Len Talmy's Glasses

(and, at that, his intratonal hearing ability... a strange thing)...


The stated intention of this paper is to explore the role of language in human cognition. And yet, such a goal is admittedly ambitious, considering the scope of the fundamental units of the topic—language and cognition. This being the case, this paper will be focused in its approach to tackling the breadth of the issues involved by carefully delimiting the parameters within which such the topic can be discussed given the space available. We will begin by looking at cognition.
Cognition, as a subject, is fraught with challenges that require, at the very least, some philosophical groundwork to be laid in order to be able to systematically, if methodologically, approach an understanding of it. To underscore why this is necessary, let us identify some of the popularly held definitions of what cognition is. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, cognition is the act or process of knowing including both awareness and judgment. Dictionary.com, an online dictionary, describes it as the mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment. Yet another dictionary suggests it to be the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired or processed. We could continue looking up the meaning of the word. But, indeed, should we undertake such the exercise we would find that the underlying theme common to the various definitions of cognition is the act of acquiring knowledge or information by way of exercising the brain. These definitions, adequate enough for now, conveniently escape the degree of precision necessary to speak to the issue of the actors involved in cognition. A process of knowing or awareness presupposes an agent on whose behalf such knowledge or awareness exists. This leads us to the issue of human consciousness and the mind. For cognition to be possible, some connection has to exist between the seat of the cognition (which is popularly accepted to be the brain) and a cognitive agent made manifest through human consciousness. This connection, it is believed by many, is something we have come to know as the mind. But there is a wide variety of opinions regarding what the mind is, if it exists, and what role it plays in human consciousness and cognition. Indeed, before we can progress we are confronted with the time-tested philosophical debate on mind and body, or, in our case, mind and brain.
How are the mind and the brain related? Modern tradition insists of us that, in appreciating the significance of the brain, we do not obscure the higher-order importance of the mind. This is why political forces seek to win hearts and minds as opposed to hearts and brains. We know what the brain is, but what is the mind? The brain, the cognitive center of all human beings, is essentially a physiological organ. While the Ancient Egyptians may have believed the heart to be the seat of power in the human body, we know today that the brain is the relevant physiological authority whose functioning is necessary for the existence of a human being. The mind, however, is an entity associated with identity and consciousness. Given the wide-ranging debate on the mind and issues arising thereof, while it may not be necessary to delve into the arguments on monism and mind-body dualism, it is important to take a position on the issue which will be the theoretical foundation for the rest of the paper. For the purposes of this paper, then, the mind will be defined as an entity for which its physical manifestation is the brain of a living human being. This position falls short of completely separating the mind and the brain as two distinct entities, and it makes no mention of either the mind or brain being in control of the other. It does imply, however, a relationship, perhaps even an interdependence, between the mind and brain. And it will even go one step further. Considering that the brain is not just some arbitrary physiological organ, but the center of activity for conscious beings, this position postulates that the functioning of the brain can be said to be mirrored within the mind and that the converse is also true—that the activity of the mind is mirrored within the brain. So, we may consider the brain as being representative of the mind and vice-versa. This now leads us to the next phase of our philosophical framework.
