MIT study: People can reason logically without language
Separating logic and language
New research from MIT's McGovern Institute shows that logical reasoning does not require language. In a study published in PNAS, researchers led by Evelina Fedorenko tested two stroke patients with severe language impairments on language-free logic games. Despite their aphasia, they solved problems as well as healthy controls. Brain imaging of healthy adults confirmed that language-processing regions are not engaged during inductive or deductive reasoning. The findings challenge long-held theories about the relationship between language and thought and have implications for understanding aphasia and AI.
It really upends a theory that says that symbolic rule induction is not possible without linguistic capacities.
- mastercheif
This maps with experience taking the anti-seizure medication Topamax in college.
I trialed for a month it as an off-label migraine preventative on recommendation from my neurologist.
Topamax can dampen neuronal activity in the language area of the brain for some people.
It was a terrifying experience, but it was also a valuable one as it changed the way I view intelligence.
About 10 days in, my writing and speech skills had devolved to that of a primary school aged child. I tried to type a text message and struggled to come up with simple words like “and”. My speech slowed down considerably.
The terrifying thing was that my internal world was still as complex and meaningful as it was before. All of the emotions I felt were real and legitimate. My cognition outside of language was intact, I could do math just fine and conceptualize and abstract problems.
In spite of this, I was unable to convey what I was feeling and thinking to the outside world. It felt like I was trapped inside my own body.
After recovering, my intuitive understanding of the link between language and intelligence was changed forever.
See the following for more info on Topamax/Topiramate language impairment: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10072-008-0906-5
- purplepatrick
I’m really not trying to sound like an ass, but it never occurred to me that anyone would seriously believe that language is required for “logic”.
Babbling toddlers can do logic. I sometimes can also do logic, even though I don’t have an inner voice and don’t formulate thoughts in words of any kind. As I’m relatively sure I’m not an ET alien, there are probably plenty of people like me.
- Lerando
My ex-wife doesn't have internal dialogue. Instead, when she is thinking through something she has images in her head of shapes morphing. She told me that she felt having an internal monologue would be horribly annoying and horribly slow.
- metalman
this must be symbolic of something, nebulous, like how statistics can mean anything that will get more grant funding, but nothing actualy specific or informative.
we can see the lesser version of this in click title writing everywhere, so the whole thing is a war for attention, but of course people seem to form some kind of resistance or more often get sucked further and further in, but then become essentialy zero sum partisipants.
thats why the quest is to get them young and lock them into lifetime spending routine
- dudefeliciano
I grew up speaking 3 languages, and picked up a few more since then. To me it seems innately obvious that language is just a layer on top of the (much more complex) mental activity that goes on underneath all the time.
I do find myself thinking in one language or the other at times, but none is exclusive, often they get mixed together (the "next-token prediction" in my mind allows picking words in other languages that may more accurately describe an idea) and most frequently I do not have any internal dialogue at all.
I am pretty sure this is true for everybody, that the internal dialogue is not something natural but rather something people are so used to that we identify with it. Meditation and flow-state inducing activities (physical excercise, playing music, etc) make me think that this is the default for people, as these allow to access that lower layer of mental activity where internal dialogue disappears, even if briefly.