Language and Cognition

[Actaeon]

I have heard the assertion, most recently from a fellow Spiderwebber, that all linear, cohesive thought requires some form of language. That is to say, in order to think about something you must first name it and categorize it in some form (even if there's no outloud expression.) While I accept that complex, abstract concepts cannot be properly conceived or communicated without something of the sort, this seemed a little far to me. So, questions to ponder and discuss:

 

To what extent is language tied up with cognition? Can the latter exist without the former?

 

Do you THINK in language? Even when your imagining a sensory experience?

 

To what extent to basic neurological responses qualify as "thought?

 

What qualifies as "language"? Does a pet communicating a desire for food count?

 

Is language the primary avenue for cultural programming? The only one?

 

Do different languages produce inherently different behaviors?

 

Does having more ways of expressing something make it easier to understand?

 

Is naming direct, or are all things defined in opposition to, or as a distinct part of, something else?

 

To what extent are words and meaning subjective? Do they, in fact, have any absolute definition?

 

As culture and language evolve, which leads the way? Is there a feedback?

 

I could go on, but I think that should provide enough conversation generation to start with.

[saunders]

As my friend the Greek historian says, all meaning is contextual and recursive.

 

However, it is clear that a language that separates the verb "to know" into two separate verbs will favour a different set of thoughts on knowing, and one that separates "to be" into essence and state will stimulate different ideas about being.

[Student of Trinity]

There's the Sapir-Whorff thing about whether the structure of your language constrains your thought. My understanding of the state of linguistics there is that language certainly doesn't constrain thought really brutally and crudely, but it might have subtler effects. It's not really my source's field, though. Maybe Slarty's more up-to-date.

 

But I take the question to be more basic than that. Do you need to have some kind of language in order to have any thought at all?

 

I've wondered about that. I think there are drugs or something that will temporarily put one hemisphere of your brain to sleep without affecting the other. They're used to identify in which hemisphere speech is localized, before conducting some kinds of experiments or some kinds of surgery. It would be an odd experience to have your language ability shut down, but still be conscious. I don't remember any accounts by people who have experienced this, though. Maybe it was hard to remember afterwards.

 

Based on crude notions that language and spatial imagery are localized in separate hemispheres — a theory that may well be proven false for all I know — I have sometimes tried to think out something verbally while simultaneously picturing rotating geometrical shapes in my mind. I think I can do it, but it's a bit hard to be sure that I'm not just switching back and forth between the tasks, and interpolating continuity in memory. If I really can do that, though, then it would seem that some geometrical thinking might be independent of language.

[Callie]

The problem I have is defining what exactly language is. I generally don't believe that we truly have any kind of free will, and so I think of our brains as being like a computer program that responds according to certain constraints and can probably even modify itself, but predictably so. Like a computer, this program operates according to a programming language, except that this one is biological and the circuitry is different. Unlike computers, we aren't networked in a physical sense, so we can't simply transfer information directly from one brain to another. A person communicating to another is taking the output of its own program and modifying it according to a certain protocol so that the other person's "program" can interpret it in a useful manner. A shared protocol is a spoken language. How the language/protocol originated is an entirely different question though.

 

So I tend to think that spoken and written language is the result of cognition, but cognition need not require language. I don't think that's a sure thing, though, and I see quite a few problems with the analogy I used above. I have no clue how meta-cognition fits into the picture.

[Cairo Jim]

 

Do you THINK in language? Even when your imagining a sensory experience?

 

Sometimes, language isn't even involved in my thoughts, but rather images. Occasionally it happens often.

 

What qualifies as "language"? Does a pet communicating a desire for food count?

 

If you think of language as just an organized bunch of vocalised sounds in order to communicate a certain message, and notice other animals having some grasp of that, I'd say that your pets desire for food could count as language.

[Mosquito---Slayer]

I think the question is closely related to how you define language, do you simply take it to be something that can make us communicate what we are thinking at the moment or is it the more complex things we call English/French etc., that choice itself answers some of the questions for me.

[Goldengirl]

This has been a topic that has interested me and provoked me into further study ever since I read Orwell's 1984 and started thinking about the possibility of something like Newspeak actually existing. I've read literature on the topic by people such as Roland Bleiker, Eva Waniek and Erik Vogt, Laura Shepherd, and Lera Boroditsky. They've come at it from the viewpoint of gender, psychology, and critical resistance, so it's a fairly varied approach. If anyone can recommend more authors (links appreciated) I'd be indebted.

