The interrelation between thought and language has been a central and Essay

The interrelation between thought and language has been a central and enduring issue in philosophy and psychology. Of particular interest has been the possibil - Essay Example However, there are studies such as the classical and operant conditioning which somehow proved that even animals has the ability to learn. These studies opened the possibilities that thought exists even without language. Darwin (1920), the person behind the theory of evolution, suggests that human mind and that of animals are different on certain degree and not of kind. This statement implies that animals may also have the capability to think but not in the way and degree that human does. Theories and studies on different animals in search for the cognitive ability of animals provide evidence or somehow support this statement of Darwin. In earlier theories, the famous classical conditioning is one of the evidences of animal cognition. It was proposed by Ivan Pavlov; with the theory about the relationship between stimuli and responses using a dog, Pavlov discovered that animals could learn to display certain responses to stimuli already eliciting those responses (Tiffany, 1999 p.216). The operant conditioning started with different experiments, especially that of B.F. Skinner. Skinner developed the operant conditioning using rats and pigeons. In his rat experiment, he put a rat in the cage called Skinner Box that had a button on a wall which when pressed released a food pellet. When the rat accidentally pressed the button, food pellet came out which caused the rat to pressed the button more. When the button can not anymore give the rat some pellets, the rat stopped pressing the button. Through this theory, it was discovered that animals have the ability to learn through reinforcement or reward. However, even if Skinner used nonhuman animals with his experiment, he was still one of those who favor the total dependence of thought on language along with other behaviorists such as Watson, Ryle, Rosenberg, Wittgenstein and others (Chrucky, 1990). The operant theory is used today in human psychology