Weird thought.

Get some help.

What about humans in the past?

Lame joke.

Yup. That's what I've come to.

What kind of language?

 

Babies can think, and they don't know a language. I think that without communication, we act primarily on instinct, although no one will ever really know.

 

Babies have a bigger notion of language than you think.

 

There is absolutely no reason why animals don't have a language.

Thinking without words is interesting though, if I really concentrate I can picture objects in my mind.

 

Not quite.

While not proven, this study has shown that babies cry in different languages from one another, primarily due to the language spoken by their mothers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8346058.stm

That whole area of science is very new, but there have been a few interesting discoveries.

 

Exactly -->

 

What about crows... they communicate through noticable noises. I wonder if crows think like they sound out loud :S?

 

Very interesting.

I was looking for these kinds of responses.

 

Image association. Subconsciously you will associate various images with various things without thinking using language. However, once you begin to think about a language it is impossible to think without a language until you forget that thought. See the White Bear Phenomenon; if i tell you not to think about a white polar bear, what do you immediately think about?

 

^ Swan is a person of science! hence her being an athiest :]
But yeah, I think it's just pure instinct writen on our DNA. For example, how does an ant think? It's brain is probably microscopic yet it hunts for food all the time and communicates with it's own kind, it scurries as fast as it can if there is danger and it knows where it's going all the time and if you put a stick between it, it will notice there is an obstacle in the way and try to find a way around it. I don't think a brain of that size can do all that.

 

^^ He took that first sentence out of my mouth.

 

Ignore the people who are giving you crap for this begin a dumb question. You actually pose a relay good question.

It is difficult to try and put together coherent thought with out the use of a preset language, for humans at least. You see language is abstract. A word is nothing more than a sound that two people agree to have a meaning. This means that animals can actually communicate in other ways that just human-like voice/words. Gestures and smell are also fair game. If you accept this theory you can than amuse that instead of thinking with words an animal can visualize gestures or ponder smells.

This is at least my theory on it. I'm an anthropology major and i have long thought about this when studying chimp communication and behavior.

 

You pose a great question, so don't that people are giving you crap for asking this. they just aren't reading your entire post.

You have to remember that language is abstract. A word, in human terms, is nothing more than a sound that two or more people agree to have meaning. Since this sound is abstract it can then be replaced by anything but a sound to have a new or the same meaning. Thus meaning (communication) is the essence of language. Animals although they do not speak like you and i do have recognizable gestures and smells. Instead of using words when an animal is thinking it could be visualizing gestures or thinking about smells.

I hope this answers your question. I'm an anthropology major and i have soften seen this type of behavior in chimps. The sit there in the middle of their enclosure and have an inquisitive look on their face. After some time the take action and preform what they were thinking about.

 

Surely thought had to have existed for someone to think that it is a good idea to associate sounds with things.

 

Thank you buddy, but still.
1) How do they think of adjectives? e.g. that is good.
2) What about babies?
3) Is that the reason they are less smart, to some degree, than humans?