 

The person who really revolutionized my thinking on the matter, though, was Jacques Lacan, who theorized that the mind itself is set up as a language - signifier and signified. We can see this in some sense with neurons, in that they form connections of meaning with representations of the physical world. Moreover, because each of our networks of language may differ, we ultimately will always have the "Lack" of an ability to objectively and Truthfully describe reality. Thus, all is subjective, as I'll explain more later. Ultimately, though, I don't think it matters too much about the actual validity of the hypothesis that Lacan proposed. Rather, it serves as a convenient conceptual framework for understanding the world.

 

This, then, gives me my definition of language - it is a specific way of describing the world. Consider, for instance, a factory. A Marxist might see this as an instance of the oppression of the working class, capitalists as a means to productivity, a worker as a means for sustaining oneself, environmentalists as a cause of pollution, etc. Thus, each of those are describing it with different languages based on their own lives and experiences - subjectively different. English, German, or any other language merely provides the diction and syntax for the expression of those languages; one could call them meta-languages, in that regard. They aren't neutral or objective descriptions of the world, as the connotative forces of each individual language manipulates and pulls the meanings of the words, giving them subjectivity.

 

I do not believe, though, in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language defines what we think. Rather, though, I believe that it helps to frame the modes of thought that are available, and the descriptions of things that we hold are highly correlated with our thoughts. Sometimes we view things as threats, and describe them as such; acting to secure ourselves against them follows easily, which can create a security crisis based on threat construction. So, if a discourse on a certain subject portrays it as a threat, it is more likely to align itself with that definition culturally as a reaction to the threat construction. For example, Iran is popularly discussed as a threat to the United States, and therefore hostility towards Iran is perpetuated in some regards, which forces Iran to seek to give itself a means of protection so it doesn't become the next Iraq. However, this is not an absolute; cultural reappropriation exists, and meanings can be subverted. Reality doesn't have to be aligned with thought.

 

Early on, though, as children we take for granted the assumptions and popular discourses that we are taught as true. As we grow older, we can critique and challenge those assumptions, but they still leave a cultural imprint on us and help to keep society, in many senses, rooted in its traditions. The interplay between culture and the individual occurs in this fashion, then; the messages that are sent to people through society as youth and into adulthood are absorbed, only to sometimes be challenged. To not challenge them is to let the social norms and cultural roles of society define you, though this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[Lilith]

if lacan was any nuttier he'd have a shell and grow on a tree

[Goldengirl]

if lacan was any nuttier he'd have a shell and grow on a tree

 

Eh, I put him on the same level as Freud, more or less.

[Actaeon]

Eh, I put him on the same level as Freud, more or less.

 

I would apply the same description to Freud. But then, I'm an Anthropology major.

[Prince of Kitties]

Lacan's abuse of mathematics makes it impossible for me to take him seriously. Anyone who equates the male reproductive apparatus to the square root of negative one is, at the very least, suffering from a serious case of Dunning-Kruger effect

 

(Also, I have a rather dim view of people who practice any kind of medicine based on pure theoreticals. A clinical psychologist can change how his or her patients think; knowing what he or she is doing is not optional, and being well-meaning is not enough.)

[Balladeer]

To what extent is language tied up with cognition? Can the latter exist without the former?

Only to the extent it takes to convey your concept to someone else. Indeed the mute/deaf/and blind can still think about whatever it is they are feeling. Helen Keller could think perfectly fine without language. Giving her language just unlocked her ability to communicate with the world.

 

Do you THINK in language? Even when your imagining a sensory experience?

No. I think in pictures/concepts. I always have. I find it difficult sometimes to properly express my thoughts to others because what I am thinking does not really have adequate words to describe it.

 

To what extent to basic neurological responses qualify as "thought?

To the extent that the thinker is conscious of it. With my definition, dreams are not necessarily thoughts. Not until one is either in a waking dream or thinks about the dream after waking up.

 

What qualifies as "language"? Does a pet communicating a desire for food count?

