WORDS, CONCEPTS, AND THINKING

By: Alberto, Mary Grace

INTRODUCTION:
Human beings are born with a curious mind. We tend to question simple things
and later on, discovered that it contains a complex explanation that is beyond of our
imagination. People always ask which comes first, the chicken or the egg. This debate is
still open for discussion nowadays. It is easy to wonder which comes first but it is hard
to prove or explain it to the public. Just like this debate, many researchers (from
different fields) are also arguing for centuries until up now on which process comes first
or shapes the other, the language or the thought. In this section we discuss two
opposing views: the first, linguistic relativity, is that lexicalized concepts restrict
possible ways of thinking; the second, the language of thought hypothesis,
maintains that thinking and speaking, while related, involve distinct levels of
representation. There are strong and weak versions of both of these positions, but we
will for clarity outline fairly strong versions.
DISCUSSION:

 LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY

 Also known as Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

 Introduced by American Linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf.
 This proposal describes the idea that language influences the perceptions
and thoughts of people, thus affecting their behavior.
 Sapir proposed the view that the particular language we speak conditions our
conceptualization of the world. He elaborated that “social reality” is guide by
language and no two languages are ever sufficiently the same as being
considered as representing the identical social reality.
 Whorf strengthened the link between language and thought. He stated that our
perception of the world is determined by our linguistic and cultural background.
He also believed that meanings derived from grammatical systems (e.g. notions
of number and space in nouns, or aspect and tense in verbs) were even stronger
determinants of thought. The idea is that speakers can reflect on word meanings
but grammatical systems are largely unavailable to conscious reflection.
 A commonly cited example of linguistic relativity is the example of how Inuit
Eskimos describe snow. In English, there is only one word for snow, but in the
Inuit language, many words are used to describe snow: “wet snow,” “clinging
snow,” “frosty snow,” and so on.
 LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT HYPOTHESIS

 Introduced by  Jerry Fodor in his 1975 book The Language of Thought, and

further elaborated and defended in a series of works by Fodor and several
collaborators.
 The language of thought hypothesis (LOTH) proposes that thinking occurs in a
mental language. Often called Mentalese, the mental language resembles
spoken language in several key respects: it contains words that can combine into
sentences; the words and sentences are meaningful, and each sentence’s
meaning depends systematically upon the meanings of its component words and
the way those words are combined.
 There are two main types of arguments that support this view. The first one is
that there is evidence of thinking without language, and the second is that
linguistic analysis has shown us that language underspecifies meaning .
 Steven Pinker, a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist and linguist,
provides shreds of evidence for the first type of argument. He recounts the
various reports of artists and scientists who claim that their creativity sometimes
derives from ideas that are non-linguistic images. There is also evidence from
psychological experiments of visual thinking: subjects seem able to manipulate
images mentally, rotating them, scanning them, zooming in and out, and so on,
exhibiting a variety of mental processes which do not seem to involve language.
 For the second type of argument, there is some indirect support that emerges
from the characteristic view of the communication of meaning that has emerged
from research in semantics and pragmatics. It has become clear that meaning is
richer than language at both ends, so to speak, of the communication process.
 One natural extension of this view is the proposal that everybody’s Mentalese is
roughly the same, that is, that the language of thought is universal.

 THOUGHT AND REALITY

If we leave this question of the relation between words and thinking, for the time
being, we might ask whether semanticists must also consider questions of the
relationship between thought and reality. According to Stephen Richards, the reality
is a projection of your thoughts or the things you habitually think about. To fully
face and understand reality, first, we must accept it the way it is when we need to
start changing our thoughts because it all starts with a thought. Our thoughts
become our words; our words become our actions; our actions become our habits,
and our habits become our character, and in essence, our character is our reality.
In summary, although thought influences reality and vice versa, the key is to be
conscious of our thoughts always.  For when our thoughts are conscious and
positive, we can then create the reality that we truly want.
CONCLUSION:
We can say that the bond between words and thought is simple yet strong.
Thought is an idea or information produce by thinking while language is an expression
of ideas through spoken, signed, or written symbols. Both of them influence each other
and can't function without the help of another.

REFERENCES:
Saeed, J. (2006). Semantics: Fourth Edition. Retrieved from: semantics-4th-ed.pdf
Linguistic Relativity. (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_leading-
with-cultural-intelligence/s08-03-linguistic-relativity.html#:~:text=A%20commonly
%20cited%20example%20of,snow%2C%E2%80%9D%20and%20so%20on.
Rescorla, M. (2019). The Language of Thought Hypothesis. Retrieved from:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/language-thought/#:~:text=For%20example%2C
%20there%20is%20a,means%20that%20whales%20are%20mammals.
Adams, A. (2014, December 22). Power Tools: Thoughts vs. Reality. Retrieved from:
https://coachcampus.com/coach-portfolios/power-tools/irene-adams-thought-vs-
reality/#:~:text=The%20difference%20between%20our%20THOUGHTS,we%20put
%20into%20our%20thoughts.&text=Just%20as%20thought%20influences
%20reality,THOUGHT%20%E2%80%93%20REALITY
%20%E2%80%93%20THOUGHT).