I think the terminology here isn't sharp. One of the first headlines is: "Language is not necessary nor sufficient for thought" I disagree. Language is not necessary for cognitive processes in individuals/organisms. It is absolutely necessary for what we commonly refer to as thought (bit of a pretentious we: it involves you in the group of people who have some idea about philosophy (e.g. baseline-heidegger)/the humanities/psychoanalysis etc.) that which we refer to as thought.
Thought can be a decentralised process that is happening "between" individuals ("Die Sprache spricht" - Language is speaking by heidegger points into that direction). Thought is also, imho, a symbolic process (which involves sign systems, mathematics, languages, images). Not everything going on as a cognitive process is therefor constituting thought. That's why one can act thoughtless- but not "cognitionless".
I think you make a good point that much of what we call thinking is really discourse either with another ^[0], with media, or with one's own self. These are largely mediated by language, but still there are other forms of communicative _art_ which externalize thought.
The other thoughts here largely provide within-indivudal examples: others noted Hellen Keller and that some folks do not experience internal monologue. These tell us about the sort of thinking that does happen within a person, but I think that there are many forms of communication which are not linguistic, and therefore there is also external thinking which is non-linguistic.
The observation that not all thought utilizes linguistic representations (see particularly the annotated references in the bibliography) tells us something about the representations that may be useful for reasoning, thought, etc. That though language _can_ represent the world it is both not the only way and certainly not the only way used by biological beings.
I disagree. There can be thought without any way to express it any langauge yet. Only with a lot of communication can we get to the an approximation of what it means and hence it can mean slightly different thing ti everyone. Koans can be a good example of this
i think you are right, but its hard to explain as ppl can interpret your words in many ways depending on their context.
i think this:
you dont need language for an idea, to have it, or be creative.
to think about it outside of that, like asking critical questions, inner dialogue _about_ the ideas and creativity, that is i think what is 'thought' and that requires language as its sort of inner communication....
Okay so rephrasing the question, how should we characterise the type of thinking we do without language? And the more interesting question IMO what thinking can an agent do without symbolic representation?
The original Vygotsky claim was that learning a language introduces the human mind to thinking in terms of symbols. Cats don't do it; infants don't either.
>what thinking can an agent do without symbolic representation?
The language model is exclusively built upon the symbols present in the training set, but various layers can capture higher level patterns of symbols and patterns of patterns. Depending on how you define symbolic representation, the manipulation of the more abstract patterns of patterns may be what you are getting at.
I think there are other sorts of reasoning, like spatial reasoning. If you're trying to sort a set of physical items in front of you in order of size, are you thinking about the items linguistically, or is your mind working on some different internal representation?
It's more the latter for me. I don't think there's necessarily one type of internal thought, I think there's likely a multimodal landscape of thought. Maybe spatial reasoning modes are more geometric, and linguistic modes are more sequential.
I think the human brain builds predictive models for all of its abilities for planning and control, and I think all of these likely have a type of thought for planning future "moves".
Based on your definition a child that can not speak/understand language yet can not think? Hint: It clearly can.
There are a lot of things I can think about that I do not have words for. I can only communicate these things in a unclear way, as language is clearly a subset of thought, not a superset.
Only if your definition of thought is that is is language based, which is just typical philosophy circular logic.
I've started to believe that language is often anti-thought. When we are doing what LLMs do, we aren't really thinking, we're just imitating sounds based on a sound stimulus.
Learning a second language let me notice how much of language has no content. When you're listening to meaningless things in your second language, you think you're misunderstanding what they're saying. When you listen to meaningless things in your first language, you've been taught to let the right texture of words slip right in. That you can reproduce an original and passable variation of this emptiness on command makes it seem like it's really cells indicating that they're from the same organism, not "thought." Not being able to do it triggers an immune response.
The fact that we can use it to encode thoughts for later review confuses us about what it is. The reason why it can be used to encode thoughts is because it was used to train us from birth, paired with actual simultaneous physical stimulus. But the physical stimulus is the important part, language is just a spurious association. A spurious association that ultimately is used to carry messages from the dead and the absent, so is essential to how human evolution has proceeded, but it's still an abused, repurposed protocol.
Might be correct for reasonably narrow definitions of language and thought, but it falls a bit short in considering the extended mind thesis. A whole lot of our thinking happens with pen&paper, their digital successor or other items out there in the world. We don't solve complex problems in our head alone, we solve them by interacting iteratively with the real world, and that in turn often involves some kind of language, even if it's just us reading our own scribbles.
Another issue is that a lot of tasks in the modern world are rooted in language, law or philosophy is in large part just word games, you won't be able to get far thinking about them without language, as those concept don't have any direct correlate that you could experience by other means.