A language is any form of communication that is repeatable. That is, a word or a concept has a specific sound or symbol or gesture assigned to it. That sound or symbol or gesture always refers to the same word or concept and is repeatable to convey the same word or concept to many people/animals. Pronunciations and spellings may change over time but if it is not repeatable, no thoughts can be communicated.

 

Is language the primary avenue for cultural programming? The only one?

Yes. There are few other ways to convey how one is supposed to act in order to be culturally accepted without language. Observation of the behaviors of others might be an alternative, but then body language also comes into play. It is difficult to observe behaviors without seeing some type of gesticular language at the same time.

 

Do different languages produce inherently different behaviors?

No. I have seen much of the same inherent behaviors written throughout history no matter what language the people were speaking.

 

Does having more ways of expressing something make it easier to understand?

Depends. I love my Thesaurus. I love being able to find one word that means the same as a certain combination of other words. But it is only 'easier' to understand if that word is in the other person's vocabulary. I remember I had the hardest time wrapping my head around the word 'dynamic'. For years I struggled to put the concept to a picture in a way I would fully understand it. Now that I understand it, using it increases my understanding of other concepts, but did not help when I did not know the word.

 

Is naming direct, or are all things defined in opposition to, or as a distinct part of, something else?

Depends on the language. I would say English is pretty direct. What is it? An arm, a hand, a finger? I would think that if they were named as parts of each other we would stick with something like carpals and metacarpals. You might have to explain this concept further for a fuller answer.

 

To what extent are words and meaning subjective? Do they, in fact, have any absolute definition?

They are as subjective as the common collective allow them to be. People are adding new definitions to old words all the time and new words to old definitions. (And new words to new definitions for that matter.) Languages are always changing and evolving. A definition will only be absolute if those speaking the language always agree that it should never change.

 

As culture and language evolve, which leads the way? Is there a feedback?

Culture leads the language. Made up words are often used unofficially by those in the culture before they become part of the language. Feedback is plausible. 100 ways to say the concept of 'love' could do the culture a load of good I say. We should test it. >.>

[Cairo Jim]

 

 

What qualifies as "language"? Does a pet communicating a desire for food count?

A language is any form of communication that is repeatable. That is, a word or a concept has a specific sound or symbol or gesture assigned to it.

 

 

Or a combination of all the above. Body gesture can make a significant amount of what is to be communicated, as well as the "spoken." A lot of the time it's hard to tell how serious people are or to fully understand some things that are merely written, especially on the internet. Although credit can be given to literary geniuses that are that good at describing things on paper that the reader can start to imagine what the writer was intending, although that can vary slightly from reader to reader.

[Student of Trinity]

 

The person who really revolutionized my thinking on the matter, though, was Jacques Lacan, who theorized that the mind itself is set up as a language - signifier and signified. We can see this in some sense with neurons, in that they form connections of meaning with representations of the physical world.

 

I like most of your post very much, because it expresses some of the things that fascinate me most, and does so as well as I could; but this pair of sentences just drives me nuts. They represent to me everything that is absurdly wrong with philosophy about cognition. It is absurd to think of neurons as some kind of simple confirmation of some dictum of Lacan. If we had even the faintest inkling of exactly how neurons "form connections of meaning with representations of the physical world", then we would already be so far beyond Lacan that not even philosophers would ever bother to breathe his name.

 

Perhaps some recent philosophers may have been foolish enought to pretend that physical reality is merely an arbitrary social construct, as malleable as their next book title; but my impression is that this is rather a straw man put up by naive scientists in the culture wars. All the philosophers whom I've actually read are intelligent enough to concede explicitly, at least when pressed, that gravity is not a political football. But I think there really is a philosophical naïveté that is almost as bad, by which the philosophical relevance of the physical world is denied, even though its objective reality is grudgingly admitted. People seem, as it were, to write many pages about believing, and concede in a footnote that Yes, of course, Seeing is believing. In fact, we do not yet remotely understand seeing, and until we do, it is futile to expect to say anything true or useful about something as much more complicated as believing. It is doubly futile to expect anything useful or true about believing to be said by someone who manages to be so naïve about something as much simpler as seeing. In short, it is the philosophers on this topic, rather than the scientists, who seem to me to take far too much for granted.

