Meditation is a dialogue of the soul with itself” (Plato);
“To think means to talk to oneself... means to internally (through the reproductive imagination) hear oneself” (I. Kant);
“I forgot the word that I wanted to say, / And the disembodied thought will return to the palace of shadows...” (O.E. Mandelstam);
“Every thought... from the very beginning feels like a replica of an unfinished dialogue” (L.S. Vygotsky);
“The word dies in inner speech, giving birth to a thought” (aka).
All the above quotes, each in its own way, express a general psychological idea that arose long before the birth of scientific psychology. This is the idea of the inextricable relationship, interpenetration and functional unity of higher forms of thinking and speech.
In Western humanities, we can roughly distinguish three main models of the relationship between language and thinking.
According to the first and earliest of them, the thinking process does not involve language, and only the results of mental and cognitive activity are expressed in linguistic form (ancient philosophy, Kant, Locke).
The second model postulates the identity of the structure of thinking, language and the knowable world (L. Wittgenstein).
The main position of the third model is formulated as follows: language and communication act as conditions for the possibility of any form of thinking and cognition (modern philosophy of language).
The relationship of thought to word is one of the central problems not only of general psychology, but of all humanities disciplines that study the systemic interaction of thinking, language and culture. This problem becomes the focus of the scientific interests of psychology when the latter ceases to be content with considering isolated mental formations and poses the question of how these formations are interconnected as part of a single whole - the human psyche.
According to L.S. Vygotsky, mental development is expressed in the gradual formation of not only individual functions, but also complex relationships between them, i.e. interfunctional connections of the psyche. The result of the development and complication of the “relationship of thought to word” becomes a special mental function inherent only to man - verbal/speech thinking.
Indecomposable unit of analysis of speech thinking, preserving all its specific systemic properties, L.S. Vygotsky saw in the inner side of the word - in its meaning. It is in the meaning of the word, which for a long time remained hidden from researchers, like the other side of the Moon, and which is irreducible to a simple associative connection between the sound of speech and the idea, that it is at this point that the “knot of unity” of thinking and speech is discovered.
Since meaning always presupposes generalization, because does not imply any single object, but a group or class of objects, then it represents a phenomenon that is both speech in nature and related to the field of thinking. In meaning, the two main functions of speech are integrated and “the unity of generalization and communication,” thinking and communication is achieved. Specifically human forms of communication are mediated by speech, which is not just the manipulation of signs, but the transfer of meanings from one communicator to another, which, in turn, requires a special mental operation - generalization. Thinking, speech and communication through the exchange of meanings - these higher mental functions develop in continuous mutual influence.
The fact that complex forms of conceptual thinking develop simultaneously with the formation of inner speech, that both of these processes occur in the closest relationship and are inseparable, impossible one without the other, has long become a generally accepted empirical fact. This is succinctly and accurately expressed in the famous thesis of L.S. Vygotsky: “Thinking is “silent” and compressed internal speech, while speech is voiced thinking.”
Speech and thinking
Associated with consciousness as a whole, human speech is included in certain relationships with all mental processes; but the main and determining thing for speech is its relationship to thinking.
Since speech is a form of existence of thought, there is unity between speech and thinking. But this is unity, not identity. Equally illegitimate are the establishment of identity between speech and thinking, and the idea of speech as only an external form of thought.
Behavioral psychology tried to establish identity between them, essentially reducing thinking to speech. For a behaviorist, thought is nothing more than “the activity of the speech apparatus” (J. Watson). In his experiments, K.S. Lashley tried to detect, using special equipment, the movements of the larynx that produce speech reactions. These verbal reactions are carried out by trial and error; they are not intellectual operations.
This reduction of thinking to speech means the abolition of not only thinking, but also speech, because, preserving only reactions in speech, it abolishes their meaning. In reality, speech is speech insofar as it has conscious meaning. Words, like visual images, sound or visual, do not in themselves constitute speech. Moreover, reactions in themselves do not constitute speech, which through trial and error would lead to their production. Movements that produce sounds are not an independent process that produces speech as a by-product. The selection of the movements themselves that produce sounds or signs of written speech, all the speech process is determined and regulated by semantic relationships between the meanings of words. We sometimes search and do not find words or expressions for an already existing and not yet verbally formulated thought; we often feel that what we say does not express what we think; we reject the word that comes our way as inadequate to our thought: the ideological content of our thought regulates its verbal expression. Therefore, speech is not a set of reactions carried out by trial and error or conditioned reflexes: it is an intellectual operation. It is impossible to reduce thinking to speech and establish identity between them, because speech exists as speech only due to its relation to thinking.
But one cannot separate thinking and speech from each other.. Speech is not just the outer clothing of thought, which it sheds or puts on without thereby changing its essence. Speech, the word, serve not only to express, to externalize, to convey to another a thought that is already ready without speech. In speech we formulate a thought, but formulating her, we are all around her we form. Speech here is more than an external instrument of thought; it is included in the very process of thinking as a form associated with its content. Creating speech form, thinking itself is formed. Thinking and speech, without being identified, are included in the unity of one process. Thinking is not only expressed in speech, but for the most part it is accomplished in speech.
