Human speech does indeed urge the mind to foresight and aftersight, but only up to a point, and in my world that is not very far compared with information taken into the brain visually. The latter is the main channel for creation of memory and thought, by conversion of images in the form of stored holographic structures which are capable of being reinvoked given sufficient stimulus by later experience. Apologies for my somewhat technical approach to this interesintg statement by Elliot, but I wrote a paper in November 2019 (attached) which seems to be a little relevant to his statement. It is a bone of conetention with me how language is inadequate to convey undersanding of the way in which the minds of tohers's work in the accurate transmission of information. Unfortunately, this is one of the most convenient means we have currently at our disposal for transmission of understanding, one to another, but this will change when we know more about the operation of mind and memory, on which subject I have been toiling for far too long.

Nick

I like Nick's answer, but was hoping for an answer from a more traditional evolution of language and its function specialist. I still am.

My uneducated feeling is that the individual (not necessarily human) without language will still use memory to guide future action as a matter of basic survival. A group with a common language will be able to form a collective memory (that some members may dissent from) and a collective plan for the future (that some...) which is what we see everywhere in human society. I feel that this is compatible with Nick's answer, and that Eliot is indeed only partly right.

Nicholas Greaves

This is an excellent piece on the mind and the evolution language: http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/the-kekul-problem