To varying degrees, we are able to observe the brain, but we are only able to theorize about the mind as a reflection of the brain and its activities. This is especially relevant, considering the subject under discussion. Observing the brain during a cognitive process gives little or no insight into the state of mind of a cognitive agent. And we are very much interested in this state of mind, as it can lead us to answers about how language, for instance, plays its role in cognition. In attempting to illuminate upon such a phenomenon, then, we find imposed upon us methodological constraints that place us at the doorstep of another time-tested philosophical debate—that one about empiricism versus rationalism. As with all bipolar debates, it has been suggested that there lies middle ground between the empiricist tradition and the rationalist tradition. As the old saying goes, “the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.” For our purposes, and considering the nature of the subject under discussion, this compromise, this middle ground is essential. Empiricism without a supporting, well-reasoned theory may be argued to be groundless data collection without aim or direction, the argument goes. What good is experience without an abstract framework within which to understand it? As for rationalist thinking, it can be very effective in logically explaining phenomena. But, most especially in the case of language and cognition, rationalism without even a little empiricism cannot be justifiable. Again, this paper will take a position which will add to the theoretical foundation that will underlie the discourse heretofore. As regards the study of cognition, and given the limitations of technology vis-à-vis an empirical approach to a robust understanding of the cognitive process, rational theory can go a long way in providing insight into the workings of the mind and brain. With some empirical data available on the workings of the brain, however, it would be unwise to abandon what these data may do to shed light on any theories. To the extent possible, this paper will defer to empiricism where possible, while attempting to approach the issue from a rationalist perspective. This is necessary for, while there is limited access to the brain’s workings in terms of empirical data, there are logically persuasive arguments concerning how the mind must function given what we currently know about the universe within which the mind finds itself operative. To this end, the paper will concern itself, from the empirical perspective, with examples from aphasia and child developmental psychology, and from the rationalist perspective, with theories of cognition and models of the mind that seek to give reason to observed phenomenon or provide a rational framework concerning how the mind must operate for the empirical data to be justified. These preliminary philosophical matters dispensed with, it is now possible to go on to look more carefully into the issue and provide a more refined definition of cognition.
We have defined the brain as a physiological organ whose working mirrors the mind of a conscious entity. The mind itself operates within a universe that is often thought to be infinite. What we will concern ourselves with, however, is the operation of the mind within the known universe as it relates to cognition. We now want to understand how the conception of this universe is organized within the mind as mirrored in the brain and its activities. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein held that the world consists totally of facts. Such a view is attractive, if only because the world, and by extension, the universe, can consist of nothing other than just that. That is, regardless of the perception or lack thereof of it, a truth exists. Thankfully, there is a perception of this truth that exists and the mind is the central agent in perceiving this truth—this state of affairs that is the entirety of facts Wittgenstein believes the word consists of. For example, humans are endowed with the ability to perceive the color red as red, the color green as green, and the color blue as blue. These truths, the existence of primary colors in the perceivable universe of humans, are facts that the universe consists of and, as well, there is uniformity in their perception. This uniformity may be seen as the fundamental precursor to what Adolfo Bastian called the “psychic unity of mankind.” And so we will agree with Wittgenstein in suggesting that there are facts which the world, and by extension, the universe consists of. We hasten to add that, of course, aside from the facts, the mind is also concerned with such things that cannot be defined as facts—things such as concepts, ideas and thoughts. But we will deal with these very shortly. We wish, first, to situate the mind within the universe. To do this, it is postulated that the mind, as the center of intention of a conscious entity, has the ability to represent information. And it represents information utilizing concepts, ideas, and thoughts, such mechanisms as earlier mentioned. This statement ought not be controversial. The very fact that the mind is aware of what exists suggests that it has the ability to represent knowledge. Again, there are a variety of schools regarding just how the mind can represent information or knowledge. Even as science makes advances in the study of the brain, at this point it is healthy to invest some energy into rational thought concerning just how the mind, as mirrored in the brain, can represent information or knowledge.
An intuitive theory of representation would be that the mind is a symbolic system. That is, it represents information by means of symbols. A symbol is simply an abstract object which is a representation of a thing. This theory, of the symbolic representational capability of the mind, is that which we will subscribe to for the purposes of this paper, because it allows us to generalize over any manner of representation available to the mind. This includes representations similar to or in the form of semantic networks, analogy, images, scripts, and frames. At the highest level of abstraction, all schemes to represent information or knowledge must involve symbols of the information or knowledge being represented. To make this clear, music, for example, or sound frequencies, can be represented symbolically. The symbol of a musical note, transliterated by the brain’s electrochemical mechanisms, may evoke in the mind the experience of the musical note. The use of the term symbol, in this sense, may be in fact argued to be analogous to the term concept, but only as a means of explicating upon what this paper would consider a symbol system to exist as in the mind. In this sense, there is a subtle differentiation between what this paper considers a symbolic system to be and what, say, Allen Newel would consider a symbolic system to be. The model of cognition subscribed to by this paper is a fine-grained one which gives deference to the mind as the knower of all things relative to the cognitive agent and accommodates the most fundamental cognitive processes that can occur consciously or otherwise.