In those cases where thinking occurs primarily not in the form of speech in the specific sense of the word, but in the form of images, these images essentially perform the function of speech in thinking, since their sensory content functions in thinking as a carrier of its semantic content. This is why we can say that thinking is generally impossible without speech: its semantic content always has a sensory carrier, more or less processed and transformed by its semantic content. This does not mean, however, that a thought always and immediately appears in a ready-made speech form accessible to others. Thought usually arises in the form of trends, which at first have only a few emerging support points that are not yet fully formed. From this thought, which is even more a tendency and a process than a completed formed formation, the transition to a thought formalized in words is accomplished as a result of often very complex and sometimes difficult work. In the process of speech formation of thoughts, work on the speech form and on the thought that is formed in it mutually transforms into each other.
In the thought itself, at the moment of its origin in the consciousness of the individual, the experience of its meaning for a given individual often prevails over the formalized meaning of its objective meaning. To formulate your thought, that is, to express it through the generalized impersonal meanings of language, essentially means, as it were, to translate it into a new plane of objective knowledge and, by correlating your individual personal thought with the forms of social thought fixed in language, to come to an awareness of its objectified meaning.
Like form and content, speech and thinking are connected by complex and often contradictory relationships. Speech has its own structure, which does not coincide with the structure of thinking: grammar expresses the structure of speech, logic - the structure of thinking; they are not the same. Since the forms of thinking of the era in which the corresponding forms of speech arose are deposited and imprinted in speech, these forms, being fixed in speech, inevitably diverge from the thinking of subsequent eras. Speech is more archaic than thought. Because of this alone, it is impossible to directly identify thinking with speech, which retains archaic forms. Speech in general has its own “technique”. This “technique” of speech is related to the logic of thought, but is not identical with it.
The presence of unity and lack of identity between thinking and speech clearly appears in the process of reproduction. The reproduction of abstract thoughts is usually cast in verbal form, which, as has been established in a number of studies, including those conducted by our employees A.G. Komm and E.M. Gurevich, has a significant, sometimes positive, sometimes - if the initial reproduction is erroneous - inhibitory influence on the memory of thoughts. At the same time, memorizing thoughts and semantic content is largely independent of the verbal form. The experiment showed that memory for thoughts is stronger than memory for words, and it very often happens that a thought is preserved, but the verbal form in which it was originally clothed drops out and is replaced by a new one. The opposite also happens - so that the verbal formulation is preserved in memory, but its semantic content seems to have faded away; Obviously, the verbal verbal form in itself is not yet a thought, although it can help restore it. These facts convincingly confirm, on a purely psychological level, the position that the unity of thinking and speech cannot be interpreted as their identity.
The statement about the irreducibility of thinking to speech applies not only to external, but also to internal speech. The identification of thinking and inner speech found in literature is untenable. It obviously proceeds from the fact that speech, in contrast to thinking, refers only to sound, phonetic material. Therefore, where, as is the case in inner speech, the sound component of speech disappears, nothing is seen in it other than mental content. This is wrong, because the specificity of speech does not at all come down to the presence of sound material in it. It lies primarily in its grammatical - syntactic and stylistic - structure, in its specific speech technique. Inner speech also has such a structure and technique, which is unique, reflecting the structure of external, loud speech and at the same time different from it. Therefore, inner speech cannot be reduced to thinking, and thinking cannot be reduced to it.
So: 1) between speech and thinking there is neither identity nor gap, but unity; this unity is dialectical, including differences that sharpen into opposites; 2) in the unity of thinking and speech, the leading one is thinking, and not speech, as formalistic and idealistic theories want, turning the word as a sign into the “producing cause” of thinking; 3) speech and thinking arise in a person in unity on the basis of social and labor practice.
The unity of speech and thinking is concretely realized in different forms for different types of speech.<…>
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Unity is the beginning of everything
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Gates previously unseen
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Thinking and speech. Language and speech. Types and functions of speech. The problem of egocentric speech in the research of L.S. Vygotsky and J. Piaget.
Response Plan
Thinking and speech.
Language and speech.
Types and functions of speech.
Answer:
Thinking and speech.
The relationship between thinking and speech is manifested in their mutual influence on each other’s development. So speech penetrates thinking, becoming internal. But initially it is also associated with thinking when it is external egocentric speech. The formation of such a mental act as planning is based precisely on the phenomenon of egocentric speech, which, according to L.S. Vygotsky goes into internal. First, there is external utterance of the action, and then its internal utterance (transition in the process of development), which is a predictor of the action itself. And only after that the action is implemented.
