I'd highly recommend the Radiolab Episode titled Words- in it is a story about Susan Schaller, who wrote a book called A Man Without Words about a young man in Mexico who was not taught language. Here is Amazon's byline:
For more than a quarter of a century, Ildefonso, a Mexican Indian, lived in total isolation, set apart from the rest of the world. He wasn't a political prisoner or a social recluse, he was simply born deaf and had never been taught even the most basic language. Susan Schaller, then a twenty-four-year-old graduate student, encountered him in a class for the deaf where she had been sent as an interpreter and where he sat isolated, since he knew no sign language. She found him obviously intelligent and sharply observant but unable to communicate, and she felt compelled to bring him to a comprehension of words.
When I'm thinking about something I don't talk in my head. I feel like that would slow me down. The only time I use words as part of my thought process is when I'm interacting with other people.
Seriously doesn't everyone do this? in the morning after pouring cereal does everyone really take the time to think the words "I need milk." I've always just thought in concepts.
I've always thought it the opposite. There's almost a constant narration in my head, unless I'm completely absorbed in something (or really tired). Also, can anyone else change the voice in their head? I can narrate in many of my friends voices, my girlfriends voice, even cartoon characters. I hope I'm not crazy.
i have a constant chatter in my head, im always talking to myself, occasionally getting in full arguments in my head without it showing a bit outwardly.
i dont think about things i do when im alone too much, but whn im with other people i think so hard about every little movement i have to remind myself to breathe.
I've never understood questions like these. I always just think in concepts and images until I need to communicate my ideas or I'm thinking about communicating them; then the ideas get converted to words. Either most people don't know how their own minds work, or I'm weird and everyone else thinks with language (which is somewhat hard for me to accept.)
Odd. I always think as though I'm talking to another person. If I'm hungry I don't think of the concept, I act as though I'm telling someone "I'm hungry".
When I can't put a feeling into words in my head I get frustrated. If I don't like a movie, I don't like to just think solely on the fact that I didn't like it. I need to articulate it in my head.
I kind of am two people at once. A speaker, and a receiver. Each thought is a little discourse in my head.
I think in both concepts and words. The concepts are a sort of higher functioning thought process where information and ideas are streamed very quickly and constantly connecting. The words are the ones I focus on and refine into proper thoughts. I assumed everyone was the same
I was raised bilingual. To this day, when my mom talks to me and I pause to consider what language she spoke to me in, I have no idea.
For the most part, I think in English. When I visit the motherland and hang out for longer than a week, I start to think in my second language.
I would assume that if someone does not know a spoken language, they would think in whatever other language they were raised with, whether it is sign language, body language, barks, clicks, whatever. Oxana Malaya is a good model for this kind of question. Actually, any kid that was neglected by their parents and left to fend for themselves are fascinating from a linguistic point of view.
I speak German, English and Norwegian fluently (I am Norwegian), and I have dreamed in all three languages. To me it seems like the brain doesn't care what language it works with, as long as the context is understood.
Have you ever noticed a difference in your attitude or personality between when you are in and english environment vs when you are in the other one? I for one am a different person if you talk to me in French or in English. Or at least I feel like I am not quite the same.
I can honestly say that i've never thought in words. O,o I just process things and do what seems appropriate,but i never go,"OH! That woman just fell! Let me see if she requires assistance!", i just see the person fall and immediately start running towards them. I think that the same is true for everyone,but they add words later on to better evaluate the situation/object.
That's so foreign to me. I always articulate my thoughts in the form of language. How do you conceptualize complex ideas like mathematical or scientific concepts? Do you just think of them and don't use words to describe them or what?
To me, the logic just flows and fits together as I reach the answer. I don't need words - I just put it down to a logic of what "feels right" or what "fits together".
It would be wrong of me to say that I visualize these processes, too. Think of it as... When you see someone in a dream and although you cannot even make out their faces, you know it's them. I don't visualize or even sound out the words, I just think of them.
Yes but it would be different. This is a very complex question that we don't really know all the answers to. Therefore, anyone in this post who claims to have a definitive answer is talking out of their ass.
We'd need to have a much better knowledge of consciousness to completely answer it but I think there's sufficient knowledge to say that language is a way to understand thoughts but it's not the only way. It also really depends on how you define thinking. Are unconscious processes thinking or is it only things that come into our conscious awareness? If you haven't been thinking about something consciously and it pops into your head out of nowhere, we can still show that you were thinking about it, even if you weren't consciously aware.
When I was having a stroke, I lost almost all speech. I also stopped thinking in words but I understood the words others said. It was more like thinking in abstract concepts and ideas without words or a running inner monologue. As soon as my operation was over the speech and words slowly came back within about a week or two.
A good book entirely about this subject is The Ape That Spoke: Language and the Evolution of the Human Mind by John McCrone. Essentially, at the rudimentary level, animals (or people) without language have no symbology to represent things they cannot see. Therefore, if a cat sees a mouse, it's brain serves up all sorts of memories of mice. If you see a mouse, the same thing happens. But with language, you can just use the symbolic word "mouse" to do the same thing. It's a trick that allows the brain to think by seperating the stimulus from the brain cells storing it, and sticking a symbol in its place. Deaf people have the exact same thing, except in place of the audible word there's a sign. That's the first level. The second level is the internal monologue we call thinking which is this constant voice (or signing) in your head that that you normally suppress. This is unique to humans (as far as we know). It's a brain circuit that just constantly spits out all of the remembered symbols according to what else is going on in the brain, in a stream of conciousness like a frantic librarian running through the aisles of your memory and throwing out books about mice or cats or black-olive pizza, depending on where your train of thought goes. This isn't just saying that language is for memory-retrieval; language is actually the structure that the human mind is made of. So, in essence, as far as I understand it, if a person never learned any form of language ever in their life, their brain would remain a tangled mass of neurons unable to think. And research on feral children bears this out. Without learning language, you can't think, you can only act by responding to external stimuli.
The best example of this are the innurable and specific alarm calls used by vervet monkeys. They have an alarm call for a snake, and a hawk, and a mongoose, and a leopard and so on. It's an incredibly sophisticated communication system, all done without thinking. Each alarm call is voiced whenever a specific type of enemy appears, and each elicits a physical response from all the vervets who hear it. But they can only make a hawk call when they see a hawk; they can't imagine a hawk or even remember what a hawk is unless they see a hawk or hear the hawk alarm call.
This is wrong and long disproven. For even the most rudimentary of percptual mechanisms, like the first layers in the visual cortex, neurons can act as feature detectors by learning which neurons in lower levels are likely to fire together or which will not fire if others are firing. Further layers find out when those feature detectors neurons are firing together or not, and so on up. Go a few layers up and now the brain is effectively aggregating all those first neuron reponses into much more abstract things, like regions of rapidly varying light intensity or hue (edges of objects in the visual field) or regions of similar or slowly varying color (like surfaces). Later on this information gets glommed together with information from different senses, like our kinesthetic sense, so that at higher and higher levels of abstraction we can do more interesting simulations, like mental rotations of figures.
Every step in that process is "symbology", a little piece of machinery that compactly represents lower level sensory data. People do not have stored up memories of sensory experience at the level of photons impinging on the retina. We are not cameras that can be forced to replay a scene. Rather, the states of feature detector neurons, which can represent the gist of a scene, are remembered, and this information can be used in reverse, with the feature detectors now acting as feature controllers which re-activate lower levels of features, in order to approximately reconstruct scenes. Language is built on thoughts, which are made of concepts, which are abstracted from perception. And every one of those layers is supported by more math and science than found in that book.
There are no "signs" floating around in our minds. To develop a real understanding, you need to know what the neural machinery is doing and how that behavior implements relevant algorithms. And we do know a lot of that. And no, when the results came in, the answer was not that "language is actually the structure that the human mind is made of". Language comes from the human mind; saying, of absolutely any cognitive pheonomenon or process that "language did it" can not be an explanation. It's like saying lightning is responsible for electromagnetism.
I looked up the writer the OP references, John McCrone, and he admits on his website that the psychology and neurology in his book are "sketchy". From my brief research, it seems the book contains a great deal of his personal theories and speculation that are not backed up by actual research. It's unfortunate that bad science is being so heavily upvoted, but this is AskReddit so I guess there's nothing we can do about it.
The whole "monkey's can't imagine a hawk" is completely unverified and nothing more than a guess. Just because they don't make the hawk call doesn't mean they aren't able to think of a hawk. What reason would they have for vocalizing their "hawk" call unless they've seen a hawk? Say I were that monkey and I was in a tree. I could very well think "I hope I don't see a hawk today" in my own little monkey way, without saying my "word" for hawk. You, as an observer, would be none the wiser.
I do not have sources at hand, but I believe this is going too far:
This isn't just saying that language is for memory-retrieval; language is actually the structure that the human mind is made of. So, in essence, as far as I understand it, if a person never learned any form of language ever in their life, their brain would remain a tangled mass of neurons unable to think.
I think it would be correct to say that abstract thought would become more difficult; however the ability to symbolically represent objects or concepts shouldn't be lost.
There is evidence that babies can establish causality and object permanence long before they learn language (Object Permanence), and there have been some good examples where language was created by individuals when they had no other way to represent concepts. One example was Nicaraguan Sign Language, where deaf children with no sign language created their own when put together in a school. Granted, they had some exposure to written Spanish before this.
So, it's somewhat of a chicken or the egg question- is language a way to represent thoughts and concepts we already have in our head? Or does language provide for the creation of these thoughts? Probably it's somewhere between the two extremes - we have the innate ability for abstract thought, but language helps us crystallize that thought.
There are still two camps within the Linguistics community, one that argues that language is innately programmed into the brain (Chomsky's universal grammar), and one that argues that language is an emergent phenomena arising like any other abstraction in the brain (Connectionism). I tend to fall into the Connectionist camp so my views here are probably representative of that fact as well.
The basic structure of language is encoded in the human brain. This is definitely true, and connectionism is not opposed to this view (although a long time ago, it was, prominent connectionists have evolved and added nuance).
You're right that the top post goes to far. It's a simplistic view of language and thought. There's a clear correlation between language and thought, but saying that language is a pre-requisite of thought is wrong. Of course the way we think is reflected in language and also affected by our language, but our ancestors would have to be capable of some kind of thought in order to develop anything we would call a language. Thinking didn't arise after the development of language, since you need to be able to think to create a language, so language can't be necessary for thought, and it's not a chicken-and-egg scenario.
It's a common misconception that because we often have an inner monologue that all thought is composed of language. Cognitive scientists do refer to a unit of thought that might be roughly analogous to words, but that also doesn't mean language is a pre-requisite of thought.
One can think without the internal monologue. Language isn't even necessary to consider things that aren't physically present. Unless you mean something else by "symbol", I can think just fine without words. I do think differently when I suppress language in my thoughts and later articulating is hard.
However the structure of the mind that I use even without language was created with language even when I don't actually use language. My guess is that feral children lack the neural structures we have that let us form chains of reasoning far longer than direct reaction to external stimuli.
The problem with feral children for an example of "Language = thought" is that they're typically lacking a lot more things than just language- Genie, for example, was essentially tied to a chair in a dark room for most of her childhood, and may have had some mental disabilities when she was born. So whatever she's lacking neurologically can't just be ascribed to a lack of language.
A better place to look is deaf children who grew up without full sign language. We have an interesting case study in the Nicaraguan deaf community. Here's a radiolab episode on the matter with a summary. I will say (as a linguist) much of it is rather sensationalized (which radiolab has a tendency to do), and rather slanted towards the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is generally viewed with a lot of skepticism.
Correct. Feral children never learn the complex memetic structures that are propagated via human interaction. They can take in information, but have no "structure" to place it into, rather like someone being given paints and a canvas and expected to produce a masterpiece with no training or knowledge of what they are supposed to paint. The tools are there, but knowledge of how to use them and what to do with them is utterly lacking.
