I was having lunch with my partnered colleague and a straight question: "In which language do you think?” had kept me paused for certain moments and left me pondering as it created a doubt in my mind. I went on to ask myself another question, does thought need language?
Language is mere medium to communicate. It is a set of symbol that is being agreed upon by two parties to express and communicate. Thus it is actually an abstraction to another set of people. It is an abstraction to a person until he instantiate himself to be a member of that group. Now what he is doing is actually agreeing to learn or understand their medium.
While thought on other hand is a process in which a human mind operates or functions to attain desired objective. I had put my initial thoughts but he without disagreeing tried to indoctrinate his ideas with examples. My mind was incertitude another idea of "Chicken first or Egg", resembling similar dubiety had come up in my mind. Well the former was certainly easier to answer, I felt.
I tried to dig in to the philosophy of genesis of human thought, although I had something really important to complete as a commitment, and found that this subject has been in debate as early as time of human civilization came into being. Interestingly medical science has been researching on this subject and has many theories. One of them is based on the MRI study of blood circulation in brain. The MRI scan of brain under different stimuli shows that thought generates in the portion of brain where blood flow is maximum.
Another theory which is even more interesting is study of neuron. According to it; these special cells in brain are cause of entire thought process. When there is large number of neurons active it is indication of some thought process. If neurons are hyper-active and uncontrolled the thought process is aggressive which is what was indicated by Lord Krishna as उत्तेजना'uttejana' while he was educating Arjuna, didn’t I say early days. On contrary when neurons are inert we go into trance called as संयम‘sanyam’. While we are awake there are many mundane thoughts that is always in our mind. Though there are debates over the neuron readings as the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) used for study emits an EMI (Electro-Magnetic Induction) which destroy neurons. I leave experts to ponder over it as I was feeling comfortable of my initial thoughts.
The next day another table of turn and I immediately took opportunity to explain my thoughts. I was feeling great as I continued speaking and I finished in style. "…… A new born baby does not know a language but they do think. Language is mere mode and just an aide to thought". Here I was caught again and restaurant retainer did not help my cause either. He served the soup. My fellow mate started there, he exclaimed 'the moment I touch this soup the words that come to my mind is "aae toh gorom", I THINNK IN BENGALI!!!’ I with extreme honesty tried this exercise and failed to get any assistance by all the language I knew, it was only my mind indicating that soup was hot. There was silence for few minutes as I had no answer. He interrogated further, I replied back, I think.., 'I THINK IN ENGLISH, HINDI, MAITHILI and MARATHI!!!'
2 comments:
I will like to distinguish between thought and feeling. You can feel without language but to think you need a language. To give identity to your feeling is putting it in words or language.
Language is not just a medium of expression but a string that binds together your feelings and leads to a conclusion called thoughts.
All languages are not similarly equiped to express all feelings. So there are manythings that you can express in one language but not in other. And when you think on lines of those things actually you think in that language only.
Unless feelings are named they cannot become thinking and naming happens in one language.
hmm.. nice effort. From my perspective, thought and feeling are more or less similar entities. Ever experienced a situation where you know you are sad/happy, but you have no reason. You dig your brain for reason, but no answer. But you can COMPREHEND (mark the word used) that you are sad/happy as your brain is logically advanced enough to convey. Take the case of a child. He knows no language and his brain isn't advance enough. So he likes/dislikes some stuff but does not know that this is what is happiness/sadness.
So for sure, thoughts need no language but to express that, you need a language. You decide on something and reason with yourself, these things happen automatically as brain is trained to handle such things. But when you put it in more concrete form, like on pare, or to talk to someone, thats when u need a language.
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