"I have can't think of any evidence in my own experience that thought precedes language."
David, there are many people who have severe communications disorders that make them unable to learn verbal language, but if you spent some time with them you would be hard pressed to deny that their heads are full of thoughts. If the looks on their faces and in their eyes did not convince you, the purposeful way they negotiate their environment would bring home the point. Language is an incredibly important cognitive tool that assists us in utilizing our power to think, and for verbal people like us it is almost impossible to imagine thought without language. But in my opinion language is like a flashlight. It lets us see the thoughts in our brains and hold them up and discuss them with others, but that doesn't mean that just outside the beam, where we cannot see, there is nothing in the dark that is real.
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