Conceptual Thought Without Language? The Case from Animal Cognition

Markus Wild reviews recent research in animal cognition to make clear that living beings can possess concepts even when they do not possess language. He develops an argument from animal cognition in order to support the assumption that concepts do not necessarily presuppose language: as some animals behave in a way that is complex enough to require scientific explanations of their behavior to make recourse to thoughts, some animals have thoughts. If some animals have thoughts but do not possess language, then something like conceptual thought without language must exist. Wild grapples with three common objections raised in the literature and attempts to rebut them. After considering these objections, he discusses criteria for the attribution of (non-linguistic) thoughts which contain concepts. In particular, these include the construction of stable representations of objects and their properties, the independence of the representations from stimuli, and the existence of a systematic relationship between the elements of the contents of a representation.