There’s a scene in Bablyon 5 where Capt. Sheridan has just met Lorien–who is the first intelligent being to arise in the history of the universe and who is still alive after all these years.
At the moment, Sheridan is quite distracted by recent events and is unable to appreciate a question Lorien is mulling over. Lorien points out to Sheridan that the Universe began with a Word, but which came first? The Word or the Thought behind it? You can’t have words without thoughts or thoughts without words, so there’s a kind of chicken-vs.-egg situation here.
There are several remarkable things about this scene. One is that it was written by Joe Straczynski, who is an atheist but was nevertheless willing to put on the lips of Lorien (a kind of cosmic Adam) a statement about Creation taken from the Gospel of John. As always, kudos to Joe for being willing to treat religion thoughtfully and respectfully in his fiction.
Another remarkable thing about the scene is that Lorien is wrong.
Oh, sure. You hear his view about the interdependence of thoughts and words articulated a lot, and it can seem prima facie justified: We have an awful hard time thinking without an internal monologue going in our heads. Yet it is still untrue that we can’t think without using words.
There are a variety of ways to show this, though I won’t go through them all here. I will mention two, however.
One is the ability of individuals to clearly think and understand complex realities without the ability to articulate them in words. I recently was reading a book by a cognitive scientist who cited the case of a man who had a stroke while he was sleeping and woke up unable to use language, even in his mind. He later regained his language ability and described his experience vividly. As soon as he woke up, he realized something was wrong. He couldn’t use certain parts of his body, and he quickly deduced that he must have had a stroke during the night. He tried to call out to his wife (who had already gotten out of bed) for help, but couldn’t remember how to use words.
He thus understood the concepts I have had a stroke and I can use words to get help without having the ability to cash out these thoughts in linguistic form.
He was (temporarily) reduced to a state of functioning only in what cognitive scientists call “mentalese”–the “language of the mind,” which we frequently experience with an almost-simultaneous accompanying internal gloss in English (or whatever the language is that we’re thinking in at the moment).
Yet it is possible to think without the gloss. Situations in which we have to think very fast are good for bringing this out, as we may be having to think so fast that we don’t have time to do the gloss that we normally reflexively provide.
Lately I’ve been trying to cultivate an awareness of my own thinking in mentalese, and I’ve found that driving offers a lot of opportunities.
For example, this Saturday I was driving up a particularly narrow, twisty road on a mountainside. The road had lots of intersections, and if a car came whizzing through one of these intersections under the control of a careless drive, it could smack into you in no time flat.
Thus as I drove up the hill, I was very sensitive to the cars that might pop in from the right or the left.
Sure enough, as I was rounding one turn that had an intersection, my peripheral vision caught a car coming right up to the intersection at a high rate of speed. Only having a second to decide whether to slam on the breaks or not, I quickly looked down at the roadsurface of the intersection to see if there was a white line at the intersection, blocking the car’s path and signalling it to stop. I realized that if there was a white line that the driver of the other car would be legally required to stop and, unless he was extraordinarily careless, he would stop, meaning that the risk of a collision was low enough that I shouldn’t swerve dramatically or slam on the breaks (which are themselves risky moves in such an environment). I saw that there was such a white line, kept driving, and the other car stopped.
I thought all of this–the need for the white line, its legal implications, its probable implications for the other car stopping, and the ensuing implications for what I needed to do as a driver–in under a second and didn’t have time to cash it out in words.
It was a moment of pure mentalese.
It took me a lot longer just now to articulate in words what happend than it took me to think it all as it happened when unencumbered by words.
And that’s the way it tends to work: We first reason through a situation very fast in mentalese and, upon having a particular insight, we start reflexively cashing it out in words in our internal monologues–unless events (like driving in a complex environment) force us to think about other things. This reflexive translation of mentalese into a verbal language is what generates the illusion that words and thoughts are mutually dependent on each other.
They aren’t.
Fascinating.
What about people who are deaf from birth? How do they think? Do they make up their own words? Or do they think without words, in a form of mentalese?
You may also be interested in the life and work of Dr. Temple Grandin, who has autism, and has been able to describe her visual (non-verbal) thought processes. She’s a remarkable woman who has contributed much to animal welfare and humane treatment of animals.
http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html
There’s definitely certain forms of thinking that don’t involve words, no matter what speed they’re performed at. I’m a painter and I find that I can work for long periods of time, thinking quite intensely about my painting and making critical decisions, but without words. I’ll think in terms of colors, textures, gestures etc. And I’m pretty sure other artists have similar experiences. Musicians sometimes report that their intelligence in music can seem to be “in the hands.”
I suspect athletes can experience this as well, and not just in those moments of snap-decision making. Like, a gymnast who is mentally preparing to execute his gymnastics is not inwardly verbalizing what all of the motions will be. He’ll be simply visualizing them, thinking in terms of his muscles and movements.
You probably know that JMS was a Christian in college, read the Bible several times, and rejected the Faith when his girlfriend was killed in a car accident, much like Galen in _Crusade_. More of an anger against God than a true atheism.
He is unusual in understanding how beliefs motivate people and their choices, whether they are Christians, Jews, Centauri emperor-worshippers, or Minbari pantheists.
I like the part about the mentalese, it is a very fine example. However you could not have understood what the objects and the situation signified without prior knowledge of the words that signify them. The words, the meaning of the white line, the intersection etc., are now, I believe part of a larger group of thought that derived from words, however now, because of their almost immovable meaning, are part of a body of knowledge that does not need words to express it, only images. This does not mean words are not what made it possible, your knowledge of the white lines, intersection etc. is not possible- without words.
I think computer programming in mentalese.
But I read in english, and I need to think words to read.
So basically I can read a program much quicker than english, with better comprehension.
Thoughts are a symbol of words I think, they are only weak servants of thoughts. Words to me are the external expression of the internal, that is words are the physical limits to thought like gravity is to objects. We are bound by these limits of truley exspressing who we are.
Nice article, I only wish it were longer. I found it after a search and was glad to see I wasn’t crazy. I often catch myself “cashing out” my thoughts, as you put it, and realizing that I already had the thought and didn’t need the “verbal” component. It seems like a waste of time and energy to do this, yet it seems to be how we function by default.
“It seems like a waste of time and energy to do this, yet it seems to be how we function by default.”
I would dearly love to know what it’s like to think complex thoughts without the aid (or burden, depending on your viewpoint) of language.
I actually had an experience of life for a few hours without the capacity for language. It was back during my druggie days, and I think it was due to some PCP-laced marijuana. It was terrifying, mostly because I thought I would no longer be able to communicate with anyone, and would likely wind up in a mental institution. I had thoughts, but could not direct them with language, and I heard the words of those around me, but they didn’t mean anything to me. Fortunately, I was still able to pray (no atheists in foxholes, right?) although it was a wordless petition rather than a formal prayer. When I awoke the next morning, my mind was as normal as ever.
Of course it’s possible to think without language, but language allows you to manipulate your thoughts and direct them in certain ways. Thinking without words is a bit like writing without fingers. Possible, but clumsy.
When you think of something, you usually need a word to create the image even if its subconcious. You can’t think of a red ballon for example without having the words to conjure the image. the word gives the identity to the thing rather than the other way around. the exception of course are people who are deaf or never learnt to use language.