If a mind isn't exposed to any language, would it be able to think?
Answer:
I think you would be able.Language is a way to communicate, but is not the only one.
There's body language as well, and so many other.
Look at the Neanderthals, they didn't speak any language and they knew their role.They knew they had to provide shelter and food to their families and reproduce.
So,my answer is yes.I think a mind can think without the use of a language
Well, you could surely undertand that when u were hungry, you would look for food. You could remember what foods were good and what were bad. Where they could be found,etc... You could even learn that sometimes letting someone else eat some of your food is ok, b/c they might do the same in the future. i would say that is "thought"
Probably much better, without the overwhelming constraints of popular English. Habitual thinking patterns dictate most closed minds, and is limited to the number of words one is able to recall for use. (about 3000 tops)
Grammar is key to utilizing fewer words, and is similar to higher math in many cases.
But without language as we know it , there would have to be another basis for communication with others, which in a large way-inspires Intelligence.
YES
First animals think and have no language.
Second, early cave paintings might suggest that before written language there was pictoral language. I would extrapolate and suggest that might work similarly within an individual's consciousness.
I would say so. That is how human beings evolved did not they ? From communication via gestures (a theory) and then sounds and then languages.
An interesting article...from somebody's blog.
Related articles: Everyone sees red, not pink Facial expressions run in the family
SYDNEY: Human language may have evolved from the use of gestures by our ape ancestors, and not just from primitive vocalisations, according to a new study.
Only humans and apes use hand or limb gestures to communicate, but until now little was known about how these gestures combine with other forms of communication in apes or what kind of responses they generate.
To learn more, primatologists Frans de Waal and Amy Pollick of the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre in Atlanta, Georgia, studied bonobos and chimpanzees, in captivity. They focused on the way that our closest relatives combine gestures, facial expressions and vocalisations to communicate.
Flexible and complex
As they reveal today in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the pair found that the use of gestures is highly flexible, complex, and difficult to link to specific contexts. The use of gestures even varied widely between different groups of chimps and bonobos.
"The way they use gestures is extremely variable, especially compared with other forms of communication," said de Waal. "This makes gesture a possible candidate for symbolic communication in our shared ancestor."
Facial expressions and vocalisations, on the other hand, are more stereotypical, and are though to be largely instinctive and reactionary in apes. Gesture appears to be more under conscious voluntary control – much like human language, write the authors.
"Far more than facial expressions and vocalisations, gestures are subjected to modification, conventionalisation, and social transmission," de Waal told Cosmos Online. "This is especially so when compared to their vocalizations and facial expressions, which are more directly tied to emotional and social contexts."
"Better Platform"
"Since language is largely voluntary and free of specific contextual situations, these results suggest that manual gestures are a better platform on which to build a language system," commented Michael Corballis a psychologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
He argues that speech itself is a kind of gestural communication, made up of gestures of the tongue, larynx and lips. "My guess is that gestural language became more facial and less manual as our ancestors usurped the hands for other activities."
The new study also suggested that – at least in terms of the origin of language – bonobos are more similar to us than chimps. The team found that bonobos are more flexible in their use of gestures, and also responded more frequently to them.
"This may be due in part to bonobos' deliberate attempts to add critical information to the message they're trying to send [and] suggests that the bonobo is a better model of symbolic communication in our early ancestors," said de Waal.
Colourful language
Related findings also published in PNAS today report that the language we speak, can shape the way we perceive colours – leading to different patterns of colour discrimination.
Researchers at Stanford University in California have found that speaking a language with a mandatory distinction between shades of a colour (say light blue and dark blue in Russian, rather than just blue in English) can influence the time taken for the subject to respond in an objective colour test, a result not seen in subjects who speak a language with just one word for the colour.
I would think so, because although the thoughts aren't translated to us, it's still thought by the functions the body does. If you were to be itchy, then your nerves would tell you that you're itchy, and a thought would form to say, "I am itchy. I need to itch that itch." Which, therefore, makes a thought, so even if it's not in a language we can understand, thoughts are things that we conjure up when experiencing or witnessing something, and I believe we try to do that all the time...you can't stop thoughts unless you were dead.
Yes. Language helps you to communicate your thoughts to others, but so does body language. Instinct helps you to survive, but so does experience. The mind collects, processes and remembers your experiences, which allows you to learn and grow and act. All of it uses thought processes.
that's an excellent question. I've always wondered that, too
It may be able to think using images, but this type of thinking will give a lot lesser result than thinking with a language. While thinking in images may work for a very concrete, immediate action, it'd be quite powerless with abstract thinking.
yes,,, we have been exposed to language for a long time... but we don't always even think in terms in language... our memory includes photo's , life experiences, emotions... the mind uses all these to "think" language isn't even the first choice, it's used when considering communications mostly... remember the first birthday you remember it didn't come in words did it... it didn't use language...
There's a book you might be interested in, Man Without Words.
It's about a deaf man who was never taught sign and had no language until relatively late in life.
Yes, he thought, but didn't have the sort of abstract thinking one has when one has a language.
Not all that goes on in one's mind is language -- there are images and sounds and other perceptions and echoes of perceptions (for want of a better word), and feelings which have a thought component to them.
The man in the book was an illegal immigrant. The INS uniforms and trucks were green. He developed a phobia over that color, which he associated with being captured and incarcerated.
I read it years ago and don't remember much else about it, unfortunately.
But you might try getting your hands on a copy.
"Thinking" preceded language by a long shot. I suspect thinking was more "abstract," (I haven't done any research on this), but if you see it this way--without images, feelings, associations, how could one live? It wouldn't be necessary to think in "words." With language or not, we all communicate--, all creatures. Body language is the best communicator of all, since it's the most truthful. I've sometimes thought of how language gets in the way; words misused or misinterpreted. We have many images in our minds that could never be translated into words, anyway. When I was painting, I was "inspired" by an image, not thought, & the painting obviously wasn't translated into words. "Think" about it!
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