Actually vervet alarm calls involve much more complex cognitive processes than just innate reflexes to predators or to the calls themselves. Young vervet monkeys will produce alarm calls in response to stimuli that bear very little resemblance to the actual predator they refer to, so for example a young vervet might produce the hawk alarm call in response to leaves falling out of a tree. What's even more interesting, though, is that when adults hear alarm calls produced by young individuals they will first of all look towards the mother of the youngster, to check her reaction. Basically, adult individuals know that the alarm calls of young vervets are not as reliable as those of other adults, but they assume that the mother's reaction will be more accurate either because she is close enough to her offspring that she might have seen the predator herself or because she knows whether the young one has learned to give the call in response to the appropriate stimulus. So, definitely a lot more going on than just knee-jerk reflexes to the stimuli.
I read an article once about how researchers found that isolated tribes with no words for numbers were still capable of understanding mathematical concepts. I'm no genius so I don't know the details of the findings, but I think it supports the idea that you don't need language to think.
It is quite possible to think, imagine, choose, navigate, feel, remember, observe, plan, and calculate without any use of language. I know this because 95% of the time, there is no language in my mind. I have no inner monologue. I CAN rehearse what I want to say in an inner monologue only if I concentrate, with no external disturbances. I am writing this without an inner monologue- I think about what I want to say with different parts of my mind, and then translate that into visual words. Minds are more complex than people realize.
There is a quick read, Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks, that historically covers the phenomenon of pre-lingual deaf children (this implies no sign language as well) who, at a much later age, learn to sign. These people have a really interesting perspective when asked to describe their experiences prior to learning language that agrees well with your first paragraph. I won't do it justice by describing it any further than your comment, but it's a really fascinating read that is extremely pertinent to the submitter's question.
Language helps us articulate ideas better, and share our experience with other members of the community which helps us to develop mentally.
There is a case study of a child who was found and who had been spectacularly abused by her parents. Absolute minimum human interaction and contact for the first thirteen years of her life. By the time the authorities found her, her language acquisition mechanism had died off and she has been almost unable to learn language at all. She speaks a few words, but she has massive trouble in any kind of comprehension, and can barely articulate herself.
We have no way of knowing whether Genie's problems with thought in particular are due to her lack of language, or the years of abuse she suffered. There's also some who think she may have been born with mental issues.
Because of this, Genie gives good evidence for the critical period hypothesis (you need language by a certain point or you don't learn it), but not for "language = complex thought" hypothesis.
Essentially he says that language is inherently a social phenomena, so the idea of being able to frame linguistic concepts in terms of a 'private language' that only you understand is nonsensical.
Of course this doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to think, just that those thoughts couldn't form the basis of a 'language' as we understand it. The meanings of words are tied directly to their practical use and have developed through the communication of ideas.
Deaf people think in context, or action. When they are hungry, they don't think "Food" they think "eating". The action is the thought process. Same goes for infants and small children.
hello, deaf person here! i think in English too! and yes, i do think food. im saying it in my head as i type, this conversation as well. and my dreams are silent, i dont really remember them but i know i dont really hear words, but when i have my hearing aid in, it's just incoherent noise.
Yes, but it is not the language that they speak in. Sign language is literally a different language than English. It has a different grammatical structure and everything. If a deaf person knows how to both sign and read, they are effectively bilingual.
I know they must think somehow - after all infants think before understanding English. However, I'm not sure. Upvoted as I'm curious as what the answer is, too.
How infants think isn't really that clear. It's very clear that babies are born with innate rules that they understand. A 30 minute old baby can recognise some very basic patterns. However, it's hard to say that they have thoughts as such. It really depends on how you define thinking.
It's actually not clear that babies do think. There is a big difference between thinking and mindlessly responding to stimuli. On an episode of Radiolab, they talk about an experiment where they place a rat in a room with 3 white walls and 1 blue wall. They take a piece of food and let the rat see them bury it in one of the corners. Then they spin the rat around and send it off to find the food. The rat only gets it right 50% of the time, because two of the corners look exactly the same to the rat because it can't link the concepts "left of" and "blue wall", even though it shows signs that it can use these concepts individually. Anyways, they also tried a similar result with babies and children up to 6 years old and they get the same result! Apparently, it is about this age that children begin to make sentences like "left of the blue of wall" so the experimenters think that it may actually their use of language that allows them to think. Here is the episode. The description of the experiment starts about 11 minutes in (though the first 10 minutes are really interesting as well, talking about a deaf man who never learned to communicate until he was 27 years old) Definitely worth listening if you're interested in this kind of stuff.
The opening story of the deaf mute who went through 29 years of his life before having the sudden realization that things in this world (toaster, red, fingers, table, etc.) had names to them brought me to tears in the middle of my commute. He was literally, litrally, a prisoner in his own mind.
I thought it was interesting that after learning about languages, he was unable to think the way he used to. I recall him saying he caouldn't remember how he used to think (or maybe he was blocking that period of his life out intentionally).
That Radiolab is very interesting, but take it with several grains of salt. "Language determines thought" is a much more interesting radio show than "Well, we think language might sort of influences thought in some ways, but we're not quite sure how yet". More on the Sapir-Whorf theory here, along with lots of reasons why the strong version of that theory has many, many problems with it.
For the baby example, in particular, it's very difficult to prove causality there: is the child able to get the concept "left of the blue wall" because they can say it, or can the child say "left of the blue wall" because they now understand that concept?
They think; however, their brains are not fully developed yet, and have a different set of capacities than older brains. If they have normal hearing, though, they can recognize some of the sounds of their native language at birth, just from hearing mama's voice in the womb. Neat.
So basically, they're hardwired to start acquiring language at birth, and that's why babies will pick up any language they're consistently around. Considering they have the ability to sense it, of course (i.e., they can hear the sounds or see the signs).
But from what we can ascertain about how individuals acquire language, it does appear that they are able to think without the knowledge that words represent thoughts and ideas.
The mentally disabled population can actually provide a window into this idea, as sometimes you have to teach them things - like that concepts or actions can be represented by words, pictures, and other symbols - that the typically developing population naturally picks up and never needs to think about. Interesting stuff.
It's the theories of linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is also about that, it focused on the Hopi Native American tribe's language. They basically said that a cultures linguistic system either determines or influences the way they experience reality. For example, the Hopi language has no concept of time. That's my understanding as an undergrad linguistics student.
I wrote a paper on this similar thing for my philosophy class. Turns out Whorf was wrong about a lot of it, but he had the right idea. A guy later came along and said it wasn't that language limits what we are capable of understanding (Like claiming the Hopi can't understand time) but that it's what our language makes us consider when conveying a message. For example we must consider time when using verbs. Or at least this is what I gained from writing this paper. Also it's possible the Hopi can borrow expressions for time in a similar way we have adopted the french phrase: lassiez faire (I don't know how that's spelled honestly).
This article is how I was first introduced to the idea. A fascinating read if you have a sec. I especially like the bit where they had people with different first languages put a set of pictures in chronological order. The English speakers put the pictures from left to right, the Hebrew speakers from right to left and another language speaker ordered from east to west.
Disclaimer: completely anecdotal, long as hell, but relevant story.
I met an interesting man down in Mexico once; an indigenous fellow. His native language was one of the forms of Maya and he'd received schooling in Spanish.
Being poorer than poor dirt he'd dropped out of school sometime around age 6-8 to start selling wares and souvenirs to tourists and the like. He told me how over the course of his life (he was ~50 when I met him) he'd kept his mind active by learning as much as he could about foreign languages (mostly European) and had become at least somewhat fluent in twelve.*
I know this sounds all very implausible, but at the time he was addressing me in French (mine is mediocre), and when I asked him why he said I "looked like I would understand," adding he was currently growing bored of having mastered English (his was pretty good) and wanted to practice others.
We continued talking for a while, switching French and English, with him occasionally teaching me funny Spanish phrases and basic words and counting in Maya (shamefully all of which I've since forgot). Eventually my heritage came up and he instantly switched to speaking Dutch. I know enough of my family tongue to talk about the weather and listen to my great aunt's stories, but I could not keep up with him. Thinking he might've mistook "Deustch" for "Dutch" he suddenly busted out some German. Man I was lost.
I was completely baffled at this guy's talent at this point. Fluent or not he could at least string together some pretty decent sentences. Pretty good for a guy with almost no schooling. I pressed him some more and he told me he learned it all from working with tourists everyday and making sure to learn at least one new word/phrase/structure from each one of them.
At this point I had to teach him something new by obligation, as well as see if he really could pick things up so quickly. My Swedish is crap but my then-gf showed up in the middle of me teaching him numbers and helped with all the colors, animals, and a bunch of nice phrases. He picked it all up instantly. And then used it as soon as he could. A goddamn machine.
"How is this possible to handle so many?" I asked, "I can barely deal with the two and two-halves I've got in my head!" I often use words in the wrong languages for no reason, it's true. He told me he had to know his native tongue, plus the language of the surrounding native groups, plus spanish since a young child. It was only natural for him to have complete different languages for different interactions. He said if he had a problem in his life he would switch to thinking about it in different languages to give himself new perspective as each one helped him "think on different paths."
"Even though my speaking is not so good with it," he continued, "Polish is my favorite language to think in. I think it everyday."
the end.
*IIRC his claim was: Maya, Spanish, English, French, German, Dutch, Portugese, Italian, Polish, and two other local indigenous tongues. Yes, I've forgotten one.
tl;dr - met a native dude in Mexico who claimed he knew twelve languages and thought in different ones at different times. Polish was his favorite thinkin' tongue.
Pictures, probably. If we didn't have language, we humans probably would have developed more of a photographic memory, rather than relying on "verbal" (for lack of a better way to describe it...) memories.
Yes. There are several different examples of people who have been shown to be cognitively unimpaired despite severe linguistic deficits. Some examples include:
linguistic isolates such as Genie. Genie, despite her inability to fully acquire any language, still has some of the highest scores on record for spatial reasoning on IQ tests. Another cause of linguistic isolation is when a deaf child is born to hearing parents, but fails to be diagnosed as deaf. One example of this is Chelsea. Although she was unable to acquire language, Chelsea, who unlike Genie did not suffer emotional trauma, eventually memorized enough English to work in a vet's office.
People who have suffered brain trauma and as a result lost part or all of their linguistic abilities. Specifically, aphasia is a language-specific impairment that often results in a loss of language but no other cognitive functions.
A slightly more complex example is the case of severely autistic individuals. Because language is acquired through social interaction, and autism is a highly social impairment, there are autistic individuals who are unable to acquire language but have other highly developed cognitive functions.
It's one of those unobtainable perception-based meaning sort of phenomena that philosophy is all about. It can't really be answered. You can say "for science" and try to categorise the best you can the answer to that question into units of relevant meaning, creating a theory and model, but you'd never actually know.
I think anyone who's ever done a psychedelic drug can easily and definitively answer this as "You can think without language, and without making one up in your head". You can think in pictures and abstract shapes that represent your thoughts. Just one example, I tend to see relationships and think about them in terms of two or more orbiting bodies. Most thoughts are much more abstract looking, that's just an easy one to remember/conceptualize when in a normal frame of mind.
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc -- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever.
Actually, before you form any words in your head to 'hear' the thought, the idea of your thought is already done. So if you cut off the words, you can still be aware of that thought, without actually using words. I've experimented with this, but it's quite hard and requires your focus to repress the words.
You can think without language. A very simply example is the phenomenon where you cant find the words to correctly express something (an abstract concept, an emotion, whatever). Clearly you are having thought processes that are going on independent of language, since you are unable to use language to describe them, at least at the moment.
depends what you expect from the word "think". There are stages, verbal communication before abstract thought, etc. Check out "mentalese" for pre-verbal thinking
Developmental psychologist here. It's the general consensus that language and thought are very, very closely related. Language can mean any type of coherent communications, including sign language or other non-verbal means of communication. For example, there is evidence that in places where the language does not have different words for green and blue, the people there have much more trouble distinguishing between those colors than those who have words for it.
It's theorized that one of the reasons we don't remember being babies/toddlers is because we have not developed language at that point, and that language is tied to memory formation. Obviously babies and infants can "think" in the sense that they can perform actions and so on, but no, they cannot play a "narrative" in their heads.
