> Language serves not only to express thoughts, but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it. It is sometimes maintained that there can be no thought without language, but to this view I cannot assent: I hold that there can be thought, and even true and false belief, without language. But however that may be, it cannot be denied that all fairly elaborate thoughts require words.
> Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits by Bertrand Russell, Section: Part II: Language, Chapter I: The Uses of Language Quote Page 60, Simon and Schuster, New York.
Of course, that would contravene the popular narrative that philosophers are pompous idiots incapable of subtlety.
It’s doubtless to me that thinking happens without intermediary symbols; but it’s also obvious that I can’t think deeply without the waypoints and context symbols provide. I think it is a common sense opinion.
Just a few days ago was "What do you visualize while programming?", and there's a few of us in the comments that, when programming, think symbolically without language: >>41869237