Is it possible to have non-linguistic thoughts?

I do think it's possible. A picture speaks a thousand words, and music ?

A great deal of communication is non verbal.

 

Ok my personal interpretation ? Looking at human evolution it seems we were able to communicate via cave paintings and gestures, long before we could coherently talk to each other verbally.

I think still today body language and how we express things makes a huge difference to the meaning. Like "that's fine "

Or "THAT'S FINE!"

I've put that in verbal written form. But just one sigh ? I think that shows how important non verbal communication is.

 

Well, yeah. I was under the impression that a great many people primarily think in pictures/images.

I mostly think in words, mostly. However, there are times when I 'see' a vivid mental image and know immediately what it means. A part of me then often attempts to put it into words and I find myself thinking, again in words, that this is unnecessary and inaccurate because I know that I 'got' the content of the image immediately.

Jung is all about non-linguistic psychic processes...it's amazing how little he is referenced here!

 

Haha, another grad student asked me this exact question a little while back. My answer is yes, we can have thought without langauge. To give a quick, tangible example of this, imagine a circle. Now, imagine that this circle is rotating on an axis perpendicular to the plane of the circle. What shape does this simulate? While I needed language to communicate my example, you did NOT need language to imagine and transform the geometric shape, and draw comparative conclusions.

I think that language reflects the structure of thought, not that thought is a result of the structure of language. I think language or the structure of language can influence thought, and even limit someone if they aren't creative enough to think outside the bounds of that language, but this is not due to the relationship between language and thought. Rather, this is due to the limitations of that individual.

 

A very strong "ye" of agreement from me. I've been painting pictures in my mind and crafting worlds I could envision vividly since I was a wee lass. So unless I just lost my mind a long time ago and I'm seein' stuff...

Sometimes it's just one or the other, but often it's both at the same time, linguistic and non-linguistic, like an illustrated story, or images with captions. I've actually been frustrated before due to an inability to find adequate words to express what I see in my mind's eye - Like anything I try to put to paper, whether written or drawn to convey it, pales in comparison.

 

Hi Ren, others are contributing very interesting thoughts I will just contribute my own thoughts about this. I was in a similar discussion to this with other students in a class I was enrolled in. My discipline is information and knowledge, so in classes we discussed a lot of ideas about data, information, and knowledge in human society.

We discussed a number of papers in the field that made the claim that "All knowledge is inherently social". I think this is an idea that is not exactly linguistic, but is very directly related to linguistics, because language is a sort of inescapable part of socialisation. Our ability to think, to understand our own thinking, is so enmeshed with our education to apply language, that our thinking is inherently social.

I absolutely reject this claim. My objection is that this hypothesis about all knowledge being social is untestable. It is an extremely poor hypothesis, there is actually no hypothesis at all involved, but it is rather, a statement of supposed fact, a personal belief that is being stated as a fact, an assumption about the limits of possibility. Our ability to test the hypothesis is dependent on the limitations of what is being tested, so it can't be tested. My feedback to the class was that because it is impossible to test this hypothesis, that it is impossible to make such a statement that all knowledge is social.

The practical outcome is that if we operate on an assumption that all knowledge is social, we risk excluding some potential fields of knowledge, or explanations for current knowledge, or variables involved in the construction of knowledge, from our understanding... we cause our potential (more complete) understanding of the construction of knowledge to become impossible by excluding potential alternatives of knowledge construction.

My thoughts on this topic were not well received by my colleagues in study or by my tutor, to me they seemed very invested in the legitimacy of the historical scholars in the discipline, but I think I had a point.

I don't really know whether or not it is possible to think outside of language, but hope these thoughts contribute to the topic.

 

I have non-linguistic thoughts when I solve Rubik's cubes. When I do puzzles in general really. I solve them spatially.

Even if I had to use some form of language, it would be a notation which is not recognizable to most people, e.g. R' U' R U' R' U2 R

Edit:
Games like Chess and Tetris also cause me to have non-linguistic thoughts.

 

He probably didn't try to think without words.

Consider that most of language is explanatory. We have phrases like "if you do, then" which are all about preparing a context. When you're thinking in your own mind however, you don't necessarily need to prepare your own context since you can assume it to be known. "if x then y" becomes superfluous.

For example when I'm solving a cube, it could be seen as a string of "if this, then that." Since this is happening repeatedly, you can essentially ditto out the parts of the thought which are not unique. "if this, then that" loses its purpose and you can soon end up thinking in terms of simply "this, that" because the rest is implied by what you're doing. "This" and "that" can then quickly be replaced with mental images of the states of the cube. It is no longer "If I make this move, then that happens" I simply see "this move" as an image of itself, and then the result of it as an image of itself.