Inner speech is speech to oneself, with the help of which logical processing of sensory data occurs, their awareness and understanding in a certain system of concepts and judgments. During the formation of mental actions, the formation of generalized associations and semantic complexes occurs. Inner speech has both the function of semantic generalization and the function of semantic memorization. With the help of internal speech, logical processing of information received from outside through various channels occurs, thus internal speech is the central mechanism of thinking or mental activity. Although in foreign psychology there is a different approach to assessing inner speech, it is understood as the initial stage of the threshold of psycholinguistics. Inner speech has features:
1) its syntax is fragmentary, fragmentary and abbreviated (mama give), the subject and the connections between them are abbreviated, the center is the predicate.
2) the structure of internal speech is preequivalent, i.e. refers to a specific time, action or state. Productivity is closely related to planning the transformation of a given specific situation (Vanka, give me the bike).
3) the phonetic side is shortened, it turns out to be almost without words, words are shortened, structured so that the significant side of the word (for example, the root) becomes dominant.
4) in internal speech, the meaning begins to prevail over the meaning of the word, but the meaning of the word in the child’s speech may undergo distortion and there may be misunderstanding between people in communication, moreover, the meaning of the word is individual, because associated with emotions, feelings, thoughts, associations. The meaning of a word is different for different people, although its sound expression is the same.
Language and speech.
Speech is a historically developed form of people; through language, verbal communication is carried out according to the rules of a specific language. In turn, this language is a system of phonetic, lexical, grammatical and stylistic means and rules of communication. Speech and language are a complex dialectical unity. Because speech under the influence of a number of factors (example: the development of science, etc.) changes and improves. Speech itself in phonetics is the generation of various acoustic phenomena (sounds) based on the work of the articulatory apparatus. Speech is a complex phenomenon.
The language should be the same for all people of a given ethnic group. Language allows for individual originality; the speech of each person expresses his own personality, his psychological essence. Language reflects the psychology of the people who created it and is associated with the cultural and environmental aspect. Language develops independently of a specific person, although an individual can come up with a word and a combination of words, which will later become part of the language (Mayakovsky invented words).
In ontogenesis, acquiring language as a socially fixed system, the child simultaneously masters the logical form and operations of thinking (speech as a means of implementing various operations of thinking) - analysis, synthesis, class - speech is divided into productive and receptive. This is passive listening to speech and its obligatory understanding, including the possible pronunciation of a specific word by the listener (a person can speak after the person he is listening to), in this case a complete understanding of the speech is achieved.
Differences between speech and language: 1) language is relatively stable, speech is situational, 2) language is of supra-individual origin (no author), 3) individual speech, 4) the nature of learning: language is theoretical, speech is spontaneous, without organized learning. 2 hypotheses: hard - the native language influences a person, determines his thinking, soft - language influences thinking, against these hypotheses: the area of color discrimination: in different languages there is a different number of words denoting colors, shades. Therefore, it is impossible to accurately determine whether culture influences thinking or vice versa.
Types and functions of speech.
Types of speech:
External and internal speech. External – loud, oral speech. The internal one is formed from the external one. Inner speech has the function of planning and regulation. It is predicative: it outlines, draws up a diagram, a plan. Collapsed, flows in short bursts.
Dialogue and monologue speech. Dialogical - alternately with someone else. Earlier and simpler. Monologue – speech of one person addressed to others. More complex. The content and internal resources must be very large, because no one will advise or help.
Oral and written speech. Oral – earlier, simpler, situational. A person usually learns it himself. Written – later, complex, contextual speech. It is learned from other people.
Descriptive speech is associated with perception and representation, the most complex type of speech.
Speech functions:
Communicative - a means of communication or communication.
Expressive is an expression of an emotional state, this appears in rhythm, pauses, intonations, modulations, and stylistic features.
Regulatory – a person uses speech to regulate his own and others’ actions and mental processes and states.
Intellectual - subtypes: indicative (indicating), nominative (naming), significative (designation), programming - constructing semantic schemes of a speech utterance.
The problem of egocentric speech in the research of L.S. Vygotsky and J. Piaget.
For Piaget, the child’s thinking develops from the autistic form through the egocentric (speaking to oneself) to the socialized form. For Vygotsky, from the socialized form through the egocentric (speech for communicating with others) to inner speech.
Piaget views egocentric speech as “dying speech,” and not as an intermediate stage on the path to the formation of inner speech, which is typical for Vygotsky. This was their difference in considering egocentric speech.
Piaget: Environmental pressure => socialization => egocentric speech => socialized speech. Speech thus becomes psychically internal before it becomes truly internal. The actual movement of the process of development of children's thinking occurs not from the individual to the socialized, but from the social to the individualized.
Vygotsky: mastery of speech (socialization, internalization) -> egocentric -> internal, because arbitrariness grows. It becomes a means of thinking, i.e. begins to perform the function of forming a plan for solving a problem.
For Piaget, the main dogma is still the position that the child is impenetrable to experience. The patterns of child thinking established by Piaget cannot be generalized to all children, because This is how the thinking of the child he studied develops; saying that before the age of 7 a child thinks more egocentrically than socially is based on the fact that he did not take into account the influence of social influence. situations.
