Part A
Directions:
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers ma ANSWER SHEET 1.
Text 1

It is evident that there is a close connection between the capacity to use language and the capacities covered by the verb" to think". Indeed, me writers have identified thinking with using words: Plato coined the saying, "In thinking the soul is talking to itself"; J.B. Watson reduced thinking to inhibited speech located in the minute movements or tensions of the physiological mechanisms involved in speaking; and although Ryle is careful to point out that there are many senses in which a person is said to think in which words are not in evidence, he has also said that saying something in a specific frame of mind is thinking a thought. Is thinking reducible to, or dependent upon, language habits It would seem that many thinking situations are hardly distinguishable from the skilful use of language, although there are some others in which language is not involved. Thought cannot be simply identified with running language. It may be the case, of course, that the non-linguistic skills involved in thought can only be acquired and developed if the learner is able to use and understand language. However, this question is one which we cannot hope to answer in this book. Obviously being able to use language makes for a considerable development in all one’s capacities but how precisely this comes about we cannot say. At the common-sense level it appears that there is often a distinction between thought and the words we employ to communicate with other people. We often have to struggle hard to find words to capture what our thinking has already grasped, and when we do find words we sometimes feel that they fail to do their job properly. Again when we report or describe our thinking to other people we do not merely report unspoken words and sentences. Such sentences do not always occur in thinking, and when they do they axe merged with vague imagery and the hint of unconscious or subliminal activities going on just out of range. Thinking, as it happens, is more like struggling, striving, or searching for something than it is like talking or reading. Words do play their part but they are rarely the only feature of thought. This observation is supported by the experiments of the Wurzburg psychologists reported in Chapter Eight who showed that intelt adaptive responses can occur in problem solving situations without the use of either words or images of any kind; ",Set" and "determining tendencies" operate without the actual use of language in helping us to think purposefully and inteltly. Again the Study of speech disorders due to brain injury or disease suggest that patients can think without having adequate control over their language, some patients, for example, fail to find the names of objects presented to them and are unable to describe s which they witness; they even find it difficult to interpret long written notices. But they succeed in playing s of chess or draughts. They can use the concepts needed for chess playing or draughts playing but are unable to use many of the concepts in ordinary language. How they manage to do this we do not know. Yet animals such as Kohler’s chimpan2ees can solve problems by working out strategies such as the invention of implements or Climbing when such animals have not language beyond a few warning cries. Intelt or "insightful" behavior is not dependent in the case of monkeys on language skills: presumably human beings have various capacities for thinking situations which are likewise independent of language.

According to the theory of "thought" devised by J. B. Watson, thinking is______.