If I had to think about it in words, it would probably take hours rather than the usual 30 to 50 seconds it takes me.

 

Yes, when someone is hurt and they yelp in pain, they're not verbalizing.

 

It is great of you to bring it up and that I see it today If you hadn't posted this I would have made a similar thread, though it is not rooted in language, but the perceptions of existentiality. The thing you're asking is very much rooted in this question of how reality is perceived. (Though actually my question would have approached the same topic, but from a different perspective.)

My thoughts were very similar to yours. What I have come to know during the last hour, is that people perceive and determine what is real (not only but primarily) depending on which their preferred etymological function is, Ni or Si. While Si perceives reality based on tangible evidence and the experiences of the self, Ni believes that reality expands beyond what the self can perceive, which includes thought and language. These are the basic points, which can be expanded on, but this is not the place for it.

Back to the OP, I don't agree with Wittgenstein in full. The limits of language can only limit the thought in terms of what you can express and prove. But it cannot constrict perception and creativity. Abstract thought can be devoid of language, being completely or partially in form or even without form. Only in it's most abstracted form can thought defy not only the use of language to define it, but even tangible meaning as a consequence. It doesn't mean though that the thought doesn't exist, but that it has not yet emerged out of your subconscious to take on form yet. I think that only after thought is formed, can it be attempted to define it by distinction.

For example, if there is an unknown thing, a tangible object out in the world, it doesn't have a word to describe it (or you just don't know it yet), but that doesn't mean it does not exist. I think this is called the Observer Effect. Therefore, it includes the perspective of physics, metaphysics and quantum mechanics (not exactly sure about the last one).

I am still reading Herder's "Treatise on the Origin of Language", in which he proposes that before language evolved, there had to be perception and rationality/prudence (I think it's the Latin ratio or sapientia rather than prudentia, i.e. the capability of rational thought. Ergo, language comes after thought.
I think what we perceive as thinking in a language or with language is a specific mindset that is taught through language. (I have a book on that which I am planning on reading soon.)

I just had to delete my last sentence because another thought occurred to me, a distinction or definition that has not been made yet. It is not just the term "thought" which has to be defined, but "language" as well. If we think back in the history of writing, there were pictograms and other sign-based languages. Even our abstract letters are signs, which have evolved through the millenia of human history. So, if we say we use signs and images to manifest thoughts in our minds, we still use language, only in a different form. It doesn't necessarily have words, or syntax, but it is still language, or proto-language if you will. From this point of view, Wittgenstein could be right.

However, these images are, even if they are signs which hold meaning, not the limits of thought. These images still only represent conscious thought. But what about unconscious thought? I see it as a tiny unit, a snippet from the mass of thought, merging into tendrils or strings and emerging from the void of knowledge. (The reason why I call it a void is another topic.) While in the void, it can only be called an inkling, an idea, a tangent of conscious thought. It is unquestionable that only conscious thought can find manifestation in the form of language as it exists in the vernacular. But as the transition from unconscious to conscious is fluid, we cannot see where conscious thought or even language begins. They don't have to begin at the same point. Also, there must be something before unconscious thought, something which triggers the thought to form in the first place.

It is not just an issue present in the humanities and philosophy, but also physics and biology. What I did was merely an abstract idea of how thought forms. For the moment, it can only apply to me and my perception, unless there is someone that agrees with me and perceives it the same way. Until we can prove the existence of thought and consciousness, this is not a question that can be answered with veracity.

 

@Ren
I can see that making sense. What do we gain by stretching things to fit though, other than a feeling of rightness?

Edit:
Also some times a cat is just a cat. When you see an actual cat on an actual heater, it's not symbolic, it's a thing being itself. It might become a symbol when you recall it later as memory or knowledge, but I'd argue it's only trivially a symbol for the sole reason that your memory is not the actual cat.

 

@Ren
I see. Here's a thought then:

Connecting a cat to a heater is no different than connecting a cat to being alive. What about the cat itself? Understanding that cats sit on heaters takes for granted the cat (and the heater even) but the cat (and the heater) is also a relationship of objects - the cells and internal organs of the cat (and the parts of the heater that make it produce heat)

The cat has organs which relate to each other just as the cat and the heater relate to each other. What makes a cat alive in the first place is probably more complicated to understand than what makes a cat sit on a heater.