22 ms·

Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]

• meowface 2y ago
  Side note, but I enjoy papers with meta-contrarian theses like these.
• beaned 2y ago
  Language is for both. Every concept is tied to a label that is a word. We identify pieces of reality by their common attributes while omitting their specific measurements, and attach these identifications to a label which is a word. It is a unique ability that we have as humans, which no other animal shares. It is essential for rational thought. Communication may have been an evolutionary forcing function on our ability to conceive generally (rather than simply perceive), but communication is still downstream from having concepts to communicate.
  • pama 2y ago
    Take a detailed look at an abstract painting and you might form thousands of unlabeled concepts per second; examine life in a microscope; listen to complex instrumental music; taste spicy/tingly XiAn noodles; smell a forest in the fall after the rain: there is a ton of thought involved in common human function without the need or ability of using language. A serialized version of language is too slow to capture parallel complex ideas that can race through your brain in an emergency and save your life. Learning how to use words is useful but there are not enough combinations of words in the world for the richness of thought you can experience in a single morning, in a single breath. We have way too many smell receptors in our genome and way too few words formed for the smell combinations we experience daily. We can recollect experiences, or we can visualize generate experiences in our mind; I dont see a reason we would label every internal or external experience and we certainly dont have to forget or not imagine all the parts we havent labeled yet.
  • larsrc 2y ago
    "It is a unique ability that we have as humans, which no other animal shares." Dogs at least can learn that, too. Probably also cats. Using buttons to express themselves has proven that. Hell, even our dog, who never figured out the buttons, understood that "bed" meant "soft thing next to human's bed", not "the particular bed I usually sleep in". Humans are merely a lot better at communicating this, having a more complex speech apparatus.
• dangrossman 2y ago
  Contrast that with Helen Keller's description of her mental state before language: https://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-helen-keller-on-her.html https://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-he...
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • toasterlovin 2y ago
    Something to keep in mind is that according to Wikipedia, Helen Keller met Anne Sullivan, her caretaker and the person who introduced her to language, at around 7, which is probably around the age many people with normal language acquisition would start to have the kinds of changes in cognition that Keller attributes to learning language.
    • 082349872349872 2y ago
      See also Spacetime for Springers
• Jun8 2y ago
  The entry in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good summary of the Language of Thought Hypothesis. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/ Jerry Fodor, who advocated an internal mental language, was seen as an old crank when I studied Linguistics in late 90s; I just looked him up and, god, he died recently in 2017. Here’s a New Yorker article from that time: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/jerry-fodors-enduring-critique-of-neo-darwinism https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/jerry-fodors-en....
  • lukasb 2y ago
    Complaint not targeted at you personally but - why does thought have to take place in language at all? I sometimes reason using physical or kinesthetic metaphors that would be impossible to capture perfectly in language.
    • strikelaserclaw 2y ago
      and why does thought have to have one form? I think in both language and visual representations and i switch between them depending on the task and i even pipe the input from one representation into the other representation.
  • foldr 2y ago
    This is related but not really the same thing. The Language of Thought may or may not be closely related to human language. (Some animals may also have concepts and compositional mental representations.)
    • cubefox 2y ago
      I didn't read the SEP article, but is the language of thought hypothesis perhaps already verified by our ability to do some sort of logic on neural network embeddings? E.g. queen-royal=woman.
      • foldr 2y ago
• ModernMech 2y ago
  Makes sense -- I don't think in language but shapes and graphs and blobs and other things I can't even describe with words. The words are vehicles for my thoughts but they are not my thoughts. So communication is sort of like a serialization process where thoughts in my head, however I represent them, are packaged into language; sent over a medium; received as language through eyes or ears or touch; and then unpacked into thoughts in the receivers head, however they represent them.
• darth_avocado 2y ago
  Somehow, when I say Pow-el street instead of Pow-ul street, everyone feigns ignorance, even though they completely know what I’m talking about. Doesn’t seem like language as a communication tool works well, when it is I used as a way to establish superiority.
  • tamimio 2y ago
    I agree, especially regarding accents. Something becomes really clear if you move to different areas with even a slight accent change: the dynamics shift to "your accent is bad and ours is better."
• nopinsight 2y ago
  There are many concepts in our thought stream without a 'word' or even a simple 'phrase' to label them. A word or a common phrase is coined when a concept is sufficiently common and important enough such that someone comes up with a label to communicate the idea succinctly and the label catches on. We, humanity, have words or common phrases to label the vast majority of significant concepts. However, not every concept is accorded such importance in every language. Some common words in other languages without direct translation in English: * 積ん読 (Tsundoku) (Japanese): Buying books and never reading them, just letting them pile up. * น้ำใจ (Nam-jai) (Thai): Literally "water from the heart". Being very nice and helpful without expecting anything back. * 关系 (Guanxi) (Mandarin): Your network of connections that help you get stuff done in life and business. This is perhaps another line of evidence to support the thesis of the article. Make no mistake though: Language is extremely useful for some types of thoughts, especially more abstract ones. Not everyone, however, uses it as their primary tool for thinking. ----- The above also helps explain some limitations of LLMs, such as their inadequate spatial intelligence. Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) start to address these issues by using much more granular data than language alone.
  • Swizec 2y ago
    > * 关系 (Guanxi) (Mandarin): Your network of connections that help you get stuff done in life and business. I do think in American English at least there is a phrase for this: Your Network. You even used it to explain the word :) Usually the first association to “your/the network” is social. You have to specify if you mean the technical version with computers.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • earth-adventure 2y ago
      The mandarin guangxi encompasses a whole lot more than just your network. That would be considered a very bastardised translation, losing all the extra meanings such as good luck created by having that network, possibilities to fortune, a kind of karma, and more.
• giorgosts 2y ago
  False dichotomy. Of course language is for communication like in all other animals, but where would man be without the invention of the language of mathematics? Probably not in the space and nuclear age. So the linguistic tools can push the boundaries of human cognition.
  • subuwm 2y ago
    Did you read the paper? According to the authors, mathematics isn't a "language" in this sense.
  • taneq 2y ago
    Exactly. It's like saying hands are for making things rather than for carrying things.
• m3kw9 2y ago
  To all engineers, it’s just an API
  • mirekrusin 2y ago
    And LLMs are mock we want to ship to production because in some cases it's indistinguishable from service. It's also like a burrito. Also not engineers - devs.
    • mikeqq2024 2y ago
      Difference between engineers and devs?
• jumploops 2y ago
  I think this is largely correct, but may miss some higher-order concepts related to language and the structure of one’s complex thoughts. To me they appear to go hand-in-hand, similar to the way a backend’s logic may inadvertently be structured to support an API. Another metaphor may be Conway’s Law, where the way one is forced to communicate, may in turn shape the way they structure their (brain) processes. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that speakers of different languages seem to “think” more similarly than not. For instance, native speakers of non-English Germanic languages appear to think more similarly compared to those native speakers of Romance languages, and vice-versa. Obviously I’m using English as a middle-man, and am likely projecting on what their internal thoughts actually are, but the pathways they take to express an idea or a solution is oftentimes more similar than not within the same base language background. Now is language necessary for complex thought? Absolutely not. We’ve seen evidence from many different life forms that show complex problem-solving, pattern matching, and novel tool use that all seem to happen without having a seemingly complex language background (i.e. Zipf’s Law).
• stoniejohnson 2y ago
  Language is the medium through which raw perspective refined itself. Language birthed social games and the sense of self. Yes, language evolved for communication. But without communication, thought would still be stuck in the land of instinct, never forged by the tribal dances of love, art, deceit, debate and organization.
• tetrisgm 2y ago
  We don't have better tooling to transfer information between humans though. We have language, and we have art. It seems that art transcends humans in some ways: happy / sad music seems to affect animals, and we've seen animals contemplating things. Without language, we can't really create a mapping to what that means though. We simply don't have a better way to compress multiple concepts into few bits of information we can pass around. Interestingly, removing language as a tool for communication is a cool thought experiment. I imagine one could use maths, or music, as a way of expressing thoughts and ideas. Would that process of condensing information not be language-making though?
