Thinking Using Language

There are different ways a person could express their thoughts within their own mind.  Perhaps they reason things out with no specific imagery, sounds, or memories in mind, just an immediate grasp of concepts.  Perhaps they think by visualizing concepts and their thoughts about those concepts, with mental images reflecting their natural thought processes.  Another possibility is that they, as many people seem to do from time to time, think by using words or even speaking full sentences in their head.  Someone could use one, multiple, or all of these approaches to thinking even if they have never dissected just what makes them different.  While it is easier for some people to realize that thinking without imagery is possible, it is less common for people to admit that words do not confine or structure all thoughts.

This equating of words to thoughts themselves, as if there is no difference, conflicts with basic facts about logic and phenomenology.  For example, a person can switch between purely conceptual thoughts and mental self-dialogue using words on a regular basis, going from one to the other throughout a single day intentionally or by developed habit.  Even if someone had transitioned from thinking in a more abtract sense in terms of concepts or mental imagery to almost exclusively thinking using words, it would not be impossible to reverse this, nor would this mean words have supplanted conceptual reflection.  After all, words only have linguistic meaning when there is an intended concept behind them, even if that concept is vague or the concept of nothingness.

Thus, even in cases where a person does happen to think mostly by using language to speak to their own mind, it is never because of some special necessity of language for introspection or general thought.  It would have only become a habit by choice or something the individual slipped into by happenstance.  A grasp of the laws of logic, intentionality, and the capacity for introspection do not hinge on whether a person has ever even been introduced to language.  Each of these things is present even when someone thinks linguistically instead of thinking in various ways that happen to sometimes involve language (or just entirely in other ways).

All the same, language can be a useful tool for processing thoughts, especially if those thoughts are specifically supposed to be communicated to others verbally or in writing at some point in the future.  Language is still never the foundation of thought or the thing by which people grasp the laws of logic themselves.  This could never be the case because the opposite is necessarily true.  It is the other way around.  The laws of logic allow people to reason and understand experiences and thinking is used to associate words and ideas.  Words can be part of thinking processes, but it is always only because someone took a pre-existing grasp of reason and at least some concepts and applied words to the thoughts.