chapotraphouse

i simply don't understand how you square this concept of ideas existing outside language when that's inexpressable without language.

I think the easiest way to conceptualise it is when you're trying to explain something but struggling to find the right words - the idea is there fully formed in your mind, but you still have to search for the language to express it to someone else.

i mean that you have language of a brain (thoughts/shapes/associations/memories) that float inside brain in some patterns, like waves on a pond. You can decide to express them, to explain/translate them to another person or not. I'm saying what i believe, opinions of course differ, some people think language guides ideas.

(as an exercise, what is decision in language form, explicitly? while i can buy that thoughts and objects-symbols might be closely related, verbs and actions are very far removed, feely-wise, to me)

you might find this article at least interesting (it's not strictly language of thought supportive) https://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/21/life-without-language/

as aside if something is not expressible by language, it doesn't mean it's not real (nor is it real because i like to think it exists tbh), not something as private (and as of yet, due to mri restrictions, immeasurable) as thoughts. *(as an absurd example, is electromagnetic wave real for ancient egyptian? i don't think a single word will match or concept of light fits with ancient egyptian ideas)

i simply don't understand how you square this concept of ideas existing outside language when that's inexpressable without language.

This is just question-begging. "Everything exists within language because you can't express anything without language." No, it's because you're putting something into the format of linguistic expression that language becomes a necessary element. That doesn't mean that the actual internal experience depends on language, because it clearly does not and I'm struggling to figure out how to explain this to you because you've just talked yourself into it with poorly-constructed syllogisms.

Language is helpful for encoding ideas into long-term memory, but that doesn't mean all ideas are fundamentally mediated by language, and even the communication of ideas is not fundamentally mediated by language (though most of it is for humans).

as an aside, social conformity can be transmitted by body language perfectly well

i hope i didn't make it sound like verbal speech was the key here, the muscle and bone adaptions that make complex speech possible were accompanied by brain stuff. people with disabilities making some forms of language inaccessible still use language!

Body language is not literally language, and would be more accurately described, if we're talking about conscious communication, as "body gestures". Gestures are not the same thing as signs, as in sign languages used by people with certain disabilities. Body language furthermore is often unconscious or fully involuntary, which I think we can agree makes it not even a gesture.

You have argued yourself into a position where you are asserting that 12-month-olds do not have an idea of what their primary caretakers look like in the absence of something to gesture to, but earthworms do have ideas because they exhibit body "language". Please just read even an introductory article on this topic before going around making assertions about it, because it's silly to just go off of vibes, or if you can't be bothered to, just have some epistemic humility.