  • 082349872349872 2y ago
    I often work with animals who show signs of thought: presented with a novel situation, they pause, reflect, and select the prudent option. I sometimes work with people who show no signs of thought: external stimuli are perceived, converted into a stream of language, and conveyed, with no apparent effort at audience-based compression (selection of an appropriate message from a wide variety of potential messages), or even compression in general (selection of a short message...).
    • tetrisgm 2y ago
      That's great insight. How do you think animals store or communicate those thoughts? From your own experience.
      • 082349872349872 2y ago
        Storage I have no idea. (for that matter, I have little idea how we store non-linguistic thoughts) Communication is primarily via posture, secondarily via sound. No "grammar" is involved, intensification is via intensification of signal, not addition of symbols. (that said, much human-animal communication is by means of arbitrary symbols, just that each symbol is serving as a sign because combinations of symbols and even their ordering doesn't really matter) Animals certainly get order: they'll easily learn sequences of actions, but if you're getting different behaviour from AB than BA, I currently believe that's because the animal has learnt, and is perceiving, those as two different gestalts. Imperative and Vocative are the basic cases. (and to what extent the latter belongs to the former I can't really say: when the stock greets in the morning, are they saying "good morning, 0823", as we'd like to believe, or are they really saying "Hey, you, thumb-monkey, feed us!"?) Interrogative exists, but barely: "where is everyone?" "fren?" (or, if wondering about more* than friendship: "gotta light?") An example of linear use of order in equines: a young equid has what my wife calls "filly rights" and generally gets to do what it wants. As it gets either older, or too obnoxious, though, the other members of the herd will start to socialise it. This usually occurs via an ascending scale of pressure, from the subtle (eye contact - "are you sure that's an acceptable behaviour?") through the clear (coming up alongside — "all right, what's all this then?") to behaviours reserved for outlaws (full-power kick with both hinds — "what we've got here is failure to communicate"). [the biggest problem I see novice humans have is they attempt to bargain with animals; offer-consideration-acceptance is, for me, far too human-abstract a framework. That's not to say you can't come to consensus on a modus vivendi, but you're not going to get there through a contract approach, calibrated to the capabilities of two-legged mammals.] My stock all know index finger up is a non-linguistic way humans ask "are you sure?" (and their name may be a linguistic escalation), but I have no clue if they understand it as a sign of potential aggression (being generally produced as a sharp movement), or as a symbol of potential displeasure? Cattle (both mobs and individuals) can be steered by use of their fight-or-flight in response to posture. You don't directly tell them "go left" ("haw" for a carriage horse) or "go right" ("gee" for a carriage horse) but instead either confirm the pressure (if they're already pointed the right direction) or change the pressure (reduce-intensify if you wish them to flip towards you, intensify-reduce if you wish them to flip away from you) to get them going in the desired direction. [as you all can tell, feudalism (or IR) is basically what you get when you think politics should be entirely based on this level of communication; however even in democracies use of the bovine principle to manufacture consensus in an electorate occurs, for my sensitivities, way too often] If anyone can think of experiments that would clarify some of these situations, I'm all ears! * I understand these days you all mediate all your flirting via text, which seems like a very difficult thing to calibrate; in my day we had analogue signals that (to me alone?) are much easier to dial up or down: We laugh just a little too loud Stand just a little too close We stare just a little too long WTF are kids doing these days? "we put just a little too many 'e's in our heeeeys?"
• miika 2y ago
  How do you define “thinking”? To me thinking is primary tool of communication between I and “me” and it’s entirely based on sound and language. Can you think without using language? When you have song playing in your head, how is that different from your thoughts? Isn’t talking out loud just act of thinking, the output being connected to mouth? Have you ever tried to repeat mantra in your thought, slow down until coming to full stop? What remains when thinking stops? Have you noticed that thinking is like breathing, in a way that it’s happening automatically and you can also take over? Have you noticed that thinking consciously is linked with breath and being aware of space? Fascinating topic!
  • 082349872349872 2y ago
    To me most communication between I and "me" occurs in symbol arrangements, not sound and language. This can be annoying: when my wife asks me what I'm thinking about, if I'm thinking about something relatively linguistic (an HN comment, say), it's easy to tell her. Otherwise, I need a fair amount of time and effort to make the consecutive interpretation (and forget about simultaneous!). Further evidence that my thought is not especially language-mediated: my wife and I share a little over three languages in common; however translating into any of these is about as difficult as any other, suggesting that the original thought is equally "far away" from all of them.
  • jbkly7 2y ago
    Most of my thinking is not in language, though I do sometimes talk to myself in my head. If someone asks me what I'm thinking or feeling, it sometimes takes great effort to translate it into words; and when I do attempt to express it I often feel the words are pretty inadequate. Like encoding a high-res image into a few pixels, or music into a few notes. Super interesting topic indeed.
  • tamimio 2y ago
    Thinking is more than just communication; it involves reasoning, problem-solving, etc., according to the paper. You can definitely think without using language, such as while driving, flying, or even playing sports. A subcategory of thinking probably requires language, one that will be used to communicate with others, like addressing an issue at work or even writing a comment here.
• calf 2y ago
  The crux of their argument is that the language faculty and other faculties (math/logic/abstract, theory of mind/social reasoning, spatial/temporal imagination, and other cognitive abilities) all evolved in parallel, so the most plausible explanation is that language is mostly independent of all those other faculties which are activated in distinct neural network areas of the human brain, based on brain scan studies in the last 20 years. I imagine a counterargument (or complication) to that is that such parallel evolution would require the neural networks to independently evolve certain breakthroughs multiple times before reaching the Homo sapiens stage. For example, language is recursive and yet human mathematical reasoning is recursive, but these use two different brain areas (according to the paper). So in their figure of two different brain regions for language processing versus math/code thinking, both regions had to somehow evolve the "wetware" for recursive computation. How did natural evolution manage that in general?
  • 4b11b4 2y ago
    If language is no longer part of thought, then sure, breaking down... thought... into many different mechanisms also makes sense (quite a bit of sense actually). From there, you ask: "What is the fundamental aspect underlying each of these different faculties?"
    • calf 2y ago
      The authors say their opponents want a singular fundamental aspect, supposedly because of parsimony or Occam's razor (but this is the authors' framing). It's not clear to me who's account is more likely.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • derriz 2y ago
    Actual human natural language isn’t recursive in any meaningful sense. Formal grammar - an (often futile) attempt to describe the structure of natural languages - is generally expressed using a formal mathematical system which features recursion.
• zarzavat 2y ago
  Language is a major component of thought. Every programmer knows the unreasonable effectiveness of rubber duck debugging whereby one can solve logical problems more effectively by talking aloud. If language were merely a tool for communicating thoughts rather than an integral part of thinking, then talking aloud wouldn’t help. But since raising the volume of one’s internal monologue does improve reasoning, this shows that the internal monologue is part of the thinking process - not a passive reflection of thought that is happening “elsewhere”. Yes, of course you can engage in complex thought without language. There is verbal and non-verbal reasoning. A chess player thinks spatially in terms of how the knight moves, not just verbally, though verbal reasoning does help in chess somewhat.
  • tgaj 2y ago
    Yeah, I am a programmer without inner monologue so it's not that simple.
• MiguelX413 2y ago
  I think it'd be epic if the link of the post was changed to https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07522-w https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07522-w or https://oadoi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07522-w https://oadoi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07522-w
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • ffsm8 2y ago
    Both of your links send me to nature, which is paywalled. That'd be worse then the currently linked PDF, which includes everything.
• verghese 2y ago
  Reminds me of the the quote from Albert Einstein: "I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards." Language is a higher level abstraction for the brain. Sort of like a higher level programming language vs assembly or binary.
  • kevinventullo 2y ago
    I think of language more as a lossy serialization format for thoughts.