Now that we have talked about the capability of the mind to represent
information, we can now go on to redefine cognition. First, we define a mental state as a specific representation of information in the mind. This representation is the truth of the mind at any given point in time. We now define cognition as the process involved in the change of mental states—that is the process involved when the mind transforms from one symbolic representation to another. This definition of cognition takes into account any form of cognitive activity. So, to use a simplified example, a mental state could involve the complete state of awareness of a being at time t. This state might be represented symbolically to signify all the parameters within which the mind finds itself extant in the universe—parameters such as light level, air intake, decibel level of varying frequencies, and so on and so forth. For every change in these parameters, there is necessarily a concomitant transformation of the symbolic representation in the mind in order to reflect the mind’s awareness of the dynamics of the situation. That very transformation is the cognitive process. In its most simplified sense, cognition, by this definition, is a continuous process consisting of a series of discrete transformations.
Following the example of the psychologist, Alexander Luria, it is now helpful to classify cognition according to its manifestations. There are basically two types of cognition1. The first is perceptual or sensory cognition. This manner of cognition is involved with a cognitive agent’s functioning as it acquires information from the universe within which it exists. An example of sensory cognition, and perhaps the most celebrated owing to the body of knowledge about it, is visual perception. The second type of cognition is rational cognition. Although rational cognition covers a broad area, we can traverse most, if not all, of its terrain by equating it with the sum total of voluntary acts, problem-solving, and thinking. Psychologists define voluntary acts as intentional actions undertaken by a human being at the behest of the thing that drives intention. We will see later its implications for the role of language in cognition. Problem-solving, deceptively named, is not limited to intellectual challenges, for instance, of the mathematical sort. Problem-solving is used in everyday life and it includes such seemingly mundane but intentional tasks as opening doors, driving cars, and scrubbing dirty plates. Thinking, for its part, is simply what it is, thinking. This paper will be concerned with the role of language in rational cognition.
We have discussed cognition and laid some the theoretical groundwork that will underlie our approach to understanding what role language plays in it. Now we are confronted with the next question, what is language? It seems that at every turn we find ourselves immersed in age-old debates that have not resolved themselves, forcing us, for the purposes of this paper, to lay claim to a position, or, at least, an idea concerning how we will approach the issue. Language, we know, is a form of expression. It is also a means of communication. These two facts are generally accepted. But such a vague definition allows for a wide range of living creatures to be equipped with language. These are controversial waters and we will chart our course accordingly. There is the school of thought which states that language is that ability which differentiates humans from all other living things. That is, no beings but human beings have language. That it is not merely a means of communication and form of expression, but that it is a complex set of rules which form the framework within which communication and expression can operate. Furthermore, as a social phenomenon, the extent to which language is made manifest points to a latitude well beyond mere communication and expression. And then there is the school of thought which adheres to the position that some animals have some form of language. Within the ranks of believers in this school are those who have attempted to show that animals have the capacity to learn to communicate with humans and each other utilizing a form of language. Chimpanzees, those genetic cousins of man, have been the most controversial of such subjects. The literature on chimpanzees and language is vast, but the consensus is small. As far as this debate goes, for the purposes of this paper we will take the least controversial path available, abstracting away the features of language that are agreed upon, leaving the rest of the specifics out of the fray. So, we are committed to the vague but still accurate notion that language is a form of expression and a means of communication utilized to convey information or describe states of affairs for the benefit of or at the behest of a cognitive agent. It should be pointed out that language is a two-way phenomenon. That is, the definition given assumes that language use involves being on the receiving end of the expression and communication as much as it involves being on the producing end.
Let us now explore language within the brain. In her book, “Aphasia,” Libby to be located in the left hemisphere”2. This is consonant with the view from neurolinguistics which holds that damage to the left-hemisphere of the brain, in right-handed people, will result in language impairment. This state of affairs in which the left-hemisphere is dominant in language processing is known as lateralization.