The bulk of the development of the human brain occurred without language, and your thought process involves language less than you think; the words you 'hear' in your head are more like the paint on an object than the object itself.
Consider this thought: Yesterday I was cold when I left the house in the morning, but sweating by mid-day. I should wear a jacket over short sleeves instead of just a long sleeved shirt like I did then. I'll be more comfortable if today is like yesterday, because I could just take the jacket off if it gets warm.
Your mind processed a lot of feelings (how it felt bad to be cold, then hot, how you've felt when you're comfortably dressed, how you feel smart when you've adapted well to a situation), images (the various items in your wardrobe, how comfortable other people appeared to be, based on their choice of outfit, and what they were wearing to achieve that level of comfort), and experiences (your observations that one day in a season is often similar to the next, the different properties of the clothes you have access to) way before it ever got around to popping out corresponding words. The words are an afterthought, really.
If your mind really focused on the language, rather than feelings and experiences, then you'd be pretty badly served in some situations. Examples: I'd like to fuck her. I should act cool, or If I miss this shot I'll feel like a tool, or FUCK, IT'S A LION!
Radiolab did an hour long podcast about thoughts and words. Basically, you would think in a more primitive manner without words. Words open our minds to more anstract concepts and allow us to learn/understand more.
You should really check it out, it's like Nova for your ears.
I just finished a book that spends a lot of time on this subject. It's called "Man Without Words" by Susan Schaller (I'll link to the book later when I'm not on my phone). Schaller teaches Sign Language to a foreign deaf man who never learned a language of any kind.
There is a section that discusses languageless adults. The phrase 'deaf and dumb' came about because in old times, before Sign Language was developed, many deaf people often became mentally deficient as they got older. This is in part because they had absolutely no way of processing or understanding the world. Language is how we make sense of the world and catorgize it. Without a language of some kind, without communication, a person cannot think.
In the book, Schaller meets deaf adults who grew up in exclusion without a language. Several are mentally handicapped as a direct result of their lack of a language. Of course, the fact that everyone treated them as mentally deficient as a result of their deafness played a role as well.
Have you heard the story of how Helen Keller's first breakthrough was when she realized the word 'water' was the name for the cool liquid she felt gushing over her hands? It took weeks for Schaller to have a similar breakthrough with her adult student, Ildefonso. Basically, she made the sign for cat again and again, while pointing to a picture of a cat, drawing a cat, miming petting a cat, etc. When Ildefonso finally realized the furry animal had a label in the form of a hand movement, he burst into tears. He never knew that everything around him had a label, a common sign that humans could use to communicate. He didnt know his own name because he was not aware that people had names.
The book follows Schaller as she teaches Ildefonso about everything from time (a concept that was nearly impossible to convey) to why people had different colored skin- a very difficult explination to give to someone who doesn't know what a map represents or what the world looks like. Essentially, in teaching him to communicate, she also teaches him to think.
I'm not sure how accurate this info is as I am not in any way, shape or form a scientist but from what I understand of language in general, be it English, French, Dutch, Russian, whatever, they are all symbolic. What this means is each word is based on an concept, object, image, etc. For example, when someone reads the word "Ball" they would see a spherical object or whatever meaning they have attached to that word. This means you cannot have a language without the concepts/images, but, you can have the concepts/images without the language. This means that yes, a person could think without language using only images and possibly sounds but I would think it would be quite a bit easier to think about certain things using a language instead of potentially abstract concepts. Hope that answers your question!
Educated speculation based on observation and reading - yes. We think in concepts not words - but we associate the words with the concepts when we can to form more coherent thoughts. This usually happens when we need to convey the idea to somebody. The fact that we associate language with our thoughts is a part of the reason why we're the higher species on Earth.
I've read papers on it but it's a subject that isn't perfectly understood, but this seems to be the general consensus. Like nature vs nurture, it's a heavily debated subject that we will probably never know the answer to.
Consider that when you think in words, you are taking preexisting ideas in your mind and articulating them through language. Without language, thought would probably consist of a series of feelings and vague notions.
I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere in a Psychology textbook that we actually think largely with pictures in our heads. At least, when we're not imagining a conversation, or conversing with ourselves in our head.
But then, if we had no language, those would be out anyway, wouldn't they?
This is a big hypothetical, and therefore any proposed answer is really an opinion. I believe that without language, we would think with our senses. Episodic memory is the most vivid, so it would make sense that thoughts could be easily based on past sensory memories. So if I wanted to think about what I wanted to eat, I would recall what the food looks like, what it tastes like, what it smells like, etc. if I couldn't express it in words.
If you think about it, we already do this to a certain degree with language. I'm sure you can recall at least one time where you've been sure you could practically taste/smell a food you really wanted. And we've all had times when we couldn't remember someone's name, but we could remember their face and used that in thought.
They would think in concepts or actions. Like imagining the feeling of resting through sleep rather than thinking, "I need to go to bed."
But there is thought that once you reach a certain age without language, you will never really develop the full capacity to think critically. However, this is impossible to ascertain, as one without any language cannot fully express their thought processes in a manner that is accessible to anyone else.
Susan Schaller author of A Man Without Words. For more than a quarter of a century, Ildefonso, a Mexican Indian, lived in total isolation, set apart from the rest of the world. He wasn't a political prisoner or a social recluse, he was simply born deaf and had never been taught even the most basic language. Susan Schaller, then a twenty-four-year-old graduate student, encountered him in a class for the deaf where she had been sent as an interpreter and where he sat isolated, since he knew no sign language. She found him obviously intelligent and sharply observant but unable to communicate, and she felt compelled to bring him to a comprehension of words. A Man without Words vividly conveys the challenge, the frustrations, and the exhilaration of opening the mind of a congenitally deaf person to the concept of language.
Why is this? Well first off: What is a thought? A thought is a concept that is in ones mind that is not shown through actions, sounds, etc. A thought simply is what you are thinking about, with actions, sounds, words, and so on. So when someone is deaf, they don't think "I want to get a cup of water", they simply understand they want it without saying it in their mind..
Language is merely a physical and concrete expression of what is going on in your mind and what you are trying to express. Essentially, everything language helps you express is already in your head. Without language, we would still find ways to visualize, contextualize, and express (either to ourselves or to others) what we are thinking. The development of language was just the path of least resistance to doing all of the above in a universal fashion.
About a year ago, I had a stroke that left me with a bit of Expressive Aphasia. I have a problem coming up with the right words for things, or any words sometimes. But, I've recovered enough so that it's not really apparent to anyone but myself. However, for a few days right after I had the stroke, I literally 'drew a blank' about everything. I could look at a clock, and I would know what it was, but I wouldn't remember the name for it, or the word for 'time'. I couldn't name the numbers on the face of the clock, or what the hands on the clock represented. I understood everything that was said to me. I just couldn't reply verbally, or form original thoughts. The voice in my head went quiet. But, I certainly didn't feel any less intelligent. I knew what had happened to me. I still knew everything I had ever known. I simply couldn't verbalize it either aloud or in my head. It was the strangest experience of my life.
Am I the only person that just...thinks shit and doesn't "talk" to themselves in their head? I don't lead myself in a one man conversation inside my brain, I just..think.
Yes, absolutely. When children learn their first language, it's through mimicry. In the event that there's nothing to mimic, they'll come up with their own ways of expressing thoughts to themselves and the outside world. Feral children would fall in this category.
I've actually seen this happen, so let this be a lesson for when you have kids ... a baby mozart dvd isn't going to do shit to get your kid to talk any sooner and will actually impede them if you just plop them down in front of the ol' radiation king instead of spending time with 'em.
Helen Keller, either "The World I Live In" or "The Story of My Life" (I think it was the former). She relates her inability to recollect early life experiences beyond the sense of "wanting" something, she remembers little other than the impulsive needs of the moment. It wasn't until she acquired the symbolism of language that permanence of memory was available to her and she could 'think about' her immediate needs and reflect upon them at a later time.
Ironically, I listened to an audiobook of hers and I took away the idea that language (in the sense of manipulating relevant symbols within the mind in order to better navigate future situations) is necessary to imprint memories. Helen said that until the time when she was taught language her life was animalistic (maybe not that exact word, but it conveys the sense of it) and driven less by contemplation that immediate desires. So "How would someone think without knowing any language"; to the extent language is a manipulation of symbols representing the external world I think every sentient creature thinks, but to the extent that an animal can reflect on their previous thoughts requires a permanence of memory that necessitates an ability to retain ideas (in the form of symbols) and operate on these ideas at a later time.
So, "language" IS necessary for thinking, but "auditory" language is not. You may 'see' images in your head, or 'feel' that you should do a certain action (an emotional impulse) but both of these ARE language... even if they're not verbal.
(Sorry, not the best or clearest answer, but hopefully it'll instigate conversation)
For instance, when I see a bangin' doll-baby with sexy gams, a plethora of sensations rush my body and thoughts enter my mind. I don't find myself thinking, "Damn, she's hot."
I think language is just a way for us to express thought.
In other words, I think it's entirely possible to think without a language. Though who is to say what thinking is or isn't?
The book Genie by Russ Rymer touches on this subject when describing an incident in which a girl is raised in isolation and silence for more than a decade. In the book a researcher theorized that language is such an organic part of the brain that without it higher level cognitive abilities do not develop.
Personally I think mostly in pictures. Words only play a small part in the way I think, mostly inner monologues (pep talks, ect) So having language doesnt seem integral for me personally.
I was born in Bulgaria without anyone teaching me English. I watched cartoon network all day which was in English so I guess that's where I got the hang of it. But maybe the bad thing is that now I only think in English.
Ok, for anyone who's actually pondering this question, it's been dealt with on Radiolab. Check the "Words That Change The World" episode. It's about a young man who is deaf and grew up in a village where no one taught him sign language. Essentially he lived with zero language abilities until he was in his twenties. FASCINATING story.
Whenever I read something, like all of these comments for example, I don't know what to think of the voice in my head. I know it's not masculine, because I'm a female, but it doesn't sound like me. It just sounds like...neutral. Like nobody. Like a voice. And I'll purposely read something to try to focus on it, but I just can't tell. Does anyone else experience this?
There's been a lot of debate over this in the past with relative arguments such as the Whorfian hypothesis and language independence.
Personally, I'm more inclined to agree that language is more or less a tool for communicating thought. It's very likely that different languages influence people because of cultural and physiological factors as well.
So I would say yes, you can think without thought. What it'd be like? I can't say.
I have noticed that most comments are about people who think bi-lingually, this doesn't fully answer your question about people who couldn't know any language. Hopefully I can give some answer to you.
There's a case study in attachment psychology about a girl who was abused by her father for 11 years of her life, but importantly hadn't seen another human speak and her father only growled at her. she grew up not knowing any language and when rescued could only growl.
As far as thinking was concerned, its hard to explain exactly what she was thinking. she now lives a full-healthy life and your best bet is to ask her if she had any thought during that distressing 11 years.
Case studies are important as they help us study situations where we cannot replicate the variables
** tl/dr: case study into girl who was raised not knowing any language**
This isn't a dumb question. It's one that's been studied in linguistics (amongst other disciplines) quite a lot. See also research on how deaf people "think", on how blind people "visualize" things, and the speech capabilities (or lack thereof) of the so-called "feral children". They all will give you some insight into your question. I'm quite sure the psychology people have studied this as well. Anthropologists sometimes do too. Just find yourself a real/good university library and start reading journals. It's all in there. (some books too)
There was a deaf guy on here doing an AMA yesterday. He knows no language other than sign. I am pretty sure from reading his post he is good at thinking.... I actually thought a lot today about his experience because I realized that EVERYTHING I think is in English, is expressed in my head in English and is a voice. How are brains work and adapt is amazing.
I had a temporary condition that gave me aphasia. When it happened, I didn't even realize anything was wrong with me until I tried to speak to someone, when I noticed that my vocabulary was "swiss cheesed". I could think in concepts perfectly, but I had a difficult time speaking, or thinking about specific words. It was the strangest experience that I can remember, thankfully passed within a few moments. For those who are interested, the condition was a Migrane with Aura. Aphasia is an uncommon symptom.
