[HN Gopher] Language is not essential for the cognitive processe...
___________________________________________________________________
Language is not essential for the cognitive processes that underlie
thought
Author : orcul
Score : 108 points
Date : 2024-10-17 12:10 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| For those who can't and don't think in words this is
| unsurprising.
| fsndz wrote:
| absolutely !
| neom wrote:
| How would someone think in words? You mean the words in the
| pictures or...?
| mjochim wrote:
| By "hearing" words, sentences, dialogues in their mind. Just
| like imagining a picture, but audio instead.
| Teever wrote:
| but words, sentences, and dialogues are all features of
| language.
| vivekd wrote:
| I think in words. For me during thought there is a literal
| voice in my putting my thoughts into words.
| BarryMilo wrote:
| Are there really people who don't know about inner
| monologues?
| jerf wrote:
| I have the standard internal monologue many people report,
| but I've never put much stock in the "words are _necessary_
| for thought " because while I think a lot in words, I also
| do a lot of thinking in not-words.
|
| We recently put the project I've been working on for the
| last year out into the field for the first time. As was
| fully expected, some bugs emerged. I needed to solve one of
| them. I designed a system in my head for spawning off child
| processes based on the parent process to do certain
| distinct types of work in a way that gives us access to OS
| process-level controls over the work, and then got about
| halfway through implementing it. Little to none of this
| design involved "words". I can't even say it involved much
| "visualization" either, except maybe in a very loose sense.
| It's hard to describe in words how I didn't use words but
| I've been programming for long enough that I pretty much
| just directly work in system-architecture space for such
| designs, especially relatively small ones like that that
| are just a couple day's work.
|
| Things like pattern language advocates aren't wrong that it
| can still be useful to put such things into words,
| especially for communication purposes, but I know through
| direct personal experience that words are not a _necessary_
| component of even quite complicated thought.
|
| "Subjective experience reports are always tricky, jerf. How
| do you know that you aren't fooling yourself about not
| using words?" A good and reasonable question, to which my
| answer is, I don't even _have_ words for the sort of design
| I was doing. Some, from the aforementioned pattern
| languages, yes, but not in general. So I don 't think I was
| just fooling myself on the grounds that even if I tried to
| serialize what I did directly into English, a
| transliteration rather than a translation, I don't think I
| could. I don't have one.
|
| I'm also not claiming to be special. I don't know the
| percentages but I'm sure many people do this too.
| binary132 wrote:
| Like, at the speed of speech?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Could you imagine the impossibility of riding a bike if you had
| to consciously put words to every action before you did it?
| Razengan wrote:
| Can you _count_ without using a "language"?
|
| Try it now: Tap your hand on the desk randomly. Can you recall
| how many times you did it without "saying" a sequence in your
| head like "1, 2, 3" or "A, B, C" etc?
|
| If yes, how far can you count? With a language it's effectively
| infinite. You could theoretically go up to "1 million 5 hundred
| 43 thousand, 2 hundred and 10" and effortlessly know what comes
| next.
| kachnuv_ocasek wrote:
| Interestingly, I feel like I can "feel" small numbers (up to
| 4 or 5) easier than than thinking about them as objects in a
| language.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| By feel, I can without language or counting, play mostly
| X . . X . . X . . . X . X . . .
|
| and every so often switch out for variations, eg:
| X . . X . . X . X . . . X . . .
|
| or X . . . X . . . . . X . X . . .
|
| but I'm no good for playing polyrhythms, which many other
| people can do, and I believe they must also do so more by
| feel than by counting.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Practice a few polyrhythms, get used to things like:
| X . X X X . X . X X X . A . . A . . A . . A . .
| B . B . B . B . B . B .
|
| and: X . . X . X X X . X X . X . X X . .
| X . X X . . X X . X X . X . . X . X X . . X X . X . . X .
| . X X X X . . X X X X . . X . . X . X X . . X X . X . . X
| . X X . X X . . X X . X . . X X . X . X X . X X X . X . .
| A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . .
| . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . .
| . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . A .
| . . . A . . . . A . . . . A . . . . B . . . . . . B
| . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B .
| . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . .
| . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . . . . . B . . .
| . . . B . . . . . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C
| . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . .
| C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C .
| . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C . . C
| . .
|
| Learn to do them with one limb (or finger) per line, and
| also with all the lines on the same limb (or finger). And
| then suddenly, they'll start to feel intuitive, and
| you'll be able to do them by feel. (It's a bit like
| scales.)
| youoy wrote:
| It's a well known phenomenon! I will drop this link here in
| case you are not familiar with it:
|
| https://www.sciencealert.com/theres-a-big-difference-in-
| how-...
| j_bum wrote:
| This is highly anecdotal, but when I lift weights, I have an
| "intuition" about the number of reps I've performed without
| consciously counting them.
|
| An example of this would be when I'm lifting weights with a
| friend and am lost in the set/focusing on mind-muscle
| connection, and as a result I forget to count my reps. I am
| usually quite accurate when I verify with my lifting partner
| the number of reps done/remaining.
|
| As OP mentioned, many people have _no_ internal speech,
| otherwise known as anendophasia, yet can still do everything
| anyone with an internal dialogue can do.
|
| Similarly for me, I can do "mental object rotation" tasks
| even though I have aphantasia.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _I have an "intuition" about the number of reps I've
| performed without consciously counting them._
|
| This is known as subitising.
| datameta wrote:
| Can you expand on your last sentence? The notion is
| fascinating to me.
| datameta wrote:
| I can remember the sequence of sounds and like a delay line
| repeat that sequence in my head. This becomes easier the more
| distinguishable the taps are or the more of a cadence
| variability there is. But if it is a longer sequence I
| compress it by remembering an analogue like so: doo doo da
| doo da doo da da doo (reminiscent of morse code, or a kind of
| auditory binary). Would we consider this language? I think in
| the colloquial sense no, but it is essentially a machine
| language equivalent.
|
| For context I have both abstract "multimedia" thought
| processes and hypervisor-like internal narrative depending on
| the nature of the experience or task.
