How do/did people who never learned a language think?
In: 1738
In the most extreme cases, isolated from both language and culture, they may not think much at all, at least not in the way we think of conscious thought. There was a famous case which of course I now forget the name of, but when asked what he thought prior to learning language the man would mime being “dumb” and “ignorant”, and refused to speak about that time.
Clearly there is enough thought to *live* (find food, hide from predators), but it’s hard to say what level of planning or reflection occurs.
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