    • dabei 2y ago
      Agree, think about it as scribbles we make on the scratch pad when thinking through a challenging math question. It mostly serve as input to our ongoing thinking process, rather than persistence of thoughts.
  • BurningFrog 2y ago
    Not claiming to be like Einstein in other ways, but I could say the same. Sometimes people ask me if I think in English or my native language. I'm tempted to say "mostly not". BTW, loose speculation: Maybe being bilingual does "free" the brain from word thinking.
• abetusk 2y ago
  In contrast to Noam Chomsky who was pushing the idea that language was developed primarily for thought [0]. I don't know how much weight should be given to this paper but, if true, directly contradicts Chomsky. Here is one quote from Chomsky: """ ... One general assumption about language, almost a dogma in philosophy ... [and] linguistics ... is that language is primarily a means of communication ... probably that's totally false. It seems language ... is designed as a mode of creating and interpreting thought. """ In my opinion, I find Chomsky to get mired in certain quagmires around intelligence and computation, especially in regards to AI, where he's somehow managed to rationalize an absurd stance. I remember watching a video with Chomsky claiming that language's primary purpose was not communication and thinking it was potentially plausible but highly unlikely. I'd be curious to see if people think this paper, and maybe any other research, refute this position. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEmpRtj34xg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEmpRtj34xg
  • contingencies 2y ago
    Perhaps an artificial dichotomy between thought and communication is itself false. After all, is thinking not in some sense remembered experience (ie. the past self) communicating with the present (ie. future self)?
    • 082349872349872 2y ago
      They may overlap, but they're certainly not identical: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40756659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40756659
  • calf 2y ago
    To be fair to Chomsky, the historical context is that he was pushing against a particular dogma of his time. So later on Chomsky evolved his own position and came up with i-language/e-language for internal vs external language and so forth. And a few years ago he was recommending a new cognitive science textbook where the first chapter begins with Claude Shannon's communication/information theory.
    • 2y ago
• feverzsj 2y ago
  I believe so, as some people don't even have inner voice.
  • rsoto2 2y ago
    is it possible these people just can't "hear" their inner voice? or regard it as something else?
    • polytely 2y ago
      I'm definitely mostly without inner voice but I can drop down to it if I want to. I also have this with reading. normally it seems it skips the internal voice and goes straight from image to thought. but once I start verbalising it, it's hard to stop doing it.
• patryn20 2y ago
  Language is a tool for manipulation. Sure it is used for communication with people considered “equals”. But primarily people use it to get what they want from people they can outmaneuver and/or manipulate verbally and legally (both are an extension of language). Language’s roots are in trade and survival. Therefore manipulation of others for the speakers benefit has ALWAYS been the primary purpose.
  • larsrc 2y ago
    Language's roots are in survival, as in being able to talk to others of your tribe. I'm sure manipulation has always been part of language, but it's a tool for communication foremost. "Og, watch out for that sabretooth tiger!" is hardly manipulation. I feel sorry for you that you consider manipulation to be so central.
• vishnugupta 2y ago
  Most of the time we are communicating (internal monologue) with ourselves which I’m sure shapes our thoughts. I’d guess a large percentage of that is through a language. In fact languages codify a community’s culture, values, a way of life all of which go way beyond communication.
  • x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
    Lot's of people (me included) do not have persistent internal monologues.
    • vishnugupta 2y ago
      Sure. But when you do have it, would it be fair to say it does shape your thoughts, no matter how small?
      • x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
        Yes, but it is not my primary mode of thinking.
  • anon22981 2y ago
    Imo the internal monologue is often about summarizing or sorting out something, while I’ve already figured it out non-verbally. Like a verbal confirmation. Though sometimes the internal monologue is about processing something and figuring stuff out.
    • vishnugupta 2y ago
      > Though sometimes the internal monologue is about processing something and figuring stuff out Indeed. And my non-expert assertion was that our brain doesn't compartmentalise between communication and thought processing. Our thoughts are getting shaped even as we are verbalising something. IMO it's a continuous stream of chatter of jumbled up things a part of which gets used to create/shape our thoughts.
    • hliyan 2y ago
• soloist11 2y ago
  So it sounds like LLMs will not achieve AGI.
  • jschrf 2y ago
    They are regurgitrons that will eventually begin training themselves on their own output, and humanity will get stupider as a result. RIP art and poetry.
• benrutter 2y ago
  It absolutely melts my mind every time I come across the two facts that: - People experience their thoughts very differently - We all secretly believe that deep down, everyone experiences thought like we do. I've never really had a strong internal monologue when thinking, so my assumption would always be that of course, thinking isn't very linguistic (even if we can use it as a tool while thinking). It seems like there's a large number of people who experience their thought exclusively as language. That sounds absolutely nuts to me, but I've heard people say the exact same in reverse. Even more fringe is that there's a sizable number of people who when thinking about words (i.e. remembering names) visualize their words as text. What!? I can't imagine that anymore than I can imagine how a jellyfish feels? The University of Wisconsin did a cool study that comes with a fun quiz you can do to see just how much of a wierdo you truly are: https://uwmadison.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3NMm9yyFsNioVhz https://uwmadison.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3NMm9yyFsNio...
  • _bramses 2y ago
    Makes you wonder as well if the expressed genetic traits we can’t see are more are less different than the ones we can. For example, does evolution have any pressure to produce those who think linguistically, vs healthy hair and skin?
  • raincole 2y ago
    Are humans just a thin common interface covering our messy implementations underneath?
    • beacon294 2y ago
      Or "is language just a thin common interface covering a variety of internal implementations?"
  • leto_ii 2y ago
    > I've never really had a strong internal monologue when thinking I'm curious, what is it like when you read something? Is it just not meditated by a monologue at all?
• stall84 2y ago
  The first thing that strikes me is the definitions of thoughts and language used on the first page.
• visarga 2y ago
  Let's do a mental experiment: Put 2 year old Einstein on a remote island, all alone, and come back 30 years later. Assume he survives. Will he impress you with his insights? They say we don't use language for thought, but language informs our strategies and choices, and collective experience is essential for progress. We only add small increments of insight from our own experiences to the pool, but the experience captured in language is greater than any one of us. And more interestingly, LLMs trained on this data show amazing capabilities that go beyond mere reproduction. LLMs gain everything Einstein lost in this experiment, what is the language part and what is the pure insight part? Looks to me humans are like LLMs on feet, and with a full social complement surrounding them.
  • somenameforme 2y ago
    I know your answer is supposed to be no, but I think there's a good chance the answer would be yes. There's a seemingly endless amount that can be learned about basically anything. And surviving for 30 years on an isolated island is going to involve developing a wide range of skills and masteries ranging from healthcare, seasonal prediction, animal habits, hunting, medicine, shelter construction, and much more. It'd be akin to chatting with an isolated tribesman - that alone would already be fascinating and endlessly informative. These are people who can walk into the woods naked, and walk out weeks later fed, clothed, and sheltered. And now also add in this individual happening to be a several sigma outlier in learning capacity, creativity, and so on. It'd be an absolutely fascinating discussion!
    • mewpmewp2 2y ago
      Pretty sure he would die, to be honest.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • mleroy 2y ago
    For reference, language deprivation experiments have a long tradition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experim...
• somenameforme 2y ago
  While I think this is a really interesting topic, it should also be self evident because of a simple fact. Humans developed language long after our species evolved. The most recent estimates put the development of language at as recently as 40,000 years ago. It'd be impossible to 'invent' language without thought, so therefore it must be the case that thought exists independently of language.
  • tanepiper 2y ago
    The problem here is you are putting language as mutually exclusive to humans. Other animals communicate, by our standards they have language - although their concepts and form is quite different. Language can also be non-verbal. More likely 40,000 years ago we needed to go beyond simple concepts to more abstract ones.
• mleroy 2y ago
  I believe the concept of multimodal token embeddings is quite fitting for my own thinking. Certainly, my 'embeddings' are not always fully formed words, but sometimes they are.
