True Words

I felt as if I had to record these words somewhere. As the mother of a non-verbal seven-year-old autistic child, they particularly resonated with me. They came from Alexander McCall Smith's Philosophy Club series, but I forget which book.

Cat had laughed. “I suppose if one wrote down all one’s thoughts through the day it would make very odd reading.”

“It would.” said Isabel. “And one of the reasons why it would make such odd reading is that language would be inadequate to describe our thoughts. We don’t think in words all the time. We don’t engage in one long soliloquy. We don’t mentally say things like: ‘I must go into town today.’ We don’t use those actual words, but we may still make a decision to go into town. Mental acts and mental states don’t require language.”

“So a person who never learnt a language could think in the same way as we do?” Cat sounded doubtful. How could one know one was going into town unless one had the word for going and the word for town?

“Yes,” said Isabel. “A person like that would have mental pictures. He would have feelings. He would have memories of what has happened to him and knowledge of what may happen in the future. The only difference is that he would find difficulty in communicating these, or recording them for that matter.”