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Single Idea 18537

[filed under theme 18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 8. Human Thought ]

Full Idea

Thinking - ordinary conscious thinking - is imagistic. This is so for 'linguistic' or 'sentential' thoughts as well as for patently non-linguistic thoughts.

Gist of Idea

Linguistic thought is just as imagistic as non-linguistic thought

Source

John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 12.10)

Book Ref

Heil,John: 'The Universe as We Find It' [OUP 2012], p.272

A Reaction

This claim (that linguistic thought is just as imagistic as non-linguistic thought) strikes me as an excellent insight.

The 7 ideas with the same theme [what is distinctive about the way humans think]:

6712 For Locke, abstract ideas are our main superiority of understanding over animals [Locke, by Berkeley]
23656 The structure of languages reveals a uniformity in basic human opinions [Reid]
6393 A creature doesn't think unless it interprets another's speech [Davidson]
18538 Non-conscious thought may be unlike conscious thought [Heil]
18537 Linguistic thought is just as imagistic as non-linguistic thought [Heil]
17768 Perception reveals what animals think, but humans can disengage thought from perception [Bayne]
17769 Some people centre space on themselves; others centre space on the earth [Bayne]