I agree that language tends to play a massive role in how we perceive our world, and that our subconscious minds utilize language to a high degree. However, I think it’s possible to have a thought without words, on both the conscious and subconscious levels. I think a lot of it just boils down to how you define a thought. If the word “thought” is already automatically tied to words for you, then under that definition it would obviously be true that we cannot think without words. However, I think the question you’re really meaning to ask is ‘what would the conscious experience be like without thoughts?’. Meditation can help to answer that question. If you or anyone else reading this hasn’t tried it out yet, give it a go! You might have to be persistent though. For me it’s also about imagination. I do all sorts of neat things in my mind that I could never communicate to you.

I agree that language can be limiting but I think it can also be an enabling factor. It’s mostly just a tool for communicating and sharing. Although I’m already kind of contradicting myself (since I already agreed language helps define our reality), I’m just trying to say that I don’t think it’s an intentional conspiracy, nor do I think it would make a good tool for controlling people, because it could backfire easily if the people you were trying to suppress managed to use it to their ends. Despite the fact that practices like book burning or internet censorship limit or distort our perception of our world by controlling language, I still think individuals have more power than they would if they couldn’t use words.

Also, in response to Mariam’s post: you are still basically using words if you go around pairing a new set of random sounds with all the objects you know. Even if you think your newborn words don’t have a map of cognitively associated terms with them, they actually kind of do by a sort of transitive property because your pre-existing language serves to delineate what IS a distinct object, and therefore what needs a new sound. I’m sure it’s a fun exercise and it makes you feel light like you said, but I would suggest that if you really want to free your mind, you have to stop seeing the distinctions among objects somehow. The only way I can think of for doing this is meditation.

I agree that language tends to play a massive role in how we perceive our world, and that our subconscious minds utilize language to a high degree. However, I think it’s possible to have a thought without words, on both the conscious and subconscious levels. I think a lot of it just boils down to how you define a thought. If the word “thought” is already automatically tied to words for you, then under that definition it would obviously be true that we cannot think without words. However, I think the question you’re really meaning to ask is ‘what would the conscious experience be like without thoughts?’. Meditation can help to answer that question. If you or anyone else reading this hasn’t tried it out yet, give it a go! You might have to be persistent though. For me it’s also about imagination. I do all sorts of neat things in my mind that I could never communicate to you.

I agree that language can be limiting but I think it can also be an enabling factor. It’s mostly just a tool for communicating and sharing. Although I’m already kind of contradicting myself (since I already agreed language helps define our reality), I’m just trying to say that I don’t think it’s an intentional conspiracy, nor do I think it would make a good tool for controlling people, because it could backfire easily if the people you were trying to suppress managed to use it to their ends. Despite the fact that practices like book burning or internet censorship limit or distort our perception of our world by controlling language, I still think individuals have more power than they would if they couldn’t use words.

Also, in response to Mariam’s post: you are still basically using words if you go around pairing a new set of random sounds with all the objects you know. Even if you think your newborn words don’t have a map of cognitively associated terms with them, they actually kind of do by a sort of transitive property because your pre-existing language serves to delineate what IS a distinct object, and therefore what needs a new sound. I’m sure it’s a fun exercise and it makes you feel light like you said, but I would suggest that if you really want to free your mind, you have to stop seeing the distinctions among objects somehow. The only way I can think of for doing this is meditation.