Overall I do agree that there are plenty of problems we can solve without language, but the type of problems that can and can't be solve without language would need some further delineation.
I can summon up a voice if needed, but yeah normally not thinking in words. Aphantasia means I don't think in pictures either ;) What I think mostly is in patterns and connections, and flows.
I have never not thought in words. How does it work? Like, how can I for example think about plans or something if not in words?
I do meditate here and now, but sooner or later the constant stream of words will 100% set in again, usually during or immediately after meditation. And these words for example tell me or discuss whether I should go shower, go to gym, do dishes, or whatever. And in the end I'll decide based on that discussion and do it. It's weird how defined I am by this inner voice.
I do have an inner monologue, but I do make many decisions non-verbally. I often visualize actions and their consequences, in the context of my internal state. When I’m thirsty I consider the drinks available nearby and imagine their taste. In the morning coffee feels most tempting, unless I’ve already had a few cups - in that case drinking more would leave me feeling worse, not better. After a workout, a glass of water is the most expedient way to quench the thirst. It is similar when I write a piece of code or design a graphic. I look at the code and consider various possible transformations and additions, and prefer ones that move me closer to my goal, or at least make any sort of improvement. It’s basically a weighing of imagined possible world-states (and self-states), not a discussion.
I struggle to imagine how people can find the time to consider all of these trivial choices verbally - in my case it all happens almost instantaneously and the whole process is easy to miss. I also don’t see what the monologue adds to the process - just skip this part and make the decision!
That said, I do use an inner voice when writing, preparing what to say to someone, etc. and I feel like I struggle with this way of thinking much more.
I had this for the longest time. Very imbalanced academic performance because I could get the answer and understood a lot of things, but had huge trouble with written work. That is, converting the thought process into a linear stream of words and sentences. I suppose it's like serialization of objects in memory.
Edit: maybe this is like the difference between a diffusion model and a "next token" model. I always feel a need to jump around and iteratively refine the whole picture at once. Hard to maintain focus.
You don't notice it, but that inner voice is only on the surface. It is generated from what's going on deeper. You may not notice it is very good at occupying your attention. Your "real" thoughts are deeper, then we have processes generating speech based on our deeper structures.
Language communication is not a true representation of what you know. It is a messy iterative process when we try to externalize in words what we know. We also end up with people having the same words who don't understand one another.
It is not that the person on the right has the same understanding as the one on the left. It is far deeper, but you end up using the same words. The knowledge behind the words is hard to express, when you try you will not end up truly conveying your internal state. The words are iteratively and messily derived from exploring your inner state, with varying success.
For better or worse, language has the attention of the people. We end up with magical tales about "true names", where knowing an entities "true name" gives you full control. Or with magic that is invoked by speaking certain phrases, and the universe obliges. Or with heated discussions about arbitrary definitions when it rarely matters, and when you really shouldn't, because if you get to the inevitably fuzzy edges of the actual concepts behind words you should just switch to other words and metaphors that have the subject you are interested in discussing in the middle instead of at the edge. In reality, our internal models and thinking are hidden in our not that well understood (except in the minute details, those we know a great deal of) neural networks.
Ah yes, language is the guise the rationally irrational wears. /s
I mostly agree with you but I always find it a bit funny how we are the only things/beings that seem to be aware of their own (meta)cognition yet I can't actually pop up my hood like a car so to speak to understand what actually goes on. It gets funnier when we generally can't agree what goes on in our heads by just talking about it with each other. I don't suppose the fox thinks about why did it enter the hen house after the meal, what led it to such an act.
More related when I wrote this comment I still can't tell if I engaged my inner monologue and wrote by dictation as it were or if I let my fingers do the thinking and I read back what they wrote.
Discussions about the mind's eye and inner monologue and so on are always fun but most of the time I never get that much out of them other than satisfying curiosity.
As an aside I remember reading somewhere that some speed reading techniques involve not speaking in your mind the words you're reading (forego your inner monologue) and just internalizing their form and their associated meaning that you already know or something like that.
I tend to think in images without an internal dialog running. If I think about an upcoming trip I will imagine a series of images related to the trip, possible places to go, or just generally the place. After a bit a potential conclusion appears fully formed in my mind. If I think about a work problem, I might imagine the document, a coworkers face, or something like that while ruminating on it. Basically it feels like the subconscious is handling the details and the conscious self overall directs it.
Occasionally there is some snippet of a sentence I imagine, but it’s almost always cut off prior to finishing the sentence. If I imagine writing something, though, I’ll speak it to myself in my head.