| card_zero wrote:
| Do you also have some noise for mathematical operations,
| such as raising a number to a power, and for equals? So doo
| doo da _ugh_ doo doo _feh_ doo doo da doo da doo da da doo?
|
| ...maybe I do this sometimes myself. Remembering the proper
| names of things is effort.
| jwarden wrote:
| I can. But I do this by visualizing the taps as a group. I
| don't have to label them with a number. I can see them in my
| mind, thus recalling the taps. If I tap with any sort of
| rhythm I can see the rhythm in the way they are laid out in
| my mind and this helps with recollection.
|
| If I want to translate this knowledge into a number, I need
| to count the taps I am seeing in my head. At that point I do
| need to think of the word for the number.
|
| I could even do computations on these items in my mind,
| imagine dividing them into two groups for instance, without
| ever having to link them to words until I am ready to do
| something with the result, such as write down the number of
| items in each group.
| nemo wrote:
| Many animals can do some form of counting of small numbers
| where there's no connection to language possible.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| An important note. If you're hearing your voice in your head
| doing this, that's subvocalisation and it's basically just
| saying it out loud, the instruction is still sent to your
| vocal chords
|
| It's the equivalent of <thinking> tags for LLM output.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I don't make a sound or word in my mind but I definitely keep
| track of the number. My thinking is definitely structured and
| there are things in my thoughts but there is no words or
| voice. I also can't see images in my mind either. I've no
| idea what an inner monologue or the minds eye is like. I have
| however over the years found ways to produce these
| experiences in a way of my own. I found for instance some
| rough visualization was helpful in doing multi variate
| calculus but it's very difficult and took a lot of practice.
| I've also been able to simulate language in my mind to help
| me practice difficult conversations but it's really difficult
| and not distinct.
|
| I would note though I have a really difficult time with
| arithmetic and mechanical tasks like counting. Mostly I just
| lose attention. Perhaps an inner voice would help if it
| became something that kept a continuity of thought.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Can you draft a sentence (with all the words precisely
| determined) in your mind before you say it or you write it
| down? Can you "rehearse" saying it without moving your
| tongue or mouth? If yes, that's pretty much an "inner
| voice".
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I can imagine the numbers as figures (I mean that the shape
| of the characters 1, 2 etc), or the patterns on a dice in
| sequence.
|
| This is a parallel stream, because if I count with imagined
| pictures, then I can speak and listen to someone talking
| without it disturbing the process. If I do it with
| subvocalization, then doing other speech/language related
| things would disturb the counting.
| aeonik wrote:
| Wow I've never tried this before, and I feel like this is
| way easier than using words.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| I remember back in school, a language teacher once was trying
| to convey the importance of language. One of his main arguments
| was that we needed words and languages in order to think. I
| still recall my disbelief.
|
| I spent the next few days trying to understand how that process
| worked. I would force myself to think in words and sentences.
| It was incredibly limiting! So slow and lacking in images, in
| abstract relationships between ideas and sensations.
|
| It took me another few years to realise that many people
| actually depend on those structures in order to produce any
| thought and idea.
| truculent wrote:
| I once realised that, for me, subvocalising thoughts was a
| way to keep something "in RAM", while some other thoughts
| went elsewhere, or developed something else. Perhaps slower
| speed helps in that respect?
| bonoboTP wrote:
| I think people are just using the word "think" differently.
| They may have picked up a different meaning for that verb
| than you. For them, thinking == inner vocalization. It's just
| a different definition. They would not call imagining things
| or daydreaming or musing or planning action steps as
| "thinking".
|
| Also, many people simply repeat facts they were told. "We
| need words to think" is simply a phrase this person learned,
| a fact to recite in school settings. It doesn't mean they
| deeply reflected on this statement or compared it with their
| experience.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Right, I think it's less than 50% of people that have an "inner
| voice" - using language to think.
|
| Other animals with at best very limited language, are still
| highly intelligent and capable of reasoning - apes, dogs, rats,
| crows, ...
| fsndz wrote:
| more proof that we need more than LLMs to build LRMs:
| https://www.lycee.ai/blog/drop-o1-preview-try-this-alternati...
| hackboyfly wrote:
| Well it's important to note that this does not mean that our
| language does not play a role in shaping our thoughts.
|
| "You cannot ask a question you that you have no words for"
|
| - Judea Pearl
| m463 wrote:
| <raises eyebrows>
| nurettin wrote:
| Next they will argue that your eyebrows are words.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| My cat asks me to go outside. No english words involved of
| course. She sits and faces the door, meows at it, and paws at
| the knob. Maybe you can argue they are speaking cat when they
| ask.
| sshine wrote:
| I swear my cat says Hao Wan Er haowa'er? when he lacks
| stimulation, which means "Fun?"
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Now I need to learn about how they convey these questions without
| language.
| m463 wrote:
| I like Temple Grandin's "Thinking the Way Animals Do":
|
| https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html
| eth0up wrote:
| Considering that, in 2024, if not a majority, then, still, a vast
| portion of our consciousness is words. Perhaps not for the
| illiterate, but for many, much of our knowledge is through the
| written or spoken word. [Edit: Even a hypothetical person, alone
| and isolated, never having spoken, would still devise internal
| language structures, at least for the external realm. ]
|
| Base consciousness is surely not dependent on language, but I
| suspect base consciousness may be extremely different from what
| one might expect, so much that compared to what we perceive as
| consciousness, might seem something close to death.
| eth0up wrote:
| Well, I'm not sure cognition entirely without language is even
| possible for non larval humans. Language is a natural tendency
| and it arises regardless of documentation, scribblings or
| utterings. It exists whether audible or not. Language itself is
| manifestation of the thinking process that permits it.
|
| And I'll hold to the notion that the complete absence of
| language (and its underlying structure) would resemble death if
| death can be resembled. Perhaps death is only the excoriation
| of thought, cognition and language, with something more
| fundamental persisting.
| bassrattle wrote:
| Is this the death of the Sapir-Whorf theory?
