Can you think without words?

[Sy Borg]

Also interesting is that in Helen's wordless world she claims in her book that nothing made sense, that without words to hold everything together and in some kind of order, most activities were simply confusing. She already knew some symbolic meaning before she learned language, one was "stroking her own hair" meant 'mother' and "cupping her hands" meant 'go gather eggs.' But until she could put words to actions her life was mostly meaningless.

To be fair, any of us would find it confusing to be in a dog pack too if we didn't understand the olfactory cues. Since we live in human societies full of symbols everything is necessarily confusing if you don't know the lingo.

I do think comprehension and understanding at a deep level are possible without words. Words often fail us when trying to describe what we think. The mind forms concepts prior to attributing labels.

The value of words is in our external interactions (as you said, "action") rather than internal processing. The flow of words we all have running through our minds would be replaced by a flow of images and other patterns if we didn't have our language. That's not to say that language isn't pivotal to human success. Our ability to share and store knowledge with language has made us the dominant large animal. Individual humans are pretty unexceptional but seven billion people with the weight of thousands of years of cultural transmission are a force to be reckoned with.

[Neznac]

I do think comprehension and understanding at a deep level are possible without words. Words often fail us when trying to describe what we think. The mind forms concepts prior to attributing labels.

I agree that meaning exists in cognitive processes that are deeper than language Greta. The problem for me is that one cannot have a thought, like to deliberately think about 'green grass,' without some kind of linguistic system in place through which one can prompt that idea in an abstract sense. For me, thought is about the activity of abstract cognition, certainly other sense experiences like seeing a green rug or smelling something that "re-minds" one of green grass can produce the appropriate abstract image, but since those prompting sensations come from outside oneself that doesn't seem like actually having your own thoughts/concepts (deliberate self-prompted abstractions).

Maybe it's difficult to make some stark demarcation between perceptions and conceptions and usually these overlap each other, but for the sake of convenience I am of the opinion that the actual thinking of thoughts depends on language. My other understanding that meaning itself comes directly from perceptions/memories may seem to throw my dependence on language for producing actual thoughts into some doubt, but there's a blurred area between perceptions and conceptions that is a necessary merging between those two ways of knowing.

[Obvious Leo]

there's a blurred area between perceptions and conceptions that is a necessary merging between those two ways of knowing.

The blurred area you refer to is non-existent for a process philosopher and information theorist. A perception is nothing more than an assimilation of raw data via the senses and such data is simply information without a meaningful structure. Its meaning lies in the cognition of the recipient of the information and thus has an epistemic provenance only. Herein lies the gulf between epistemological knowledge and ontological truth which only logic can bridge.

Regards Leo

[Belinda]

Right, Leo. When I had an accident to one eye that resulted in partial sight loss I was entertained when I closed my eyes by indistinct shapes on the black background, involuntarily and gradually forming themselves into regular patterns, rather like complicated lace. Unfortunately the entertainment of those visions stopped when reality re-adjusted my brain

[MidiChlorian]

To some degree, everyone thinks without using words, where as an example, if one walks into a restaurant and sees a person eating, something like soup with a spoon, salad with a fork, or a piece of fried chicken with their hands, would not think out the words in their minds but would associate the action with something that they may have experienced doing themselves, therefore associating visual action with retained thought patterns which would indicate visual thought. We also associate sounds the same way in that when hearing a sound and not necessarily recognizing that sound pattern with a previously learned sound pattern we may attempt to associate a sound with other patterns and may compare them with what we may have seen and heard from memory, where while laying in bed at night and hearing a sound which we do not recognize right away, imagine a similar sound with a possible action and either conclude what it was or get up an look at what it might have been. Nevertheless, we may think out in words afterwards what it might have been, we generally attempt to analyze without words strange sounds which we may not recognize right away, which would indicate the mind searching out possible similarities.

