Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

For those who can’t and don’t think in words this is unsurprising.

absolutely !

How would someone think in words? You mean the words in the pictures or...?

Could you imagine the impossibility of riding a bike if you had to consciously put words to every action before you did it?

By "hearing" words, sentences, dialogues in their mind. Just like imagining a picture, but audio instead.

I think in words. For me during thought there is a literal voice in my putting my thoughts into words.

but words, sentences, and dialogues are all features of language.

Can you count without using a "language"?

Try it now: Tap your hand on the desk randomly. Can you recall how many times you did it without "saying" a sequence in your head like "1, 2, 3" or "A, B, C" etc?

If yes, how far can you count? With a language it's effectively infinite. You could theoretically go up to "1 million 5 hundred 43 thousand, 2 hundred and 10" and effortlessly know what comes next.

I remember back in school, a language teacher once was trying to convey the importance of language. One of his main arguments was that we needed words and languages in order to think. I still recall my disbelief.

I spent the next few days trying to understand how that process worked. I would force myself to think in words and sentences. It was incredibly limiting! So slow and lacking in images, in abstract relationships between ideas and sensations.

It took me another few years to realise that many people actually depend on those structures in order to produce any thought and idea.

Are there really people who don't know about inner monologues?

I have the standard internal monologue many people report, but I've never put much stock in the "words are necessary for thought" because while I think a lot in words, I also do a lot of thinking in not-words.

We recently put the project I've been working on for the last year out into the field for the first time. As was fully expected, some bugs emerged. I needed to solve one of them. I designed a system in my head for spawning off child processes based on the parent process to do certain distinct types of work in a way that gives us access to OS process-level controls over the work, and then got about halfway through implementing it. Little to none of this design involved "words". I can't even say it involved much "visualization" either, except maybe in a very loose sense. It's hard to describe in words how I didn't use words but I've been programming for long enough that I pretty much just directly work in system-architecture space for such designs, especially relatively small ones like that that are just a couple day's work.

Things like pattern language advocates aren't wrong that it can still be useful to put such things into words, especially for communication purposes, but I know through direct personal experience that words are not a necessary component of even quite complicated thought.

"Subjective experience reports are always tricky, jerf. How do you know that you aren't fooling yourself about not using words?" A good and reasonable question, to which my answer is, I don't even have words for the sort of design I was doing. Some, from the aforementioned pattern languages, yes, but not in general. So I don't think I was just fooling myself on the grounds that even if I tried to serialize what I did directly into English, a transliteration rather than a translation, I don't think I could. I don't have one.

I'm also not claiming to be special. I don't know the percentages but I'm sure many people do this too.

Interestingly, I feel like I can "feel" small numbers (up to 4 or 5) easier than than thinking about them as objects in a language.

This is highly anecdotal, but when I lift weights, I have an “intuition” about the number of reps I’ve performed without consciously counting them.

An example of this would be when I’m lifting weights with a friend and am lost in the set/focusing on mind-muscle connection, and as a result I forget to count my reps. I am usually quite accurate when I verify with my lifting partner the number of reps done/remaining.

As OP mentioned, many people have no internal speech, otherwise known as anendophasia, yet can still do everything anyone with an internal dialogue can do.

Similarly for me, I can do “mental object rotation” tasks even though I have aphantasia.

> I have an “intuition” about the number of reps I’ve performed without consciously counting them.

This is known as subitising.

I can remember the sequence of sounds and like a delay line repeat that sequence in my head. This becomes easier the more distinguishable the taps are or the more of a cadence variability there is. But if it is a longer sequence I compress it by remembering an analogue like so: doo doo da doo da doo da da doo (reminiscent of morse code, or a kind of auditory binary). Would we consider this language? I think in the colloquial sense no, but it is essentially a machine language equivalent.

For context I have both abstract "multimedia" thought processes and hypervisor-like internal narrative depending on the nature of the experience or task.

By feel, I can without language or counting, play mostly

  X . . X . . X . . . X . X . . .

and every so often switch out for variations, eg:

  X . . X . . X . X . . . X . . .

or

  X . . . X . . . . . X . X . . .

but I'm no good for playing polyrhythms, which many other people can do, and I believe they must also do so more by feel than by counting.

Can you expand on your last sentence? The notion is fascinating to me.

I can. But I do this by visualizing the taps as a group. I don't have to label them with a number. I can see them in my mind, thus recalling the taps. If I tap with any sort of rhythm I can see the rhythm in the way they are laid out in my mind and this helps with recollection.

If I want to translate this knowledge into a number, I need to count the taps I am seeing in my head. At that point I do need to think of the word for the number.

