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Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie thought

(www.scientificamerican.com)
549 points orcul | 2 comments | 17 Oct 24 12:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.461s | source
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orobus ◴[20 Oct 24 15:57 UTC] No.41896198[source]▶
I’m not a neuroscience expert, but I do have a degree in philosophy. The Russell quote immediately struck me as misleading (especially without a citation). The author could show more integrity by including Russell’s full quote:

> Language serves not only to express thoughts, but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it. It is sometimes maintained that there can be no thought without language, but to this view I cannot assent: I hold that there can be thought, and even true and false belief, without language. But however that may be, it cannot be denied that all fairly elaborate thoughts require words.

> Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits by Bertrand Russell, Section: Part II: Language, Chapter I: The Uses of Language Quote Page 60, Simon and Schuster, New York.

Of course, that would contravene the popular narrative that philosophers are pompous idiots incapable of subtlety.

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1. usgroup ◴[20 Oct 24 16:17 UTC] No.41896381[source]▶
I think it’s a nicely summarised challenge to boot.

It’s doubtless to me that thinking happens without intermediary symbols; but it’s also obvious that I can’t think deeply without the waypoints and context symbols provide. I think it is a common sense opinion.

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2. Izkata ◴[20 Oct 24 22:17 UTC] No.41898950[source]▶
"Language" is a subset of "symbols". I agree with what you said, but it's not representative of the quote in GP.

Just a few days ago was "What do you visualize while programming?", and there's a few of us in the comments that, when programming, think symbolically without language: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41869237