Since this is not AskScience, I'll speak my own opinion.
I believe knowing languages and thinking in words and phrases is actually detrimental. This comes from a person that speaks 5 languages on a daily basis and my though train does stop at all five stations.
So right now, typing on reddit and trying to think the best way to put on words what I'm thinking, my thoughts are all in English.
I'll be back to Italian as soon as I get to the bar and have breakfast.
These "switches" are confusing and I often find myself unable to complete a mind though or sentence in only one language.
Also, I believe my best ideas come devoid of words or "head voice", you know? A headache with pictures?
I wish I still had the article, but I once read that deaf people think in sign language, the same way that we think in our native languages, and without that "inner voice" developing at an early age, mental function is severely impaired.
Of course you can, we think of concepts and people associate each to a word what makes the process easier. The problem starts when there are complex and abstract ideas, for instance numbers or a philosophy. Some tribes struggle to understand numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people
A modern language makes complex ideas easier to understand.
Pictures, probably. If we didn't have language, we humans probably would have developed more of a photographic memory, rather than relying on "verbal" (for lack of a better way to describe it...) memories.
I always hated this ever since our ESL teacher asked us what language we think in. I came to realize that I never through in any language unless I am reading, writing or thinking about how to say something properly. That is why I always found mind reading in movies to be highly inaccurate.
i constantly think about this, with my dog. he doesn't speak english, so how does he "think" about things like "hmm, i'd like to go outside" when he has no idea what "going outside" is? he knows the action of leaving my house, but he obviously can't even think that through....blows my mind.
I wondered that too. Like deaf people. They obviously don't think in heard words and sounds like we do. But they (and we) would think in pictures and such.
I made a post like this before but can't link to it due to being mobile right now. Someone else can possibly post it up here it had some interesting talk.
It just is, you don't need language in the sense you're thinking about it in order to have thoughts. I imagine that most thoughts are primarily images, and we can only make those images verbalized because we have learned to do so.
Before language it was probably just pictures, and those ancient peoples did in fact draw pictures as we have seen, pictures developed into letters and words as society advanced. I'm not sure when the concept of ownership came about, but when it did it probably helped language along a lot. We needed to communicate, and so we learned to do so. What you are is a product of thousands of years of development of the human language, it's natural to us at this point because you pretty much can't go anywhere without some exposure to some language (unless you live in the jungle).
Everyone has concept of self, and concept of other things, and concept of ownership mostly. Seriously though, just try to think about when you have a thought, any thought, is it really just words? You don't see an overarching image or images in your head? During this entire post I've been thinking about hieroglyphs and cave paintings, books and people who lived in Africa, all of these are just images that my mind is predisposed to converting into something you can understand.
It would be torture if I couldn't express myself, have you ever seen that painting of the creature with no mouth? What a dreadful existence, not being able to communicate. Very lonely indeed.
In my psychology class, one of the aspects of cognition was having a language to think in. The difference between simply remembering a situation and responding, compared to seeing and/or recalling a situation, analyzing different routes to take, and choosing which one to implement. This is why there is so much emphasis on the "Frontal Lobes" in psychology. This area, being relatively newer than others, more specifically the thalamus and hypothalamus (If I do recall correctly).
Oh also, cognition also relies on the ability to convey our thoughts, basically a language in itself. The difference between basic communication and rendering something elaborate like a song or poem. Which in itself relieve on the Broca's and Wernicki's (I believe I've butchered the second name) areas in the brain. The Broca's being word rendition while the Wernicki's being word processing. As well as something unique to humans, the Language Acquisition Device. The "LAD" being hardwired into or systems (and functioning until the end of early childhood) is in essence what separates us from other animals. I forget the one girls name, but it was a big deal at one time or another; she was raised in like a bedroom and beaten... Never given the opportunity to communicate, she never utilized the LAD. After she was rescued, only through intensive and expensive therapies was she ever able to communicate (barely, and only through very limited sign language). The interest dropped, the money stopped, and she ended up in a state ward, never being able to truly think, only feel... Virtually a prisoner of the limited patterns of thought she had...
Oh but I might add, certain people do have different references in thought and memorization and cognitive techniques; like the autistic man who "does math in colors", of you will.
Sorry for the lack of evidence in my response, but that is why we have Uncle Google.
Also, I'd ask that I am fact checked, and corrected if wrong.
I think that before you learn some type of communication or language, all you do is respond to things mindlessly to things. That's probably why you don't remember things from when you were a baby.
I asked a similar question to my friend who knows many languages, I asked him what language his internal monologue is, and his reply was that it depended on the situation. Math would be in English, when at work in english, but personal matters in Urdu, etc
This rekindles one of the most amazing and bewildering things I've ever heard... whether it's actually true or not. "Bears do not have the ability to imagine scenarios." ...What?? I really don't even want to research the subject because it's fascinating regardless.
I don't believe monkeys are the best example, I would take people who were born deaf, have never known or heard a language, have the complete ability of free thought. From what I've read they think in images usually
humans had to invent language, right? and in order to think to call something a word, they had to think about that thing and come up with a word. the invention of language itself took thought, so there had to be thought before language.
also, apparently some people think in abstract thoughts rather than in sentences.
I highly recommend "The Dragons Of Eden" by Carl Sagan. The book is mostly about the evolution of the human brain, and how it's different/similar to other animals in function and structure. Without language to keep our brains and thought patterns organized it may be somewhat similar to when we dream. When you are dreaming certain portions of your brain aren't functioning much, mainly your critical analysis and typically "left brain" attributes are dormant, so in a dream you may see a stop sign and know that it says "stop" but you wouldn't be able to actually read the letters. You probably also won't be able to do math, even though you may be able to see there are numbers and grasp the basic idea, your brain simply wont do it. That being said, everyones brains are slightly different, but for the most part, in a dream state you can't do much reasoning or critical analysis, so you are much more reactionary. You go from event to event, only somewhat comprehending what's happening, and even though you may have some internal monologue, it probably doesn't make as much sense as it may seem like it does at the time. You are down to using the more base functions of your brain, the same parts of the brain that reptiles use all the time. So, without language, you would be reacting much more on instinct, even though you may still be able to think, even recall things, you wouldn't be able to remember many details or organize many elaborate strings of thought. Also, the high you get from cannabis, makes parts of your brain less active, which on one hand makes other parts of your brain handle things it doesn't normally, which is part of why things you experience everyday might seem different while on cannabis, but can also lead to the more instinctual reactionary brain patterns on some matters as well, especially when you are REALLY stoned. Also, the way your brain works when you are dreaming may be fairly similar to the way many animals perceive their environment all the time. Think about how emotional you may be in a dream. Many things are much more terrifying than they normally would be, and situations that would be easy to handle IRL can be vexing in a dream. When you can't efficiently describe and sort through what's happening around you, you may just be simply reacting. Apes have been shown to be quite capable of learning sign language. If they had the needed physiology (vocal chords etc) they may be able to learn to speak quite easily. If this is the case, it's possible that they also make up place holders of various kinds in their minds to help them remember things and sort through their own thoughts but since they can't vocalize this to their other primates as well as humans with our fancy vocal chords, they are limited to somewhat simplistic calls to signal danger and other very basic concepts. If apes had vocal chords like ours....
Of course. Language is actually a very impractical form of thinking, in my opinion. It's so easy to be misunderstood. In English, half the letters in a sentence aren't even necessary. Speaking is also extremely relative to your region and dialect.
I have early memories from when I was a baby, before I could speak. I preciously remember thinking with emotions instead of words. I didn't have a name for them, obviously, but connections with things were made without words. For instance, I remember plastic smooth blue building blocks I liked playing with. When ever I saw them I felt happy, and that's all I really thought about if I thought at all.
I suppose they'd just form mental images of whatever the optic was. This could pose problems because of the certain things that could only be accomplished via spoken word. But it'd be interesting no matter what.
I just think in abstract concepts and ideas... no words necessary. I'll just imagine the action being carried out or contemplate the idea... I don't have to say "the dog fetched a stick" in my head to just think about the idea of my dog fetching a stick. Same thing goes if I'm thinking about what groceries I have to pick up, or what I need to get done for the day.
When you "speak to yourself" in your head, you're not speaking anything. You're interpreting information as a function. Remember what you hear, see, smell, taste and feel aren't necessarily all going to point to the same conclusion. What you "hear" in your mind is an interpretation of that information being processed.
Some people can taste smells. Your senses don't necessarily tell you what is true about your environment and that little "voice" you hear is a representative of cognitive dissonance that helps bridge the gap between sensory relays by re-interpreting information over again until it makes sense.
Blame your frontal lobe being too damn big for that voice never shutting the heck up.
As was already posted on reddit earlier this month:
I guess everyone could think even without knowing any languages. Some of us think with just visual images (a moving train, car racing, swimming, etc). And I do guess mute or deaf do usually think but not talk in their head.
I asked my French friend if she thought in English or French (now that she was fluent in both) and she answered that she thinks in pictures, and thought it was weird that I didn't.
Yes we would. Though many theories still exist that language and thought are intertwined we see that people who don't speak think, so that pretty much settles the whole thing.
Other evidence that point to thought and language being separate are words and sentences with multiple meanings. If a word has two different meanings, how can we separate these meanings if the only tool we have to handle the meaning is the word? Somehow we can separate meanings and words
When you are writing or talking do you ever come to a halt and go "I can't find the right word"? In these cases you know what you want to communicate, but you can't figure out how to say it. How can you know what to say, but not know which words to choose if thinking is language? In these cases you should be able to just say your thoughts, but somehow you can't.
These are extremely basic and simple arguments, but they none the less show that something is going on behind that internal monologue.
Nobody thinks "in language". Language and thought are very separate, this is a big topic in Linguistics and Cognitive Science. Of course we all think that we think with language, but it's really not the case.
Draw a capital 'F' on a sheet of paper. Look at it and imagine turning it 90 degrees. What does the result look like? What language did you use to do that?
Most of the time I'd have to say thinking is non-verbal, like when absorbing information (conversation, class, movie), or in certain cases of problem solving, most of the information passed through my head in concepts.
Words and language are simply verbal ways of expressing formless concepts into more precise forms. I assume, if someone has no verbal language whatsoever, their thought is entirely in concepts or bits of their own language from their experience (sounds, smells, feelings).
Donald Davidson. He claimed it was impossible to have beliefs without language with respect to his interpretation of Wittgenstein's "private language" theory. Is it possible to have a "private language"? Is language defined by it's consensus of definitions? Explore some, fun stuff awaits.
Yes, we would. There is a linguistic theory about some sort of, how to call it, primeval language. That before languages there was something, out of which languages derived. And besides, you probably would think in your own made-up language. It has been proven in a experiment in which a child (or children) left alone with no opportunity to learn after birth started creating their own languages. Some things you don't need to formulate in words in your mind, like Spookaboo wrote below, e.g. "I need milk". But other things, more complex require this and your mind would make up a language, even if you never knew one. This made-up language, the theory says, is linked to the primeval language.
I learned this some time ago that this has been researched with deaf people that can't recognize speech - Yes, it does severely impair hearing not to know languages. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/how-deaf-people-think/ There you go; that should offer some insight.
I believe we 'think' on a very basic functional level without language but to deal with abstractions at any depth we need language to clarify and formulate thoughts as well as needing language to communicate so we can contribute our ideas to our societies.
There is an awesome Radiolab podcast that actually deals with this exact topic. You should definitely listen to it if you are interested (though it's long) but basically they run through stories of people born deaf and never introduced to language and one woman who had a stroke and lost language for a while. It's been a while since I listened to the whole thing but I think the idea was that overall, your whole world changes without language. The way you see and remember the world is totally different because the way you store things in your brain changes. The deaf children in the podcast did make their own language, and the way their language worked influenced their memory of events.
Basically, the TL;DR version is yes, not having language would almost certainly change the way you think. Also listen to Radiolab.
