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(I again find myself on the other side of most comments) I think it is obvious that we think in a language, or more specifically the vocabulary. Try to imagine

(I again find myself on the other side of most comments) I think it is obvious that we think in a language, or more specifically the vocabulary. Try to imagine thinking without language (yes, you can do it), e.g. think about an apple. When I tried it, I was picturing the apple and imagined the smell and taste. That was a lot of details. On the other hand, when I think about with the word "apple", the shape and color, smell and taste does not come on so strongly yet I still have the feel that I got the (idea of) apple. So in my opinion, language vocabulary is an abstraction over a collection of ideas that allows us to focus our thought without recollecting (flood our limited short term memory slots) all the details. There is this saying that our short term memory only have 7 plus or minus 2 slots and this short term memory is like our ram that enables our thinking. Vocabulary allows us to abstract complex ideas to fit into a single memory slot, thus it is essential for us to be able to have complex (when we have multiple components of ideas interweaving) thoughts. Now, I do not distinguish one language from another. Different languages may accidentally possess different power of abstraction in particular area due to the culture behind the language, but in general, I believe the abstraction power is similar -- if not, we can always invent new vocabulary and we do. So whether you are thinking in English or Spanish or jumping back and forth or mixing in between, but the abstracting aspect remain the same. For those bi-linguists try think "apple" in one language and "eat" in another language and try think anything that involves eating apple. For me at least, I do not have trouble use either language for either apple or eat, but once I start my thought, I do not swap it -- that is, if I started thinking apple in English, I remains thinking apple in English. It is the function of words as abstracting that is key to our thought (not language as typically a language teacher would define). Then there is grammar in addition to vocabulary. I don't think grammar is part of our thought. They are more like cues. We don't think about grammar, but grammar automatically comes as we use the vocabulary. The grammar do not really occupy any memory slots (except when you are learning the language). It is not that we have to think in a language -- we can think in pictures and imagine playing a movie, but thinking via a language allows us to think in a more abstract way and I believe it is essential for us to develop and grab complex thoughts.

corecoder 10y ago
I think that we have to give up the idea that we can understand anything about thought and more generally cognitive processes by looking at how it "feels" thinking (or doing math, vision, etc). The more we observe how we work, the more we learn that we really have no idea how we work. The ancient idea that we can understand reason by reasoning have to be abandoned: it is, after all, an idealistic belief; if we accept that our cognitive processes are physical phenomena, we also have to accept that reasoning without observation is powerless.

corecoder 10y ago

I think that we have to give up the idea that we can understand anything about thought and more generally cognitive processes by looking at how it "feels" thinking (or doing math, vision, etc). The more we observe how we work, the more we learn that we really have no idea how we work. The ancient idea that we can understand reason by reasoning have to be abandoned: it is, after all, an idealistic belief; if we accept that our cognitive processes are physical phenomena, we also have to accept that reasoning without observation is powerless.