From the late 1700s to the beginning of the 1800s, a new theory of the brain known as phrenology, imagined at the time to be a science, took root at the behest of a Viennese physician, Franz Joseph Gall. Phrenology postulated that the mind, as seen through the brain, was composed of various faculties which were located in specific and distinct organs of the brain. Phrenologists thus believed that they were able to read the skull of a human being and determine the measure of the various faculties of the brain. Such a process was used for “character divination.” Phrenology blossomed after this era but was eventually discredited as a valid science. Nonetheless, the idea of localization in the brain is one that holds particular interest for those involved in language within the brain. Perhaps the most prominent localization theorist for language function in the brain was Paul Broca who, in 1861, based his theory of language centers in the brain on the autopsy of two aphasic patients. Broca noted that the patients, who both had the same language impairment—the inability to articulate speech—had sustained damage to the third frontal convolution in the brain. This portion of the brain has since come to be known as Broca’s area and the language impairment described has come to be known as Broca’s aphasia. Another prominent localization theorist, Carl Wernicke, witnessing lesions in the temporal lobe, identified the first temporal convolution as being key to auditory reception and language comprehension. As with Broca, that portion of the brain has come to be known as Wernicke’s area. Both Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area are located in the left-hemisphere of the brain. There are two more areas of note in the brain that play a role in language. The first is the motor cortex which is responsible for muscle movement. Studies have shown that the part of this cortex close to Broca’s area is utilized in controlling the movement of the face, jaw, tongue and larynx, necessary for speech articulation. The second area is the arcuate fasciculus which serves as a transmission link between Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area.
Localization theory of language function, however, has not always been accepted by all. Hughling Jackson and Sigmund Freud, among others, were not convinced that a localization theory could account for the complex nature of aphasia. They did not entirely discount localization theory, but considered it too convenient an approach for a vastly complex problem. Similarly, Paul Pierre Marie performed a reexamination of the two brains that Broca had based his theory on and came to the conclusion that Broca’s evidence did not support the notion that damage to the third frontal convolution caused language impairment.
But despite these criticisms, localization is generally accepted today as the approach to a theory of language function in the brain most consonant with medical observation. A major objection to the localization theory suggests that portions of the brain are interdependent upon other portions and damage to one part of the brain has, if not global repercussions, effects on other portions. For example, Penelope Myers has suggested that right-hemisphere communicative disorders are due to what she terms “inference failures”3. These inference failures cause patients afflicted with these disorders to not understand humor, irony, hints and such notions as would require judgments of truth based on propositional analysis. The point is that, as has been pointed out often, the right-hemisphere does have role to play in the language process. For the purposes of the paper, owing to the body of evidence that supports at least a certain degree of localization, we will operate under the fundamental assumption that language is, to a variable extent, an independent faculty located in various centers of the brain. This said, we should now defer to the empiricist within and see what the evidence about language in the brain can do to give us insight into a theory of language and cognition. We begin by looking at aphasia and, subsequently, child developmental psychology. These two areas will lead us to our focal point, rational cognition, and the role of language in it.
What is aphasia? George Yule, in his book “The study of language,” states that aphasia is defined as “an impairment of language function due to localized cerebral damage which leads to difficulty in understanding and/or producing linguistic forms”4. Libby Kumin in her book “Aphasia,” calls it “language impairment following cerebrovascular accident or trauma resulting from brain damage caused by lack of oxygen to brain tissue”5. Finally, Frederick Darley, in his book also aptly entitled “Aphasia,” quotes the Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary as defining aphasia as “Defect or loss of the power of expression by speech, writing, or signs, or of comprehending spoken or written language, due to injury or disease of the brain centers”6. It is to be noted that aphasia is not a speech impairment but an impairment of the language faculty.
The two major types of aphasia are Broca’s aphasia, otherwise known as motor aphasia, and Wernicke’s aphasia. As stated earlier, Broca’s aphasia causes the inability to produce or articulate speech while Wernicke’s aphasia causes the inability to comprehend speech. There are other types of aphasia, but, in general, when a patient suffers from a combination of Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia, the situation is known as global aphasia. A summary of the symptoms associated with aphasia may produce some insight into the role that language plays in cognition. Aphasic patients may suffer from what is sometimes called word deafness. This is the inability to recognize single words. This is manifest, for instance, in the inability to select an object, having been told its name. Even when aphasics with this impediment are able to recognize words, they may have problems comprehending entire sentences. As observed by Hildred Schuell, they are hampered by the lack of what is known as an auditory retention span7. That is, they cannot remember word sequences. This problem is not limited to spoken language, but written language as well. Aphasic patients may have problems in finding adequate words to use when speaking, as well as show a lack of organization in expressing their thoughts. They also may be unable to write properly or use the wrong words when they do write.