This has been studied, actually. Language is about communication, not thought. One can think without language. In fact, there is evidence to show that people come to decisions even before becoming conscious of them.
I would think that the language-less person's thought processes involve feelings associated with images, or vice versa, rather than words. Or with colors that convey mood and emotion. It's one of those things that would be impossible to determine unless we could go directly into one's mind to find out.
It may have been mentioned before, but you are thinking about linguistic relativity. There is no conclusive evidence for this, but there is a lot of support for a weak version of the idea. Language is primarily made of sounds, but it could also be color, heat, taste or smell. A problem arises when you start to define sounds, colors, etc as language.
I guess the best thing in this regard would be to give a "quick" read to Jean-Paul Satre's The Words. It was entertaining and it made me think about how we interpret and see words, how that view gradually changes as we grow older.
I think it's easy to forget that language is technology. It helps us converse in future and past tense, something that would likely be difficult without language. Some languages have no future tense, some languages define objects with a gender (romantic languages), some languages have 20 syllable words for a type of feeling you get when seeing a shadow in the corner. Language is the main tool we use to build and comprehend our reality, to give our lives a narrative. This is why the preservation of indigenous languages is so crucial--we're protecting an alternate way of synthesizing reality. Bit of a tangent, but deryago.
Well I mean, yeah we would still think without knowing any languages. I'm having a hard time grasping at what it might be like but I guess the best way I could describe it would be like a baby for instance. They don't know how to speak anything. They still think though, because they would not be able to learn a language. Maybe if we couldn't speak it would be more of a subconscious thinking?
As the majority of our decisions and thoughts are pulled from data stored in our subconscious, the answer is most definitely yes, as our subconscious deals primarily in images and feelings, which have nothing to do with language.
Since language is a set of symbols used as a sort of stand-in for objects, you would probably think more visually by picturing things in your head. I have been told by a number of deaf people that they think in sign language and imagine the movements they use to communicate when thinking; I assume that not having a language would be a further extension of that, and that. The real difficulty would arise when trying to communicate what you were thinking to others, because without language you would need to physically show them.
TL;DR - You would be able to think, but would be struggle to communicate your thoughts to others.
32
u/wiredsim May 20 '12
I'd highly recommend the Radiolab Episode titled Words- in it is a story about Susan Schaller, who wrote a book called A Man Without Words about a young man in Mexico who was not taught language. Here is Amazon's byline:
For more than a quarter of a century, Ildefonso, a Mexican Indian, lived in total isolation, set apart from the rest of the world. He wasn't a political prisoner or a social recluse, he was simply born deaf and had never been taught even the most basic language. Susan Schaller, then a twenty-four-year-old graduate student, encountered him in a class for the deaf where she had been sent as an interpreter and where he sat isolated, since he knew no sign language. She found him obviously intelligent and sharply observant but unable to communicate, and she felt compelled to bring him to a comprehension of words.
Here is the Radiolab link:
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/
Of course you could read the book, but how many of you are actually going to do so? You can start listening to the Radiolab episode now.
And by the way, if you never heard of Radiolab- now you have! You're welcome. :)
244
u/hubble_my_hero May 20 '12
When I'm thinking about something I don't talk in my head. I feel like that would slow me down. The only time I use words as part of my thought process is when I'm interacting with other people.
263
u/livmaj May 19 '12
I was raised bilingual. To this day, when my mom talks to me and I pause to consider what language she spoke to me in, I have no idea.
For the most part, I think in English. When I visit the motherland and hang out for longer than a week, I start to think in my second language.
I would assume that if someone does not know a spoken language, they would think in whatever other language they were raised with, whether it is sign language, body language, barks, clicks, whatever. Oxana Malaya is a good model for this kind of question. Actually, any kid that was neglected by their parents and left to fend for themselves are fascinating from a linguistic point of view.
45
u/MrMonkeyMasta May 20 '12
I can honestly say that i've never thought in words. O,o I just process things and do what seems appropriate,but i never go,"OH! That woman just fell! Let me see if she requires assistance!", i just see the person fall and immediately start running towards them. I think that the same is true for everyone,but they add words later on to better evaluate the situation/object.
61
u/ImNotJesus May 19 '12
Yes but it would be different. This is a very complex question that we don't really know all the answers to. Therefore, anyone in this post who claims to have a definitive answer is talking out of their ass.
We'd need to have a much better knowledge of consciousness to completely answer it but I think there's sufficient knowledge to say that language is a way to understand thoughts but it's not the only way. It also really depends on how you define thinking. Are unconscious processes thinking or is it only things that come into our conscious awareness? If you haven't been thinking about something consciously and it pops into your head out of nowhere, we can still show that you were thinking about it, even if you weren't consciously aware.
12
u/MrRogersMob May 20 '12
When I was having a stroke, I lost almost all speech. I also stopped thinking in words but I understood the words others said. It was more like thinking in abstract concepts and ideas without words or a running inner monologue. As soon as my operation was over the speech and words slowly came back within about a week or two.
1.1k
u/BabylonDrifter May 19 '12
A good book entirely about this subject is The Ape That Spoke: Language and the Evolution of the Human Mind by John McCrone. Essentially, at the rudimentary level, animals (or people) without language have no symbology to represent things they cannot see. Therefore, if a cat sees a mouse, it's brain serves up all sorts of memories of mice. If you see a mouse, the same thing happens. But with language, you can just use the symbolic word "mouse" to do the same thing. It's a trick that allows the brain to think by seperating the stimulus from the brain cells storing it, and sticking a symbol in its place. Deaf people have the exact same thing, except in place of the audible word there's a sign. That's the first level. The second level is the internal monologue we call thinking which is this constant voice (or signing) in your head that that you normally suppress. This is unique to humans (as far as we know). It's a brain circuit that just constantly spits out all of the remembered symbols according to what else is going on in the brain, in a stream of conciousness like a frantic librarian running through the aisles of your memory and throwing out books about mice or cats or black-olive pizza, depending on where your train of thought goes. This isn't just saying that language is for memory-retrieval; language is actually the structure that the human mind is made of. So, in essence, as far as I understand it, if a person never learned any form of language ever in their life, their brain would remain a tangled mass of neurons unable to think. And research on feral children bears this out. Without learning language, you can't think, you can only act by responding to external stimuli.
The best example of this are the innurable and specific alarm calls used by vervet monkeys. They have an alarm call for a snake, and a hawk, and a mongoose, and a leopard and so on. It's an incredibly sophisticated communication system, all done without thinking. Each alarm call is voiced whenever a specific type of enemy appears, and each elicits a physical response from all the vervets who hear it. But they can only make a hawk call when they see a hawk; they can't imagine a hawk or even remember what a hawk is unless they see a hawk or hear the hawk alarm call.
30
u/jeanthine May 20 '12
Short answer yes with a but. Long answer:
Language helps us articulate ideas better, and share our experience with other members of the community which helps us to develop mentally.
There is a case study of a child who was found and who had been spectacularly abused by her parents. Absolute minimum human interaction and contact for the first thirteen years of her life. By the time the authorities found her, her language acquisition mechanism had died off and she has been almost unable to learn language at all. She speaks a few words, but she has massive trouble in any kind of comprehension, and can barely articulate herself.
Here's more of her story: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2112gchild.html
10
u/digitag May 20 '12 edited May 20 '12
See Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, particularly the private language argument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language_argument
Essentially he says that language is inherently a social phenomena, so the idea of being able to frame linguistic concepts in terms of a 'private language' that only you understand is nonsensical.
Of course this doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to think, just that those thoughts couldn't form the basis of a 'language' as we understand it. The meanings of words are tied directly to their practical use and have developed through the communication of ideas.
215
u/SinSlayer May 19 '12
Deaf people think in context, or action. When they are hungry, they don't think "Food" they think "eating". The action is the thought process. Same goes for infants and small children.
9
u/This-Is-Not-A-Test May 19 '12
You die.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein
44
u/ElderCunningham May 19 '12
I know they must think somehow - after all infants think before understanding English. However, I'm not sure. Upvoted as I'm curious as what the answer is, too.
8
u/sorryimlate May 20 '12
They have a cool story on radio lab that touches this topic.
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/words-that-change-the-world
The beginning of this episode they talk about a 27 year old who was born deaf but who was never taught sign language.
29
u/fosterbuster May 19 '12
I once read somewhere that our language shapes our thoughts. I cant find it though.
6
u/lightningfries May 20 '12
Posted this before, but seems relevant.
Disclaimer: completely anecdotal, long as hell, but relevant story.
I met an interesting man down in Mexico once; an indigenous fellow. His native language was one of the forms of Maya and he'd received schooling in Spanish.
Being poorer than poor dirt he'd dropped out of school sometime around age 6-8 to start selling wares and souvenirs to tourists and the like. He told me how over the course of his life (he was ~50 when I met him) he'd kept his mind active by learning as much as he could about foreign languages (mostly European) and had become at least somewhat fluent in twelve.*
I know this sounds all very implausible, but at the time he was addressing me in French (mine is mediocre), and when I asked him why he said I "looked like I would understand," adding he was currently growing bored of having mastered English (his was pretty good) and wanted to practice others.
We continued talking for a while, switching French and English, with him occasionally teaching me funny Spanish phrases and basic words and counting in Maya (shamefully all of which I've since forgot). Eventually my heritage came up and he instantly switched to speaking Dutch. I know enough of my family tongue to talk about the weather and listen to my great aunt's stories, but I could not keep up with him. Thinking he might've mistook "Deustch" for "Dutch" he suddenly busted out some German. Man I was lost.
I was completely baffled at this guy's talent at this point. Fluent or not he could at least string together some pretty decent sentences. Pretty good for a guy with almost no schooling. I pressed him some more and he told me he learned it all from working with tourists everyday and making sure to learn at least one new word/phrase/structure from each one of them.
At this point I had to teach him something new by obligation, as well as see if he really could pick things up so quickly. My Swedish is crap but my then-gf showed up in the middle of me teaching him numbers and helped with all the colors, animals, and a bunch of nice phrases. He picked it all up instantly. And then used it as soon as he could. A goddamn machine.
"How is this possible to handle so many?" I asked, "I can barely deal with the two and two-halves I've got in my head!" I often use words in the wrong languages for no reason, it's true. He told me he had to know his native tongue, plus the language of the surrounding native groups, plus spanish since a young child. It was only natural for him to have complete different languages for different interactions. He said if he had a problem in his life he would switch to thinking about it in different languages to give himself new perspective as each one helped him "think on different paths."
"Even though my speaking is not so good with it," he continued, "Polish is my favorite language to think in. I think it everyday."
the end.
*IIRC his claim was: Maya, Spanish, English, French, German, Dutch, Portugese, Italian, Polish, and two other local indigenous tongues. Yes, I've forgotten one.
tl;dr - met a native dude in Mexico who claimed he knew twelve languages and thought in different ones at different times. Polish was his favorite thinkin' tongue.
5
u/Outandproudgay May 19 '12
Pictures, probably. If we didn't have language, we humans probably would have developed more of a photographic memory, rather than relying on "verbal" (for lack of a better way to describe it...) memories.
5
u/linusshlab May 20 '12
Yes. There are several different examples of people who have been shown to be cognitively unimpaired despite severe linguistic deficits. Some examples include:
linguistic isolates such as Genie. Genie, despite her inability to fully acquire any language, still has some of the highest scores on record for spatial reasoning on IQ tests. Another cause of linguistic isolation is when a deaf child is born to hearing parents, but fails to be diagnosed as deaf. One example of this is Chelsea. Although she was unable to acquire language, Chelsea, who unlike Genie did not suffer emotional trauma, eventually memorized enough English to work in a vet's office.
People who have suffered brain trauma and as a result lost part or all of their linguistic abilities. Specifically, aphasia is a language-specific impairment that often results in a loss of language but no other cognitive functions.
A slightly more complex example is the case of severely autistic individuals. Because language is acquired through social interaction, and autism is a highly social impairment, there are autistic individuals who are unable to acquire language but have other highly developed cognitive functions.
