He mostly rejects that we literally think in words: ‘The obvious (and I should have thought sufficient) refutation of the claim that natural languages are the m

He mostly rejects that we literally think in words: ‘The obvious (and I should have thought sufficient) refutation of the claim that natural languages are the medium of thought is that there are non-verbal organisms that think.’ (This is him quoting Jerry Fodor.) I don't think this is particularly controversial among contemporary linguists. It's important to him because if we did think in natural languages, and if further we were the only linguistic animal (which he first posits and than backtracks), then it would follow that animals do not think, which, given only such a binary option, seems absurd. There is a rich field of linguistics that studies the relationship between language and cognition: Language can shape the way we think in obvious and non-obvious ways even if it does not determine the limits of our cognition. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity One field I found very rewarding (and approachable) is conceptual metaphors, involving parallels in cognition and language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor So I think the title of the article is sort of a red herring itself.