| zorked wrote:
| Sapir-Whorf is not alive.
| xiande04 wrote:
| No. Just because words are not _needed_ for cognitive
| processes, does not mean that people still can and do think in
| language. The properties of that language could then influence
| thought. This is known as the Weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (note
| "hypothesis", not "theory").
| saghm wrote:
| Yep, this pretty accurately describes the way of think. I
| have a pretty heavy inner monologue, but it's not the only
| way I think. I've found that words are the way I "organize"
| my thoughts from muddled general ideas mixed with feelings
| into concise ideas that I can understand and gain insights
| from. I often won't fully grasp the significance of an idea I
| have until I talk it out with someone and find a way to put
| it into words that distill whatever I'm thinking into a more
| minimal form.
|
| Somewhat relatedly, I've started suspecting over the past few
| years that this is why I struggle to multitask or split my
| attention; while I can ruminate on several things at once,
| the "output" of my thinking is bottlenecked by a single
| stream that requires me to focus on exclusively to get a
| anything useful from it. Realizing this has actually helped
| me quite a bit in terms of being more productive because I
| can avoid setting myself up for failure by trying to get too
| much done at once and failing rather than tackling things one
| at a time.
| airstrike wrote:
| https://archive.is/PsUeX
| acosmism wrote:
| now I really want to understand the deep thoughts my cat is
| having
| psychoslave wrote:
| But maybe they exceed human cognition abilities?
| codersfocus wrote:
| While not essential for thought, language is a very important
| tool in shaping and sharing thoughts.
|
| Another related tool is religion (for emotions instead of
| thoughts,) which funnily enough faces the same divergence
| language does.
|
| Right now society that calls itself "secular" simply does not
| understand the role of religion, and its importance in society.
|
| To be clear, I don't belong to any religion, I am saying one
| needs to be invented for people who are currently "secular."
|
| In fact, you have the disorganized aspects of religion already.
| All one needs to spot these are to look at the aspects that
| attempt to systematize or control our feelings. Mass media,
| celebrities for example.
|
| Instead of letting capitalistic forces create a pseudoreligion
| for society, it's better if people come together and organize
| something healthier, intentionally.
| akomtu wrote:
| Materialism is such a religion. It's sciency and emotion-free,
| so it appeals to the secular minds.
| nickelpro wrote:
| As always, barely anyone reads the actual claims in the article
| and we're left with people opining on the title.
|
| The claims here are exceptionally limited. You don't need spoken
| language to do well on cognitive tests, but that has never been a
| subject of debate. Obviously the deaf get on fine without spoken
| language. People suffering from aphasia, but still capable of
| communication via other mechanisms, still do well on cognitive
| tests. Brain scans show you can do sudoku without increasing
| bloodflow to language regions.
|
| This kind of stuff has never really been in debate. You can teach
| plenty of animals to do fine on all sorts of cognitive tasks.
| There's never been a claim that language holds dominion over all
| forms of cognition in totality.
|
| But if you want to discuss the themes present in Proust, you're
| going to be hard pressed to do so without something resembling
| language. This is self-evident. You cannot ask questions or give
| answers for subjects you lack the facilities to describe.
|
| tl;dr: Language's purpose is thought, not all thoughts require
| language
| dse1982 wrote:
| This. Also the question is what the possible complexity of the
| question is that you want to convey. As long as it is rather
| simple it might seem realistic to argue that there is no
| language involved (i would argue this is wrong). But as soon as
| the problems get more complex, the system you need to use to
| communicate this question becomes more and more undeniably a
| form of language (i think about complexity here as things like
| self-referentiality which need sufficiently complex formal
| systems to be expressed - think what godel is about). So this
| part seems more complicated than it is understood. The same
| goes for the brain-imaging argument. As a philosopher I have
| unfortunately seen even accomplished scientists in this field
| follow a surprisingly naive empiricist approach a lot of times
| - which seems to me to be the case here also.
| K0balt wrote:
| A much more interesting hypothesis is that abstract thought
| (thought about things not within the present sensorium) , or
| perhaps all thought, requires the use of symbols or tokens to
| represent the things that are to be considered.
|
| I think this may have been partially substantiated through
| experiments in decoding thoughts with machine sensors.
|
| If this turns out to-not- to be true it would have huge
| implications for AI research.
| rhelz wrote:
| Great point. They even did a bad job of reading the title. The
| title wasn't "Language is not essential for thought", the title
| was "Language is not essential for the cognitive processes *
| _underlying*_ thought. "
|
| We'd better hope that is true, because if we didn't have non-
| linguistic mastery of the cognitive processes _underlying_
| thought it 's hard to see how we could even acquire language in
| the first place.
| ryandv wrote:
| > As always, barely anyone reads the actual claims in the
| article and we're left with people opining on the title
|
| One must ask why this is such a common occurrence on this (and
| almost all other) social media, and conclude that it is because
| the structure of social media itself is rotten and imposes
| selective pressures that only allow certain kinds of content to
| thrive.
|
| The actual paper itself is not readily accessible, and properly
| understanding its claims and conclusions would take substantial
| time and effort - by which point the article has already slid
| off the front page, and all the low-effort single-sentence
| karma grabbers who profit off of simplistic takes that appeal
| to majority groupthink have already occupied all the comment
| space "above the fold."
