I think that rational thoughts are independent from language. Sometimes I have new ideas while sleeping and then have a problem to translate them into normal language and writing down after waking up.
Very often we get some visual information and its verbal description is also a problem. As we know, a digital image (for sequence even more) has more information than a sequence of words. Some of it is excessive, other (less important) details are never put into words. But if a sequence of images generates some abstract ideas, translation of them into words is even more difficult. That is why some creators prefer to paint a picture or to write music - in this manner a lower fraction of their ideas will be lost (comparing to translation into words).
"The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanisms of thought. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously at a second stage." — Albert Einstein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbSu2PXOTOc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQwJXvlTWDw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6Zo-zuaqc0
etc...
Rational thoughts can and have existed w
before the discovery of language. The activities of the mind that leads to rational thinking can be performed within any communication form not necessarily language.
Does "rational thought" require "language" necessarily?
Dennis
Dennis Mazur
There have been cases of feral children that had no language. Presumably the fact that they survived indicated they were able to make judgments, inferences, and decisions vis à vis their environment and act in ways that made satisfying their preferences and achieving their goals more likely than not. To the extent that the human capacity for self-aware means-ends reasoning was involved, feral children would have had something more than the instincts or behaviorial propensities vis à vis the environment that nonhuman animals have, namely rationality.
Yes, rational thought exist without language but those can not be communicated without a language.
"Signal interpretation" is an example of a rational human activity that may motivate human behqvior in another human being without necessarily being communicated.
Dennis
Dennis Mazur
I should like to remember the studies of languages of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). His recognition was that language is a tool between the percepted world of facts (by the senses) and the world of ideas in the mind of the human being. Not the idea is the beginning of recognition in Humboldt's view, but the spoken language with their expressions and meanings. The syntax of a language can be seen as a kind of mirror of the respective culture where the language is spoken.
Creatures don't have verbal dialect that people would perceive, yet they obviously have discernment and they can unmistakably consider tackling issues without words. The appropriate response must be that pre-verbal idea shows up in the mind as dynamic pictures and physical motivations in light of enthusiastic needs and desires.
For example, when a creature is parched it doesn't believe "I'm parched, I have to discover water." More likely it starts to envision the numerous spots it recollects that it can discover clean water this season, and afterward tries to recall the most ideal approach to arrive to keep away from predators. You truly needn't bother with words to have every one of these contemplations, you just need spatial memory, enthusiastic necessities, and desires of addressing those requirements.
As a side note, if any of the parts of the human cerebrum that frame verbal dialect are harmed because of injury or disease (Broca's zone for discourse creation, Wernicke's region for discourse appreciation), you will incidentally lose the capacity to talk or think in words. This can keep going for a considerable length of time or months or a whole lifetime relying upon the harm. In any case, individuals who briefly lose this capacity will reveal to you that despite the fact that they couldn't think in words or talk, they were as yet ready to consider what to cook for supper, comprehend what individuals were endeavoring to convey to them, recall how to get the chance to get to the store, recollect arrangements, and even sit in front of the TV and comprehend it without verbal setting. This demonstrates discourse is only the tip of the theoretical pyramid for shaping complex musings.
regards
While I waited for my morning tea to brew, I would brush my dog. She learnt this, and every time I put the kettle on, she would wait in the kitchen.
However, she is unable to learn that I do not brush the dog at afternoon tea time. So she associate place with brushing, but is unable to associate time with brushing. She reasons that boiling kettle = brushing, but language is needed to understand time and use it.
I agree with most of the previous answers that dissociate rational thought from language. Perhaps, in the case of laws (in which the form, that is, the way in which the law itself is written is itself substance), this dissociation is not always possible. I would also like to know how the philosophers of the Vienna Circle and Bertrand Russell would have answered this question.
Thought cannot be communicated without language but thought can exist without language
Rational "pertaining to reason; Language, the development of rhetoric and of sophistic reasoning, in which language works and is structured.
Plato, the signification of names, the structure of sentences, and truth and falsehood. Logic, Aristotle and the Stoics, logic and language are perpetually on a common ground. Logos from λέγω, légō, lit. 'I say', a technical term in philosophy beginning with Heraclitus (c. 535 – c. 475 BC), who used the term for a principle of order and knowledge.
To my opinion without Logos, Language, there is no development of logic and the pertaining to reason would remain abstract and confused. The language provides the tool, the mathematical formulation to assemble a rational statement. This is why human evolution and language development coincide in the historic time.
I think that rational thoughts are independent from language. Sometimes I have new ideas while sleeping and then have a problem to translate them into normal language and writing down after waking up.
Very often we get some visual information and its verbal description is also a problem. As we know, a digital image (for sequence even more) has more information than a sequence of words. Some of it is excessive, other (less important) details are never put into words. But if a sequence of images generates some abstract ideas, translation of them into words is even more difficult. That is why some creators prefer to paint a picture or to write music - in this manner a lower fraction of their ideas will be lost (comparing to translation into words).
The rational thought can certainly exist without a supporting structure of the natural language. Based on my own observations, our thoughts represent mainly the relationships between non-linguistic concepts / objects created by the mind. They possess very rich “compositional” relations allowing creation of new structures. This concept is supported by the process of creating new mathematical ideas that occurs outside the linguistic part of the mind. Only later, these new ideas are transformed into specific linguistic expressions, mainly for the purpose of communication. This observation is quite consistent with the concepts of “Language of Though” and “Modular Structure of Mind” introduced by Jerry Fodor.
Dear Kirk MacGregor
YES. It has been shown that much rational thought (and corresponding abilities to make decisions) PRECEDES the language to share it (Piaget and his followers showed a LOT of this). And, there may indeed be other situations/circumstance you cognitively process without language (see --> process --> conclude)(this would be adaptive and efficient in cases). (Emotions may also help, for less need for language.)
The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics. Plato; As mathematics is a language; rational thought ( a reasonable or logical opinion ) without a form of a language cannot exist. Language development coincide with human evolution.
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