Language is not essential for thinking. The results of a study awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine prove this.

Preface
- I would like to add that I have noticed that a well-known medical fact (below) in the world clearly shows that language is not essential for thinking.

Medical Facts

Split-brain is a general term for a condition in the brain in which the corpus callosum, which connects the two cerebral hemispheres, has been severed to some degree. The surgical procedure that produces this condition is called a splanchnotomy. Although this surgery is rarely performed, it is usually done as a treatment for intractable epilepsy, usually to prevent physical damage by reducing the ferocity of epileptic seizures.

When presented with an image in the patient's left visual field (i.e., the left half of the visual field of both eyes), the patient with a separated brain cannot tell what the image is. Because of the disconnect between the two hemispheres, the patient could not tell what the right hemisphere was seeing. However, the patient can grasp and recognize objects in the left visual field with his left hand. This is because the left hand is controlled by the right cerebral hemisphere.

Early studies of the isolated brain were conducted by Roger Sperry and continued by Michael Gazzaniga. The results of this work led to an important theory of functional brain localization.

Patients with disjunctive brains sometimes produce speech as a rational explanation for their behavior. This is because the true motivation is unexplainable, since it is generated in the right cerebral hemisphere, which is linguistically inaccessible.

ref: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%88%86%E9%9B%A2%E8%84%B3



What we can say from the medical facts above
- Fact: The right brain of a separated brain patient cannot use language.

- If the popular belief (proclaimed by linguistic philosophers and others) that language is essential to thought is correct, then the patient's right brain is not thinking. However, the results of actual medical experiments (see above) clearly deny this.

My view 1
- The experiments on patients with separated brains are the subject of the Nobel Prize in Medicine and have been well known for a long time. However, I have never noticed that the results of the experiments on the patients with separated brains clearly prove that language is not indispensable for thinking. I am not sure if I am being careless or obtuse.

- It has taken me three years since my first article, but I think I have finally proven that "language is not essential for thinking" based on solid medical evidence.

- I think that my common sense is just old-fashioned, and it seems to be common knowledge that "language is not essential for thinking".

My view 2
- In a previous article (below) written about nine years ago, I criticized Ludwig Wittgenstein and other linguistic philosophers for the depletion of their imaginative abilities, and the very source of these abilities (= right brain) exposed a fundamental flaw in the Ludwig Wittgenstein school of philosophy.


- Behind his false claims about dreams lies an overestimation of language and a depletion of the capacity for imagery. That is common among philosophers who are misled by Wittgenstein's philosophy.

ref: Note: Lucid dreaming: Stephen LaBarge's experiment and the false claims of linguistic philosophers. (2012-01-23)



(2020-10-25)