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| > Language's purpose is thought
|
| Language's purpose - why it arose - is more likely
| communication, primarily external communication. The benefit of
| using language to communicate with yourself via "inner voice" -
| think in terms of words - seems a secondary benefit, especially
| considering that less than 50% of people report doing this.
|
| But certainly language, especially when using a large
| vocabulary of abstract and specialist concepts, does boost
| cognitive abilities - maybe essentially through "chunking",
| using words as "thought macros", and boosting what we're able
| to do with our limited 7+/- item working memory.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Obviously the deaf get on fine without spoken language.
|
| Why the introduction of "spoken?" Sign languages are just as
| expressive as spoken language, and could easily be written.
| _Writing is a sign._
|
| > But if you want to discuss the themes present in Proust,
| you're going to be hard pressed to do so without something
| resembling language. This is self-evident.
|
| And it's also a bad example. Of course you can't discuss the
| use of language without the use of language. You can't discuss
| the backstroke without any awareness of water or swimming,
| either. You can certainly do it without language though, just
| by waving your arms and jumping around.
|
| > Language's purpose is thought
|
| Is it, though? Did you make that case in the preceding
| paragraphs? I'm not going to go out on a limb here and
| alternatively suggest that language's purpose is
| _communication,_ just like the purpose of laughing, crying,
| hugging, or smiling. This is why we normally do it loudly, or
| write it down where other people can see it.
| habitue wrote:
| Language may not be essential for thought, (most of us have the
| experience of an idea occurring to us that we struggle to put
| into words), but language acts as a regularization mechanism on
| thoughts.
|
| Serializing much higher dimensional freeform thoughts into
| language is a very lossy process, and this kinda ensures that
| mostly only the core bits get translated. Think of times when
| someone gets an idea you're trying to convey, but you realize
| they're missing some critical context you forgot to share. It
| takes some activation energy to add that bit of context, so if it
| seems like they mostly get what you're saying, you skip it. Over
| time, transferring ideas from one person to the next, they tend
| towards a very compressed form because language is expensive.
|
| This process also works on your own thoughts. Thinking out loud
| performs a similar role, it compresses the hell out of the
| thought or else it remains inexpressible. Now imagine repeated
| stages of compressing through language, allowing ideas to form
| from that compressed form, and then compressing those ideas in
| turn. It's a bit of a recursive process and language is in the
| middle of it.
| ujikoluk wrote:
| Yes, dimension reduction.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Communication of thought is a whole different question. Either
| way you're making a lot of strong claims without support?
|
| > this kinda ensures that mostly only the core bits get
| translated
|
| The kinda is doing a lot here. Many times the very act of
| trying to communicate a thought colors/corrupts the main point
| and gives only one perspective or a snapshot of the overall
| thought. There's a reason why they say a picture is worth a
| thousand words. Except the mind can conjure much more than a
| static picture. The mind can also hold the idea and the
| exceptions to the idea in one coherent model. For me this can
| be especially apparent when taking psychedelics and finding
| that trying to communicate some thoughts with words requires
| constant babbling to keep refining the last few sentences, ad
| libidum. There are exceptions of course, like for simple ideas.
| habitue wrote:
| > Many times the very act of trying to communicate a thought
| colors/corrupts the main point and gives only one perspective
| or a snapshot of the overall thought. There's a reason why
| they say a picture is worth a thousand words.
|
| Yeah! Sometimes the thought isnt compressible and language
| doesnt help. But a lot of times it is, and it does
| akomtu wrote:
| Imo, that's the essense of reasoning. Limited memory and slow
| communication channels force us to create compact, but
| expressive models of reality. LLMs, on the other hand, have all
| the memory in the world and their model of reality is a piece-
| wise interpolation of the huge training dataset. Why invent
| grammar rules if you can keep the entire dictionary in mind?
| psychoslave wrote:
| >You can ask whether people who have these severe language
| impairments can perform tasks that require thinking. You can ask
| them to solve some math problems or to perform a social reasoning
| test, and all of the instructions, of course, have to be
| nonverbal because they can't understand linguistic information
| anymore. Scientists have a lot of experience working with
| populations that don't have language--studying preverbal infants
| or studying nonhuman animal species. So it's definitely possible
| to convey instructions in a way that's nonverbal. And the key
| finding from this line of work is that there are people with
| severe language impairments who nonetheless seem totally fine on
| all cognitive tasks that we've tested them on so far.
|
| They should start with what is their definition of language. To
| me it's any mean you can use to communicate some information to
| someone else and they generally get a correct inference of what
| kind of representations and responses are expected is the
| definition of a language. Whether it's uttered words, a series of
| gestures, subtle pheromones or a slap in your face, that's all
| languages.
|
| For the same reason I find extremely odd that the hypothesis that
| animals don't have any form of language is even considered as a
| serious claim in introduction.
|
| Anyone can prove anything and its contrary about language if the
| term is given whatever meaning is needed for premises to match
| with the conclusion.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Just as a data point, my guess is that a very small minority of
| English-language speakers would define the term as broadly as
| you do, at least in a context relating the concept to
| analytical thought processes. At the very least, I think most
| people expect that language is used actively, such that
| pheromones wouldn't fall within the definition. (And actually,
| that's reflected when you say language is a means "you can
| _use_ ".) Likewise, a slap in the face certainly can be
| interpreted, but slapping doesn't seem like a _means_ of
| communicating in general--because a slap only communicates one
| thing.
| psychoslave wrote:
| It's also doubtful that thinking about the concept of
| analytical thought processes is something most humans do
| either, at least not in these terms and this perspective.
|
| Should we expect experts in cognitive science exposing their
| view in a scientific publication to stick to the narrowest
| median view of language though? All the more when in the same
| article you quote people like Russell who certainly didn't
| have a naive definition of language when expressing a point
| of view on the matter.
|
| And slapping in general can definitely communicate far more
| than a single thing depending on many parameters. See
| https://www.33rdsquare.com/is-a-slap-disrespectful-a-
| nuanced... for a text exploring some of nuances of the
| meaning it can encompasse. But even a kid can get that slap
| could perfectly have all the potential to create a fully
| doubly articulated language, as The Croods 2 creators funnily
| have put in scene. :D
| throwaway19972 wrote:
| > For the same reason I find extremely odd that the hypothesis
| that animals don't have any form of language is even considered
| as a serious claim in introduction.
|
| I guess I've always just assumed it refers to some feature
| that's uniquely human--notably, recursive grammars.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Not all human languages exhibits recursion though:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language
|
| And recursion as the unique trait for human language
| differentiation is not necessarily completely consensual
| https://omseeth.github.io/blog/2024/recursive_language/
|
| Also, let's recall that in its broader meaning, the
| scientific consensus is that humans are animals and they
| evolved through the same basic mechanism as all other life
| forms that is evolution. So even assuming that evolution made
| some unique language hability emerge in humans, it's most
| likely that they share most language traits with other
| species and that there is more things to learn from them that
| what would be possible if it's assumed they can't have a
| language and thoughts.