...Due to linguistic use, we associate all our concepts with the words that express them, and fix them in our memory precisely in these words.
R. Descartes
Topic questions
1. Definition of thinking and language.
2. The connection of thinking and language with objective reality and human activity.
3. The problem of meaning and the communicative essence of language.
4. Computer language and “computer thinking”.
1. Definition of thinking and language
The problem of the relationship between language and thinking is one of the ancient and “eternal” problems. This is a classic problem. And now the controversy around it does not subside (see, for example: Thinking - without language?.. // Philosophical Sciences. 1990. No. 2). The problem of language and thinking- it is complex and multifaceted complex of various issues. This problem is the subject of consideration of various sciences: philosophy, linguistics, logic, psychology, physiology, semiotics and others. In this regard, the problem of language and thinking is divided into a number of specific aspects, which are often difficult to separate from each other. This especially applies to philosophy and general linguistics.
Private sciences gravitate towards a concrete and specific analysis of a given problem and in this sense are limited. Understanding language and thinking in reality
high, abstract level constitutes the specificity of the philosophical approach to this problem and belongs to the field philosophy of consciousness. Of course, the progress of knowledge about language and thinking is associated with corresponding successes in the entirety of the humanities. But just before philosophy of language, understood as the philosophy of the sciences of language and thinking, the task is to develop a methodology for their study and synthesize the results of this study. But even in philosophical terms, the analysis of the problem of language and thinking can be divided into two closely interrelated aspects: epistemological andsocio-historical.
The problem of consciousness and the material form of its expression has not been sufficiently studied in science. However, it has great theoretical and practical significance. In theoretical terms this is due to the increasing abstraction and mathematization of scientific knowledge, which, in turn, is accompanied by an increasing role of language in the process of cognition. In epistemological terms, language is, first of all, a tool through which a person acquires knowledge. It mediates the epistemological relationship of the subject to the object. Schematically, this can be depicted as follows: S ← L → O, where S – symbolizes the subject, O – object, L – language.
IN Philosophically, it is also important that language does not simply mediate the relationship of the subject to the object, but organically enters into the structure of human activity. Consequently, the essential role of language in cognition is associated with
the activity of the subject in this process.
IN in practical terms The significance of the problem of the relationship between language and thinking is associated with the processes of the scientific and technological revolution (automation of production, the creation of diverse artificial languages), as well as with the increase in interethnic contacts within the country and in
international arena, with the improvement of language teaching methods. Successful and effective language teaching and high-quality translation are impossible without understanding the nature of language and thinking, the mechanism of their connections and patterns of functioning.
A reflection of the sharply increased role of language (signs) in the science and practice of the twentieth century is the increased interest in it logicians and philosophers various directions. The solution to the problem of the relationship between language, thinking and objective reality in dialectical-materialist epistemology is fundamentally different from its solution by various variants of idealistic epistemology (especially positivism and pragmatism). Modern materialist philosophy examines the relationship between language and thought
niya as a complex dialectical unity , the elements of which have their own functions and specific features. But before we talk specifically about the specifics of language and thinking, it is necessary to define these initial concepts. The answer to some interesting questions largely depends on this: do animals and machines think, is it possible to create “artificial intelligence,” etc.?
The terms “language” and “thinking” are used widely
com and in the narrow sense.
Thinking in a broad sensecall the reflection of reality in generalized images and the process of operating with them. Higher animals are capable of forming general ideas and operating with them. This was also pointed out by the famous Russian physiologist I.M. Sechenov. Consequently, rational activity, so-called situational thinking, also exists in higher animals. Recognition of the presence of thinking in animals is one of the essential provisions of modern science. Without such recognition it is difficult to explain the appearance of a person with his consciousness. But animals still think
on a sensory-visual basis and is of an approximate adaptive nature. Human consciousness is qualitatively different from the psyche of animals in the presence of abstract thinking and language and is of a creative and constructive nature. Respectively thinking in the narrow sense call the ability of human consciousness to reflect reality in abstract-logical images and concepts expressed in linguistic form, and the process of operating with them.
The existence of a connection between language and thinking is recognized by all researchers. But the problem is what is the nature of this connection. For a long time in Soviet philosophical and linguistic literature it was argued that this is a very rigid (even organic) connection, and the word (language) is material-ideal education. This point of view is still found in our scientific and educational literature (see, for example: Panfilov V.Z. Epistemological aspects of philosophical problems of linguistics. - M., 1982; Philosophy: textbook / edited by N.I. Zhukova. - Minsk, 1996).
However, the famous Russian psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, one of the first in Soviet science to recognize and develop the sign concept of language, pointed out the presence in phylogenesis of a pre-speech phase in the development of intelligence and a pre-intellectual phase in the development of speech. Accordingly, in ontogenesis, he noted the presence of various genetic roots in the development of thinking and speech (see: Vygotsky L.S. Thinking and speech. - M., 1934). In addition, in his opinion, the word is not only a fixator of thought, but also its operator; thought is not simply expressed, but is accomplished in it. The noted features of the development and functioning of thinking and language indicate that between them no hard connection. Accordingly, a word cannot be considered a material-ideal formation; it cannot be considered a unity of content (thought) and form (language).
