Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

>You can ask whether people who have these severe language impairments can perform tasks that require thinking. You can ask them to solve some math problems or to perform a social reasoning test, and all of the instructions, of course, have to be nonverbal because they can’t understand linguistic information anymore. Scientists have a lot of experience working with populations that don’t have language—studying preverbal infants or studying nonhuman animal species. So it’s definitely possible to convey instructions in a way that’s nonverbal. And the key finding from this line of work is that there are people with severe language impairments who nonetheless seem totally fine on all cognitive tasks that we’ve tested them on so far.

They should start with what is their definition of language. To me it's any mean you can use to communicate some information to someone else and they generally get a correct inference of what kind of representations and responses are expected is the definition of a language. Whether it's uttered words, a series of gestures, subtle pheromones or a slap in your face, that's all languages.

For the same reason I find extremely odd that the hypothesis that animals don't have any form of language is even considered as a serious claim in introduction.

Anyone can prove anything and its contrary about language if the term is given whatever meaning is needed for premises to match with the conclusion.

Just as a data point, my guess is that a very small minority of English-language speakers would define the term as broadly as you do, at least in a context relating the concept to analytical thought processes. At the very least, I think most people expect that language is used actively, such that pheromones wouldn’t fall within the definition. (And actually, that’s reflected when you say language is a means “you can use”.) Likewise, a slap in the face certainly can be interpreted, but slapping doesn’t seem like a means of communicating in general—because a slap only communicates one thing.

> For the same reason I find extremely odd that the hypothesis that animals don't have any form of language is even considered as a serious claim in introduction.

I guess I've always just assumed it refers to some feature that's uniquely human—notably, recursive grammars.

They do, in the first section of the journal article itself:

> Do any forms of thought—our knowledge of the world and ability to reason over these knowledge representations—require language (that is, representations and computations that sup-port our ability to generate and interpret meaningfully structured word sequences)?

Emphasis on "word sequences," to the exclusion of, e.g. body language or sign language. They go on to discuss some of the brain structures involved in the production and interpretation of these word sequences:

> Language production and language understanding are sup-ported by an interconnected set of brain areas in the left hemisphere, often referred to as the ‘language network'.

It is these brain areas that form the basis of their testable claims regarding language.

> Anyone can prove anything and its contrary about language if the term is given whatever meaning is needed for premises to match with the conclusion.

This is why "coming to terms" on the definitions of words and what you mean by them should be the first step in any serious discussion if you aim to have any hope in hell of communicating precisely; it is also why you should be skeptical of political actors that insist on redefining the meanings of (especially well-known) terms in order to push an agenda. Confusing a term with its actual referent is exceedingly commonplace in modern day.

It's also doubtful that thinking about the concept of analytical thought processes is something most humans do either, at least not in these terms and this perspective.

Should we expect experts in cognitive science exposing their view in a scientific publication to stick to the narrowest median view of language though? All the more when in the same article you quote people like Russell who certainly didn't have a naïve definition of language when expressing a point of view on the matter.

And slapping in general can definitely communicate far more than a single thing depending on many parameters. See https://www.33rdsquare.com/is-a-slap-disrespectful-a-nuanced... for a text exploring some of nuances of the meaning it can encompasse. But even a kid can get that slap could perfectly have all the potential to create a fully doubly articulated language, as The Croods 2 creators funnily have put in scene. :D

Not all human languages exhibits recursion though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language

And recursion as the unique trait for human language differentiation is not necessarily completely consensual https://omseeth.github.io/blog/2024/recursive_language/

Also, let's recall that in its broader meaning, the scientific consensus is that humans are animals and they evolved through the same basic mechanism as all other life forms that is evolution. So even assuming that evolution made some unique language hability emerge in humans, it's most likely that they share most language traits with other species and that there is more things to learn from them that what would be possible if it's assumed they can't have a language and thoughts.

I'm inclined to believe that of the animals that exhibit varying degrees of self awareness, they have mental structures isomorphic to a recursive grammar. As such, perhaps using a recursive grammar is not distinctly a human trait.

Does any other living entity have recursive grammars? It seems uniquely human.

It seems that the second link may indicate otherwise but I'm still pretty skeptical. This requires extraordinary evidence. Furthermore there may be a more practical limit of "stack size" or "context size" that effectively exceptionalizes humans (especially considering the size and proportional energy consumption of our brains).

I don't think that recursive grammar is linked to self awareness. Certainly not strongly. Many animals that don't appear to have ability to interpret recursive grammar seem to have self awareness.

I'm not sure it's that fringe. Popular addages such as 'language is a vehicle for thought' and 'the pen is mightier than the sword' reveal that language is sometimes implied to be tool-like, with many of our unspoken acts carrying linguistic meaning (e.g. ghosting, not answering a call, sign language, gesturing, nodding, etc.).

Even tools present us a certain 'language', talking to us via beeps, blinks and buzzes, and are having increasingly interesting discussions amongst themselves (e.g. subreddit simulator, agent based modeling). Recent philosophers of technology as Mark Coeckelbergh present a comprehensive argument for why we need to move away from the tool/language barrier [0], and has been part in informing the EC Expert Group on AI [1].

[0]: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/97813155285...

[1]: https://philtech.univie.ac.at/news/news-about-publicatons-et...

Does it matter in the frame of investigating relations between cognitive processes and languages?

Other animals have cognitive processes, and languages, or at least it seems to be something scientifically consensual. Thus the surprise reading the kind of statement given in introduction.

Whether humans have exceptional language habilites or even "just" a biggest board to play on with the same basic facilities seems to be a completely different matter.

Language is infinitely productive. Using a finite number of sounds or symbols, humans can produce unlimited utterance chains to communicate novel and complex ideas.

Think about it: almost every nontrivial conversation you’ve had or comment/blog/article/book you’ve read constituted an entirely new (to you) utterance which you understood and which enabled you to acquire new ideas and information you had previously lacked. No non-human animals have demonstrated this ability. At best they are able to perform single-symbol utterances to communicate previously-understood concepts (hungry, sad, scared, tired) but are unable to combine them to produce a novel utterance, the way a child could tell you about her day:

“Today the teacher asked me to multiply 3 times 7 and I got the answer right away! Then Bobby farted and the whole class was laughing. At lunch I bit my apple and my tooth felt funny. I think it’s starting to wiggle! Sally asked me if I could go to her house for a sleepover but I said I had to ask mom and dad first.”

> Language is infinitely productive. Using a finite number of sounds or symbols, humans can produce unlimited utterance chains to communicate novel and complex ideas.

We maybe disagree, in the sense that it seems to be mixing indefinitely bounded expressiveness with actual unlimited expression production that could potentially be in a bijective relationship with the an infinite set of expression.

We human are mortals and even at the whole humankind scale, we will produce a finite set of utterances.

The main thing bringing so much flexibility to languages, is our ability to reuse, fit and evolve them as we go through indefinitely many inedit experiences of the world. So something like context change tolerance. But if we want to be fair with crediting admirable unknowingly extensive creativeness, we should first consider the universe as a whole, with its permanent flow of novel context, which also include all interpretations of itself through mere mortals as ourself.

I don't find these excerpts in the linked article. Are you consulting an other document than the one pointed here?

The paper itself: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07522-w.epdf?shar...

I think what you’re saying supports the view that language is structured and actively used—which excludes pheromones. But I don’t see how you get to the next step, of characterizing unspoken acts as carrying linguistic meaning. That is, sign language and not answering a call aren’t obviously in the same category, precisely because not answering a call fails to communicate any particular concept, and because people don’t use various modes of non-answering to communicate various things.