| earleybird wrote:
| I'm inclined to believe that of the animals that exhibit
| varying degrees of self awareness, they have mental
| structures isomorphic to a recursive grammar. As such,
| perhaps using a recursive grammar is not distinctly a human
| trait.
| ryandv wrote:
| They do, in the first section of the journal article itself:
|
| > Do any forms of thought--our knowledge of the world and
| ability to reason over these knowledge representations--require
| language (that is, representations and computations that sup-
| port our ability to generate and interpret meaningfully
| structured word sequences)?
|
| Emphasis on "word sequences," to the exclusion of, e.g. body
| language or sign language. They go on to discuss some of the
| brain structures involved in the production and interpretation
| of these word sequences:
|
| > Language production and language understanding are sup-ported
| by an interconnected set of brain areas in the left hemisphere,
| often referred to as the 'language network'.
|
| It is these brain areas that form the basis of their testable
| claims regarding language.
|
| > Anyone can prove anything and its contrary about language if
| the term is given whatever meaning is needed for premises to
| match with the conclusion.
|
| This is why "coming to terms" on the definitions of words and
| what you mean by them should be the first step in any serious
| discussion if you aim to have any hope in hell of communicating
| precisely; it is also why you should be skeptical of political
| actors that insist on redefining the meanings of (especially
| well-known) terms in order to push an agenda. Confusing a term
| with its actual referent is exceedingly commonplace in modern
| day.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| The conclusion implied by the title seems self evident for anyone
| who has seen any (at least) nonhuman mammalian predator.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Or anyone who has done any thinking in their own brain.
| kaiwen1 wrote:
| Here's what Helen Keller had to say about this in _The World I
| Live In_:
|
| "Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived
| in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe
| adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I
| did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or
| desired. I had neither will nor intellect. I was carried along to
| objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I had a mind
| which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction, desire. These two
| facts led those about me to suppose that I willed and thought. I
| can remember all this, not because I knew that it was so, but
| because I have tactual memory. It enables me to remember that I
| never contracted my forehead in the act of thinking. I never
| viewed anything beforehand or chose it. I also recall tactually
| the fact that never in a start of the body or a heart-beat did I
| feel that I loved or cared for anything. My inner life, then, was
| a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or
| anticipation, without wonder or joy or faith.
|
| It was not night--it was not day.
|
| . . . . .
|
| But vacancy absorbing space, And fixedness, without a place;
| There were no stars--no earth--no time-- No check--no change--no
| good--no crime.
|
| My dormant being had no idea of God or immortality, no fear of
| death.
|
| I remember, also through touch, that I had a power of
| association. I felt tactual jars like the stamp of a foot, the
| opening of a window or its closing, the slam of a door. After
| repeatedly smelling rain and feeling the discomfort of wetness, I
| acted like those about me: I ran to shut the window. But that was
| not thought in any sense. It was the same kind of association
| that makes animals take shelter from the rain. From the same
| instinct of aping others, I folded the clothes that came from the
| laundry, and put mine away, fed the turkeys, sewed bead-eyes on
| my doll's face, and did many other things of which I have the
| tactual remembrance. When I wanted anything I liked,--ice-cream,
| for instance, of which I was very fond,--I had a delicious taste
| on my tongue (which, by the way, I never have now), and in my
| hand I felt the turning of the freezer. I made the sign, and my
| mother knew I wanted ice-cream. I "thought" and desired in my
| fingers. If I had made a man, I should certainly have put the
| brain and soul in his finger-tips. From reminiscences like these
| I conclude that it is the opening of the two faculties, freedom
| of will, or choice, and rationality, or the power of thinking
| from one thing to another, which makes it possible to come into
| being first as a child, afterwards as a man.
|
| Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental
| state with another. So I was not conscious of any change or
| process going on in my brain when my teacher began to instruct
| me. I merely felt keen delight in obtaining more easily what I
| wanted by means of the finger motions she taught me. I thought
| only of objects, and only objects I wanted. It was the turning of
| the freezer on a larger scale. When I learned the meaning of "I"
| and "me" and found that I was something, I began to think. Then
| consciousness first existed for me. Thus it was not the sense of
| touch that brought me knowledge. It was the awakening of my soul
| that first rendered my senses their value, their cognizance of
| objects, names, qualities, and properties. Thought made me
| conscious of love, joy, and all the emotions. I was eager to
| know, then to understand, afterward to reflect on what I knew and
| understood, and the blind impetus, which had before driven me
| hither and thither at the dictates of my sensations, vanished
| forever.
|
| I cannot represent more clearly than any one else the gradual and
| subtle changes from first impressions to abstract ideas. But I
| know that my physical ideas, that is, ideas derived from material
| objects, appear to me first an idea similar to those of touch.
| Instantly they pass into intellectual meanings. Afterward the
| meaning finds expression in what is called "inner speech." When I
| was a child, my inner speech was inner spelling. Although I am
| even now frequently caught spelling to myself on my fingers, yet
| I talk to myself, too, with my lips, and it is true that when I
| first learned to speak, my mind discarded the finger-symbols and
| began to articulate. However, when I try to recall what some one
| has said to me, I am conscious of a hand spelling into mine.
|
| It has often been asked what were my earliest impressions of the
| world in which I found myself. But one who thinks at all of his
| first impressions knows what a riddle this is. Our impressions
| grow and change unnoticed, so that what we suppose we thought as
| children may be quite different from what we actually experienced
| in our childhood. I only know that after my education began the
| world which came within my reach was all alive. I spelled to my
| blocks and my dogs. I sympathized with plants when the flowers
| were picked, because I thought it hurt them, and that they
| grieved for their lost blossoms. It was two years before I could
| be made to believe that my dogs did not understand what I said,
| and I always apologized to them when I ran into or stepped on
| them.
