Language and thought are not almost the same. They are very different.
The purpose of language is to communicate. The purpose of thought is to predict. Very very different.
You can express one and the same thought in any language you want.
You can think without talking. See for example animals.
You can talk without thinking. See for example humans.
Thinking has to do with how your actions relate to what happened in the past.
You can easily tell whether someone thinks or not just by observing how they act in relation to what happened in the past.
You don’t need someone to speak in order to tell that they are thinking.
You don’t have to open someone’s skull, check if there is an adequate neurophysical process, in order to tell that they are thinking.
In fact, there might be nothing within one’s skull other than darkness.
You try to look into one’s skull deeper and deeper and you just keep seeing nothing but sheer darkness.
And yet, they would still be a thinking organism provided that their actions are sufficiently related to what happened in the past.
The extent to which one’s actions are related to what happened in the past is the extent to which one thinks.
No need for language.
You can be completely incapable of communicating your thoughts and still be great at thinking.
In fact, you can be terrible at language, frequently misunderstood by others, and still be great at thinking.
The other problem is that . . . your emphasis is on language.
You say that language and thought are almost the same, yet, when you define logic, you almost always do it in terms of language.
You rarely say that logic is consistency in thought.
No, what you say is that logic is consistency in language.
What this suggests to me is that you think that language is more important than thought.
Which is backwards.
In fact, most of the time, when you criticize others, you criticize their language and not their thoughts.
You pay too much attention to superficial things.
You value what is superficial (words) more than what is fundamental (thought.)
That’s my problem with you.
You are horribly superficial.
That’s very annoying when people try to communicate with you philosophically.
Because instead of paying attention to what matters, which is thoughts, you pay attention to how they express their thoughts, which is language.
People who are interested in other people’s thoughts – basically, people who are interested in philosophy – try to understand what other people are saying to the best of their ability.
Sometimes, they go to great lengths to understand what others are saying.
Sometimes, they use quite a bit of lateral thinking.
Of course, if it’s too difficult they give up. But they don’t accuse others of being bad thinkers merely because they are not good at communication.
I am not saying that it’s not better to be good at communication.
I am saying that what matters on philosophy boards are thoughts.
And if someone has great thoughts lying beneath obscure words then . . . that’s a gem right there although covered by shit.
Is a gem covered by shit of lesser worth than a gem that is not covered by shit?
I don’t think so.
Some gem is better than no gem.
But this isn’t merely because of your unwillingness to tolerate obscure language.
This is about your lack of understanding of what logic is.
That’s the problem.
You put WORDS before REALITY.
Ha!
Nothing is as simple to prove as to say that it exists, therefore is something because it has the label of nothing. Have you tried viewing nothing? You look and see ‘nothingness’, but are looking at something, so how inadequate is the label of nothing other than as a label?