[BMA]

I think in pictures/concepts. I always have. I find it difficult sometimes to properly express my thoughts to others because what I am thinking does not really have adequate words to describe it.

 

Am I right in thinking that a person who can sense nothing (from babyhood) is incapable of thought ?

 

I always think in the language I am most familiar with, and my thoughts have always appeared to me to be algorithmic at the base level. From what you say, it appears that I've been restricting my thoughts by limiting them to a set of predefined words and phrases. I wonder whether this has anything to do with left-brain/right-brain dominance.

 

Of course, because of this I've no trouble explaining my thoughts to another person.

[saunders]

It would be an odd experience to have your language ability shut down, but still be conscious. I don't remember any accounts by people who have experienced this, though. Maybe it was hard to remember afterwards.

 

The night before my twins were born, I had an experience which has been variously described as a massive migraine, a minor stroke, and "we are not sure..."

As a part of this incident, I did lose the power of language. Words simply would not come. I can remember the effort of trying to find any connection with words, but can't describe what it felt like, because that means returning to an aphasic state. Does that help at all?

[The Reverend]

I once asked my 3-year-old if she could remember what she thought about before she was able to talk. She said something like "I thought about how much I wanted to be a big girl so I could talk."

[Actaeon]

One of my earliest memories deals with the frustration of not being able to communicate. My bottle fell under my crib and I lacked the preposition to tell my mother where it was, although I think I was making progress with nouns at the time.

[Balladeer]

Am I right in thinking that a person who can sense nothing (from babyhood) is incapable of thought ?

 

Braindead, yes, but otherwise no. A capable brain with no input is still capable. Not sure what those thoughts might look like but in the least I bet at least one concept would be something like, "Its dark, its dark, why is it always dark?"

 

I also bet that the imagination might surprise us if such a person ever existed and was later able to communicate what they spent their time thinking about.

[Goldengirl]

I like most of your post very much, because it expresses some of the things that fascinate me most, and does so as well as I could; but this pair of sentences just drives me nuts. They represent to me everything that is absurdly wrong with philosophy about cognition. It is absurd to think of neurons as some kind of simple confirmation of some dictum of Lacan. If we had even the faintest inkling of exactly how neurons "form connections of meaning with representations of the physical world", then we would already be so far beyond Lacan that not even philosophers would ever bother to breathe his name.

 

I should clarify this explicitly now. I do not believe in Lacanian, or Freudian, psychoanalysis. I was just giving an (extremely) brief explanation of Lacanian thought. Lacan's ideas about the structuring of mental processes merely gave me inspiration for further analysis. They are a useful way, for me, to conceptualize how people think; it's an analogy that I utilize to comprehend, not necessarily an idea that I hold to be true. Ultimately, I think his ideas are as unscientific (unable to be proven) as Freud's, and I would loathe to see his methods applied towards the treatment of people with psychological issues. I agree with Lillith's assessment, but even nuts have some nutritional value that can be extracted, even if with a large grain of salt.

 

Neurons are complicated. I've taken enough psychology courses to know that I will not ever understand them fully (though I could make great strides to learn more fully what we already know, it's just not where I want to focus).

 

Am I right in thinking that a person who can sense nothing (from babyhood) is incapable of thought ?

 

You'd be right in saying that that person probably wouldn't have a thought process we would understand. The thoughts probably wouldn't be "Why is it so dark?" because the person wouldn't have any conception of light or dark, lacking a sense of sight. What the thoughts would be, though, we don't know sense we have so much thought based on our senses. Of course, we can't find out from asking the person, either, as we lack a means of communication.

[Actaeon]

I see sense as much more important to cognition than language. I'm not sure the individual in question would have the capacity to ask "why is it always dark?" Dark is a concept that only has any meaning in comparison to light. Without sensory apparatus, both are completely without reference.

 

Which brings me to the point Jewels asked me to elaborate on. I posit that, rather than naming things in our own right, words are only coined when something must be distinguished from something else- either in terms of a polarity, or simply by creating several categories out of a single previous concept. There is always another word, or words, in the negative space.

 

 

You might assert that some things are so entirely new or fundamentally different from everything else that they need no reference. These tend to be things I can't quite grok, myself. To me, concepts are easiest understood through their relationship to other things. "Everything but __", "both ___ and ___", "like __, except"...