|
| As my experiences broadened and deepened, the indeterminate,
| poetic feelings of childhood began to fix themselves in definite
| thoughts. Nature--the world I could touch--was folded and filled
| with myself. I am inclined to believe those philosophers who
| declare that we know nothing but our own feelings and ideas. With
| a little ingenious reasoning one may see in the material world
| simply a mirror, an image of permanent mental sensations. In
| either sphere self-knowledge is the condition and the limit of
| our consciousness. That is why, perhaps, many people know so
| little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They
| look within themselves--and find nothing! Therefore they conclude
| that there is nothing outside themselves, either.
|
| However that may be, I came later to look for an image of my
| emotions and sensations in others. I had to learn the outward
| signs of inward feelings. The start of fear, the suppressed,
| controlled tensity of pain, the beat of happy muscles in others,
| had to be perceived and compared with my own experiences before I
| could trace them back to the intangible soul of another. Groping,
| uncertain, I at last found my identity, and after seeing my
| thoughts and feelings repeated in others, I gradually constructed
| my world of men and of God. As I read and study, I find that this
| is what the rest of the race has done. Man looks within himself
| and in time finds the measure and the meaning of the universe."
| farts_mckensy wrote:
| Stix's claim appears to be unfalsifiable. In scientific and
| philosophical discourse, a proposition must be falsifiable--there
| must be a conceivable empirical test that could potentially
| refute it. This criterion is fundamental for meaningful inquiry.
|
| Several factors contribute to the unfalsifiability of this claim:
|
| Subjectivity of Thought: Thought processes are inherently
| internal and subjective. There is no direct method to observe or
| measure another being's thoughts without imposing interpretative
| frameworks influenced by social and material contexts.
|
| Defining Language and Thought: Language is not merely a
| collection of spoken or written symbols; it is a system of signs
| embedded within social relations and power structures. If we
| broaden the definition of language to include any form of
| symbolic representation or communication--such as gestures,
| images, or neural patterns--then the notion of thought occurring
| without language becomes conceptually incoherent. Thought is
| mediated through these symbols, which are products of historical
| and material developments.
|
| Animal Cognition and Symbolic Systems: Observations of animals
| like chimpanzees engaging in strategic gameplay or crows crafting
| tools demonstrate complex behaviors. Interpreting these actions
| as evidence of thought devoid of language overlooks the
| possibility that animals utilize their own symbolic systems.
| These behaviors reflect interactions with their environment
| mediated by innate or socially learned symbols--a rudimentary
| form of language shaped by their material conditions.
|
| Limitations of Empirical Testing: To empirically verify that
| thought can occur without any form of language would require
| accessing cognitive processes entirely free from symbolic
| mediation. Given the current state of scientific methodologies--
| and considering that all cognitive processes are influenced by
| material and social factors--this is unattainable.
|
| Because of these factors, Stix's claim cannot be empirically
| tested in a way that could potentially falsify it. It resides
| outside the parameters of verifiable inquiry, highlighting the
| importance of recognizing the interplay between language,
| thought, and material conditions.
|
| Cognitive processes and language are deeply intertwined. Language
| arises from collective practice; it both shapes and is shaped by
| the material conditions of the environment. Thought is mediated
| through language, carrying the cognitive imprints of the material
| base. Even in non-human animals, the cognitive abilities we
| observe may be underpinned by forms of symbolic interaction with
| their environment--a reflection of their material engagement with
| the world.
|
| Asserting that language is not essential for thought overlooks
| the fundamental role that social and material conditions play in
| shaping both language and cognition. It fails to account for how
| symbolic systems--integral to language--are embedded in and arise
| from material realities.
|
| Certain forms of thought might appear to occur without human
| language, but this perspective neglects the intrinsic connection
| between cognition, language, and environmental conditiond.
| Reasoning itself can be viewed as a form of internalized language
| --a symbolic system rooted in social and material contexts.
| Recognizing this interdependence is crucial for a comprehensive
| understanding of the nature of thought and the pivotal role
| language plays within it.
| Animats wrote:
| This is an important result.
|
| The actual paper [1] says that functional MRI (which is measuring
| which parts of the brain are active by sensing blood flow)
| indicates that different brain hardware is used for non-language
| and language functions. This has been suspected for years, but
| now there's an experimental result.
|
| What this tells us for AI is that we need something else besides
| LLMs. It's not clear what that something else is. But, as the
| paper mentions, the low-end mammals and the corvids lack language
| but have some substantial problem-solving capability. That's seen
| down at squirrel and crow size, where the brains are tiny. So if
| someone figures out to do this, it will probably take less
| hardware than an LLM.
|
| This is the next big piece we need for AI. No idea how to do
| this, but it's the right question to work on.
|
| [1]
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07522-w.epdf?shar...
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Brain size isn't necessarily a very good correlate of
| intelligence. For example dolphins and elephants have bigger
| brains than humans, and sperm whales have much bigger brains
| (5x by volume). Neanderthals also had bigger brains than modern
| humans, but are not thought to have been more intelligent.
|
| A crow has a small brain, but also has very small neurons, so
| ends up having 1.5B neurons, similar to a dog or some monkeys.
| card_zero wrote:
| Not sure neuron number correlates to smarts, either.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/
|
| There are 100 million in my gut, but it doesn't solve any
| problems that aren't about poop, as far as I know.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n.
| ..
|
| If the suspiciously round number is accurate, this puts the
| human gut somewhere between a golden hamster and ansell's
| mole-rat, and about level with a short-palated fruit bat.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Agreed. It's architecture that matters, although for a
| given brain architecture (e.g. species) there might be
| benefits to scale. mega-brain vs pea-brain.
|
| I was just pointing out that a crow's brain is built on a
| more advanced process node than our own. Smaller
| transistors.
| Animats wrote:
| That makes sense. Birds are very weight-limited, so
| there's evolutionary pressure to keep the mass of the
| control system down.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I suspect there is more going on with your gut neurons then
| you would expect. If nothing else, the vagus nerve I had to
| direct communication link.
|
| I like to think that it is my gut brain that is telling me
| that it's okay to have that ice cream...