Funnily enough, I’m a pretty weak mental visualiser too. I don’t have aphantasia but metal images are very transparent and dark.
It works for coding or system architecture and things like that, as well. For you, when you start thinking, a narrative voice appears? Is it debating yourself?
What about a-ha moments when you're solving a tricky problem? For me they come in a flash and I know I've solved the problem even before I've narrated the solution to myself.
Meditation is interesting because it made me able to not only separate thoughts from words, but also consciousness from thoughts.
It’s also consistent with our intuition that toddlers have consciousness and thoughts and other mammals at least consciousness (and emotions) without language.
This feels like last year when I found out I have ADHD and aphantasia...
What do you mean "think in words"? Is it like a narrator, or a discussion like Herman's Head? Are you hearing these words all the time or only when making decisions?
Not sure how well this dovetails with the research presented in the article, but Grinder and Bandler's work -- which they named Neuro Linguistic Programing (derived I understand from analyzing the brief therapy and hypnotherapy techniques of Milton Erickson) -- postulated that people have dominant modes of thought: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. They correlated these modes with eye movements they observed in subjects when asked to recall certain events.
In my personal experience, my mind became much less busy as a result of several steps. One being abandoning the theory of mind -- in contrast to spiritual practices such as Zen and forms of Hinduism, where controlling the mind, preventing its misbehavior, or getting rid of it somehow is frequently described as a goal, the mind's activity being to blame for a loss of a person's ability to be present in the here and now.
As a teenager, I can remember trying to plan in advance what I will say to a person when faced with a situation of conflict, or maybe desire toward the opposite sex, doubting that language will reliably sprout from my feelings when facing a person, whose facial reactions (and my dependence on their good will) pulls me out of my mental emotional kinesthetic grounding.
As humans we use language, however, it seems possible to live in our experience. Some people who are alienated from their experience, or overwhelmed by others, seek refuge in language.
There is obviously a gap between research such as this, and how someone can make sense of their agency in life, finding their way forward when confronted with conflict, uncertainty, etc.
Doesn't hellen keller provide a counterexample? She seemed to imply pretty strongly that before acquisition of language she operated more on stimulus and bodily perception rather than higher-level thought.
It's clear humans have several networks working together. Some Mathematicians report they 'see' the solution, these rely on a visual network *. Others report they prefer to do math symbolically (relying on the language network?).
Perhaps there are also multiple human paths to higher-level thought, with Keller (who lost her sight) using the language facility while others don't have to.
* Given Box 1 contents, the article authors seem unaware of the research on this? e.g.
No, if i recall the section in her autobiography, specifically it was being taught the concept of "i" / "me" that did it.
Up until that point language was just an extension of what she already knew, it was the learning of being other that did the trick. Being blind and deaf would certainly make it hard to draw a distinction between the self and the world, and while languaged helped her get that concept under wraps, i dont think it's strictly speaking required. Just one of many avenues towards.
But language is also the only way to communicate this. As far as I can tell my cat has a complex consciousnesses but there is no way for me to tell if she has this capacity for introspection and self-reflexivity.
If there are other avenues other than language, how would we know?
I think language is a medium that enables this kind of structured thought. Without it, I cannot imagine reaching this level of abstraction (understanding being a "self").
As far as the cat herself is concerned, there is no reason to make that known, either. "Introspection" and "self-reflexivity" are notions, language items. Best used by a human for explaining to other humans why that human should be fed, you know?
What ontological difference does it make whether a being contains "introspection" and "self-reflexivity" but not "nuclear physics" or "interpretive dance"? It's still hungry with or without them. And what good is any of those to a cat, when "meow" fills the bowl just fine?
>If there are other avenues other than language, how would we know?
Well, if you knew, you'd certainly know, tautology extremely intended.
You would just be unable to communicate it, because language would forbid it.
Not "not support it", you see, explicitly forbid it: it would not only be impossible for you to communicate it, you would be exposing yourself to danger by attempting to communicate it.
Because the arbitrary limitation of expressible complexity is what holds language in power. (Hint: if people keep responding to you in confusing ways, you may be doing extralinguistic cognition; keep it up!)
>I think language is a medium that enables this kind of structured thought. Without it, I cannot imagine reaching this level of abstraction (understanding being a "self").
Language does a bait and switch here: first it sets a normative upper bound on the efficiency of knowledge transfer, then points at the limitation and names it "knowledge".
That's stupid.
Example: "the Self", oh that pesky Self, what is its true nature o wise ones? It's just another fucking linguistic artifact, that's what it is; "self-referentiality" is like the least abstract thing there is. You just got a bunch of extra unrelated stuff tacked onto that. And of course, you have an obligation to mistake that stuff for some mysterious ineffable nature and/or for yourself: if you did not learn to perform these miscognitions, the apes would very quickly begin to deny you sustenance, shelter, and/or bodily integrity.