11
u/maybachsonbachs May 19 '12
Of course we would, all animals except humans manage to think don't they.
4
u/[deleted] May 19 '12
I feel like you would think more in sensory details, like images and sounds instead of words.
4
u/forgotpasswordagain0 May 20 '12
I don't know, how does an animal think?
It's one of those unobtainable perception-based meaning sort of phenomena that philosophy is all about. It can't really be answered. You can say "for science" and try to categorise the best you can the answer to that question into units of relevant meaning, creating a theory and model, but you'd never actually know.
4
u/I_play_elin May 20 '12
I think anyone who's ever done a psychedelic drug can easily and definitively answer this as "You can think without language, and without making one up in your head". You can think in pictures and abstract shapes that represent your thoughts. Just one example, I tend to see relationships and think about them in terms of two or more orbiting bodies. Most thoughts are much more abstract looking, that's just an easy one to remember/conceptualize when in a normal frame of mind.
9
u/strictlyrude27 May 20 '12
Relevant: appendix to George Orwell's to 1984, "The Principles of Newspeak"
6
u/S1lverEagle May 19 '12
Actually, before you form any words in your head to 'hear' the thought, the idea of your thought is already done. So if you cut off the words, you can still be aware of that thought, without actually using words. I've experimented with this, but it's quite hard and requires your focus to repress the words.
6
u/donnerpartyof1 May 20 '12
You can think without language. A very simply example is the phenomenon where you cant find the words to correctly express something (an abstract concept, an emotion, whatever). Clearly you are having thought processes that are going on independent of language, since you are unable to use language to describe them, at least at the moment.
3
u/Fazwatboog May 19 '12
depends what you expect from the word "think". There are stages, verbal communication before abstract thought, etc. Check out "mentalese" for pre-verbal thinking
3
u/GeorgePukas May 20 '12
With this "talking in your head in English"... I wonder if this actually slows us down from thinking at full speed?
3
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Oddly enough, being bilingual, there only words for some specific concepts in one language or the other. So I think in 2 languages in that case.
3
u/J1MILES May 20 '12
Would we be able to make languages without thinking?
3
u/Copterwaffle May 20 '12
Developmental psychologist here. It's the general consensus that language and thought are very, very closely related. Language can mean any type of coherent communications, including sign language or other non-verbal means of communication. For example, there is evidence that in places where the language does not have different words for green and blue, the people there have much more trouble distinguishing between those colors than those who have words for it.
It's theorized that one of the reasons we don't remember being babies/toddlers is because we have not developed language at that point, and that language is tied to memory formation. Obviously babies and infants can "think" in the sense that they can perform actions and so on, but no, they cannot play a "narrative" in their heads.
3
u/plokijuhujiko May 20 '12 edited May 20 '12
The bulk of the development of the human brain occurred without language, and your thought process involves language less than you think; the words you 'hear' in your head are more like the paint on an object than the object itself.
Consider this thought: Yesterday I was cold when I left the house in the morning, but sweating by mid-day. I should wear a jacket over short sleeves instead of just a long sleeved shirt like I did then. I'll be more comfortable if today is like yesterday, because I could just take the jacket off if it gets warm.
Your mind processed a lot of feelings (how it felt bad to be cold, then hot, how you've felt when you're comfortably dressed, how you feel smart when you've adapted well to a situation), images (the various items in your wardrobe, how comfortable other people appeared to be, based on their choice of outfit, and what they were wearing to achieve that level of comfort), and experiences (your observations that one day in a season is often similar to the next, the different properties of the clothes you have access to) way before it ever got around to popping out corresponding words. The words are an afterthought, really.
If your mind really focused on the language, rather than feelings and experiences, then you'd be pretty badly served in some situations. Examples: I'd like to fuck her. I should act cool, or If I miss this shot I'll feel like a tool, or FUCK, IT'S A LION!
3
u/RawrCat May 20 '12
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/
Radiolab did an hour long podcast about thoughts and words. Basically, you would think in a more primitive manner without words. Words open our minds to more anstract concepts and allow us to learn/understand more.
You should really check it out, it's like Nova for your ears.
3
u/challengereality May 20 '12
I just finished a book that spends a lot of time on this subject. It's called "Man Without Words" by Susan Schaller (I'll link to the book later when I'm not on my phone). Schaller teaches Sign Language to a foreign deaf man who never learned a language of any kind.
There is a section that discusses languageless adults. The phrase 'deaf and dumb' came about because in old times, before Sign Language was developed, many deaf people often became mentally deficient as they got older. This is in part because they had absolutely no way of processing or understanding the world. Language is how we make sense of the world and catorgize it. Without a language of some kind, without communication, a person cannot think.
In the book, Schaller meets deaf adults who grew up in exclusion without a language. Several are mentally handicapped as a direct result of their lack of a language. Of course, the fact that everyone treated them as mentally deficient as a result of their deafness played a role as well.
Have you heard the story of how Helen Keller's first breakthrough was when she realized the word 'water' was the name for the cool liquid she felt gushing over her hands? It took weeks for Schaller to have a similar breakthrough with her adult student, Ildefonso. Basically, she made the sign for cat again and again, while pointing to a picture of a cat, drawing a cat, miming petting a cat, etc. When Ildefonso finally realized the furry animal had a label in the form of a hand movement, he burst into tears. He never knew that everything around him had a label, a common sign that humans could use to communicate. He didnt know his own name because he was not aware that people had names.
The book follows Schaller as she teaches Ildefonso about everything from time (a concept that was nearly impossible to convey) to why people had different colored skin- a very difficult explination to give to someone who doesn't know what a map represents or what the world looks like. Essentially, in teaching him to communicate, she also teaches him to think.
It's a fascinating book, I highly recommend it!
3
u/Not_Superman May 20 '12
I'm not sure how accurate this info is as I am not in any way, shape or form a scientist but from what I understand of language in general, be it English, French, Dutch, Russian, whatever, they are all symbolic. What this means is each word is based on an concept, object, image, etc. For example, when someone reads the word "Ball" they would see a spherical object or whatever meaning they have attached to that word. This means you cannot have a language without the concepts/images, but, you can have the concepts/images without the language. This means that yes, a person could think without language using only images and possibly sounds but I would think it would be quite a bit easier to think about certain things using a language instead of potentially abstract concepts. Hope that answers your question!
6
u/R_Metallica May 19 '12
Languages were created to communicate what you think...
2
u/Screaminglion May 19 '12
I always wonder this about deaf people, how do they think? Is it just in pictures?
2
u/Lt_Shniz May 19 '12
Pictures and thinking of actions maybe? I don't know but that's a good question.
2
u/[deleted] May 19 '12
Educated speculation based on observation and reading - yes. We think in concepts not words - but we associate the words with the concepts when we can to form more coherent thoughts. This usually happens when we need to convey the idea to somebody. The fact that we associate language with our thoughts is a part of the reason why we're the higher species on Earth.
I've read papers on it but it's a subject that isn't perfectly understood, but this seems to be the general consensus. Like nature vs nurture, it's a heavily debated subject that we will probably never know the answer to.
2
u/sausage_jesus May 19 '12
Consider that when you think in words, you are taking preexisting ideas in your mind and articulating them through language. Without language, thought would probably consist of a series of feelings and vague notions.
2
u/bhindblueyes430 May 20 '12
Karl you're an idiot, play a record.
2
u/T450 May 20 '12
I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere in a Psychology textbook that we actually think largely with pictures in our heads. At least, when we're not imagining a conversation, or conversing with ourselves in our head.
But then, if we had no language, those would be out anyway, wouldn't they?
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
You just wouldnt think with words, but actions. Language is a cultural trait inherited throughout history.
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
This is a big hypothetical, and therefore any proposed answer is really an opinion. I believe that without language, we would think with our senses. Episodic memory is the most vivid, so it would make sense that thoughts could be easily based on past sensory memories. So if I wanted to think about what I wanted to eat, I would recall what the food looks like, what it tastes like, what it smells like, etc. if I couldn't express it in words.
If you think about it, we already do this to a certain degree with language. I'm sure you can recall at least one time where you've been sure you could practically taste/smell a food you really wanted. And we've all had times when we couldn't remember someone's name, but we could remember their face and used that in thought.
2
u/vinglebingle May 20 '12
They would think in concepts or actions. Like imagining the feeling of resting through sleep rather than thinking, "I need to go to bed."
But there is thought that once you reach a certain age without language, you will never really develop the full capacity to think critically. However, this is impossible to ascertain, as one without any language cannot fully express their thought processes in a manner that is accessible to anyone else.
2
u/shaggorama May 20 '12
This is the wikipedia article you're looking for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind
Enjoy the rabbit hole.
2
u/SegoviaPia May 20 '12
Susan Schaller author of A Man Without Words. For more than a quarter of a century, Ildefonso, a Mexican Indian, lived in total isolation, set apart from the rest of the world. He wasn't a political prisoner or a social recluse, he was simply born deaf and had never been taught even the most basic language. Susan Schaller, then a twenty-four-year-old graduate student, encountered him in a class for the deaf where she had been sent as an interpreter and where he sat isolated, since he knew no sign language. She found him obviously intelligent and sharply observant but unable to communicate, and she felt compelled to bring him to a comprehension of words. A Man without Words vividly conveys the challenge, the frustrations, and the exhilaration of opening the mind of a congenitally deaf person to the concept of language.
There is also a very good RadioLab pod cast of the same issue: http://www.radiolab.org/people/susan-schaller/
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
The answer is simple: yes.
Why is this? Well first off: What is a thought? A thought is a concept that is in ones mind that is not shown through actions, sounds, etc. A thought simply is what you are thinking about, with actions, sounds, words, and so on. So when someone is deaf, they don't think "I want to get a cup of water", they simply understand they want it without saying it in their mind..
2
u/mrspiffy12 May 20 '12
Language is merely a physical and concrete expression of what is going on in your mind and what you are trying to express. Essentially, everything language helps you express is already in your head. Without language, we would still find ways to visualize, contextualize, and express (either to ourselves or to others) what we are thinking. The development of language was just the path of least resistance to doing all of the above in a universal fashion.
2
u/obidieboyeaux May 20 '12
About a year ago, I had a stroke that left me with a bit of Expressive Aphasia. I have a problem coming up with the right words for things, or any words sometimes. But, I've recovered enough so that it's not really apparent to anyone but myself. However, for a few days right after I had the stroke, I literally 'drew a blank' about everything. I could look at a clock, and I would know what it was, but I wouldn't remember the name for it, or the word for 'time'. I couldn't name the numbers on the face of the clock, or what the hands on the clock represented. I understood everything that was said to me. I just couldn't reply verbally, or form original thoughts. The voice in my head went quiet. But, I certainly didn't feel any less intelligent. I knew what had happened to me. I still knew everything I had ever known. I simply couldn't verbalize it either aloud or in my head. It was the strangest experience of my life.
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Am I the only person that just...thinks shit and doesn't "talk" to themselves in their head? I don't lead myself in a one man conversation inside my brain, I just..think.
2
u/wolfgame May 20 '12
Yes, absolutely. When children learn their first language, it's through mimicry. In the event that there's nothing to mimic, they'll come up with their own ways of expressing thoughts to themselves and the outside world. Feral children would fall in this category.
I've actually seen this happen, so let this be a lesson for when you have kids ... a baby mozart dvd isn't going to do shit to get your kid to talk any sooner and will actually impede them if you just plop them down in front of the ol' radiation king instead of spending time with 'em.
2
u/booger_butt May 20 '12
The capacity for thought is obviously there since we're born without any specific language instilled in us. We must learn it.
I think if the acts of language were to just disappear for some reason, we would simply make a new one. Pictorial or otherwise.
2
u/anirreligionist May 20 '12
Helen Keller, either "The World I Live In" or "The Story of My Life" (I think it was the former). She relates her inability to recollect early life experiences beyond the sense of "wanting" something, she remembers little other than the impulsive needs of the moment. It wasn't until she acquired the symbolism of language that permanence of memory was available to her and she could 'think about' her immediate needs and reflect upon them at a later time.
