Is it possible to think without language?

Yes, i believe that it is possible to think without language; however without any language the extent of our thoughts is largely inhibited. However if I were to ask someone to imagine themselves to kick a football they would be able to imagine the action of kicking the football. However the main problem, I believe arises in this theory in the asking of the question. How could I ask someone to think about something if language does not exist?
Although if one were to take a baby for example, they do not have any language at this stage in their life, yet they still manage to think. They know when they're hungry, tired etc...
It is also arguable that language is not only in the form of words. Through symbols, actions, noises. It is any form of distinguishable pattern put together.
This then sways my answer to whether or not I think you can think without language more towards No. If everything we do is some form of language or another how could one possibly think anything without language.
Although there is reason to believe that one can think without language. Take for example Helen Keller. This is a woman who lived all but 19 months of her life both deaf and blind. Yet she broke the mould and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. She formed her own way off communication. However it can be argued that she formed her own sort of language that allowed her to think.
There is a hypothesis called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This states that language determines our experience of reality, and we can see and think only what our language allows us to see and think.
There is an example that Benjamin Whorf studied in which he found a certain people, whose language contained no word for time, neither past present or future. We can draw the conclusion from this that since they have no word for it, they cannot have any concept for it at all.
We can apply this logic to the main question under review, ‘Is it possible to think without language?’. Without having a word for something or any way to communicate it how can we possibly think about it? I don’t believe it would be possible to conjure up the notion of something that we cannot physically put into the words. It is like searching for something that doesn’t really exist.
However critics of this hypothesis will state that reality determines language, and the reason that this people for example have no need for a word to do with time is because it is irrelevant to their lives, if they have not needed to use a word for it then they have no need for it at all.

Back with the argument that one can think without language there are other proofs to back this up. For example tests have shown that babies as young as 5 months old have been able to do basic mathematics. We know that babies this young do not have the benefit of language yet they are able to think in order to complete the arithmetic.
We can also say that ‘Semantics’ is an example of thoughts being dominant to language. The fact that we often say something that we don’t mean would suggest that our thoughts come before language. Language often distorting what we really mean.
The final example of how one can think without thought is through the creation of new words. There must be some form of thought without language for one to be able to invent a new word, seeing as one would be doing so without using any already known language.
It all comes down to the fact that language is the core of how, we as human beings function. It is the key reason why I believe that we are the most intellectual being on this planet. We can hold in depth discussions with one another and think to ourselves. I see no way that language limits our thinking, it only aids it. This isn't to say that language doesn't limit other parts of our life. Such as transferring these thoughts to words. Perhaps we could even say that we don't us the full extent of our language when thinking, just fragments of what we are trying to say.

How would we function were there to be no language involved in our thinking what so ever?

Colour issue with sight

One of the issues that has often interested me is do we all share a common experience of colour. Is what i see as red what another person would call red. The main reason that this has often concerned me is that there is no possible way to know whether or not we experience colours the same way. For all we know colour is unique to each one of us. This is a nice thought however either way it makes no difference what so ever. As long as one can distinguish between 'their' different colours there is no issue with whether or not that colou is different in another persons eyes. 

Theories Of Meaning

Q: How would you explain to a blind person what the word 'red means'?

This is no easy task to carry out. People with sight sometimes have trouble describing colours to one another so to do so to someone who has no sight is even more difficult. In all honesty you cannot actually describe 'red' means. It can only be done by comparing it to other colours. Possibly the only way to go about doing this would be to talk about what that colour may represent to a person. For instance red is often associated with harshness or anger. It may also be easy to associate red with an intense heat. On the other hand red is often associated with love. I'm sure this would raise a question such as, 'how can it represent love and anger?'. This is a limitation of definitions. The problem is that the two people involved have no common frame of reference to draw upon from one another.

Significance of Memory in a knowers perspective.

This post is in relation to the film we've watched recently in TOK, Chris Nolan's 'Memento'. The Film is about a man, Leonard, who is on a pursuit for revenge after an incident involving the 'death' of his wife. The twist being that Leonard suffers from short term memory loss, to combat his problem he uses photographs and tattoos to 'remember' important things. A problem arises in that everything that Leonard thinks he knows is derived from theses photographs/tattoos. It comes to light at the end of the film that Leonard has already caught and killed the man that harmed his wife. He in fact started this false case of his by using these memory tools. This raises the question of how important memory is a knowers perspective. As it turns out it is extremely important. Due to the fact that these false memories had been created Leonard ended up killing innocent people. These photographs and tattoos also show us how memory can be distorted over time (although on a short scale here). Leonard is certain he knows what he knows, it is true he does know these things. However these things he knows are not true. This shows us that memory is a key factor in determining the truth behind knowledge. One persons memory of the same event could be very different to the memory of someone else. This depends on their own perspectives and their way of knowing. Leonard's way of knowing was through the pictures, others may use different methods. The beauty of it was though that Leonard had the ability to change what he knew without even remembering he had done so, meaning he could keep himself happy by continuing his already completed quest.

Does Privacy Exist Anymore?

As far as I know they're used to be a thing called privacy. One could have all their personal information and keep it to themselves as well. Then comes along the internet and... boom there goes your privacy you once had. This lack of privacy is most prominent through Facebook. We may 'think' that all our personal information 'is private' as millions of us pump it into the social-networking giant. But at the same time it could then be pumped on to a third party applications that use this information. Now i'm not one to complain about Facebook because I honestly don't know where we as a generation may be without it. The scary thing however is that someone I don't know  may know something about me. Some people may like this in fact it is argued that most teenagers are on Facebook simply for the fact to get their information out there, so they can feel special about themselves. Think about it, you're given your own web page where you have the ability to write down everything you like about yourself and let others to know about how important you are. In reality though what you are telling your 'friends' may not be tthe truth, or perhaps just a distorted version of the truth. This relates back to the topic of trusting our beliefs or what we know.

Can we trust what we know?

I was reading the Van Lagemaat book earlier where i came across a problem. In one of the paragraphs where he talks about wheter or not belief is a part of knowledge he gives an example of something we 'know for sure'. He says that, "many years ago people thought the Earth revolved around 7 planets and the sun, but no we know that in fact the Earth and eight other planets revolve around the Sun'. However know we know that infact this is not true due to the fact that Pluto is no longer a planet. Unknowingly Van Lagemaat has either completely proved his point or miserably disproved his theory, depending on the way you look at it. Being the cynic I am I chose the latter.
Either way the point is that we really don't know; anything. A group of qualified scientists who are the best in their field can tell us something that we take for truth. But years later people may be looking back on us wondering how we got it so wrong.

It really got me thinking about everything I 'know' and it's a scary thought that one could dedicate their life to doing something based on what they 'know' only for it to all be proved pointless by people in the future doing what they 'know' which could then in turn be disproved again and again infinitely.

Firsts for everything

So it turns out this blogging/journal keeping is just as hard as I thought it would be. Even just writing this first sentence must have taken at least 10 minutes of staring at the keyboard expecting something to happen. I guess this is what Theory Of Knowledge is all about though; getting out of your comfort zone and trying new things (some more compulsary than others).

Seeing as this is my first post i'm not expecting the profound thoughts of a philosepher to come streaming from my fingertips.

This is it for now I think though until it becomes more natural, which i'm sure it will.