zlacker

You are just redefining symbols (language) as thought. This is semantic nonsense and purely circular reasoning.

>>slashd+(OP)
You're not getting it. The very proposition of discussing cognitive processes as comprehensible without language inherently relies on circular reasoning. The claim that thought occurs without language cannot be falsified. To analyze or describe thought, we must use language, which is the very tool that shapes and defines that thought. The discussion itself becomes impossible if you remove language from the equation, meaning language and thought are co-constituitve.

Just as Gödel showed that no formal system can be both complete and consistent, language as a system cannot fully encapsulate the entirety of cognitive processes without relying on foundational assumptions that it cannot internally validate. Attempting to describe thought without acknowledging this limitation is akin to seeking completeness in an inherently incomplete framework. Without language, the discussion becomes impossible, rendering the initial claim fundamentally flawed.

>>farts_+K1
You are under the false assumption that thought can only be described by language. Why are you constructing this false hierarchy? Furthermore, symbolic constructs are not by definition language. The opposite, really. Language cannot be formed without symbols. Symbols, however, do not need language.

>>slashd+z2
How else can thought be described if not through language? I don't know what you mean by "symbolic constructs." Symbols are the foundation of language—they're not the opposite. There is no sense in which symbols exist outside of at the very least a protolinguistic system. Once you begin to associate sensory data with meaning, you are doing the work of creating language. To analyze or describe cognition, we must use language, which organizes symbols into meaningful constructs. That thought occurs without language is not even wrong per se. It's unfalsifiable, which frankly is worse than being wrong in a scientific context. As Wittgenstein puts it, 'The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.' Without language, discussing thought is impossible, making the claim that thought occurs without language scientifically untenable. It is an attempt to position thought as the transcendental signified.

>>farts_+34
Yes, you need language to describe (discuss) something. But not everything that exists must have a description. Furthermore, meaningful does not require organization.

If you stand outside under the sun, do you have to be able to write the word "sun" in order to feel warm?

>>slashd+s5
You're sidestepping the problem. Feeling warmth is a sensory issue. Connecting the fact that you're feeling warm with the fact that you're in the sun is cognition. In order to do that, you are doing the work of creating language. Sun equals warm.