I emailed Chomsky a month back about Thoughts and Language. I hope he doesn't mind that I'm sharing it.
My email,
I was fascinated by your talk at British Academy. I'm no linguist. Please Ignore my ignorance.
If the formal language is not designed for communication but for our thoughts, Is it not the case that there are two different mechanisms of perception? One to understand internal language (if I can call it a language) and external language we use socially? It is bewildering. As I type this email, I'm thinking of the words that needs to be followed. Because of my ability for pattern recognition or for the conceptual understanding of rules of the external language. I'm not sure if my ability is a natural phenomenon or a self trained one(as far as English is concerned). English is not my native language. It is acquired by study. Recently, My thoughts have been primarily in English. I could switch between English and my native language for thoughts.
Is language the only way to think? Is it crazy to think that our brain does not use language to think at all? Can thoughts/perception , like language, have two different mechanism. Understanding external logic and internal logic? The internal system might be visual, physical etc. It seems to lead to a structure problem. Does internal thoughts have far more complex structure? If dreams are thoughts, It is extremely complex and might be a evidence that there are different systems. I strongly think it is because we have different involuntary mechanisms to perceive like sense of smell etc.
Chomsky's reply,
Very little is understood about the interesting questions you’re raising. To study them we’d have to have a way of accessing thinking by some means that does not involve conscious use of language – which is probably a superficial reflection of something happening within. But so far there are no good ways.
I tend to think I am an animal with a language faculty and that there is common some experience I share with animals and also that animals are capable of many of the kinds of practical cognition.
I deny the idea that animals have a moral inferiority to humans, in the sense that they make worse decisions as to practical ethics.
For instance, a horse will express affection if you feed it but if you feed a child it might complain it isn't right and then wonder why his mom would rather feed the horses.
I think on any continent you will have a much easier time getting killed by annoying a cop than by annoying an animal.
I’ve always found it interesting how children learn a language. After 3 months of crying as the only form of communication, they babble for about 6 months. Then they start to articulate single words (mama, ball etc.)—quite often even with meaning, context and while pointing at something. Once again 6 months later they start to form 2-word sentences (big bubble, my ball, mama ball, ball up etc.).
It seems that babies are already able to reason about the world in a rather complex way, for example the baby can already think that someone has the ball, but they can only express it using their limited vocabulary (mama ball etc.). It seems unlikely to me that once the baby can express the subject–object–verb sentence "mama has (the) ball" the thought processes would suddenly be replaced by grammatical constructs.
It does seem, however, that grammar can be used as a tool to verify thought processes. It casts the thoughts in a mould, so to speak, and puts it on the examination table of our echoic memory with a capacity of about 5-20 seconds. There also seems to be a higher motivation to form logically coherent thoughts when they are articulated, presumably because they are naturally intended to be interpreted by other individuals.
There is good evidence that different parts of our brain think in very different ways, and we suppress awareness of how different they are. Verbal thinking in particular relies heavily on a section of the brain that is very good at making rationalizations, and is not necessarily well connected to the parts of your brain that are making the decisions you are trying to understand. Therefore our verbal descriptions of thinking is interesting, but not particularly reliable or informative.
It is worth noting that many negative reviews come from people who think that current thought from philosophical schools should have been included. Given my temperament and beliefs, I took this as a buy recommendation and am happy that I did.
Language is not the basis of thought. If someone thinks only with a mental narrative (in words, some language), then they're not really thinking in the broadest sense.
At risk of a Sapir Whorf debate, there is newer research that suggests your polemical statement isn't accurate[1], let alone a vast body of Postmodernist and Postcolonial theory[2].
Being an emergent / adaptive organism, we are taught and learn models and metrics, and in turn project those outward upon the world.
Not shocking that the models and metrics form the scaffolding for thought as expressed in language.
“Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and English Speakers' Conceptions of Time”
My statement wasn't polemical. And contrary to the body of literature that likes to tout that "all is literature/language", there are many conceptual schemes that do not comport themselves to linguistic expression, which in turn simply implies that such schemes are not cognized in linguistic terms but meta-linguistic (or non-linguistic) terms. Diagrammatic reasoning is a case in point. Appealing to the cognitive limitations brought on by acculturation isn't a satisfactory refutation. Let there be no doubt: diagrammatic reasoning will figure in AGI.
Visual, wherever the arbitrarily privileged line is drawn, is another convention.
To suggest that somehow the nebulous “visual domain” doesn't require reading would be to ignore much of art history and theory.
Again, there is no “visual” realm that is not steeped in vernacular; cliche, symbology, context, etc.
In this way, the visual domain is not somehow more elevated / pure / true than any other language, despite the sad reality that many have been unexposed to understanding it as such.
Visual thinking, a more closely related subset of diagrammatic reasoning (which need not be visual, incidentally), is in no shape or form "privileged". Visual thought is in fact closer to the general form of thinking that might be found in other sentient creatures who are not "privileged" with human language. Stated another way, diagrammatic thought is closer in shape and form to domain general pattern recognition. Reasoning, or "illation", is of a peculiarly non-linguistic nature, such that you'd be hard pressed to point out, like Achilles, to the Tortoise, just what it is that makes a conclusion of reasoning one that necessarily follows from some set of premises, unless you made use of some diagrammatic method.
Not sure why you're arguing a priori that all thought must be "vernacular" - code for "linguistic", I'd assume. But thought is not merely verbalizing or grammatizing everything.
Any visualization is also language, and ultimately convention[1]. The privileging of the visual, or even the division of the senses, is a construct.
“I have had an experience of this kind, similar to that reported from many parts of the world by those who have had occasion to show photographs to persons who had never seen a photograph before. To those of us accustomed to the idiom of the realism of the photographic lens, the degree of conventionalization that inheres in even the clearest, most accurate photograph, is something of a shock. For, in truth, even the clearest photograph is a convention; a translation of a three-dimensional subject into two dimensions, with color transmuted into shades of black and white. In the instance to which I refer, a Bush Negro woman turned a photograph of her own son this way and that, in attempting to make sense out of the shadings of greys on the piece of paper she held. It was only when the details of the photograph were pointed out to her that she was able to perceive the subject.” Herskovits, Art and value, from Aspects of Primitive Art, New York, 1959
I have been seeing this too. Steve Pinker in his books, Sense of Style, has portions which talk about this problem. He calls it -"Curse of Knowledge" and has advise for scientific writers. I wish researchers could spend a bit more time on improving their writing skills for better communication.
I just opened the chat tab and i was shocked to see the conversation i had with my co-founder sent to my college friend. Two more lines from the same conversation was sent to my friend's brother. This is serious.