I could even do computations on these items in my mind, imagine dividing them into two groups for instance, without ever having to link them to words until I am ready to do something with the result, such as write down the number of items in each group.

It's a well known phenomenon! I will drop this link here in case you are not familiar with it:

https://www.sciencealert.com/theres-a-big-difference-in-how-...

I once realised that, for me, subvocalising thoughts was a way to keep something "in RAM", while some other thoughts went elsewhere, or developed something else. Perhaps slower speed helps in that respect?

Like, at the speed of speech?

Practice a few polyrhythms, get used to things like:

  X . X X X . X . X X X .
  A . . A . . A . . A . .
  B . B . B . B . B . B .

and:

  X . . X . X X X . X X . X . X X . . X . X X . . X X . X X . X . . X . X X . . X X . X . . X . . X X X X . . X X X X . . X . . X . X X . . X X . X . . X . X X . X X . . X X . X . . X X . X . X X . X X X . X . .
  A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . .
  B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . .
  C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . .

Learn to do them with one limb (or finger) per line, and also with all the lines on the same limb (or finger). And then suddenly, they'll start to feel intuitive, and you'll be able to do them by feel. (It's a bit like scales.)

Right, I think it's less than 50% of people that have an "inner voice" - using language to think.

Other animals with at best very limited language, are still highly intelligent and capable of reasoning - apes, dogs, rats, crows, ...

Many animals can do some form of counting of small numbers where there's no connection to language possible.

Do you also have some noise for mathematical operations, such as raising a number to a power, and for equals? So doo doo da ugh doo doo feh doo doo da doo da doo da da doo?

...maybe I do this sometimes myself. Remembering the proper names of things is effort.

An important note. If you're hearing your voice in your head doing this, that's subvocalisation and it's basically just saying it out loud, the instruction is still sent to your vocal chords

It's the equivalent of <thinking> tags for LLM output.

I don’t make a sound or word in my mind but I definitely keep track of the number. My thinking is definitely structured and there are things in my thoughts but there is no words or voice. I also can’t see images in my mind either. I’ve no idea what an inner monologue or the minds eye is like. I have however over the years found ways to produce these experiences in a way of my own. I found for instance some rough visualization was helpful in doing multi variate calculus but it’s very difficult and took a lot of practice. I’ve also been able to simulate language in my mind to help me practice difficult conversations but it’s really difficult and not distinct.

I would note though I have a really difficult time with arithmetic and mechanical tasks like counting. Mostly I just lose attention. Perhaps an inner voice would help if it became something that kept a continuity of thought.

I can imagine the numbers as figures (I mean that the shape of the characters 1, 2 etc), or the patterns on a dice in sequence.

This is a parallel stream, because if I count with imagined pictures, then I can speak and listen to someone talking without it disturbing the process. If I do it with subvocalization, then doing other speech/language related things would disturb the counting.

Can you draft a sentence (with all the words precisely determined) in your mind before you say it or you write it down? Can you "rehearse" saying it without moving your tongue or mouth? If yes, that's pretty much an "inner voice".

Wow I've never tried this before, and I feel like this is way easier than using words.

I think people are just using the word "think" differently. They may have picked up a different meaning for that verb than you. For them, thinking == inner vocalization. It's just a different definition. They would not call imagining things or daydreaming or musing or planning action steps as "thinking".

Also, many people simply repeat facts they were told. "We need words to think" is simply a phrase this person learned, a fact to recite in school settings. It doesn't mean they deeply reflected on this statement or compared it with their experience.

I think this is what language is. It's a sequence rememberance system.

I'm an idiot. I thought this meant, for some reason unknown to me... written words, something I couldn't imagine being able to think in. Spoken words, sure.

Oh no… That would vindicate the chatbots..

This is So unrelatable lol. Imagine how different alien minds would be!!

"Highly intelligent" is not a word to be used with apes, dogs, rats or crows.

So if you want to look at your phone there's a voice going "I shall pick up my phone and swipe the lock away now."? Trying to understand if ALL thinking is in words or some subset.

One, two, ...many.

But that's like how I memorize sheet music, visual groups and subgroups of notes, and yet sheet music is formally linguistic nevertheless. So in such debates I think a tricky pitfall to avoid is that all data structures are essentially linguistic as well.

> Can you count without using a "language"?

Yes. Seriously, these kind of questions are so surprising. It tells you that everyone's experience is just a little different.

I think it's more likely that they lack the awareness to recognize it.

I can count to 10 with fingers.

If that's your opinion, then define intelligence in a meaningful/reductive fashion (not just "i know it when i see it"), then defend this opinion based on that!

Not really, I can speak it out loud though which is often what I do. I have over the years been able to do it in my mind but it’s not really a voice or words but some conceptual framing of the words. It’s difficult to explain.