• scoofy 2y ago
  I see aphasia as the insight into animal thoughts. Imagine when you’re trying to remember a name, and it’s just not coming. You can still understand the thing, see the thing, think about using the thing. You can do all that without language, you just can’t communicate the thing.
• bombdailer 2y ago
  That makes sense given the analogous LLM, which doesn't 'think' via the individual or even sum of the tokens it produces, but in-between in the hidden layers. The output - or actualization of the token - is simply just the form of communication used to convey the 'thought'. I guess you could say its inappropriate of an analogy since the LLM must use generated tokens to feed into itself in order to 'think' over time beyond a single token. But I would argue that's simply because we enforce the communication method. One does not need language to have a known concept for "objects fall to the ground when let go". Babies learn this without language. They do not have words for the particular concepts such as "object", "fall", "ground", but as concepts they are learned all the same. For thought, all there really is, are concepts, or forms in platonic terms. In our case, learned patterns in the world which correspond to particular sense perceptions. Imagination, or the latent space between the forms, is our initial (and only, I'd argue) mode of thinking. These forms, encoding both logical and sensory - of which they are inseparably bound - can be strung together to form thought. They agree to a type of logic, affording the capacity to extract meaning out of the world. It is an embodied logic, not boolean algebra. The logic is grounded in the ground, the earth underneath your feet. It is grounded in the sun, in its heat and light. It is grounded in the logos, or the intelligible unfolding of the universe. The intelligibility is afforded because of its own nature - that it is built up out of real patterns, patterns all the way down. But it also requires the appearance of the patterns in our sense perceptions in order to be 'seen' and thus known. As such, logic of this sort is found to be based off of the learned patterns of how the world appears to us so as to make it intelligible, affording our ability to live within it. Then you get sensory being mapped into grounded logic and vise versa, so as to experience the unfolding of the logic with imagination, and I suppose the affective state changes it produces are then fed back into the logic. So emotions seem necessary in order to 'react' to sense perceptions, so that the logic is grounded in caring about what happens, like a mother does with a child. Otherwise there is just appearance, which has no qualia in and of itself, and so the patterns that can be discovered in the world have no ground. Determining the necessity of the ground of appearances is probably what will determine if we can have AGI or not. We'd like to think computation alone will get us there, or even embodied cognition, but without the transcendentals, its dimensionality of knowing will always exclude this ground, so it cannot know what patterns are most relevant or salient, so it cannot perform relevance realization and overcome combinatorial explosion. So AI cannot be a temporal embodied agent, since the logos of the world is incomprehensible, except through itself, of which we Beings are made out of. We rely on lower order logic, such as math, for our AI. It is how we make sense of the real patterns we see in the world, but they are an abstraction over the thing itself. So a machine is confined by boolean algebra, while we are confined by the logos itself. Sounds nice anyhow.
• SillyUsername 2y ago
  Darmok and Jalad, at Tanagra. ^ Reference types in the language seems pretty good at this...
• bbor 2y ago
  I hate to quote an abstract, but I'm really struggling to understand the purpose here -- it seems like they're angry that Chomsky defined language as symbolic operations and relegated the external facets to "history of language" or "anthropology of language" or other such fields. We conclude that although the emergence of language has unquestionably transformed human culture, language does not appear to be a prerequisite for complex thought, including symbolic thought. Instead, language is a powerful tool for the transmission of cultural knowledge; it plausibly co-evolved with our thinking and reasoning capacities, and only reflects, rather than gives rise to, the signature sophistication of human cognition. What is the difference between "language is a cognitive adaptation used for communication" and "language is the communication enabled by a cognitive adaption", really? Other than a, as Chomsky would call it, "terminological dispute"
  • sprawld 2y ago
    The one part that directly contradicted Chomsky was the argument languages tend to minimise dependency length, which flies in the face of long range dependencies like question movement, topicalisation, pronoun binding etc. And misses the main point Chomsky was making: why have a system with movement? The article seems to be arguing that statistically most sentences (in most languages) are simple. OK, sentences like "Which boys do the girls expect to fight each other?" may not be common, but you instantly understand that "each other" binds not to the closer "the girls", but the long range dependency "which boys". In order to understand it you reconstruct the question to its original position "the girls expect <which boys> to fight each other" to know that the boys are the ones fighting, and bind to each other (the boys are fighting the boys) Why have a system like that (in basically every language)? How is that optimised for simple dependencies & communication?
• jschrf 2y ago
  I think cetaceans use sound to broadcast visual and emotional holographs to each other, and as humans we could do good by being stewards of the differing specie and steer their linguistics together somehow. Conservation through cognitive neuroscience and linguistics. Can dolphins communicate with sperm whales? What if they could?
  • euroderf 2y ago
    I've seen this idea before, that cetaceans might basically project ideas holographically. Is there any evidence for this ? Or is the idea simply rooted in the possibilities of sound ? Genuinely curious here.
    • jschrf 2y ago
      Thanks, feel free to email me if you can dig up anything or ever want to spitball ideas. Email address is in my profile. I've poked around lightly and didn't see anything vis a vis holographs, but I'm going to do a second pass - someone has to be onto this path in some paper somewhere. No evidence whatsoever, just intuition. If Alice and Bob are both cetaceans, communicating via underwater acoustics, what are they trying to say to each other? And do they understand each other? I guess my thought is that non-symbolic communication in the black and seamless sea implies something more.
• sturza 2y ago
  A counterargument to the claim that language is not sufficient for thought could be that while individuals with intact language abilities may exhibit impairments in reasoning and problem-solving due to brain damage or disorders like schizophrenia, these impairments might not be a direct result of language function itself. Instead, they could be caused by damage to other cognitive systems that interact with language, or by the disorder's broader impact on cognitive function. For instance, schizophrenia is a complex disorder affecting various cognitive domains, including attention, memory, and executive functions, which are crucial for reasoning and problem-solving. Therefore, the observed impairments might stem from these broader cognitive deficits rather than a lack of language proficiency. Brain damage can affect multiple brain regions and their connections, leading to a wide range of cognitive impairments. It is possible that the observed deficits in reasoning and problem-solving are due to damage to specific brain regions responsible for these functions, rather than a disruption of language processing itself. While the presence of intact language abilities does not guarantee intact thinking abilities, it is necessary to consider the potential confounding factors, such as broader cognitive deficits or damage to other brain regions, before concluding that language is not sufficient for thought. Further research is needed to disentangle the complex relationship between language and thought and to determine the specific contributions of language to various cognitive processes.
• Gimpei 2y ago
  How accepted is this result? If it’s true, it basically destroys a huge fraction of modern philosophy. A large fraction of the continental tradition would have the rug pulled out from under it.
• cubefox 2y ago
  Here is my explanation why language seems to be, while not necessary, so useful for abstract thought: Thinking thoughts with abstract concepts takes up a lot of working memory. We can't hold many of those in mind at once. But if they are expressed in words they take very little memory. So we can have long winding and abstract thoughts because language compresses the parts of the thought complex we are not currently focusing on, so we can hold more of it in short term memory. In effect it increases our thinking cache.
  • HL33tibCe7 2y ago
    I find the opposite. The more complex a thought, the harder it is to reason about using language in my head. Speaking as someone who has a constant inner monologue.
    • cubefox 2y ago
      I'm not so much talking about "reasoning using language", I mean that if you have intermediate reasoning results, you can mentally express them in language, which means you can still remember them after you have focused on something else for a minute. Otherwise you might forget them very quickly. Because we apparently can't hold a lot of thoughts in mind, while we can easily store words in memory.
  • dabei 2y ago
    Yes. Similar to how "thinking step by step" helps LLMs achieve higher quality solution.
