It's clearly possible to have very abstract & long-running thoughts without language. But these thoughts seem impossible to store & recall.
Language as a database for thinking: every sentence a key to access a previous thought path, to ground thinking in a quasi-physical space
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Clearly if you want to recall a thought, you need to associate it with a "key" that's readily available to your consciousness.
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The generalization of such a key-value system: could it be language? A system not for thinking, but to store and recall thought
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@fchollet That's definitely not what language does. It is the key for that treasure chest, though. But not the storage.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Then would knowing more than one langauge make you smarter as it increase the number of "recognizable" keys?
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It's not a key, but lossy serialization. Allows transfer of information to other people (keys don't) including future-self after forgetting.
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Language is a marvelous skill for communication, to others *and to oneself*. But don't confuse the medium for the message. Complex thought..
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..is there with or without language. Even long-term, abstract thought. Since we work with text and lang so much, it's easy to focus on. ...
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There was a Ted talk related to this. About what language does to a child's mind. Vocabulary increase changed brain/thought structure.
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Corollary: an invention without a new name is bound to not fully realize it's potential. Beneficial to invent a new name first.
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