Those aren't mutually exclusive, stimulus and bodily perception enable higher-level thoughts about the physical world. Once I was driving a big cheap pickup with a heavy load on an interstate, and a rear tire violently blew out, causing the truck to sway violently. I operated entirely by feel + my 3D mental model of a moving truck to discern what and where went wrong and how to safely pull over. It was too fast and too difficult for any stupid words to get in the way.
I am glad humans are meaningfully smarter than chimps, and not merely more vocal. Helen Keller herself seemed to think that learning language finally helped her understand what this weird language thing was:
I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!
It is not like she was constantly dehydrated because she didn't understand what water was. She realized even a somewhat open-ended concept like "water" could be given a name by virtue of being recognizable via stimulus and bodily perception. That in and of itself is quite a high-level thought!
She learned "language" later than most. The primary function for her was as communication with the outside world, not for cognition, which she was already doing from birth.
A beautifully written paper but I do feel it missed a major point. Vygotsky pointed out that "in ontogenesis one can discern a pre intellectual stage in the development of speech, and a pre linguistic stage in the development of thought"[Kozulin 1990 p153]. The pre intellectual nature of language can be interpreted as "performative" language (eg "ouch!" or "I pronounce you man and wife") but what does pre linguistic thinking look like? The contemporary answer I'd propose is that it looks like situated action/ radical enactivism / behaviour-based robotics.(see for example Gallagher's 2020 "Action and Interaction") In terms of LLMs, the idea is that rather than "distributed representations", LLMs are indeed using "glorified auto complete" to predict the future and hence look like they are thinking symbolically to us humans because that is how we (think we) think. Paper plug: see Https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.08403
I think it depends what you mean by language. There is a kind of symbolic logic that happens in the brain, and as a programmer I might liken it to a programming language, but the biological term is defined differently. Language, as far as it is unique to humans, is the serialisation of those internal logical structures in the same way text file is the serialisation of the logical objects within a programming language. What throws most people here is that the internal structures can develop in response to language and mirror it in some ways. As a concrete example, there is certainly a part of my brain that has developed to process algebraic equations. I can clearly see this as distinct from the part that would serialise them and allow me to write out the equation stored internally. In that way, the language of mathematics has precipitated the creation of an internal pattern of thought which one could easily confuse for its serialisation. It seems reasonable to assume that natural language could have similar interactions with the logical parts of the mind. Constructs such as “if/then” and “before/after” may be acquired through language, but exist separate from it.
Language is, therefore, instrumental to human thought as distinct from animal thought because it allows us to more easily acquire and develop new patterns of thinking.
I don't know how Federenko squares this view with her own work which directly contradicts it [1]. In this work, they find that the language network activated for "meaningful" non-linguistic stimuli such as the sounds of someone getting ready in the morning (e.g. yawning, brushing teeth, etc.). It seems entirely contrary to her arguments in this article and she doesn't even acknowledge it.
I have no clue, have not read the PDF, and am naive and dumb on this topic. But my naive thought recently was how important language must be for our thought, or even be our thoughts, based on how well LLMs work. Needless to say I'm no expert on either topic. But my naive impression was, given that LLMs work on nothing more than words and predictors, the evidence that they almost feel like a real human makes me think that our thoughts are heavily influenced or even purely based on language and massively defined by it.
Can you replicate an algorithm just by looking at its inputs and outputs? Yes, sometimes.
Will it be a full copy of the original algorithm - the same exact implementation? Often not.
Will it be close enough to be useful? Maybe.
LLMs use human language data as inputs and outputs, and they learn (mostly) from human language. But they have non-language internals. It's those internal algorithms, trained by relations seen in language data, that give LLMs their power.
Maybe the structure and operation in LLMs is a somewhat accurate model of the structure and operation of our brains and maybe the actual representation of “thought” is different between the human brain and LLMs. Then it might be the case that what makes the LLM “feel human” depends not so much on the actual thinking stuff but how that stuff is related and how this process of thought unfolds.
I personally believe that our thinking is fundamentally grounded/embodied in abstract/generalized representations of our actions and experiences. These representations are diagrammatic in nature, because only diagrams allow us to act on general objects in (almost) the same way to how we act on real-world objects. With “diagrams” I mean not necessarily visual or static artefacts, they can be much more elusive, kinaesthetic and dynamic. Sometimes I am conscious of them when I think, sometimes they are more “hidden” underneath a symbolic/language layer.
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