In our opinion, the connection between language and thinking is associative-functional. The word is a material object-sign, and the basis of its specific function is meaning. In addition, the latter cannot be interpreted as a real thought, just as it cannot be reduced only to the semantic component (aspect) of a word, only to an indication of the designated object, only to a reaction to a sign, etc. Meaning, from an epistemological point of view, is sufficient complex and multifaceted education. It is important to note that human thinking, being a product of the development of socio-historical practice, is a theoretical form of human activity, which is a derivative of practical activity. The connection between thinking and the goal-oriented work activity of people is expressed in the transformation of the surrounding world.
Objectification of the content of mental acts is impossible without the external manifestation of thinking in material linguistic design. Language in a broad sense name any means of communication, any sign system (national languages, Morse code, logical-mathematical languages, genetic code, music, etc.). Thus, language in a broad sense includes both natural (national) and artificial languages. Language in the narrow sense called a natural, national language. It can be defined as a historically established social system of signs that acts as a tool of thinking and communication. Natural language is a complex, multi-level formation, including phonetic, grammatical and semantic components. In the future, we will limit ourselves to considering only the basic (in terms of connection with thinking) lexical-semantic level.
2. The connection between thinking and language
With objective reality and human activity
Natural language, as opposed to thinking, is by its nature material and objectively real. The materiality of language is its essential property, especially in epistemological terms. Precisely because language is primarily a system of sensually perceived material objects, it can perform the function means of communication and the function of designation in relation to objective reality. As a material formation, language in its relation to objective reality represents
a special kind of sign system . The modern concept of the sign nature of language brings us closest to understanding the essence, structural features and nature of the relationship between language and thinking.
A sign is usually understood as a material, sensually perceived object (x), acting in the processes of cognition and communication as a representative (substitute) of another object (y) and used to receive, store, transform and transmit information about the latter (y) (L.O. Reznikov). The main function of language is the function of designation and representation (representation) of something other than the sign itself.
A characteristic feature of a linguistic sign is that there is no connection between the sign and the object it denotes. necessary communication, arising from the nature of the sign or signified. This circumstance, on the one hand, makes it possible to diversify the material carriers of the same, for example semantic, information, i.e., the possibility of diversifying national languages. (Currently there are more than 7 thousand of them on Earth.) On the other hand, this makes it possible
polysemy (homonymy in the broad sense) in national languages, which increases information capacity signs and makes it easier to store in mind. The connection between a sign and the designated object is sometimes called arbitrary (L.O. Reznikov), sometimes random (P.V. Kopnin). But more precisely, for national languages this connection is socially conditional, and specifically historically it is random.
The discovery of the iconic properties of natural language is usually attributed to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. However, many thinkers before him paid attention to this side of language, starting with the ancient Greek philosopher Plato and the ancient Indian grammarian Panini. Significant contributions to the development of the concept of the sign nature of language were made by W. Ockham, T. Hobbes, G. Leibniz, I. Kant and G. Hegel. The classics of Marxism were no exception in this regard. Thus, K. Marx noted in the first volume of Capital: “The name of a thing has nothing to do with its nature. I know absolutely nothing about this person if I only know that his name is Jacob” (Marx K., Engels F. Works. 2nd ed. T. 23. P. 110). With this remark, K. Marx points to the symbolic, conditional nature of language. Moreover, it was K. Marx in “Capital” who first explored the process of transforming a thing into a sign. He showed that a natural thing becomes a sign when it is
functional existence consumes her material existence
(Ibid., p. 140).
Ignoring the symbolic nature of language, which existed in Soviet literature in Soviet times, was apparently caused by a one-sided, incorrect understanding of Lenin’s criticism of the theory of symbols (hieroglyphs) of Hermann Helmholtz, who interpreted sensation as a sign. However, Lenin himself in his “Philosophical Notebooks” has a very correct remark about symbols, that “there is nothing at all against them
it is forbidden". Lenin only warns that sometimes symbolism is a convenient means of avoiding resorting to concepts (V.I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch. – M., 1963. T. 29. P. 108). We still encounter this situation now. among neopositivists And neo-pragmatists trying to revive nominalism on a semiotic basis (R. Carnap, W. Quine).
Indeed, a sensation (reflection) cannot be a sign of the displayed object. The sensation is connected with objective reality not by an arbitrary, conditional connection, but by the similarity of reflection with the reflected (object). In other words, thinking is connected with an objective reality that is meaningful, internally necessary, cause and effect communication Otherwise, the content of our consciousness turns out to be an indeterministic external world.
