Language has two purposes naturally: it is used for communication and as the principal instrument for aiding human thought. The first is obvious and well-known; the second is no less important but harder to see. We will explore both. Getting clear on these two purposes and how they relate will lay the foundations for everything that follows.
Humans as social animals
Humans are social animals. We cannot live completely alone. We have no natural protections against the weather and no parts of the body naturally suited for attacking or defending. Our primary ways of protecting ourselves from the weather and predators as well as our primary ways of obtaining food are all based on collective common effort; so, in that way, humans are naturally the most social of all animals. Some early modern philosophers proposed that humans are naturally free of society and later enter a social contract. That was a false picture; and, even if some thought of it only as a useful hypothesis, the fact is that this kind of view spread widely in modern thought, with important consequences.
Social animals and communication
Social animals by definition work together, and to collaborate they must be able to communicate. Animals pursue benefits and avoid harms for themselves and their group; so, that is what animals communicate about. An animal will only use communication that is possible for it, that is relevant for its life, and that concerns benefits and harms for itself.
Some animal communication is innate and some is learned, as in the case of nightingales that teach songs to their young and humpback whale songs that can spread throughout a whole ocean region when males imitate one another. This shows that animals can make choices related to their communication with others, in some ways, but all such communication is always about the goods and goals of the animals’ lives and that of their social groups.
Communication with universal scope: human language
Communication within a human social group is the primary purpose of language. Human communication in language is the expression of thought in a public way so that others may understand what has been expressed. Humans communicate about what is relevant to human life. But that means that the sphere of human concern is universal and general, from food and shelter to knowing the stars and understanding the basic forces of matter, since knowledge of all of these and more has played key roles in human life at every period of human history. So, what human linguistic acts can be about is also universal in scope. Humans can also encode communication into practically any physical form and even invent entirely new systems of communication. This is all a sign that there is something in human nature beyond language: the human capacity for reason.
Language as the principal instrument for human thought
Since we lack natural defenses and live by thinking and understanding, and since thinking correctly is difficult and understanding is the result of effort, we need an instrument that can refine, extend, or clarify our thinking. Reflecting on our thoughts purely by mental effort (without putting them into words) is difficult because thoughts are fleeting and hard to grasp. Language expresses our thoughts in particular and fixed words, which gives them a more stable form that we can experience with our senses and also remember more easily. We can then evaluate whether the words adequately express our thoughts and whether those thoughts adequately capture the reality in question. At the highest level, we must employ language to articulate the foundations and highest results of our inquiries: definitions, theories, and discoveries must be stated to be understood; and that means they must be linguistic in form.
But what about other forms of instruments for representing what is in our minds? Compared to other instruments of thought like diagrams or mathematical symbols, language has three advantages:
- It depends entirely on what is natural to every normal human.
- Its sounds are extremely varied and almost none has an intrinsic connection to things.
- It has a universal scope.
Many traditions, from Confucius, Panini, and Aristotle to Von Humboldt, have held that language is the principal and habitual instrument for aiding human thought. But where does language come from? It must come from the human mind, in particular many minds working together. Even if left entirely alone and without any outside linguistic influence, groups of children invent their own language, as, for example, the well-known case of deaf children brought together in Nicaragua.
Does thought need language?
Is it possible that thought does not need language at all? Consider the case of someone with aphasia, the complete lack of a capacity to speak or understand language. They can typically still perform elaborate tasks, solve mathematical problems, and play chess; so, it seems impossible that they are completely without thought. The key here, though, is that the classical tradition does not say that all thought is linguistic or that language precedes thinking. In fact, Aquinas is clear that the concept precedes the spoken word, and this is the best way to make sense of the source of meaning itself, as being grounded in the mind even if made present or articulated in language. So, if thought is not exclusively linguistic, what role does language have in thinking? What language does is give stability to our thoughts by giving them stable sensory form and language allows us to refine our thinking. In cases of aphasia, most of the time, the aphasia is due to an accident and the person had learned language, various skills, mathematics, chess, etc., before the loss of speech, and so their reasoning does not appear to have been brought to a higher perfection or skill without language entirely.
To what extent do animals think?
We might wonder how far animals themselves have thought that we do not perceive. Animals clearly experience, remember, and decide when and how to act, and to a degree they solve problems and plan for the conduct of their lives; research has found more of this than was once supposed. The question is whether they also have conceptual, abstract thought of the kind that needs language to be refined and communicated. We have four reasons for thinking they do not:
- Even their most impressive behavior, such as the making of tools, the caching of food for later, and the tracking of what rivals can see, can be explained by perception, memory, and practical judgment fitted to the problems they face, and it does not require abstract or symbolic thought.
- Elaborate thought is costly, so we should expect it to appear where it brings a clear benefit. Where animals show more flexible intelligence, as in crows and the great apes, the benefit we can see is better practical problem-solving, not abstract thought.
- Humankind, the one animal we know to think abstractly, gives that thought physical form in speech and language. Animal signals, such as alarm calls, convey danger or food, but they do not show the open-ended, structured discourse in which human thought is expressed and refined.
- Simpler explanations account for what animals do, and researchers have not found behavior that requires abstract thought. So the burden lies on those who attribute it to them, though the conclusion would have to be revised if such behavior were found.
The two purposes ordered to one goal
Language as an instrument of thought presupposes language as expression of thought. By language we express and communicate our thought and also refine and perfect it. Both are ordered to another goal beyond themselves: we communicate our newly refined thought to others to contribute to our community as social animals. This is the highest good of communication and thought.
Let us move from the general consideration of the purposes of language to more specifically considering how language is especially the instrument of the mind and how language aids in thought.
Continue to Discourse and the Three Arts.