• max_ 2y ago
  Well 99% of the use of language is for thought not communication. Also, People that are considered to be good at language skills (public speaking, writing) are either politicians, writers of fiction or seducers. These fields have one thing in common they are normally about deception/changing the way people think about something. Not exactly communication. We know that language is very bad for communication if we try to transmit scientific insights like climate change or health advice. This explains why scientific fields had to invent their own notation like benzine rings, maths equations & free body diagrams to make communication of ideas more effective instead of the verbose, unexact tool of natural language.
• richrichie 2y ago
  I wish Oliver Sacks were alive and writing.
• ankit219 2y ago
  In my limited (to one person) experience, it may not be as clear cut. I am one of those who uses language to think. I would have an internal monologue and I would also say things out loud just to see how they sound. It's not always a fully fledged idea, or even a coherent thought for that matter. I have no idea why i do this. But that is me. In a sense, my thoughts are forming when I speak. Hence, i am somewhat better at written communication than being asked for things on the spot. I have encountered people who when they speak, are communicating their thoughts, not formulating them unlike the way I do. I have to be careful with them because they assume I am also communicating my thought vs formulating it and that makes it sound more rigid than it is in my mind. I have seen many nerds like me who understand what thinking out loud is and are more forgiving about missteps or "wrong sounding thoughts". They are also more understanding because in our experience, that is how people tend to think.
  • tgaj 2y ago
    I have similar problem. I don't have inner monologue, so when I want to share my thoughts, I try to compile them in real time during the speaking. Which means I have no idea how the sentence will end or if I will even be able to get to the point I want to make. And additionally I have problem with focusing (ADHD probably) so my only sensible way to communicate with people is by writing, not orally.
• peter_vukovic 2y ago
  Language helps us shape our thoughts, in a way a ruler helps us draw straight lines, but thoughts do not begin with language. Our thoughts and ideas come from an unknown source. We might call it intuition, but scientifically speaking, it remains a black box. Lethologica - a temporary inability to remember a particular word or name - is one evidence of this. You can have a fully formed thought in your mind, but be unable to express it with words.
• amgalan 2y ago
  ...
• mrgaro 2y ago
  Does anybody else often visualie memories as they would watch them via a movie camera? I do. I can see myself walking in places with a cinematic camera movements and angles. Haven't heard much others having the same.
  • soxocx 2y ago
    How could you possibly know how you really looked like walking in those said places? You haven’t seen yourself walking there. Also, you haven’t seen all of the possible angles that this cinematic camera would capture and replay. This is an interesting concept about memories, part of them is just made up by our brains. Edit: So the next time you have an argument about a thing that happened or how it happened, ask yourself, do you really remember or is your brain filling the gaps?
    • mrgaro 2y ago
      Oh I absolutely agree that our minds are extending our memories and fabricating rest and it's next to impossible to difference what was real. But getting back to my cinematic memories: I remember the places I've visited (and imagine places which I haven't) and then my mind constructs the cinematics. Fascinating!
• passwordle 2y ago
  Agreed.
• dekken_ 2y ago
  thought is communicating with yourself
• PLenz 2y ago
  I definately talk to think. Even in my head I'm talking to myself.
• xjay 2y ago
  Perspectives [2015-09] Anne C. Reboul: "Why language really is not a communication system: a cognitive view of language evolution" - , Laboratory on Language, Brain and Cognition (L2C2), Institute for Cognitive Sciences-Marc Jeannerod, Bron, France [1] > [2013-09] Noam Chomsky: One of the most striking cases of incompatibility, that I know, is the sharp conflict between computational efficiency, and communicative efficiency. Language is just badly designed for communication, but well-designed to be efficient, it seems. [2] > [2013-09] Noam Chomsky adds: There's a kind of phrase that is sometimes used for this that drives people crazy; "Language is beautiful, but unusable." It's kind of true, you know. Even if people don't like it. [2] [2022] Nick Enfield: "Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists" [3] > Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best thing: reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality, Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), ... [3] > [2023-01] Ev Fedorenko: "Although language and thought often go together, they are robustly dissociable." [4] > [2023-01] Ev Fedorenko: Fallacy 1: "Good at language = Good at thought". Fallacy 2: "Bad at thought = Bad at language". Fallacy 3: "Bad at language = Bad at thought" (emphasis in being judged on how smart you are based on how you say something). [4] [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01434/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-72JNZZBoVw&t=4493s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-72JNZZBoVw&t=4493s [3] https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/5472/Language-vs-RealityWhy-Language-Is-Good-for https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/5472/Language-vs-Real... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE9AiYuCwdE&t=250s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE9AiYuCwdE&t=250s
• badrunaway 2y ago
  I believe language allows having more than one layer i.e. enabling complexity of representation. For example, If I want to think about the person thinking inside - these kind of recursive concepts need some sort of symbolic nesting to even materialise the idea.
• justacomment100 2y ago
  My takes: 1. The existence of “rubber duck debugging”, and a whole bunch of studies on verbally explaining a concept indicate that language is essential for thought. In rubber duck debugging, programmers tell their problem to an object and this is beneficial in finding the solution. There are studies that show when we verbally teach material to someone we remember it better. Also the act of taking a test increases learning and memory, but why should this be if learning is secondary? 2. Everything we know about memory tells us that externality is essential for memorizing something. If there’s nothing visual, aural, or sensory then it is unlikely to be remembered. Language acts as an externality even as inner speech, meaning that thoughts can be said in language (ascribed onto the words) and remembered for short-term and long-term memory. A thought without externality seems more like a passing whim, unrooted in any more permanent mode of cognition and thus liable to be forgotten. I can imagine thinking in visuals, melodies, words, but if there is a kind of thought that isn’t occurring based off of these then it probably can’t be sophisticated.
  • empath75 2y ago
    I think you can think of rubber duck debugging and similar ideas as "forcing functions." In order to communicate an idea one must have "an idea" to communicate. The process of putting vague notions into words forces you to reason about them and clarify them.
  • maizeq 2y ago
    1. This doesn’t indicate language is necessary for thought but rather that language is useful for refining thought. If anything it shows that some form of thought exists before it is articulated into language. I would assume inverse cases also exist, where articulation into language narrows a thought down into the vocabulary of a language. 2. I thought rare individuals who did not develop language abilities (e.g due to isolation) still had memories of their time prior to thought. The most obvious example to me is Helen Keller, who writes about her time prior to meeting her teacher.
    • lucubratory 2y ago
      Helen Keller wrote about having memories of being something like a stimulus-response automata before language enabled her to be conscious and think. I think that example is actually in favour of language being required for thought, because she remembers a state of being before language where she wasn't really conscious and didn't really think. I don't see any particular reason why language would be required for memory formation, though.
• klik99 2y ago
  I’ve noticed during meditation that the words come after the realization - I think we put thoughts into words after out of a habit of trying to explain our thoughts - we’re imagining how we would explain it to others.
• ofslidingfeet 2y ago
  Basically a blogpost tbh, and it begs the question by defining language as verbal communication.
• talkingtab 2y ago
  Okay, so my first experiment was to try to think without language. Go ahead, you try it. I can't do it. So a simple conclusion is that language gives rise to what we call thought. However, I do some things - which I do not call thought - without language. There was/is an old IBM programming test of patterns and I can choose the correct pattern even when I cannot think why that is. In "Notes on the Synthesis of Form", Christopher Alexander talks about how we can tell "good art" even when we do not know why. As a painter, I often do not paint well and I know it.N Sometimes I do well, but I cannot tell you why or what. Next issue: communication. Humans are currently dominate because we collaborate. The idea of communication as "I can tell you the day of the month" is useful. But communication as a way of effectively collaborating is another thing all together. If we accept collaboration as the thing that gives people survival fitness - which I do - then you can invert the whole thing and focus on how we achieve that. Ants are another species that collaborate well and are successful. But, arguably, ants neither think nor speak. Unless you want to call leaving a pheromone trail "speaking"? And why not? So now we can consider the issue of from another perspective - what constitutes a language? Sapir Whorf says our language affects if not determines what we think. Perhaps we need to look at language not as what we think it is but instead that language is any system that provides collaboration. And then we start going down an interesting rat hole. "Twitter and Teargas" argues that that extwitter does "affords" people ways to do some things but not others. It is a complex and interesting issue. My take is that language is primarily a tool for collaboration.
