Book Details

Thinking without Words presents the first full-length philosophical study of the nature of nonlinguistic thought, offering a conceptual framework for treating human infants and nonhuman animals as genuine thinkers. Although many scientific disciplines routinely regard nonlinguistic creatures as thinkers -- explaining their behavior in terms of their thoughts about themselves and their environments -- theorizing of this kind has proceeded without a clear account of the types of thinking available to nonlinguistic creatures. The ascription of thoughts to such creatures has frequently been treated as metaphorical and not to be taken at face value. Bermudez overturns this common view through an extensive exploration of the differences between thinking without words and language-based thinking. He acknowledges that there are clear limits to the expressive power of nonlinguistic thought; nonetheless he identifies types of thinking at the nonlinguistic level that can be used to explain sophisticated nonlinguistic behaviors.

Whereas existing discussions of nonlinguistic thought have concentrated on how such thoughts might be physically realized, Bermudez approaches the problem by considering what is required to explain behavior in psychological terms. Making use of the experimental tools of developmental psychology and the study of animal behavior, he shows how a precise account of the way in which human infants and nonhuman animals represent the world is possible. Consequently, this book has a broad interdisciplinary range and will appeal to philosophers, psychologists, students of animal behavior, and anyone interested in the relationship between thought and language.