Is it possible to think without language?

I never brought up the neocortex you did, I said this:

"
The human brain consists of not one but three brains, the reptlilian brain, the mamalian brain and the primate brain. THUS we do have an advantage over all other species, quite a considerable one, or two or rather three!"

This included chimps!

Anyway apparantly incorrect.

I'm considering those cookies .........mmmmmmmmmmmm

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Hmmph!!

I prefer cake anyway

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I know this is undoubtably my perverted perspective but that cake looks quite rude! Consider the ice biscuit between the ice cream domes planted upon some sort of chocolate sponge with a split down the middle. And the saucy sauce dribbled..............

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

your language is giving me some crude thoughts

 

It all depends on what you consider language and how many of them. I can't speak Portuguese but I can think, I can't speak Afrika but I can still think, and I can't speak Chinese but I manage to still think. But a broader definition of language is a series of mutual protocols between two or more entities. The problem most people here are having is that they refuse to believe that language is a lot more than English and Spanish, but a subset of communication. Thought itself is dependent on symbols, it started out as symbols for us with the Egyptian Hieroglyphics and still remains as symbols to all animals. There are basicaly three types of thought; Imaginative, actionary, and reactionary. Its impossible to have a comprehensive reactionary thought without understanding the external stimuli, its also impossible to develop an actionary thought for the same reason. Imaginative thoughts, which can be a used in both actionary and reactionary situations, requires a mind. The mind in turn requires feedback and understanding from the external enviroment. Put it this way, anybody can think, in fact computer machines can even think faster than humans, but the fact is to developing a realistic and sensible thought requires understanding, and understanding what you just thought about. The mind doesn't fall from an unknown dimension, it is an interface between the individual and the external world, without this world and an understanding of it there will be no sensible cognitive. This extends to the understanding of self. Even the most primitive instincts are based on action, reaction, cause, and effect. Gorrillas use tools and identify danger not by some unknown development but by a series of in-built protocols that aids in interaction with the world. Why do you move away when you see fire? Because fire is a symbol of danger when improperly used. In Burns your skin cells send an alarm to you to notify you of whats going on, some times in cases of num people it doesn't comunicate and there is a breach of survival protocols. So if language, which is basically communication, is used to keep us alive, it surely is needed in developing thought. English, anybody can write a brilliant paper in that language and not communicate, and anothe person can write a relatively sub par paper and fully communicate. And what use is language without communication? There you go. My revised opinion is that it may be possible to develop though without any language but its not going to make sense if you can't interpret it.

 

In fact this is a no brainer. Language is basiclally symbols that we interpret with our five senses, without this it is utterly impossible to formulate any sensible thought.

 

Of course it is. If you can't, that doesn't mean nobody can.
We once here did a study and a comparison on how the members of sciforums thought, the processes and methodology of thought.
It turned out that people think really different. Most use language, many others have no description, the thoughts just there are and have no form of describing, neither sound, smell, colour, words or anything else. I happen to belong to this group with some exceptions mentioned here.
Some tended or could think in shapes, others found colour or sound/melody helpful.
Turns out that thinking is a very individual activity and it differs greatly among people, although most mostly use words/language.

 

Ok I have a question

I know three kinds of languages

1. Urdu

This is my mother's language. The script is similar to Arabic, which I also know, though not well enough to be fluent.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Urdu is read from right to left and has no didactic marks, but is a phonetic language

2. Devanagari

This includes Hindi Marathi Gujarati i.e. a host of Indian languages with the same origin and hence syntax but completely different vocabulary

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

This is a phonetic script/languages with didactic marks; read from left to right

3. English

Now I am completely fluent in Urdu, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and English and reasonably competent in Arabic (I cannot think in Arabic).

Now according to this article:
( Science. 2006 Jun 9;312(5779):1537-40.Language control in the bilingual brain.)

People who communicate in more than one language can voluntarily control which language is in use at any given time. The bilingual brain can, for example, determine the language of heard or written speech, produce words in the selected language, and inhibit the production of words in the nonselected language. All of these processes necessitate language-sensitive neuronal activity. Contrary to expectation, however, whole-brain functional neuroimaging studies have shown that highly proficient bilinguals activate the same set of brain regions irrespective of which language is presented or produced. These findings suggest that the neural circuits for different languages are highly overlapping and interconnected but do not indicate how the brain determines or controls the language in use.


Any ideas?

 

Very interesting, I have no ideas as such BUT myself from observation of self, think that language storage is closely associated with memory storage, perhaps language thus facilitaes memory recall?

I say this for this reason only (no doubt Invert can elaborate or dismiss which ever is the case)

I am English but in very distant past was taught French/German and Latin, practically zero of which I can recall. However, when I started teaching myself Arabic, I found that when trying to recall an Arabic word the French version would appear to me. I was surpised as they were things I had long forgotten, this ability to recall the french came more and more the more arabic I learned. Thus rightly or wrongly I concluded that there is a language centre in the brain and excercise of that centre enhances it's functionality but also that somehow it relates to how memory is stored. As learning the arabic brought forth hidden memory of French. This was completely spontaneous without my conscious effort or desire to do so.