  • VoodooJuJu 2y ago
    Many people do not think with language: https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5486969 https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5486969
  • paraschopra 2y ago
    Fascinating. Does it mean that when we have an internal monologue, we're in effect collaborating with our immediate-future self? This has parallels to the Chain-of-Thought prompting in LLMs, where simply by letting the model speak its reasoning, it generates better responses. The way I look at things: language-less thinking is tapping into our evolved or ingrained patterns (aka intuition). This is like one forward pass of LLMs. But if you have to reason in a novel situation that you haven't seen before, you have to break it down into simpler steps and that necessarily requires some form of "thinking aloud". I need to follow the references in the original paper, but most of their evidence of language-less thought was about intuition-type thinking, not multi-step reasoning.
• ajb 2y ago
  An important concept , and one that also has implications for mental health treatment. Eg, many talk therapies operate under the assumption that 'saying the wrong words in your head' is a factor maintaining the problem, and replacing these with better ones will result in improvement. But since words are not thoughts, and further they are not mental actions (such as relaxing), saying different words in your head is only useful if they help put you in a frame of mind where you can access, or discover, the right thoughts or 'mental actions'. I conjecture that within the diversity of human minds, there are some for whom language closely bound to thoughts and mental actions, and others less so, and that talk therapy is more useful for the former than the latter. If this is true, then it is also likely to be the case that most talk therapists are of the former persuasion, since they are not likely to espouse a practice which has no effect on themselves.
  • lukeschlather 2y ago
    Words are thoughts but thoughts are not necessarily words. I do think words form better thoughts. Without words, thoughts are memories and can shift and change meaning and I won't be aware of it. If I think my thoughts in words then I can review my thoughts more carefully and be sure the meanings are not changing. If I'm solving some complicated problem, this is a big deal since if my solution to a sub-problem changes that's very bad. Of course also I can then write my thoughts down and refer back to them repeatedly so I can be sure they remain consistent.
  • dabei 2y ago
    Maybe it's similar to tweaking the LLM prompts. A different set of words trigger a different pathway in our thinking.
    • ajb 2y ago
      It could be, but I've not seen an approach to therapy that advocates tweaking like that. Most aim to identify a form of words that "should work" and then advocate persisting "until it works".
• renegade-otter 2y ago
  You can't think if you don't speak. Babies don't "think" like adults do, rather they just follow instincts. Go ahead, try it. Think something but don't say it in your head.
  • Jensson 2y ago
    > Go ahead, try it. Think something but don't say it in your head. I can think about how much food left I have in my fridge, then if I need more now, then formulating a plan to go to the store etc, all without any words ever being in my head. There is no "I have a gallon of milk" etc, instead I remember how much milk was left as images or events, and then going to the store etc is also similar events and images. There are no words, and I can't put those things into words I can only do bad translations of them, since my thought of going to the store also includes how I'll be tying my shoelaces and the path I'll take etc, imagining how much I have left includes the exact shape I last saw it in etc, translating that to words would take insane amount of words and still be very lossy. Unless I write or read or speak I don't hear any words in my mind. Only when directly interfacing with language in some way are the words there. Not when doing math problems or physics problems either etc, not when programming, those arne't languages, only when I write down rationalizations or comments etc do the words pop out.
  • pessimizer 2y ago
    This is not at all true. You think this is true because this is how you think (or how you think you think.) Translating my thoughts into words has always taken an effort, even when I was a child, and I'm always surprised at how many words it takes to describe concepts or relationships that when I think them seem very simple. edit: also, I don't even know what you mean by "instinct(s)" here, or how you differentiate them from thoughts. Even language is an instinct. If you have entities that you are applying operations to in your head in order to create new entities, you're thinking.
• Merrill 2y ago
  In college I was struck by a housemate's law books. They only contained text with no pictures, drawings, diagrams, tables, graphs, formulae, or any of the other tools for organizing information common to engineering. They looked to be extremely tedious and boring. Later, another former housemate, a math major who was developing software, went to law school for a JD. It was his opinion that many of the tools from computer science were useful for deciphering the more complex laws and regulations. How you think may be a significant factor in whether you are a good match to certain occupations.
  • creamyhorror 2y ago
    > the tools from computer science were useful for deciphering the more complex laws and regulations. I've sometimes thought that certain aspects of law (e.g. contracts) are very similar to the strict rule-based thinking required in programming, and that the same basic logical thinking is required. It's just that some concepts have been formalised differently between the fields, and also that law has inherent fuzziness due to incomplete specification of its programs, the ambiguity of some language/phrasing, and the changing societal environment. With programs, the computer interprets the rules deterministically (generally speaking), and we programmers are forced to draft our regulations accordingly or we'll get unwanted results. Whereas contracts are a bit less deterministically interpreted, and human incentives and potential interpretations have to be considered in drafting.
    • wavemode 2y ago
      In the modern day, there's almost no way to decipher the true precise meaning of a law just from its text. What really matters is case law - how the law has been applied in practice by courts over the years.
  • leobg 2y ago
    I was the only one in my class in law school who used mind maps and spaces repetition (back then on a Palm Pilot). After I graduated, new professors came in who now are popularizing such methods, writing books about it, etc.. I think it’s a zeitgeist thing. If you’re too early, nobody will take you seriously. But at some point the tide is strong enough to break through. Kinda the same as with AI/automation. I tried selling this to lawyers in 2020 and failed miserably. Three years later, ChatGPT became a thing, and now every lawyer wants a piece of AI. It’s not the better mousetrap. It’s not people wanting new things that moves the world. It’s people not wanting to be left behind. (Slightly paraphrasing the late Charlie Munger.)
• guerreroguy 2y ago
  From what I read in this paper, it seems like the authors are depending on some very strict definition of what can be considered language. Can anyone provide more context on what definition they're using? I ask because certain assumptions that seem to be built into the paper and its references seem to exclude a lot of things that I would personally consider other forms of language. For example, they say the subjects with impairments to the parts of the brain supposedly required for speech could "follow non-verbal instructions" and "understand what another person believes". What makes those exchanges distinct from use of language, albeit a poorly defined one? I know nothing about this field of study, so I assume there's some assumptions and definitions they aren't stating explicitly. It seems weird to me that they say "these representations need not be specifically linguistic: they could be symbolic but non-linguistic (for example, ‘9’), and the use of symbolic non-linguistic representations does not engage linguistic resources (for example, mathematical reasoning elicits no response in the language brain areas and is preserved in individuals with severe aphasia". Why not go back and question the initial assumption that all language depends on those specific parts of the brain? Why are symbols not language?
• kartoshechka 2y ago
  offtopic, but I can't fathom why academia and Nature specifically thinks that 2 columns of tiny text is a comfortable format for reading off screen
• kjkjadksj 2y ago
  An easy example of this is from reading books. Chances are you imagine your own scene in your head of how the characters or setting might look like, with much more clarity and depth than what few descriptors the author supplied. In that sense you’ve been communicated something through language but you aren’t thinking within the bounds of that communicated message, your thoughts go beyond merely what is written and add their own sensibilities to the message. None of this was communicated explicitly, but it exists as thought.
• nazka 2y ago
  So if language is primarily a tool for communication, which tools are we using for thought?
• genocide_joe 2y ago
  There was thought before there was language. Anyone who doubts that is not thinking.
• genocide_joe 2y ago
  FUCK YOU FOR CENSORING MY COMMENTS. YOU CAN STICK IT UP YOUR ARSES.
  • dang 2y ago
    Please don't do this here. First, it will get your main account banned as well; and second, you undermine support for your own cause by associating it with such behavior. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• zindescartes 2y ago
  IIUC this is in direct contrast to a previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40466814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40466814 That thread argued that before hellen keller was taught language in some form she was not conscious. Even the top rated comment seems to corroborate it. So which one is true?