Thus, thinking and language, being secondary in relation to natural objective reality, when considered separately, do not relate to it in the same way. If thinking is a reflection of the external world, then language is primarily a designation of it, although this designation is accomplished with the help of thinking. This is the main difference between language and thinking with the latter having a decisive role. Moreover, thinking has (primarily) the property continuity, and language (primarily) - by the property of discreteness. Ultimately, the differences between thinking and language are expressed in the fact that thinking represents a tendency for integration, and language represents a tendency for differentiation; it acts as a universal classifier. And the struggle of these opposing tendencies is the internal source of the development of language and thinking.
These differences in language and thinking do not deny their unity. Language and thinking need each other and turn out to be interdependent. On the one side,
The connection of language with objective reality, although not direct, is carried out through thinking. The sign and the object of designation, without having a natural, necessary connection with each other, are put into correspondence with each other with the help of thinking. An object can be denoted by a word only if it is known to us, that is, if we have at least some idea about it. By connecting his knowledge about an object with a word, a person thereby relates the word to this object. On the other hand, thinking, being by its nature ideal (not having sensory perceptible properties, characteristics, parameters), can be objectified and accessible to others only with the help of language, i.e. signs. Therefore, the analysis of cognition is primarily an analysis of language. However, the primary and starting point in the activity of cognition and communication is thinking; it always goes ahead of language. Language as an information system records and expresses the results of thinking.
Thus, the content of human consciousness (sensations, perceptions, ideas, concepts, etc.) is inseparable from the object it reflects. In turn, the products of mental processes (especially at the abstract level of thinking) are internally connected with sign systems. Material base the connections of language and thinking with objective reality and with each other form, as already mentioned, reflex processes and the structure of human conditioned reflex activity. In this case, language acts as a second signaling system. In other words, the connection between language and thinking is developed through the formation of temporary connections in the cerebral cortex. The specifics of the relationship between language and thinking with objective reality and with each other can be depicted by the following diagram (Fig. 3):
designation relation |
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(language mat. object) |
(referent) |
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The indicated scheme is a dialectical-materialistic interpretation of the well-known semantic triangle Ogden–Richards. This diagram shows the unity of language and thinking and the determining role of thinking in this unity. Here Helmholtz's mistake becomes obvious, consisting in replacing the relation of reflection with the relation of designation.
The components indicated in the semantic triangle do not yet represent the completeness of the sign situation in which the sign actually functions. A sign situation always includes people who carry out one or another activity with an object (subject), using signs as substitutes for objects in the process of communication. In addition, the sign does not function in isolation, but in a certain system of signs. Consequently, the sign situation can be schematically represented as follows (Fig. 4):
Language levels
pragmatic |
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(society) |
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semantic |
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language structure |
syntactic |
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(other signs) |
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From an epistemological point of view, a word is a sound (or graphic) complex with the entire system of its relations to an object, concept, other words and subject. The system of these relations is as objective as the sound complex itself, although it is not natural, but social in nature. These relationships exist not only in people’s minds, but also in their very social activities.
The general science of signs and sign systems is semiotics. It is divided into semantics, which studies the relationship of linguistic expressions to designated objects and the semantic content they express, syntactics, which studies the relationship of signs to each other, and pragmatics, which studies the relationship of language to its speaker and consumer.
The model of a sign situation we have given is very close to the model of one of the founders of semiotics -
American philosopher Charles Morris (see: Morris C. Signification and significance. – Cambr. (Mass.), 1964. P. 2) and
models of the German philosopher Georg Klaus (see: G. Klaus. The Power of Words. - M., 1967). However, there are significant differences in the interpretation of the situation itself and the meaning. We highlight not only the semiotic aspects of the sign, but also the corresponding levels of language. Moreover the highest level, which presupposes all other levels, should be considered the pragmatic level. It is at this level that one can achieve the most meaningful understanding of language, since it is closely related to human practice.
However, traditional semiotic approaches to language, as a rule, cover only part of the philosophical problems of language and thinking, and, moreover, in statics, in synchrony (this is especially characteristic of neopositivism). Language permeates the entire process of human life and is itself a process. The problem of language and thinking is part of the problem of the relationship between language (and other social phenomena), consciousness and activity. Human activity is the whole within which the interrelation of language and thinking, physical and mental, material and ideal, biological and social, internal and external takes place.
The very emergence and development of specifically human, i.e., abstract thinking, and with it language, took place in the process of activity. In accordance with K. Marx's views on the sign, a natural thing acquires the function of a sign not on its own, but only by becoming an element in the structure of human activity. An example of such a transformation is the emergence and development of the monetary form of value, shown by Marx in Capital.
Activity in its most general form can be defined as the internal and external activity of a person. Speech
activity is a certain system of speech actions (acts, behavior). Within speech activity there are various
They look for language and speech, as well as inner speech. Language as such is a system of means of cognition and communication, and speech is an activity in the process of which this system is realized. Inner speech is the interaction of various mechanisms within the body that provide speech actions.