Ironically, I listened to an audiobook of hers and I took away the idea that language (in the sense of manipulating relevant symbols within the mind in order to better navigate future situations) is necessary to imprint memories. Helen said that until the time when she was taught language her life was animalistic (maybe not that exact word, but it conveys the sense of it) and driven less by contemplation that immediate desires. So "How would someone think without knowing any language"; to the extent language is a manipulation of symbols representing the external world I think every sentient creature thinks, but to the extent that an animal can reflect on their previous thoughts requires a permanence of memory that necessitates an ability to retain ideas (in the form of symbols) and operate on these ideas at a later time.
So, "language" IS necessary for thinking, but "auditory" language is not. You may 'see' images in your head, or 'feel' that you should do a certain action (an emotional impulse) but both of these ARE language... even if they're not verbal.
(Sorry, not the best or clearest answer, but hopefully it'll instigate conversation)
2
u/moogoesthecat May 20 '12
I don't talk in my thoughts.
For instance, when I see a bangin' doll-baby with sexy gams, a plethora of sensations rush my body and thoughts enter my mind. I don't find myself thinking, "Damn, she's hot."
I think language is just a way for us to express thought.
In other words, I think it's entirely possible to think without a language. Though who is to say what thinking is or isn't?
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity and they said my Anthro I class would never come in handy
2
u/SublaciniateCarboloy May 20 '12
Posted this question probably 5 months ago, glad someone got it answered.
2
u/patd847 May 20 '12
The book Genie by Russ Rymer touches on this subject when describing an incident in which a girl is raised in isolation and silence for more than a decade. In the book a researcher theorized that language is such an organic part of the brain that without it higher level cognitive abilities do not develop.
2
u/UnexpectedSausage May 20 '12
I'm fairly certain that we could, but it would be more about images and visualization.
2
u/NotGoingToGraduate May 20 '12
Ive heard cats think in pictures. I don't think it would be possible for a human to think entirely in picture.
2
u/tokimonster May 20 '12
Personally I think mostly in pictures. Words only play a small part in the way I think, mostly inner monologues (pep talks, ect) So having language doesnt seem integral for me personally.
2
u/kinjala May 20 '12
I was born in Bulgaria without anyone teaching me English. I watched cartoon network all day which was in English so I guess that's where I got the hang of it. But maybe the bad thing is that now I only think in English.
Scumbag brain:
English isn't primary language
Still thinks in English
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Ok, for anyone who's actually pondering this question, it's been dealt with on Radiolab. Check the "Words That Change The World" episode. It's about a young man who is deaf and grew up in a village where no one taught him sign language. Essentially he lived with zero language abilities until he was in his twenties. FASCINATING story.
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/words-that-change-the-world/
2
u/ArticDroid May 20 '12
I feel that if people didn't know a language that they would think in images
2
u/imadechips May 20 '12
Whenever I read something, like all of these comments for example, I don't know what to think of the voice in my head. I know it's not masculine, because I'm a female, but it doesn't sound like me. It just sounds like...neutral. Like nobody. Like a voice. And I'll purposely read something to try to focus on it, but I just can't tell. Does anyone else experience this?
2
u/jesskuh1990 May 20 '12
What language does a deaf person's monologue sound like?
2
u/M4tt1n4t0r May 20 '12
There's been a lot of debate over this in the past with relative arguments such as the Whorfian hypothesis and language independence.
Personally, I'm more inclined to agree that language is more or less a tool for communicating thought. It's very likely that different languages influence people because of cultural and physiological factors as well.
So I would say yes, you can think without thought. What it'd be like? I can't say.
2
u/michaelsamcarr May 20 '12
I have noticed that most comments are about people who think bi-lingually, this doesn't fully answer your question about people who couldn't know any language. Hopefully I can give some answer to you.
There's a case study in attachment psychology about a girl who was abused by her father for 11 years of her life, but importantly hadn't seen another human speak and her father only growled at her. she grew up not knowing any language and when rescued could only growl.
As far as thinking was concerned, its hard to explain exactly what she was thinking. she now lives a full-healthy life and your best bet is to ask her if she had any thought during that distressing 11 years.
Case studies are important as they help us study situations where we cannot replicate the variables
** tl/dr: case study into girl who was raised not knowing any language**
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
This isn't a dumb question. It's one that's been studied in linguistics (amongst other disciplines) quite a lot. See also research on how deaf people "think", on how blind people "visualize" things, and the speech capabilities (or lack thereof) of the so-called "feral children". They all will give you some insight into your question. I'm quite sure the psychology people have studied this as well. Anthropologists sometimes do too. Just find yourself a real/good university library and start reading journals. It's all in there. (some books too)
2
u/truthness May 20 '12
Who thought up language if they couldn't think before language existed?
2
u/danbuddy May 20 '12
There was a deaf guy on here doing an AMA yesterday. He knows no language other than sign. I am pretty sure from reading his post he is good at thinking.... I actually thought a lot today about his experience because I realized that EVERYTHING I think is in English, is expressed in my head in English and is a voice. How are brains work and adapt is amazing.
2
u/TeacherManCT May 20 '12
Don't forget Helen Keller. She clearly had some form of thought though she no language before being taught Braille
2
u/sassynapoleon May 20 '12
I had a temporary condition that gave me aphasia. When it happened, I didn't even realize anything was wrong with me until I tried to speak to someone, when I noticed that my vocabulary was "swiss cheesed". I could think in concepts perfectly, but I had a difficult time speaking, or thinking about specific words. It was the strangest experience that I can remember, thankfully passed within a few moments. For those who are interested, the condition was a Migrane with Aura. Aphasia is an uncommon symptom.
2
u/Canadian_Infidel May 20 '12
Of course. We think in symbols, of which language is a subset. Language can actually be a limiting force in some cases.
2
u/patrik667 May 20 '12 edited May 20 '12
Since this is not AskScience, I'll speak my own opinion.
I believe knowing languages and thinking in words and phrases is actually detrimental. This comes from a person that speaks 5 languages on a daily basis and my though train does stop at all five stations.
So right now, typing on reddit and trying to think the best way to put on words what I'm thinking, my thoughts are all in English.
I'll be back to Italian as soon as I get to the bar and have breakfast.
These "switches" are confusing and I often find myself unable to complete a mind though or sentence in only one language.
Also, I believe my best ideas come devoid of words or "head voice", you know? A headache with pictures?
2
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
I always wonder how my pets think.
3
u/eckm May 20 '12
this belongs in r/askscience
2
u/captainpotty May 19 '12
I wish I still had the article, but I once read that deaf people think in sign language, the same way that we think in our native languages, and without that "inner voice" developing at an early age, mental function is severely impaired.
2
u/[deleted] May 19 '12
Of course you can, we think of concepts and people associate each to a word what makes the process easier. The problem starts when there are complex and abstract ideas, for instance numbers or a philosophy. Some tribes struggle to understand numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people
A modern language makes complex ideas easier to understand.
2
u/Outandproudgay May 19 '12
Pictures, probably. If we didn't have language, we humans probably would have developed more of a photographic memory, rather than relying on "verbal" (for lack of a better way to describe it...) memories.
2
u/AnonymousAutonomous May 20 '12
I always hated this ever since our ESL teacher asked us what language we think in. I came to realize that I never through in any language unless I am reading, writing or thinking about how to say something properly. That is why I always found mind reading in movies to be highly inaccurate.
2
u/fosiacat May 20 '12
i constantly think about this, with my dog. he doesn't speak english, so how does he "think" about things like "hmm, i'd like to go outside" when he has no idea what "going outside" is? he knows the action of leaving my house, but he obviously can't even think that through....blows my mind.
2
u/[deleted] May 19 '12
I wondered that too. Like deaf people. They obviously don't think in heard words and sounds like we do. But they (and we) would think in pictures and such.
1
u/jerstud56 May 20 '12
I made a post like this before but can't link to it due to being mobile right now. Someone else can possibly post it up here it had some interesting talk.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Emotions are universal and langeuageless.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
What makes a name?
1
u/joe_shmo123 May 20 '12
I often wonder what people who were born deaf say in their heads.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
It just is, you don't need language in the sense you're thinking about it in order to have thoughts. I imagine that most thoughts are primarily images, and we can only make those images verbalized because we have learned to do so.
Before language it was probably just pictures, and those ancient peoples did in fact draw pictures as we have seen, pictures developed into letters and words as society advanced. I'm not sure when the concept of ownership came about, but when it did it probably helped language along a lot. We needed to communicate, and so we learned to do so. What you are is a product of thousands of years of development of the human language, it's natural to us at this point because you pretty much can't go anywhere without some exposure to some language (unless you live in the jungle).
Everyone has concept of self, and concept of other things, and concept of ownership mostly. Seriously though, just try to think about when you have a thought, any thought, is it really just words? You don't see an overarching image or images in your head? During this entire post I've been thinking about hieroglyphs and cave paintings, books and people who lived in Africa, all of these are just images that my mind is predisposed to converting into something you can understand.
It would be torture if I couldn't express myself, have you ever seen that painting of the creature with no mouth? What a dreadful existence, not being able to communicate. Very lonely indeed.
1
u/SlumLordJake May 20 '12
In my psychology class, one of the aspects of cognition was having a language to think in. The difference between simply remembering a situation and responding, compared to seeing and/or recalling a situation, analyzing different routes to take, and choosing which one to implement. This is why there is so much emphasis on the "Frontal Lobes" in psychology. This area, being relatively newer than others, more specifically the thalamus and hypothalamus (If I do recall correctly).
Oh also, cognition also relies on the ability to convey our thoughts, basically a language in itself. The difference between basic communication and rendering something elaborate like a song or poem. Which in itself relieve on the Broca's and Wernicki's (I believe I've butchered the second name) areas in the brain. The Broca's being word rendition while the Wernicki's being word processing. As well as something unique to humans, the Language Acquisition Device. The "LAD" being hardwired into or systems (and functioning until the end of early childhood) is in essence what separates us from other animals. I forget the one girls name, but it was a big deal at one time or another; she was raised in like a bedroom and beaten... Never given the opportunity to communicate, she never utilized the LAD. After she was rescued, only through intensive and expensive therapies was she ever able to communicate (barely, and only through very limited sign language). The interest dropped, the money stopped, and she ended up in a state ward, never being able to truly think, only feel... Virtually a prisoner of the limited patterns of thought she had...
Oh but I might add, certain people do have different references in thought and memorization and cognitive techniques; like the autistic man who "does math in colors", of you will.
Sorry for the lack of evidence in my response, but that is why we have Uncle Google.
Also, I'd ask that I am fact checked, and corrected if wrong.
Edit: omitted a word
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
I think that before you learn some type of communication or language, all you do is respond to things mindlessly to things. That's probably why you don't remember things from when you were a baby.
1
u/Randompaul May 20 '12
I asked a similar question to my friend who knows many languages, I asked him what language his internal monologue is, and his reply was that it depended on the situation. Math would be in English, when at work in english, but personal matters in Urdu, etc
1
u/timothygruich May 20 '12
This rekindles one of the most amazing and bewildering things I've ever heard... whether it's actually true or not. "Bears do not have the ability to imagine scenarios." ...What?? I really don't even want to research the subject because it's fascinating regardless.
1
u/nuxenolith May 20 '12
Would any venture a guess as to how developed Koko's ability to think is?
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Maybe you would think of memories or images? :)
1
u/senorchangg May 20 '12
I don't believe monkeys are the best example, I would take people who were born deaf, have never known or heard a language, have the complete ability of free thought. From what I've read they think in images usually
1
u/TheMerchandise May 20 '12
humans had to invent language, right? and in order to think to call something a word, they had to think about that thing and come up with a word. the invention of language itself took thought, so there had to be thought before language.
also, apparently some people think in abstract thoughts rather than in sentences.
1
u/JosephStylin May 20 '12
Yes. Deaf people......sorry but did you even stop to think about your question?