How does aphasia affect rational cognition? There have been several studies on how aphasia affects the intelligence of patients. Yet, the evidence for or against reduced intelligence as a result of aphasia is contradictory. Some studies, utilizing various modes of testing various cognitive skills, are said to indicate a loss of intelligence as a result of aphasia. Other studies claim that aphasic brain-damaged patients do no worse than non-aphasic brain-damaged patients in intelligence tests. For instance, Carl Lubin undertook a study, a comparison of hemiplegic patients with aphasia and hemiplegic patients without aphasia on “non-verbal tasks of intellectual functioning” 8. Alluding to theorists who postulated a relationship between language and abstract functioning, as well as others who made what he calls a “direct identification between language and thought,” Lubin’s rationale was that brain injury accompanied by language loss ought to have a greater impact on intellectual functioning than brain injury without accompanied language loss if these theorists were correct. The null hypothesis for his experiment was that “no consistent relationship exists between ability to engage in non-verbal intellectual tasks and language disturbance.” Tests such as the Goldstein-Sheerer Cube Test, designed to gauge the ability for abstraction, and other such tests were administered. The data from all the tests were said to reveal that the null hypothesis that no consistent relationship exists between ability in non-verbal intellectual tasks and language disturbance was correct. But this is just one in a number of experiments that have been conducted attempting to shed some light on aphasia and intelligence. Lebrun and Hoops demonstrated that there was no reduction in intellectual performance in patients who had undergone neurosurgery and had become severely aphasic9. These patients had been tested psychometrically before the surgery. So why do different tests seem to produce different perspectives? According to Frederick Darley, it is because these tests require various levels of verbal mediation on the part of the subjects. And this is of interest to us, this issue of verbal mediation during rational cognition.
Verbal mediation, the terms irresistibly conjures the idea of inner speech. In his book “Language and Cognition,” the psychologist Alexander Luria attempts to demonstrate that inner speech is intricately linked to rational cognition. He calls it the “Problem of the Voluntary Act”10. Luria, a disciple of Lev Vygotsky, suggests that, but for Vygotsky and his team, psychologists have failed to provide a suitable explanation for the voluntary act. Many psychologists have simply attributed it to a spiritual force. Others ignored it. Others yet attributed it to instinct or habit. Vygotsky’s theory was that voluntary acts begin at a very early age, when communication is established between a mother and a child. According to this theory, the child learns to act in reaction to the mother’s commands. At this stage, the mother’s command Vygotsky calls the source of the voluntary act. Later on, the child utilizes its own speech, initially external, in the process of or preceding voluntary action. Finally, this speech is internalized and serves as the mediating factor in rational cognition resulting in voluntary action. Luria goes on to describe experiments he carried out, continuing along the path of Vygotsky’s own experiments, which seem to support the theory. To show how, at an early age, a mother has directional influence on a child’s action, the example is given of how, when a child is breast-feeding and the mother whispers to the child, the child ceases breast-feeding for the duration of the mother’s speech. The experiments further cited show how, at varying stages of children’s development, they first learn to direct their voluntary actions in accordance with their mother’s commands, then they themselves regulate their own volitional acts with externalized speech. The studies show the utility of verbal mediation in children’s problem-solving and the eventual internalization of the speech.
But something ought to have caught our attention at this point. By the time the child becomes an adult, it no longer seems efficient to utilize inner speech to regulate voluntary acts. Consider a person sitting down who is in the process of making the decision to stand. Such a person is hardly likely to first pronounce to himself that he wishes to stand before standing. The decision is made almost instantaneously. For this Luria has an answer. His experiments show a phenomenon among children as their external speech is observed when they regulate their voluntary acts with it. As children grow older, such regulatory speech becomes more and more abbreviated until it is just linguistically functional enough to accommodate the intent of the child. According to Luria, inner speech, then, is not just the popularly believed phenomenon of speech without concomitant motor action. It is, instead, a much more abstract phenomenon that manifests itself at different levels, ending up as complete syntactically correct forms. What is more, at its most abstract level, it is the language of intention. Luria further states that studies indicate that even aphasics are able to regulate their voluntary acts using inner speech.
