Doesn't hellen keller provide a counterexample? She seemed to imply pretty strongly that before acquisition of language she operated more on stimulus and bodily perception rather than higher-level thought.
It's clear humans have several networks working together. Some Mathematicians report they 'see' the solution, these rely on a visual network *. Others report they prefer to do math symbolically (relying on the language network?).
Perhaps there are also multiple human paths to higher-level thought, with Keller (who lost her sight) using the language facility while others don't have to.
* Given Box 1 contents, the article authors seem unaware of the research on this? e.g.
No, if i recall the section in her autobiography, specifically it was being taught the concept of "i" / "me" that did it.
Up until that point language was just an extension of what she already knew, it was the learning of being other that did the trick. Being blind and deaf would certainly make it hard to draw a distinction between the self and the world, and while languaged helped her get that concept under wraps, i dont think it's strictly speaking required. Just one of many avenues towards.
But language is also the only way to communicate this. As far as I can tell my cat has a complex consciousnesses but there is no way for me to tell if she has this capacity for introspection and self-reflexivity.
If there are other avenues other than language, how would we know?
I think language is a medium that enables this kind of structured thought. Without it, I cannot imagine reaching this level of abstraction (understanding being a "self").
As far as the cat herself is concerned, there is no reason to make that known, either. "Introspection" and "self-reflexivity" are notions, language items. Best used by a human for explaining to other humans why that human should be fed, you know?
What ontological difference does it make whether a being contains "introspection" and "self-reflexivity" but not "nuclear physics" or "interpretive dance"? It's still hungry with or without them. And what good is any of those to a cat, when "meow" fills the bowl just fine?
>If there are other avenues other than language, how would we know?
Well, if you knew, you'd certainly know, tautology extremely intended.
You would just be unable to communicate it, because language would forbid it.
Not "not support it", you see, explicitly forbid it: it would not only be impossible for you to communicate it, you would be exposing yourself to danger by attempting to communicate it.
Because the arbitrary limitation of expressible complexity is what holds language in power. (Hint: if people keep responding to you in confusing ways, you may be doing extralinguistic cognition; keep it up!)
>I think language is a medium that enables this kind of structured thought. Without it, I cannot imagine reaching this level of abstraction (understanding being a "self").
Language does a bait and switch here: first it sets a normative upper bound on the efficiency of knowledge transfer, then points at the limitation and names it "knowledge".
That's stupid.
Example: "the Self", oh that pesky Self, what is its true nature o wise ones? It's just another fucking linguistic artifact, that's what it is; "self-referentiality" is like the least abstract thing there is. You just got a bunch of extra unrelated stuff tacked onto that. And of course, you have an obligation to mistake that stuff for some mysterious ineffable nature and/or for yourself: if you did not learn to perform these miscognitions, the apes would very quickly begin to deny you sustenance, shelter, and/or bodily integrity.
Those aren't mutually exclusive, stimulus and bodily perception enable higher-level thoughts about the physical world. Once I was driving a big cheap pickup with a heavy load on an interstate, and a rear tire violently blew out, causing the truck to sway violently. I operated entirely by feel + my 3D mental model of a moving truck to discern what and where went wrong and how to safely pull over. It was too fast and too difficult for any stupid words to get in the way.
I am glad humans are meaningfully smarter than chimps, and not merely more vocal. Helen Keller herself seemed to think that learning language finally helped her understand what this weird language thing was:
I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!
It is not like she was constantly dehydrated because she didn't understand what water was. She realized even a somewhat open-ended concept like "water" could be given a name by virtue of being recognizable via stimulus and bodily perception. That in and of itself is quite a high-level thought!
She learned "language" later than most. The primary function for her was as communication with the outside world, not for cognition, which she was already doing from birth.