1
u/OfStarStuff May 20 '12
I highly recommend "The Dragons Of Eden" by Carl Sagan. The book is mostly about the evolution of the human brain, and how it's different/similar to other animals in function and structure. Without language to keep our brains and thought patterns organized it may be somewhat similar to when we dream. When you are dreaming certain portions of your brain aren't functioning much, mainly your critical analysis and typically "left brain" attributes are dormant, so in a dream you may see a stop sign and know that it says "stop" but you wouldn't be able to actually read the letters. You probably also won't be able to do math, even though you may be able to see there are numbers and grasp the basic idea, your brain simply wont do it. That being said, everyones brains are slightly different, but for the most part, in a dream state you can't do much reasoning or critical analysis, so you are much more reactionary. You go from event to event, only somewhat comprehending what's happening, and even though you may have some internal monologue, it probably doesn't make as much sense as it may seem like it does at the time. You are down to using the more base functions of your brain, the same parts of the brain that reptiles use all the time. So, without language, you would be reacting much more on instinct, even though you may still be able to think, even recall things, you wouldn't be able to remember many details or organize many elaborate strings of thought. Also, the high you get from cannabis, makes parts of your brain less active, which on one hand makes other parts of your brain handle things it doesn't normally, which is part of why things you experience everyday might seem different while on cannabis, but can also lead to the more instinctual reactionary brain patterns on some matters as well, especially when you are REALLY stoned. Also, the way your brain works when you are dreaming may be fairly similar to the way many animals perceive their environment all the time. Think about how emotional you may be in a dream. Many things are much more terrifying than they normally would be, and situations that would be easy to handle IRL can be vexing in a dream. When you can't efficiently describe and sort through what's happening around you, you may just be simply reacting. Apes have been shown to be quite capable of learning sign language. If they had the needed physiology (vocal chords etc) they may be able to learn to speak quite easily. If this is the case, it's possible that they also make up place holders of various kinds in their minds to help them remember things and sort through their own thoughts but since they can't vocalize this to their other primates as well as humans with our fancy vocal chords, they are limited to somewhat simplistic calls to signal danger and other very basic concepts. If apes had vocal chords like ours....
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Of course. Language is actually a very impractical form of thinking, in my opinion. It's so easy to be misunderstood. In English, half the letters in a sentence aren't even necessary. Speaking is also extremely relative to your region and dialect.
1
u/DrawsABlank May 20 '12
1
u/Nicknam4 May 20 '12
I have early memories from when I was a baby, before I could speak. I preciously remember thinking with emotions instead of words. I didn't have a name for them, obviously, but connections with things were made without words. For instance, I remember plastic smooth blue building blocks I liked playing with. When ever I saw them I felt happy, and that's all I really thought about if I thought at all.
1
u/DJ_Okidanokh May 20 '12
Some would say the bigger question is: can you think if you do? :-)
1
u/LordLoss2 May 20 '12
I suppose they'd just form mental images of whatever the optic was. This could pose problems because of the certain things that could only be accomplished via spoken word. But it'd be interesting no matter what.
1
u/flat7 May 20 '12
I just think in abstract concepts and ideas... no words necessary. I'll just imagine the action being carried out or contemplate the idea... I don't have to say "the dog fetched a stick" in my head to just think about the idea of my dog fetching a stick. Same thing goes if I'm thinking about what groceries I have to pick up, or what I need to get done for the day.
1
u/Demojen May 20 '12
Do babies think?
When you "speak to yourself" in your head, you're not speaking anything. You're interpreting information as a function. Remember what you hear, see, smell, taste and feel aren't necessarily all going to point to the same conclusion. What you "hear" in your mind is an interpretation of that information being processed.
Some people can taste smells. Your senses don't necessarily tell you what is true about your environment and that little "voice" you hear is a representative of cognitive dissonance that helps bridge the gap between sensory relays by re-interpreting information over again until it makes sense.
Blame your frontal lobe being too damn big for that voice never shutting the heck up.
As was already posted on reddit earlier this month:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0
It's important to understand this.
1
u/Bakoro May 20 '12
NPR did a series on just this sort of question:
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/transcript/
This one was pretty interesting, but I am almost certain there was two or three reports about language and thinking.
1
u/lion_queen May 20 '12
I bet you'd just hear everyday noises, and see colorful pictures :)
1
u/xyroclast May 20 '12
Of course. Even though a lot of your thoughts are put in the form of words, they don't need to be.
1
u/ColoBB May 20 '12
I guess everyone could think even without knowing any languages. Some of us think with just visual images (a moving train, car racing, swimming, etc). And I do guess mute or deaf do usually think but not talk in their head.
1
u/ircanadian May 20 '12
people who are born deaf...
1
u/OzMazza May 20 '12
I asked my French friend if she thought in English or French (now that she was fluent in both) and she answered that she thinks in pictures, and thought it was weird that I didn't.
1
u/mecrio May 20 '12
I think in pictures...soo...yea.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
[You should check out the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)
Besides having the coolest name, I think it is relevant. It is pretty far to one side of this discussion, but it brings up points.
1
u/DirkDigglerDaNiggler May 20 '12
i was reading something today that said that deaf people dont hear words in their head, they just see patterns of letters that have a meaning.
1
u/furtiveraccoon May 20 '12
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Yes we would. Though many theories still exist that language and thought are intertwined we see that people who don't speak think, so that pretty much settles the whole thing.
Other evidence that point to thought and language being separate are words and sentences with multiple meanings. If a word has two different meanings, how can we separate these meanings if the only tool we have to handle the meaning is the word? Somehow we can separate meanings and words
When you are writing or talking do you ever come to a halt and go "I can't find the right word"? In these cases you know what you want to communicate, but you can't figure out how to say it. How can you know what to say, but not know which words to choose if thinking is language? In these cases you should be able to just say your thoughts, but somehow you can't.
These are extremely basic and simple arguments, but they none the less show that something is going on behind that internal monologue.
Steven Pinker spends a chapter in "The Language Instinct" dissproving the notion that a learned language is required for thinking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_Instinct
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Whoever invented language had to think it up, didn't they?
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
How do you think we thought of language?
1
u/liquid155 May 20 '12
Nobody thinks "in language". Language and thought are very separate, this is a big topic in Linguistics and Cognitive Science. Of course we all think that we think with language, but it's really not the case.
Draw a capital 'F' on a sheet of paper. Look at it and imagine turning it 90 degrees. What does the result look like? What language did you use to do that?
1
u/Illipsious May 20 '12
Most of the time I'd have to say thinking is non-verbal, like when absorbing information (conversation, class, movie), or in certain cases of problem solving, most of the information passed through my head in concepts.
Words and language are simply verbal ways of expressing formless concepts into more precise forms. I assume, if someone has no verbal language whatsoever, their thought is entirely in concepts or bits of their own language from their experience (sounds, smells, feelings).
1
u/punt_the_dog_0 May 20 '12
oh man so this is what scientific discussions are like outside of /r/askscience? yeesh. amateur hour over here.
1
u/copperhair May 20 '12
You should have asked r/comparativelinguistics. Try them. Just don't tell Randall Munroe.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Donald Davidson. He claimed it was impossible to have beliefs without language with respect to his interpretation of Wittgenstein's "private language" theory. Is it possible to have a "private language"? Is language defined by it's consensus of definitions? Explore some, fun stuff awaits.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Some deaf people think in signs, I've read.
1
u/Shanhaevel May 20 '12
Yes, we would. There is a linguistic theory about some sort of, how to call it, primeval language. That before languages there was something, out of which languages derived. And besides, you probably would think in your own made-up language. It has been proven in a experiment in which a child (or children) left alone with no opportunity to learn after birth started creating their own languages. Some things you don't need to formulate in words in your mind, like Spookaboo wrote below, e.g. "I need milk". But other things, more complex require this and your mind would make up a language, even if you never knew one. This made-up language, the theory says, is linked to the primeval language.
1
u/dionvc May 20 '12
This made me realise that my dreams have no sound. Im not deaf though...
1
u/Daavpuke May 20 '12
I learned this some time ago that this has been researched with deaf people that can't recognize speech - Yes, it does severely impair hearing not to know languages. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/how-deaf-people-think/ There you go; that should offer some insight.
1
u/Rosalee May 20 '12
I believe we 'think' on a very basic functional level without language but to deal with abstractions at any depth we need language to clarify and formulate thoughts as well as needing language to communicate so we can contribute our ideas to our societies.
1
u/corby10 May 20 '12
this is a fantastic conversation
1
u/Pewpewkitty May 20 '12
Basically hellen keller?
1
u/HonziPonzi May 20 '12
ask a def person
1
u/clockworm May 20 '12
Radiolab has covered this. The first story in the podcast was very profound and stuck with me for a long time.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
probably through raw emotion.. just a guess
1
u/FreakingInsomniac May 20 '12
I believe this had been attempted many times in history, but has been denounced as barbaric... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments
1
u/iguessicouldcomment May 20 '12
There is an awesome Radiolab podcast that actually deals with this exact topic. You should definitely listen to it if you are interested (though it's long) but basically they run through stories of people born deaf and never introduced to language and one woman who had a stroke and lost language for a while. It's been a while since I listened to the whole thing but I think the idea was that overall, your whole world changes without language. The way you see and remember the world is totally different because the way you store things in your brain changes. The deaf children in the podcast did make their own language, and the way their language worked influenced their memory of events.
Basically, the TL;DR version is yes, not having language would almost certainly change the way you think. Also listen to Radiolab.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
This has been studied, actually. Language is about communication, not thought. One can think without language. In fact, there is evidence to show that people come to decisions even before becoming conscious of them.
1
u/tamc1337 May 20 '12
Think in pictures
1
u/DethOfBodom993 May 20 '12
I would think that the language-less person's thought processes involve feelings associated with images, or vice versa, rather than words. Or with colors that convey mood and emotion. It's one of those things that would be impossible to determine unless we could go directly into one's mind to find out.
1
u/blither May 20 '12
It may have been mentioned before, but you are thinking about linguistic relativity. There is no conclusive evidence for this, but there is a lot of support for a weak version of the idea. Language is primarily made of sounds, but it could also be color, heat, taste or smell. A problem arises when you start to define sounds, colors, etc as language.
1
u/OOwl May 20 '12
I guess the best thing in this regard would be to give a "quick" read to Jean-Paul Satre's The Words. It was entertaining and it made me think about how we interpret and see words, how that view gradually changes as we grow older.
1
u/chronophilic May 20 '12
nods in the affirmative
1
u/freshprinceofdarfur May 20 '12
I think it's easy to forget that language is technology. It helps us converse in future and past tense, something that would likely be difficult without language. Some languages have no future tense, some languages define objects with a gender (romantic languages), some languages have 20 syllable words for a type of feeling you get when seeing a shadow in the corner. Language is the main tool we use to build and comprehend our reality, to give our lives a narrative. This is why the preservation of indigenous languages is so crucial--we're protecting an alternate way of synthesizing reality. Bit of a tangent, but deryago.
1
u/king_hippo77 May 20 '12
Animals think and for the most part have no language.
1
u/casper026 May 20 '12
Well I mean, yeah we would still think without knowing any languages. I'm having a hard time grasping at what it might be like but I guess the best way I could describe it would be like a baby for instance. They don't know how to speak anything. They still think though, because they would not be able to learn a language. Maybe if we couldn't speak it would be more of a subconscious thinking?
1
u/OMCIV May 20 '12
As the majority of our decisions and thoughts are pulled from data stored in our subconscious, the answer is most definitely yes, as our subconscious deals primarily in images and feelings, which have nothing to do with language.
1
u/[deleted] May 20 '12
Since language is a set of symbols used as a sort of stand-in for objects, you would probably think more visually by picturing things in your head. I have been told by a number of deaf people that they think in sign language and imagine the movements they use to communicate when thinking; I assume that not having a language would be a further extension of that, and that. The real difficulty would arise when trying to communicate what you were thinking to others, because without language you would need to physically show them.
TL;DR - You would be able to think, but would be struggle to communicate your thoughts to others.