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| > What this tells us for AI is that we need something else
| besides LLMs.
|
| Basically we need Multimodal LLM's (terrible naming as it's not
| an LLM then but still).
| Animats wrote:
| I don't know what we need. Nor does anybody else, yet. But we
| know what it has to _do_. Basically what a small mammal or a
| corvid does.
|
| There's been progress. Look at this 2020 work on neural net
| controlled drone acrobatics.[1] That's going in the right
| direction.
|
| [1] https://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/docs/RSS20_Kaufmann.pdf
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| You could say language is just the "communication module"
| but there has got to be another whole underlying interface
| where non-verbal thoughts are modulated/demodulated to
| conform to the language expected to be used when
| communication may or may not be on the agenda.
| bbor wrote:
| Well said! This is a great restatement of the core setup
| of the Chomskian "Generative Grammar" school, and I think
| it's an undeniably productive one. I haven't read this
| researchers full paper, but I would be sad (tho not
| shocked...) if it didn't cite Chomsky up front. Beyond
| your specific point re:interfaces--which I recommend the
| OG _Syntactic Structures_ for more commentary on--he's
| been saying what she's saying here for about half a
| century. He's too humble /empirical to ever say it
| without qualifiers, but IMO the truth is clear when
| viewed holistically: language is a byproduct of
| hierarchical thought, not the progenitor.
|
| This (awesome!) researcher would likely disagree with
| what I've just said based on this early reference:
| In the early 2000s I really was drawn to the hypothesis
| that maybe humans have some special machinery that is
| especially well suited for computing hierarchical
| structures.
|
| ...with the implication that they're not, actually. But I
| think that's an absurd overcorrection for anthropological
| bias -- humans are uniquely capable of a whole host of
| tasks, and the gradation is clearly a qualitative one. No
| ape has ever asked a question, just like no plant has
| ever conceptualized a goal, and no rock has ever computed
| indirect reactions to stimuli.
| slibhb wrote:
| Chomsky is shockingly _un_ humble. I admire him but he's
| a jerk who treats people who disagree with him with
| contempt. It's fun to read him doing this but it's
| uncollegiate (to say the least).
|
| Also, calling "generative grammar" productive seems wrong
| to me. It's been around for half a century -- what tools
| has it produced? At some point theory needs to come into
| contact with empirical reality. As far as I know,
| generative grammar has just never gotten to this point.
| keybored wrote:
| Who has he mistreated?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Is it important? To who? Anyone with half a brain is aware that
| language isn't the only way to think. I can think my way
| through all kinds of things in 3-d space without a single word
| uttered in any internal monologue and I'm not remotely unique -
| this kind of thing is put in all kinds of math and iq'ish like
| tests one takes as a child.
| jebarker wrote:
| > What this tells us for AI is that we need something else
| besides LLMs
|
| Not to over-hype LLMs, but I don't see why this results says
| this. AI doesn't need to do things the same way as evolved
| intelligence has.
| weard_beard wrote:
| To a point. If you drill down this far into the fundamentals
| of cognition you begin to define it. Otherwise you may as
| well call a cantaloupe sentient
| jebarker wrote:
| I don't think anyone defines AI as "doing the thing that
| biological brains do" though, we define it in terms of
| capabilities of the system.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It doesn't need to, but evolved intelligence is the only
| intelligence we know of.
|
| Similar reason we look for markers of Earth-based life on
| alien planets: it's the only example we've got of it
| existing.
| theptip wrote:
| LLM as a term is becoming quite broad; a multi-modal
| transformer-based model with function calling / ReAct
| finetuning still gets called an LLM, but this scaffolding might
| be all that's needed.
|
| I'd be extremely surprised if AI recapitulates the same
| developmental path as humans did; evolution vs. next-token
| prediction on an existing corpus are completely different
| objective functions and loss landscapes.
| yapyap wrote:
| Lol, it's insane how some people will track everything back to
| AI
| yarg wrote:
| Is this not obvious?
|
| Language is a very poor substitute for freely flowing electrical
| information - it is evolved to compensate for the bottlenecks to
| external communication - bottlenecks that are lacking an internal
| analogue.
|
| It's also a highly advanced feature - something as heavily
| optiimised as evolved life would not allow something as vital as
| cognition to be hampered by a lack of means for high fidelity
| external expression.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| It is not at all obvious that "freely flowing electrical
| information" isn't just language in a different medium, much
| the same as video on a cassette tape.
| yarg wrote:
| Yes it is.
|
| Language is designed to be expressible with low fidelity
| vibrating strings - it is very clear that the available
| bandwidth is in the order of bytes per second.
|
| Verses a fucking neural network with ~100 billion neurons.
|
| Come on man, seriously - the two communication modalities are
| completely incomparable.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Versus a fucking phone network with ~10 billion active
| numbers.
|
| Come on man, seriously - the two communication modalities
| are completely incomparable.
|
| Clearly the information traveling around on the phone
| network couldn't possibly be the same as the low bandwidth
| vibrating strings used in face to face communication.
| Obviously.
| yarg wrote:
| There's a major difference - the phone network takes in
| prerequisite constraints on the nature of the information
| that it's encoding; it is forced by its functionality to
| be a reflection of spoken language.
|
| The internal communications of the mind have no need for
| such constraints (and evolved hundreds of millions of
| years beforehand).
|
| Anyway, I don't know what you were actually trying to
| argue here: you just built a simulated brain out of
| people, and the massively multi-agent distributed nature
| of the language of that machine is (emergently)
| incomparable with vocalised language.
| psychoslave wrote:
| >And in fact, most of the things that you probably learned about
| the world, you learned through language and not through direct
| experience with the world.
|
| Most things we know, we are probably not aware of. And for most
| of us, direct experience of everything that surrounds us in the
| world certainly exceeds by several order of magnitude the best
| bandwidth we can ever dream to achieve through any human
| language.