• ppipada 2y ago
  A conversation with ChatGPT to understand the papers perspective further: https://chatgpt.com/share/7f5449d3-3411-4462-acd1-ca9baa535136 https://chatgpt.com/share/7f5449d3-3411-4462-acd1-ca9baa5351... The references of interest: Piaget, J. (1926). The language and thought of the child. Monti, M. M., Parsons, L. M., & Osherson, D. N. (2007). Functional Neuroanatomy of Deductive Inference: A Language-Independent Distributed Network
• davidaorai 2y ago
  what is a thought then? what is this little voice which guide you to think of this or that from the beginning of the day till the end even diring dream? for me from the electronic part its a pathway of electronic discharge between all over neural cells of different functional area of tgd brain which respect the phisiological structure of tge brain (motor, visual , temporary front cortex , cingulate for Long short memory, ) but what guide you to think of that then after, maybe thr machine learning conception can explain : for each different person and experience , each of us has going to activate a neural cell wchich to be the most predictable idea , and this prediction id modulated by all the input acquired all thr day ( for example if something more important is seen around us)
• aaronturner 2y ago
  Leibniz knew this in 1676 - “Let us calculate!” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis
• psychoslave 2y ago
  Skiming it, it seems that this article doesn't give itself a scoped definition for thought and language, despite pointing the highly polysemic state of these terms. It's hard to conclude anything on so broad terms. My perspective is that there are thoughts which are inaccessible to bare spoken language and straight forward access without such a language, and there are thoughts that are unreachable without the relevant language to leverage on. Moreover I guess that here communication mainly means interpersonal communication, but my bet is that on the median case people use mainly languages as an internal tool to stear the large body of inconsistent thoughts going through their brain toward something consistent enough to be considered by the small part of the mind called attention, which can then try to decide something about it. At least in my own case, most of my use of language never lead to any utterance. And of course some things I utter obviously lacked thoughtful consideration.
• veunes 2y ago
  Different languages may offer unique perspectives
• robthebrew 2y ago
  I totally agree. Kekulé's discovery of the structure of benzene was in a dream and purely visible. When I still did chemistry (post-doc), much of my thinking was not verbal but "Intuition" (whatever that is). Explaining in words my discoveries was secondary.
  • lupire 2y ago
    How did Kelulé pin down all the details of the dream image?
    • AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      There weren't tons of details to pin down. IIRC, the question was the structure of benzene, which was known to be C6H6, but nobody could figure out how to make a carbon backbone six atoms long that would take only six hydrogen atoms. Hexane, for example, is C6H14. Kelulé's dream was of six snakes in a circle or hexagon, each eating the next snake's tail. He turned that into the (correct) idea of the benzene ring - six carbon atoms connected in a circle. The only remaining detail was that it had to have alternating single and double bonds (and even that was wrong - the double bonds get smeared out, so that it's more like one and a half bonds between each atom). So I'm not sure what you mean by "all the details". There were very few details. "Connected in a loop" was the only thing that mattered; it explained everything.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • sdwr 2y ago
    The fault lines between unconscious understanding and reality come into focus when writing code. Intuition is fantastic for one big idea, or a few medium-sized ones, but struggles to remember lots of details.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• jpt4 2y ago
  Which is to say, language is a tool for rigorization.
  • VyseofArcadia 2y ago
    I like this a lot. A habit I picked up in grad school for math was to, if I thought I understood something, really check my understanding of it by re-explaining it to myself. Serializing thoughts into language is a pretty great way of catching holes and errors in reasoning. I suspect this is also why rubber duck debugging works.
• interiorchurch 2y ago
  This would be sort of a death blow to much of postmodernism, no? "Reality is structured like a language and the free play of symbols reigns over all"-style thinking was very popular at one time, but this would rule against it.
  • kapodc 2y ago
    Not completely. The Postmodernists do use language to shape people's thought by redefining words and eliminating wrongthink words. And they have been successful. But they mainly influence people who are not thinking to begin with. Or, to put it more mildly, do not have time to think about every issue and therefore adopt the current mainstream propaganda. So in the sense "Can we conjure up a fake reality that many people will believe?" they are right". In the sense that "language is reality or even thought they are of course wrong.
  • podgorniy 2y ago
    No. Language stays a framework for modelling. Reality stays available to us only in form of models (pictures, sounds, ideas, measures, texts, videos, this text and what you imagine based in the text). The claim "Reality is structured like a language and the free play of symbols reigns over all" holds regardless of us thinking in symbols, words, pictures, concepts, cliches, emotions or _other models_. We have access only to symbols (not reality they represent) thus we "stuck" with this postmodernism discovery for observable future.
• boerseth 2y ago
  There are many that would strongly object to this conclusion. I have heard friends describe their inner life as almost entirely verbal, that they "think in words", and are totally unable to relate to anything else. When we say "communication", I think there is an implication that the goal is communication with others. But there is also value in communication with oneself. To verbalize is to condense ones thoughts into words, and when we hear words they get unpacked and evoke meaning. The resulting feedback loop can be amazing for refining ideas. It should be no surprise that humans might end up relying on this internal monologue when thinking to the point that they mistake it for thought itself.
  • teeray 2y ago
    I surprised my freshman-year Spanish teacher on the last day of classes when he did an AMA. I asked "do you think in Spanish"? This question was nonsense to him—another student got it, but he was baffled by what I was asking. It wasn't until years later when I found out that some people didn't have an internal monologue that his confusion made sense.
    • poincaredisk 2y ago
      Are there really people with no internal voice at all? I understand that not everyone has this constant internal chat as I do, but it's hard to me to imagine, for example, solving math problems without "thinking" the numbers aloud.
    • BitwiseFool 2y ago
      I have an internal monologue and I struggle to imagine how someone can think without one. Yet I also wonder if bypassing the need to articulate thoughts in words is actually more efficient. Do those people have a higher thought throughput? I suspect we may never know.
  • ogig 2y ago
    I think in words. There is always an internal dialogue. Even when doing music, or painting, I'm always anticipating what's next by some words; here comes the bridge, goes to Am now, gonna paint leaves in this shape, or maybe this other. I can visualize things and sounds, but words are always involved. That's probably why I'm not very talented at music or painting.
• calini 2y ago
  I'm bilingual, people keep asking me what language I think 'in', and I don't think I think _in_ a language. For lack of a better way of describing it, I rather think in concepts, sometimes the voice in my head likes to play along by imagining the words representing those concepts, sometimes in English, sometimes in Romanian, but the words are not necessary. In dev words, I guess I think in structs and then optionally serialize those structs in En/Ro (JSON).
  • educasean 2y ago
    Same here. Also bilingual, also never related with people who think in sentences. It's all abstract bytes until it needs to be formatted and output into a specific language.
  • romseb 2y ago
    I am the same and would say it could be a form or side effect of aphantasia.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
  • patapong 2y ago
    Same here... Am also bilingual, and I seem to think in language only when I think _about_ language, e.g. when I plan what I could say or write. Otherwise, it is concepts or images.
  • ogig 2y ago
    I'm bilingual and I can switch my permanent internal dialogue to one language or another, and It happens automatically if I'm actively using it for a few minutes. This afternoon that I've been on HN for a while I'll think in English, probably until wife comes. In dev words, I could say the same as you, but maybe the serialize phase is not optional.
  • poincaredisk 2y ago
    I'm bilingual (having learned English relatively late - in school), and i think in both languages. I think my mind language depends on which one I'm immersed currently (work/browsing internet: English, real life meetings: my native one). I have very long internal monologues in both languages picked unconsciously/randomly, and sometimes switching. Another fun quirk is sometimes I remember that I've read a sentence, I can "quote" it, but I'm not sure if I've read it in my native tongue or in English. I guess my mind sortes them in a language independent way sometimes?