Speech activity
organically connected with socio-historical human practice. In contrast to behaviorism (which is characterized by a biological interpretation of behavior as a physiological reaction to a sign), materialist philosophy considers behavior (including speech activity) as an element of the system of human social material activity. The latter is precisely what language serves. In other words, speech activity is included as an integral part of a higher order activity.The speech pursues an intermediate applied goal. This is an influence on the behavior of the interlocutor, i.e. the implementation (ensuring) of communication. The purpose of speech is subordinated to the purpose of a higher order activity. Consequently, a linguistic sign is not just a biological stimulus, but a social one. "stimulus-means"(L.S. Vygotsky) subject-specific and practical human activity.
The instrumental-sign character of language also determines its active role in cognition. It is a necessary condition generalizations and abstractions. The latter are possible due to the conditional nature of the connection between the sign and the object of reality and the associative-functional nature of the connection between language and thinking. The relative freedom of connection between the object of reality, thinking and language allows the subject to associate with the sign (linguistic object) those thoughts that he considers necessary (essential).
In the genetic-historical sense, this is expressed in the formation of the meanings of individual words and expressions in everyday language, and in the functional-theoretical sense, in the formation of terms and their definitions.
Thus the language does following functions: denoting, presentational (expressive), cognitive (cognitive), regulatory and communicative. It serves as a means of recording and transmitting social information.
3. The Problem of Meaning
And communicative essence of language
The central problem of semantics and semiotics in general is the problem meanings of a linguistic sign. This problem is complex and has not been solved in modern science. Apparently, all elements of a sign situation participate in the constitution (establishment) of meaning. This gave rise to various and corresponding to individual aspects of the sign situation
concepts of meaning: objective (G. Frege), syntactic
cultural (A. Ayer, R. Carnap), figurative (L. Wittgenstein, G. Klaus), pragmatic (C. Morris, W. Quine).
However, not all components of a sign situation are equivalent and equally significant in terms of meaning. Language as a means of thinking and communication represents a certain functional system. A functional understanding of a language system when describing it presupposes taking into account everything with which this system interacts and on which its very existence depends. The general understanding of a function is defined as a way of connecting the elements of one set with the elements of another. A function in a systemic sense is determined by its relationship (dependence) to a higher order integrity.
Meaning in a broad philosophical sense is a function
tion of some material object (linguistic sign),
arising on the basis of its relationship (connection) to other objects (including its own kind). Apparently, this is why some authors are trying to define meaning as a relationship (see, for example: Abramyan L.A. Epistemological problems of the theory of signs. - Yerevan, 1965). In our opinion, even with the broadest philosophical approach to meaning, such a characteristic of it is insufficient, since the nature of relationships can be very different. And the connections of a sign with other objects are numerous and varied. From a philosophical point of view, especially from a semiotic point of view, both the nature of these connections (relations) and their subordination and implementation. In this regard, the most acceptable concept seems to be the concept of meaning developed by the Soviet researcher I.S. Narsky (see: Modern problems of the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism. In 2 vols. T. 2. –
In this concept, the value is characterized as
invariant of information carried by a sign . At the same time, under in-
Formation refers to knowledge transformed in a special way in a sign and sign system, as well as the transfer of this knowledge. In other words, information is the transformation and movement of knowledge from source to receiver. This understanding of information is not traditional, but quite broad, involving the technological aspect of knowledge. In terms of communication, there is information organizing and managing the impact of some systems on others (in this case, the impact of language on a person in the process of communication). This effect is realized in the transfer of the structure (or its fragments) of the first systems to the second. In the process of implementing information, it is not knowledge in the proper sense of the word that is transmitted, but certain material structures, organization of the sign system.
Thus, the well-known expression “people exchange thoughts through language” should not be taken literally. In the process of people communicating with each other, a thought does not “fly out” along with the word from the head of the speaker and then enter in the same way into the head of the listener. Obviously, thought as a property of highly organized matter, as a function of the brain, cannot exist outside the human head. The thought is not put into the word, but is only expressed in a special way in it. Thought, the ideal, is objectified, transforming into the material structures of language. Thought is embodied in various words and texts and objectively exists (so to speak) as a meaningful
the meaning of the signs.
The purpose of human language communication is understanding people, therefore, in pragmatic terms, meaning is also related to understanding. The basis of mutual understanding is the similarity of the psychophysiological organization of people, the material unity of the diverse world and the social community of people based on socio-historical practice, which is served by language.
When a word is perceived as a physical stimulus, a similar thought is formed in the brain of the addressee (receiver, receiver). This occurs when the word is included in the activity of the addressee’s body, which is adequate to the activity of the sender’s body. In other words, in the process of linguistic communication there is encoding and decoding re-
given thoughts. Consequently, information includes the interpretation of signs; the meaning appears as some secondary(arising and manifesting in relation) functional property of sign matter. This dual - level - nature of linguistic communication was accurately expressed by A.I. Kuprin in the story “Evening Guest”. He writes: “Now he will come in... we will begin
talk. The guest, making sounds of different heights and strengths, will express his thoughts, and I will listen to these sound vibrations in the air and figure out what they mean... and his thoughts will become my thoughts.”
