Thought and language

Abstract

It is evident that there is a close connexion between the capacity to use language and the capacities covered by the verb 'to think'. Indeed, some writers have identified thinking with using words: Plato, in the Sophist, coined the aphorisc, " In thinking the soul is talking to itself ". Other writers are not so dogmatic about the relation between thought and language, but still most are of the opinion that there is indeed an intimate relation between the two. Does this commit us to the view that thought and language are one and the same thing, or that thought is a sort of 'inner saying'? Does this relationship exclude the possibility of there being thoughts in a creature which is unable to use language? Can we shear language off and leave mental phenomena intact beneath, or would this also imply that we are removing the mind? These are the sort of questions that I would like to raise and try to answer in this paper. These questions are important not only because the answer to them renders the nature of thinking clearer to us, but also because it throws light on the nature of philosophy itself. We say that philosophy studies the means by which we represent the world, and we say that we represent the world through thoughts. Now if these thoughts are essentially linguistic, then we can study how we represent the world by studying language in its various aspects. And in effect this would be analogous to saying that the philosophy of language is the central issue in philosophy. If however we say that thought and language, although similar, are not one and the same thing, that one cannot be explained in terms of the other, then this would mean that the philosophy of mind is central rather than the philosophy of language. With this I think we can proceed to analyze the problem whether thought is possible in the absence of language.