|
| Ok, there are no actual data to back this, but authors of the
| article don't have anything solid either to back such a bold
| statement, from what is presented in the article.
|
| If most of what we know of the world would mostly be things we
| were told, it would obviously be mostly a large amount of phatic
| noises, lies and clueless random assertions that we would have no
| mean to distinguish from the few stable credible elements
| inferable by comparing with a far more larger corpus of self
| experiments with realty.
| dang wrote:
| All: please don't comment based on your first response to an
| inevitably shallow title. That leads to generic discussion, which
| we're trying to avoid on HN. _Specific_ discussion of what 's new
| or different in an article is a much better basis for interesting
| conversation.
|
| Since we all have language and opinions about it, the risk of
| genericness is high with a title like this. It's like this with
| threads about other universal topics too, such as food or health.
| WiSaGaN wrote:
| I think we need to distinguish between the language e.g. the
| native language the person uses like English and the concept of
| language. Your information exchanging binary messages over PCI
| bus is also part of a language.
| jostmey wrote:
| Progress with LLMs would seem to support the title. The language
| abilities of LLMs does not seem to lead to higher thought, so
| there must be additional processes that are required for higher
| thought or process that don't depend on language
| fjfaase wrote:
| As some who has a dis-harmonic intelligence profile, this has
| been obvious for a very long time. In the family of my mother
| there are several individuals struggling with language while
| excelling in the field of exact sciences. I very strongly suspect
| that my non-verbal (performal) IQ is much higher (around 130)
| than my verbal IQ (around 100). I have struggled my whole life to
| express my ideas with language. I consider myself an abstract
| visual thinker. I do not think in pictures, but in abstract
| structures. During my life, I have met several people, especially
| among software engineers, who seem to be similar to me. I also
| feel that people who are strong verbal thinkers have the greatest
| resistance against idea that language is not essential for higher
| cognitive processes.
| eliaspro wrote:
| Growing up, I never used words or even sentences for thinking.
|
| The abstract visualizations I could build in my mind where
| comparable to semi-transparent buildings that I could freely
| spin, navigate and bend to connect relations.
|
| In my mid-twenties, someone introduced me to the concept of
| people using words for mental processes, which was completely
| foreign to me up to this point.
|
| For some reason, this made my brain move more and more towards
| this language-based model and at the same time, I felt like I
| was losing the capacity for complex abstract thoughts.
|
| Still to this day I (unsuccessfully) try to revive this and
| unlearn the language in my head, which feels like it imposes a
| huge barrier and limits my mental capacity to the capabilities
| of what the language my brain uses at the given time (mostly
| EN, partially DE) allows to express.
| mmooss wrote:
| A concept in every human culture - i.e., created in every
| culture, not passed from one to some others - is _mentalese_ [0]:
| "A universal non-verbal system of concepts, etc., conceived of as
| an innate representational system resembling language, which is
| the medium of thought and underlies the ability to learn and use
| a language." [1]
|
| If you look up 'mentalese' you can find a bunch written about it.
| There's an in-depth article by Daniel Gregory and Peter Langland-
| Hassan, in the incredible Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on
| _Inner Speech_ (admittedly, I 'm taking a leap to think they mean
| precisely the same thing). [2]
|
| [0] Steven Pinker, _The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human
| Nature_ (2002)
|
| [1] Oxford English Dictionary
|
| [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/inner-speech/
| andai wrote:
| When I was 13 or so, a friend asked me, "So, you speak three
| languages. Which one do you think in?" and the question left me
| speechless, because until that moment I hadn't considered that
| people think in words. It seemed a very inefficient way to go
| about things!
|
| Much later, I did begin to think mostly in words, and (perhaps
| for unrelated reasons?) my thinking became much less efficient.
|
| Also related, I experienced temporarily enhanced cognition while
| under the influence of entheogens. My thoughts, which normally
| fade within seconds, became stretched out, so that I could stack
| up to 7 layers of thought on top of each other and examine them
| simultaneously.
|
| I remember feeling greatly diminished, mentally, once that
| ability went away.
| aniijbod wrote:
| Thought and language are intertwined in ways we don't fully
| grasp. The fact that certain cognitive tasks, like comprehension,
| can proceed without engaging traditional language-related brain
| regions doesn't mean thought doesn't use language--it just means
| we might not yet understand how it does. Thought could employ
| other forms of linguistic-like processes that Fedorenko's
| experiments, or even current brain-imaging techniques, fail to
| capture.
|
| There could be functional redundancies or alternative systems at
| play that we haven't identified, systems that allow thought to
| access linguistic capabilities even when the specialized language
| areas are offline or unnecessary. The question of what "language
| in thought" looks like remains open, particularly in tasks
| requiring comprehension. This underscores the need for further
| exploration into how thought operates and what role, if any,
| latent or alternative linguistic functionalities play when
| conventional language regions aren't active.
|
| In short, we may have a good understanding of language in
| isolation, but not necessarily in its broader role within the
| cognitive architecture that governs thought, comprehension, and
| meaning-making.
| joelignaatius wrote:
| Is this the part where someone will attempt to have me poisoned
| so I can't hold an interior dialog anymore and take notes? And if
| I say anything this will definitely happen?
|
| You are now aware that just about every rat model described on
| pubmed is just an experiment done on someone the mafia doesn't
| like.
|
| Look up mellowsadistic on tumblr. Compare and contrast the number
| of articles about autism with hackernews and metafilter. If this
| is about someone else I don't care. I just don't want to be
| poisoned and tortured anymore.
|
| Everyone around me is hellbent on making the case that
| civilization isn't worth it because they want to play cowboys and
| indians and use the poor for medical experiments. How about not
| doing that.
|
| Language is my favorite thing. And I'm having everyone around me
| act psychotic on purpose while I'm being gaslit and drugged. This
| is in San Francisco. It's such a shit show. They're just all
| assholes. If I ever have any power or authority in any way
| whatsoever I'm just going to mail everyone in California a letter
| that says "you have the society you deserve" and a nickel. You're
| all assholes that torture people and you deserve each other.
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