Thus, language and thinking relatively autonomous, and the essence of linguistic communication is the actualization in memory of semantic and other meanings or their formation under the influence of signs. Of course, in a person’s head, thoughts do not exist in a bare, “pure” form, like some “ideal being.” Material basis thoughts here constitute material neurodynamic processes, occurring in the structures of the brain. In addition, we should not forget that the real process of thinking carried out by a specific individual is a complex and dynamic formation. This process integrates many components: abstract-discursive, sensory-figurative, emotional, intuitive and others. Therefore, there is also an extra-verbal thought, objectified in brain neurodynamic systems (codes) of a certain type as a variety and component of subjective reality (see: D.I. Dubrovsky. Does extra-verbal thought exist? // Questions of Philosophy. - 1977. - No. 9). In particular, thinking at the level of sensory reflection of the world does not require verbal means of implementation.
In this regard, the assertion that has existed since the cult of Stalin’s personality that thinking can exist only on the basis of language seems incorrect (see, for example: Passov E.I. Fundamentals of methods of teaching foreign languages. - M., 1977. P. 16) . The presence of relative independence of thought in the thinking actually experienced by a given person (in “living” thought) is confirmed by the very search for adequate expression of thought and studies of functional asymmetry of the brain and the pathology of thinking, especially aphasia.
The transition from thought to word in psychological terms should be considered not as a simple “dressing” of thought in a sound shell, but as a complex multi-stage, repeatedly mediated process, one of the main links of which is inner speech (L.S. Vygotsky). The latter has an amorphous structure, but is predicative. This puts it in an intermediate position between a thought that does not have a grammatical structure and a speech utterance formed according to grammatical rules.
Given the specificity of language and thinking that we have indicated, their connection appears more mobile, dynamic, dialectical
ethically contradictory
. This inconsistency, as already noted, is an internal source of their development. The assertion that thought in its “pure” form exists in a person’s head or that it is literally contained in language (in the natural content of linguistic signs) leads either to vulgar materialism, or to objective idealism.Explanation of the origin and development of human consciousness, thinking and language in philosophy is associated with the development of a theory of social development. Meaning is established in the course of social objective activity, the structure of which includes language itself (speech activity). From a social value point of view, the value is fixed by a sign "transformed" form of this activity, found in the relations between the elements of a sign situation, just as the value of a commodity, expressed in money, is a transformed form of social relations in its production, exchange and consumption. The meaning is objectified in the indication of an object, action or other signs and subjectified in the sense (concept, epistemological image).
The unity of language and thinking, the correspondence of the elements of language to the objectified elements of the ideal (meanings) has developed, developed over a long natural-historical path in the process labor activity. This is evidenced in the language itself by the fact that the most ancient part of the language primarily includes words denoting actions. At first, sounds (the beginnings of a word) are used by people as direct sound communication, as a stimulus and regulator of action (animals have similar sound communication). Initially, words accompanied real actions. But then the ability to operate with words developed, which was not necessarily accompanied by real actions on objects. The sound signal began to be associated with ideas about action; it becomes a sign of action (“awl” - sew, “chop” - chop).
This is how information communication arises , which mediates a person’s relationship with nature (and tools), as well as a person’s relationship with a person in the process of work. Probably, initially there were few words and each of them covered the whole any situation. Each word, apparently, contained a content that, at the modern level of language development, is expressed
With using several sentences (judgments).
IN Due to the historical nature of language and thinking, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the phenomena of objective reality, elements of the conceptual system and elements of the structure of language. It is known that there are various natural and artificial languages that have different structures and dividing (structuring) reality in different ways. Therefore, constructing speech in a foreign language during translation requires not element-by-element (word-for-word) translation, but a transition from the point of view of one language to the point of view of another.
The linguistic and individual relativity of thinking and the associated certain uncertainty of cognition and communication are sometimes absolutized. In particular, this was expressed in the well-known hypothesis of linguistic
what Sapir–Whorf relativity and the no less well-known hypothesis about Quine's translation uncertainties . The first of these argues that differences in languages bring with them differences in the way we think or view the world. The second holds that any “translation” (including the interpretation of one’s own speech) is fundamentally uncertain, and therefore cannot be given preference any translation scheme as more correct. In other words, ideas about the world vary not only from language to language, but also from individual to individual, and in some cases are incomprehensible at all.
However, the linguistic and individual vision of the world does not lead a person to conflict with reality and with other people. A correct understanding of the essence of objects and phenomena of the world around us and the effectiveness of communication are ultimately ensured on the basis of the objective goal-setting activity of a person. It is known that language arose from the need for joint coordinated activity of members of society. It is a purposeful functioning system. And since the purpose of speech is subordinated to the purpose of objective-practical activity, the successful implementation of the latter is proof of mutual understanding, proof of the effectiveness of human communication (i.e., the certainty of linguistic thinking).