• tombert 2y ago
  Hmm, this definitely feels contrary to my intuition; it definitely feels like language is how I think, though I'll trust the research here more than my gut feeling, so I'm definitely wrong. I guess the reason that I think that is because of how much clearer I can think of a problem after I write a somewhat structured paper on it. Maybe it's not the "language" so much as just forcing some structure is what's responsible.
• curation 2y ago
  The failure of language to provide for us a way to precisely say what we mean results in consciousness. (Lacan/Slovenian Troika/McGowan/Benjamin etc)
• butterNaN 2y ago
  For those without money to spare: https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/linguistics/2024-fedorenko.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/linguistics/2024-fedorenko.... The authors come from MIT, Harward, and University of California
• VyseofArcadia 2y ago
  I feel like this is one of those "of course" papers that people will dismiss, but it is good in science to confirm via orthogonal methods things that ought to be true[0]. All evidence points to language evolving for the purpose of communication, so of course its primary function is communication. It was only later co-opted for use in thought. [0] I like the analogy of a subway network. Something like a star topology is unreliable because you have one problem and a whole swath of the city is inaccessible. But if you start building secondary and tertiary links between stations, you get robustness. Even if there's a problem or two you can still get anywhere.
• elijahbenizzy 2y ago
  There's an interesting debate here -- see this tweet. https://x.com/ylecun/status/1769137037959913690 https://x.com/ylecun/status/1769137037959913690. Cool to see an actual article on it as opposed to speculation from personal experience. Now for some speculation from personal experience. Some people leverage language more for internal thought and some people have other intermediate representations. I'm personally more of a language thinker except I have a specific avenue for math/programming that is highly optimized. I imagine many use language to solve math problems (and no way is right or wrong).
• photochemsyn 2y ago
  Sounds reasonable. Animals (including humans) construct mental maps of their environment without language, which is an important ability for everything from seasonal migration to location of reliable food sources. For social animals, simple vocal phrases like 'follow me to food' (e.g. in parrots, crows, etc.) would be secondary to the construction of that mental map, but do confer a large survival advantage on their social group (group selection in evolutionary terms). If so, this has some interesting implications for LLMs and AGI. First, LLMs don't seem to be thinking or reasoning if they're only doing next-word-prediction based on a large training set - so a step towards real AGI might be a system that had an internal map of reality that it was constantly updating with new sensory information, with the LLM as a layer above it that allowed it to communicate the relevant details of that internal map to others? Personally, every time I 'think in words' it always begins with 'how can this be explained' and the actual thinking that precedes that is done with images, diagrams, graphs, etc.
• WiSaGaN 2y ago
  This is surprising to me because when I learn something, I usually find that trying to speak it out helps a lot of thinking about it clearly. Put it another way, the effort to turn something into language helps forming the thought about it. Thus I don't know whether counts as a counter argument.
• nabla9 2y ago
  Some people use language in thought more than others. Some don't use language at all. It's certainly time to exit the notion that language is necessary for complex thought. Thinking the Way Animals Do: Unique insights from a person with a singular understanding. https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html > A horse trainer once said to me, "Animals don't think, they just make associations." I responded to that by saying, "If making associations is not thinking, then I would have to conclude that I do not think." >I have no language-based thoughts at all. My thoughts are in pictures, like videotapes in my mind. When I recall something from my memory, I see only pictures. I used to think that everybody thought this way until I started talking to people on how they thought. I learned that there is a whole continuum of thinking styles, from totally visual thinkers like me, to the totally verbal thinkers. Artists, engineers, and good animal trainers are often highly visual thinkers, and accountants, bankers, and people who trade in the futures market tend to be highly verbal thinkers with few pictures in their minds.
• hliyan 2y ago
  Was just remembering some advice I received from a counsellor years ago: "thoughts lead to actions, actions lead to emotions". That never fully resonated with me, because if thoughts as we understand them are the origin of everything, we should have a lot more control of ourselves than we actually do. Now I tend to think that both thoughts and emotions have the same origin: some sort of internal representation of the world around us that we do not directly control. Thoughts, whether visual or auditory or symbolic, arise from this "model". I'd like to think of this model as not consisting anything that we would recognise directly as thoughts or emotions or even memories. It may be a "machine language" layer that has no conscious representation. I wouldn't call it subconscious thought because that would imply a thought being thought, only without conscious awareness.
• podgorniy 2y ago
  Tailoring pattern-recognition should be easier for a word than for a concept. Then future AI will be able to interpret thoughs of those who think in words because these "words" are common cross many people unline concept-thinking.
• mikewarot 2y ago
  My view of the centrality of language in the process of sustained complex thought is strongly influenced by the memoir of Helen Keller we discussed last month [1]. While it is possible to think about quantities of things without mathematics, you can't engineer systems to get men on the moon without it, nor language. [1] https://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-helen-keller-on-her.html?m=1 https://scentofdawn.blogspot.com/2011/07/before-soul-dawn-he...
• spark_chicken 2y ago
  This article raises an interesting point, but I think it may oversimplify the relationship between language and thinking. While the authors provide some convincing arguments, we should not ignore the role of language in internal thought processes. Many people, including myself, often organize and sort out their thoughts through internal dialogue. This "self-communication" may not be external communication in the traditional sense, but it does help us structure and refine ideas. Language provides a way to structure our thoughts, allowing us to examine our ideas more clearly. In addition, certain complex abstract concepts may be difficult to form without language. While basic cognitive processes may not rely on language, high-level thinking - especially in fields such as philosophy and science - is often closely linked to language. I agree that language is a powerful communication tool, but I think it is also a thinking tool. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that language serves both communication and thinking, and the two are not mutually exclusive.
• moth-fuzz 2y ago
  I do not have an internal monologue, unless I intend to. I also frequently don’t even have thoughts unless I intend to, but that I’ll admit comes from several years of meditation. When I tell people I’m not thinking about anything, or that I even have the ability to not think about anything, they act shocked and confused. When I say “hold on, I have to translate my thought into English first,” they’re usually accommodating but I can tell from the looks I get that that’s not something everybody does. It does however put into perspective a number of arguments I have day to day and online, and the simple fact that most of them are over semantics, definitions, miscommunications, and misunderstandings. I frequently wonder what it would be like to have an argument with someone where you both perfectly understand each other, and are just debating the merits of your ideas and not just how they’re presented. I feel like a lot of people in the world equivocate language with meaning itself, with no abstraction behind the words and letters. That’s why sometimes if you tell someone they’re using a word wrong they’ll take it personally, as if you told them their very being was wrong. Well, if the externalized word is the only avenue you have for internal understanding, how can it be any other way?
• no_identd 2y ago
  <Memetic Components of Languages, probably, if they had drunk too much mean juice> Nice implicit metrics y'all got there, would be a shame if anything happened to 'em
• no_identd 2y ago
  <Memetic Components of Languages, probably, if they had drunk too much mean juice> Nice implicit metrics y'all got there, would be a shame if anything happened to 'em. (yes I duped my comment into the dupe submission, so?)
• Valakas_ 2y ago
  There is a condition called aleythimia. People who have been emotionally neglected have not been mirrored and told what they're feeling "You look exhausted" "It's normal to feel guilty in that situation." "I understand that you feel so conflicted." I talk with people in this circle, and in fact, giving a name to emotion, making it a concrete thing, instead of just this bodily feeling and cloud in the mind, gives it relief and allows it to be fully expressed and understood. It makes each emotion a separate entity in a sea of previously undefined emotions. When we talk with people with alexythimia they often say they feel "pain" to describe some discomfort. And in fact they do. But when they realize they are actually feeling guilt, or confusion, or anxiety, which are all uncomfortable, not only you can see them feeling relief, as now it makes sense what they're feeling, but the emotion becomes a specific thing. Confusion becomes identifiable from stress, instead of just being called "Pain" and with this, it can be identified as two separate feelings and not just one. They see now that this feeling of not knowing what to do is a clear different thing than the other one where they feel there is an important event coming and they don't feel prepared for it, instead of both just being uncomfortable. So imo, the word, "primarily" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.