[Lilith]

Am I right in thinking that a person who can sense nothing (from babyhood) is incapable of thought ?

 

A baby raised without any kind of communication or touch will fail to develop and eventually waste away and die: this is known as hospitalism, because in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the standard of care in hospitals was to give babies as little human contact as possible, in hopes of protecting them from infection. Unfortunately, instead of protecting them, this mostly just caused them to die. Sensory input is absolutely essential to survival.

 

Braindead, yes, but otherwise no. A capable brain with no input is still capable. Not sure what those thoughts might look like but in the least I bet at least one concept would be something like, "Its dark, its dark, why is it always dark?"

 

I once spoke to a guy who's been totally blind since shortly after birth. He has no real concept of what darkness looks like: he's intellectually aware of what it is, but the idea has no referent for him. He doesn't report seeing a constant field of black before his eyes; he's not aware of seeing anything at all.

[Alorael at Large]

A brain incapable of receiving inputs, having never received any inputs, would probably lack anything like thought. That's true from a neurological standpoint, as Lilith points out, but I think it's also true philosophically. With no input, I can't see any real sense of self (given that there is no other), and there's nothing to think about and no terminology with which to do it. "I think, therefore I am" can be turned around: without a clear "I am" I'm not sure there could be any thinking.

 

—Alorael, who of course is working on the kind of ridiculous, impossible counterfactuals that can make philosophy insufferable. He could build a school of thought on his axiom, but it's an axiom that has no evidence.

[Balladeer]

A baby raised without any kind of communication or touch will fail to develop and eventually waste away and die: this is known as hospitalism, because in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the standard of care in hospitals was to give babies as little human contact as possible, in hopes of protecting them from infection. Unfortunately, instead of protecting them, this mostly just caused them to die. Sensory input is absolutely essential to survival.

 

I once spoke to a guy who's been totally blind since shortly after birth. He has no real concept of what darkness looks like: he's intellectually aware of what it is, but the idea has no referent for him. He doesn't report seeing a constant field of black before his eyes; he's not aware of seeing anything at all.

 

I was disappointed in the article's lack of statistics on the percentage of infants that actually died from this. The supporting article does a little better but I don't think that it gives us a perfect case study. These babies wasting away are not deprived of their senses, they are deprived of human contact. Which, while it may be a good starting point and the closest we can get to a real case study, it is imperfect. I would argue, though, that it is not the actual lack of human contact that is killing them, but their sense of loss going from constant contact to none. Thus its other name of anaclitic depression. If sensing human contact is a pre-requisite for thriving, than any baby that does not develop the ability to sense anything would die in the womb.

 

And maybe there is our answer right there. Has there ever been a baby born without the sense of touch that survived? I did a small search and could not come up with anything that was not philosophical.

[Alorael at Large]

That's not quite accurate. Anaclitic depression isn't like major depressive disorder. In this case depression is used in its physiologic sense, a reduction in function. The symptoms of failure to bond as an infant aren't classic major depressive symptoms, although that disorder's presentation in children is hard to pin down. Rather, it's a spectrum of social and cognitive deficits. And it shows up dramatically on brain scans. It's not a feeling of loss, or even a mood; it's a failure of normal brain development that leads to gross structural abnormalities. And wasting away and dying is dramatic but rare; children raised without an opportunity to bond to a caregiver more often show delayed cognitive development and dysfunctional social development.

 

It's also worth noting that although I don't think anyone's documented total loss of touch sensation, there is congenital sensory neuropathy, which can involve loss of most sensation in most of the body. That has developmental difficulties aplenty, but children can grow up psychologically fairly normal with the disorder. That's probably linked to the fact that developmental milestones come in order. Before birth the brain isn't primed for sensory input and doesn't really care whether it's there or not; after birth it must receive proper input (bonding, neither over- nor under-stimulation) in order to develop the right pathways.

 

—Alorael, who will also point out that the evidence strongly suggests that human contact isn't enough. Responsiveness, and caring responsiveness, are everything; being cared for constantly but indifferently is also damaging. Given that evidence, the womb probably doesn't provide anything like caring contact; babies don't have needs or stresses before they're born, really, and can't appreciate having those needs met.