We are indeed concerned with inner speech and voluntary acts as manifestations of rational cognition. We are also concerned with verbal mediation and problem solving as a manifestation of rational cognition. For, both voluntary acts and problem-solving are necessary in everyday life, and without them a person could not function. If we are to take at face value Luria’s assertion that inner speech is necessary for voluntary acts, then it would follow that verbal mediation is a key component of problem-solving, although we may not be able to make the stronger claim that it is necessary for all problem-solving. We may also be inclined to believe that, as with inner speech, verbal mediation can take on forms ranging from the abbreviated and abstract to the syntactically expressive. Luria gives an example to bolster his theory that abbreviated language is not only possible within the human, it may be the norm at some point in a child’s development. Consider a child in the holophrastic stage of linguistic development who utters single words, mostly nouns, to identify objects. Luria points out that studies have shown that children at that stage of development are able to utilize single words to express more complex concepts. For instance, a child may point to the bed that his sister regularly sleeps in and utter her name even when she is not there. There is a thought process in this scenario, and it involves the child’s associating the bed with his sister, and attempting to express an idea regarding the situation. But even if pre-linguistic children or children at early stages of linguistic development can be said to have thoughts, some primitive, some more complex, as Luria suggests, it is not the case that during the course of development they do not imbibe behaviors which determine their method of cognition as they come into being as mature humans. Vygotsky’s theory of learned regulation of voluntary acts through speech is one such example.

According to Luria’s perspective, words are associated with objects in the real world not only for communication, but also for thinking. This is in line with the proponents of the theory that language and thought are inextricably bound and there is no thought without language. Jerry Fodor, on the other hands, holds the view on the other end of the continuum in this debate by suggesting that the mind represents the external world symbolically, and these symbols, or tokens, are used within the framework of an internal conceptual language he calls “Mentalese.” The Fodorian viewpoint upholds the independence of Mentalese from normal language, although Mentalese is argued to have rules similar to language.
So we should ask ourselves, what exactly is thought? Thought is the direct manipulation of the representation of the universe that a mind is aware of at the behest of the consciousness on whose behalf the mind operates. Since the days of Socrates and Plato, the debate on whether language and thought are inextricably bound has raged, and very passionately at that. Peter Carruthers explains the debate as one being between what he calls the “communicative conception of language,” a view which proposes that the role of language is the communication and expression of thought, and the “cognitive conception of language,” the view which postulates that thinking occurs in natural language11. There has been no consensus, except that many agree that without thought there could not be language. This is hardly surprising. What would a person say who thought of nothing? But is language necessary for thought? Scholars in the debate have taken positions ranging from the idea that thought is totally independent from language, to the idea that all thought is carried out through language. For the most part, this debate is carried out within the framework of a rationalist tradition, for there is little way of garnering information about the nature of thought except for observing and analyzing one’s own thoughts. But there are cases of human beings who were raised without the benefit of language that provide the slightest insight into how language and thought might be related. The most infamous case is the unfortunate one of Genie, a thirteen year-old girl who had been tied to a chair for most of her life and had been beaten if she as much as made a sound. Genie had no contact with any other humans but for her father and brother, who were not socially inclined with the girl, and with her mother, for a few minutes a day, who was permitted only to serve her food. When she was admitted to the children’s hospital in Los Angeles, she was severely language impaired. In fact, she could not utilize language. Eventually she did learn to communicate although never quite to the level required of those her age. Regarding the debate on language and thought, we know that Genie’s language faculty was underdeveloped. But, considering the psychological trauma she underwent, it would not be justifiable to explain any cognitive deficiencies that she might have displayed as being resultant of the state of her language faculty. But it does raise the question.