Thus perhaps the way that language assists with thought is related very importantly to how memory is stored and accessed?

 

It seems reasonable to assume that language somehow is very closely linked with memory, because we memorise words, grammar, pronunciation, etc.

 

But I am suggesting that memory storage is perhaps itself directly linked to language, without language would we be able to remember or would thought be of that moment only? Is this why many of us can only recall childhood thoughts from an age when we had some language comprehension and not before?

 

hummm, other animals have memory, but, as far as we know, no language (with some curious exceptions). Also I can recall events just as visual occurances. I don't feel (that's as much as I can offer) that they are stored as language/text and then recited and recalled to visual, I see the picture or film in my brain, I don't notice any language involvement anywhere except where there was a conversation.

 

This is interesting because Arabic grammer is very similar to French grammer.

Did you learn pure Arabic or a Moroccan/Tunisian version.

My ex was Moroccan and I noticed he used a lot of French in his Moroccan.

 

I'm thinking more along the lines of remembering thoughts more than remembering events.

(Hence animals not included as they can recall events I assume as it enables them to take avoidance measures or become tame as in domestication)

Imagine how you would remember a thought without language? The thought would exist and then pass, how would you recall it?

 

It was traditional arabic and sadly forgotton again, my ex was arabic but as well as him not being remotely supportive, the arabic I was learning was not his dialect, his being more colloquial. It was the arabic the newspeakers read on arabic channel! I sometimes recognise it if I hear it, but it was very different to what ex spoke. I found it very hard to speak but at least if I could have understood it to listen to that would have been great.

As you say very like french, different words for males and females and female and male words! Maybe this is why my French was being recalled and not the others.

 

I can only offer myself as one of the possible examples. Just as I have conceptual ideas thoughts that have no materilisation language, I recall the thought that I had by trying to recreate the feeling of it.
For instance, if there's some idea on phylosophy, I just go into my phylosophy mode and there they all are, i.e., I try to recall, recreate the feeling of thought I originally had when I had that particular thought.
That's the best as I can explain it in language, because there really are no words in English or Russian or Latvian to describe that.
Sometimes the place helps, i.e., if I thought of some poem staring at one particular place at the wall, I go to that place, try to recall the feeling, and there it is, the poem.

As for writing poems, I just tend to lay my hand on paper and write, I don't think verbally when writing, I have almost no conscious thought, just the unconsciousness guides and writes whatever it wants at the moment.
I find that I write similar poems if the same environment exists, i.e., drinking the same tea at the same hour listening the same music album with the same incense burning behind.
At a later stage I use language to perfect the poem written to apply some more gramatical and literal style to it, change a few words to rhyme better, but that's it.

Of course this is just me and, as I already told, people think differently. There are some main groups, but that's it.

 

agreed, I think rejection of language can faciliate access to subconscious memories and greater creativity...I have said this earlier, contradicting myself I know but I am wondering now re memory and language and how language facilitates memory storage and recall which it clearly does. Maybe no language enables us to recall memories and language enables us to store them more efficiently?

I have no clue what I am on about really.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

But we are animals! I see no sane reason why to exclude them from the picture.
We invented language relativly recently and in big lines we still behave like other animals. Could we not recall thoughts previous to inventing language?
And we haven't really understood the brain to such an extent as to say that other animals can not recall thoughts. We don't know.

 

From what i know about animal brains (limited granted) is that are largely concerned with innate knowledge whereas we as humans have very little innate knowledge but a larger capacity for learning whcih they have in lesser degrees depending upon the species.

So animals can appear to have memory but really that knowledge is innate (fascinating the subject of innate knowledge, being born with knowledge how does that work...a great topic for another thread) they do remember but do they think? Do they remember what they think? I doubt it personally.

 

Yes, innate knowledge fascinates me too. The reason (I'm sure you well know this) why we have less of it is that we as humans are born too fast (biologically).

Alas other animals remember particular persons who they like and don't, and they remember events (not thoughts, as far as we think, but there really is no way to say that with any assurance, because we haven't stepped in other's animal brain (not literaly)). This is my opinion. I'm not a supporter of the idea that animals can recall thoughts or a wish to think so, I simply think that there is too little known about brain and consciousness to take one position or another. I'm agnostic in this

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

till more evidence shows up or I become aware of such evidence, if it already exists.

I wonder if you've heard that, but recent research about dolphins shows that dolphns give each other names and refer to them and the named dolphins too refer to their names.
Of course dolphin is a very special example, because its' brain is very advanced, on par with human (that is just my idea), but the difference is in the environment, i.e., they are so different, because they live in a totally different environment and percieve the world with senses we don't have.

Sorry for the slight offtopic.