On the same note, but slightly different, can the eyes hear sounds or more directly perceive thought which may be transmitted over light frequencies, whereby not necessarily the visible light frequencies which we can see, but other sub- or ultra-visual light frequencies which could be considered as thought patterns that the human mind could transpose into viable thoughts? Something light carrier X-rays or x-waves which would go through matter but at the same time be picked up by the human mind or brain similar to radio waves, and compared to a form of human consciousness or conscious thought patterns which are not perceived as words but as conceptual impressions as knowing something by deductive assumption; being that the human eye is so complex and interconnected with the brain and auditory system and human senses, would in most cases be a preprocessor to the brain, and use light to generate specific energy, even if we are not aware of its overall ability?

[Obvious Leo]

Right, Leo. When I had an accident to one eye that resulted in partial sight loss I was entertained when I closed my eyes by indistinct shapes on the black background, involuntarily and gradually forming themselves into regular patterns, rather like complicated lace. Unfortunately the entertainment of those visions stopped when reality re-adjusted my brain

Visual perception is a remarkable feat of information processing. The human retina gleans an amazingly sparse amount of information from our external environment. This information is presented to the brain in the form of an extremely grainy 2-dimensional image in only three primary colours. Furthermore it is presented upside down with a bloody great hole in it where the optic nerve connects and yet our brain is able to construct this minimal information into a precisely detailed image of our world the right way up in glorious technicolour. This means we don't actually observe the world at all. We quite literally MAKE it.

Regards Leo

-- Updated December 5th, 2014, 10:01 am to add the following --

It was once thought that human infants were born blind but this has now been shown not to be the case. They are not born blind but nevertheless they cannot see. Seeing must be learned.

[Misty]

Helen Keller became blind, deaf, mute early in life after a fever. When she was taught to link letters into a word with familiar textures, like water, etc., she was able to assign words to what she experienced. So, yes, one can think without words.

Bringing in Helen Keller is interesting because her learning the skill of language was even more than feeling different textures and connecting words with them. Ms. Sullivan and Mrs. Keller had tried for almost a year to give Helen objects and then spell the word for them in her other hand but she never made the connection. Then that one time as the teacher pumped water over one hand and spelled the word w-a-t-e-r in the other it was the simultaneous action that made the breakthrough, and almost instantly Helen grasped the nature of language. The fascinating part for me is how action- oriented language use is, what I mean is that it's not primarily about matching objects to words as in pointing to things and naming them, but rather it's about how action in the world must be matched up to actions in cognition.

Also interesting is that in Helen's wordless world she claims in her book that nothing made sense, that without words to hold everything together and in some kind of order, most activities were simply confusing. She already knew some symbolic meaning before she learned language, one was "stroking her own hair" meant 'mother' and "cupping her hands" meant 'go gather eggs.' But until she could put words to actions her life was mostly meaningless.

Now, those who claim to be able to think thoughts without words are bravely giving feelings and emotions the same powers as thoughts, but we all know that you cannot abstractly think 'red' without the word to prompt you to do so. You cannot deliberately think of 'envy' without the word to trigger that thought. Of course if you see a red dress or meet someone whom you are jealous of, then those will prompt either the image of red or the feeling of envy, but those are not entirely abstract experiences. Words are necessary to give thoughts their structure and order in an abstract sense.

It is interesting that the movie gives one the idea that Helen knew when she was being obstinate and displayed bad behavior. She also seemed to know which parent was more sympathetic with her. It seems she took pleasure in it somehow. So, it that regard it makes it difficult to know what she really knew and understood without words. I have not read her own book about her pre-word days, but I will put it on my to read list.

[Wolf-J-kom]

It is very difficult to put word to an abstract idea. It is even more difficult to understand an abstract concept, yet we seem to alight on it sooner or later.

