Would Magnus Carlsen be unable to play chess if he had no words for it? This old post suggests some people don’t have mental imagery at all. If that’s true, these people would probably make some interesting claims about thinking.
Or could he not even be able to understand, say, that a patient was having a heart attack if he did not have the words for it?
I can visualize a “heart attack” in my mind with all the relevant steps involved, no words needed. People (and animals) understand other kinds of phenomenoms they don’t have words for, so I would deduce that it applies to this situation also. Symbols are needed for understanding phenomenoms you’re not directly experiencing, but they don’t have to be words.
So do you have an argument for or against the need for an advanced or specialised vocabulary to be rational? Is it a question that’s too vague, or with too variable an answer?
Specialized vocabulary usually makes thinking and communication more effective by allowing shorthand for complex concepts. This applies to many kinds of thinking, most of it not necessarily rational. You’d probably find correlation, but good luck with the causation part.
I had a complicated point to make about the interplay of vocabulary and simplifying ideas in order to make thinking more clear (and thus perhaps rationality?) but I think I kind of lost that in the post and have made it sound more like “can people think if they don’t have words?”.
I agree with what you’ve written, and I’d say that your last sentence rather answers my (intended) question: correlation may exist, but causation is a lot trickier to pin.
Would Magnus Carlsen be unable to play chess if he had no words for it? This old post suggests some people don’t have mental imagery at all. If that’s true, these people would probably make some interesting claims about thinking.
I can visualize a “heart attack” in my mind with all the relevant steps involved, no words needed. People (and animals) understand other kinds of phenomenoms they don’t have words for, so I would deduce that it applies to this situation also. Symbols are needed for understanding phenomenoms you’re not directly experiencing, but they don’t have to be words.
Specialized vocabulary usually makes thinking and communication more effective by allowing shorthand for complex concepts. This applies to many kinds of thinking, most of it not necessarily rational. You’d probably find correlation, but good luck with the causation part.
I had a complicated point to make about the interplay of vocabulary and simplifying ideas in order to make thinking more clear (and thus perhaps rationality?) but I think I kind of lost that in the post and have made it sound more like “can people think if they don’t have words?”.
I agree with what you’ve written, and I’d say that your last sentence rather answers my (intended) question: correlation may exist, but causation is a lot trickier to pin.