Noam Chomsky - Thought Without Language

language often falls short for many of us and we sometimes refer to foreign language to try to explain something why is it that my thinking process or my experiential process cannot be articulated with language where where is that disconnect well you know each language has first of all I think all together I think all of us know that language do does not give us the full capacity maybe anywhere near the capacity to express what we're thinking feeling U hoping for you know whatever there's an awful lot of thought that goes on that just isn't doesn't

come out the mouth you know and probably can't I mean when you introspect you you can see this so for example is a topic that hasn't been studied but should people are talking to themselves all the time you can't prevent yourself from talking to yourself actually I don't know if that's true of signers the signers sign to themselves all the time all the time yeah okay but seen it you've seen it well you just can't prevent yourself from doing it it takes a tremendous Act of will now if you pay attention at least when I

pay attention to what I think I'm doing it is externalized language like I can tell whether two words rhyme but I think it's fragments I mean at least what I think I'm doing is sort of fragments come to mind you know a word you know another word and all of a sudden I know exactly what the thought is and I can express it well if that's true that means that the thinking is going on the bits of externalized language are kind of you know spurring you to express it and then you can express whatever it

is you're thinking but even with all of that there's a lot of stuff you just can't express that's why we you know people write poems and um that's why we have literature and art and music and all sorts of other things and that tell does something but not enough as for looking at other languages it's some I me there are sometimes Concepts that do have a kind of like the mo you know the right word it happens like that happens to be in another language it doesn't have be an Express of English and there are

things like that you know Shodan Freud you know anst and stuff like that so there are cases where some other language just happens to have the concept that you're looking for uh but there are plenty of cases where at least my feeling is where no language does and we just can't begin to exhaust the content of our thoughts feelings emotions and so on I think everybody knows this from their own experience it's not studied much and one of the reasons it's not stud studied is because of the pervasiveness of certain dogmas like the kinds I

mentioned that nothing can be going on unless you're conscious of it or at least you can become conscious of it that's a very deep-seated conviction uh in philosophy and psychology I mean I've looked maybe some of you know better but I can find almost nothing in the history of thought that raised the question that there are unconscious thoughts and inally that includes Freud uh as far on this debate about this but if you far as I read Freud uh he I think when he talks about the unconscious I don't think he means by it inaccessible

to Consciousness in fact the whole technique of psychoanalysis wouldn't make sense on that assumption uh so it's as if it's un it's there somehow and you can bring it to Consciousness but the idea that there's something that the stuff going on that is completely uncons ious that's rarely discussed I me there's some in Yung there's some in Vio but not much and I suspect that this uh Bears on current work that's being done like there was some very interesting work that came out recently some of you will remind me I forgot the name of the

experimenter uh which was all publicized all over the place uh someone found that U before you make a decision let's say to lift your hand uh there's something going on in the motor cortex that would be connected with lifting your hand I forget who the guy was who did this this was interpreted all over the place as being an argument against freedom of will it isn't that at all all it's saying is that decisions are unconscious you know so you make a decision before it becomes conscious already something's going on so the problems all the

problems remain exactly as they were but you learn something you should have guessed anyhow that things are happening that just aren't accessible to Consciousness why why should they be any more than the rigidity principle is yeah