When I was learning English I asked a teacher through an interpreter: which is the quickest way to learn? He gave me two books: “The old man and the sea” and “ The headless angel” He said: familiarise yourself with the shape of the words and just occasionally look up a word in the dictionary. I could very soon understand Old Man and the Sea, but was completely last with the “Headless Angel”! It took me ages to realise that “headless” was not meant literally but simply meant “foolish” or “naïve”.

I had many occasions when an “idea” became tacitly understood. It is probable that Helen Keller came to understand the concept of language in one important “Eureka” moment.

[Sy Borg]

My guess is that the words were empowering for the young Helen Keller. She was aware of this symbols that those around her used but didn't know how it worked until her eureka moment. I had similar, if less profound, aha moments when learning to read music.

So what of the largely wordless mind of Helen Keller? It was a mind that was aware enough to have her big aha moment. Her realisation must have consisted of a complex web of wordless abstract memories.

-- Updated 04 Dec 2014, 20:04 to add the following --

Please pardon typing. Phone autocorrect.

[MidiChlorian]

Helen Keller's situation was truly difficult, but it took another person with a disability to understand, partially what she was going through, where in order for her to learn she needed to be treated like an animal, where correct behavior was rewarded and incorrect behavior was answered with repetition and persistence. Where she was learning both her own unique language and how to translate this language with her tactile understanding of material form from her surroundings through common objects. Even being able to read Braille, would require some material form dictionary to be able to understand words which represented objects.

Even music for the deaf would be possible, as long as they could see, and where musical tones could represent colored light and various color tones to represent octaves, or electronic apparatus attached to the skin which would vibrate at different levels to represent sound, as one plays the notes on the sheets of music. Where even a deaf audience would partake of an orchestra with a corresponding colored light show, something like what Disney did with the 1940 Film, Fantasia. Much can be learned when one has a disability, given additional tools and instruction.

[Tachyung]

Thoughts don't need words. If you think without words, but use words to describe your thought to yourself, you are doing it wrong. An idea can be a conviction. Not definable by words, and that idea can be strained and edited without ever using words. You only need words to express the thought to others.
The nature of such thoughts can't be described, as there is no common language to do so. When I think in thought, I think in shapes. Some people say pictures, but pictures are slow. I think of a picture as a fully formed 2D image. I'm thinking in spheres, colors and textures. A tree isn't a picture of a tree, nor the word "tree" but it's shape, color and texture. What it is depends on the context. If I'm driving and looking at 1000 potential hazards, a tree is a round post, brown and hard. If I'm thinking of the wind, a tree is green and soft, blowing through it. Oh, and as I'm thinking about thinking, I'm also realizing that I think in sound. Not playing the sound, like a song going through your head, but the feel of the whoosh.

[Angel Trismegistus]

As some have already suggested, if some (non-human) animals think -- as their behavior certainly suggests --then thought appears to be possible without words (assuming a non-verbal ordering of experience on their part.) If the question concerns human animals only -- that is to say, can a human being think without words? -- a little introspection should verify that much of human thought consists of mental images -- think of memory in this regard. Language certainly factors into the ordering of a human experience of the world, but once ordered, and perhaps even before ordered, reflection on visual images does not seem language-dependent.

[Unseen_Beauty]

Well in terms of brain anatomy, with the Left side of the brain controlling the more known, logical, and factual information processing station, and the Right side controlling the more abstract, beautiful, fanciful, and unknown archetypes of our existence, this question is can be answered by knowing which hemisphere is more dominant (at least in part). Now this next part is somewhat of a leap, however, I theorize that those strongly grounded in a left-hemispheric interpretation of the world explain it with things they know and can understand, for example, words. However, the opposite side tends to leave things "up to the imagination," without needing to give something a name or fit it into some ideal parameter for simple understanding. I have definitely met people with very dominant right-hemispheres who think almost purely in images, and when they can finally interpret what they're seeing or experiencing, they do it beautifully, although they feel that having to use words themselves is a limitation in itself. Sometimes the best thinking is done without words, because words can't fully take into account experiential and emotional phenomena