Other cases, however, are known of so-called “wolf children” who managed to be raised without language. In one case, it was discovered that the child had learned to classify objects as colors and not as objects. And, finally, there is the case of twin girls who were thought to be mentally impaired because they spoke what was believed to be gibberish, but what was later discovered to be an authentic language that they both could understand. What these cases tell us is that there is much more study to be done before any definitive conclusion can be drawn about the relationship between language and thought.
The debate on language and thought, and by extension, language and cognition, is sure to continue for quite a while. As has been the case, new scientific evidence will be interpreted to suit the arguments of the different sides in the debate. But through it all, consensus might find a space to exist as the varying theories inevitably provide common ground. For example, although their positions may seem entrenched on opposite sides of a continuum, Alexander Luria and Jerry Fodor are perhaps not as far apart in their views. Fodorian Mentalese seems to qualify as the most fundamental manifestation of Luria’s version of inner speech. Both are the language of intention. The placeholders for concepts. In this view, Mentalese as the basest form of inner speech would evolve into syntactically expressive inner speech, and then to external speech if necessary. This, also, is not too far-removed from Noam Chomsky’s Logical Form, the interface between the cognitive system and the language faculty. Some might suggest that language-less thought is imaginable. But what we are attempting to consider is not whether language in its expressive form is necessary for thought or cognition, but instead, if the language faculty necessarily organizes intention as involved in rational cognition. The question becomes one of whether the language of intention is possible without the language faculty. To this question there is no ready answer. As such, there is also no ready answer as to exactly how rational cognition is hindered without language. Certainly, there is a compelling case to be made that language in its expressive form is relevant in a lot of thought. Expressive language, in many cases, serves a purpose in the identification of objects stored in the mind as symbols as well as plays a mediating role. The evidence from problem-solving experiments suggest that the role and manifestation of language during rational cognition, may, in fact, be tied to the degree of complexity of voluntary acts and problems that require solutions. Language, in this view, would have an organizing function in the brain, coming into play when it is necessary to systematize the brain’s representation of reality in such a way that the cognitive agent can readily grasp the import of the situation. But language in its kernel form, its most abstract form, this is where the argument now stands. No one disputes that expressive language is too wieldy to be a convenient factor in all thought. It just takes too much time to express thought in whole sentences. What is less certain, however, is whether there is a form of language that is so logically structured that it gives expression to that thing that drives intention, allowing it instantaneously mentally articulate the purpose of a conscious being, whether it be as regards voluntary acts, problem-solving, or thinking itself. In the most fundamental sense, then, the argument is about whether there exists a conscious recognition of intent by a cognitive agent. And therein lies the key. For without conscious recognition of intent, how shall we suppose that intent is intentional? And yet, conscious recognition of intent presupposes the ability to articulate said intent, in some manner, shape or form, to the cognitive agent. Is this articulation the root of language? Is this where the language faculty originates? Or is this articulation a distinct phenomenon from language? That is where the debate is. Again, there is no ready answer. But this is our accomplishment, identifying the location of the debate as it has evolved. In questioning the role of language in cognition, we question the form of language, from its most abstract to its most expressive. What we can say, is that language does play a very important role in cognition. And that without language, some cognitive tasks would certainly be, at the very least, considerably problematic.
As improving technology sheds more light on the workings of the brain, our theories about the mind are bound to become more accurate. And then, a fuller understanding will come into being, of what the role of language may be in cognition.

References
1) Luria, Alexander (1981), Language and Cognition, 18.
2) Kummin, Libby (1978), Aphasia, 12
3) Myers, Penelope S. (1991), “Inference Failure: The Underlying Impairment in Right-Hemisphere Communication Disorders”, Clinical Aphasiology 20(16):167-179.
4) Yule, George (1985), The Study of Language, 167.
5) Kummin, Libby (1978), Aphasia, 12.
6) Darley, Frederic L. (1982), Aphasia, 1.
7) Kummin, Libby (1978), Aphasia, 26.
8) Lubin, Carl Kenneth (1969), Language Disturbance and Intellectual Functioning, 37.
9) Darley, Frederic L. (1982), Aphasia, 22.
10) Luria, Alexander (1981), Language and Cognition, 88.
11) Carruthers, Peter and Boucher, Jill (1998), “Introduction: opening up options”, Language and Thought, Interdisciplinary Themes, 1.
12)