Language as grist to the mill of cognition

There is a growing consensus that natural language plays a significant role in our cognitive lives. However, this role of language is not adequately characterised. In this paper, I investigate the relationship between natural language and thinking and argue that thinking operates largely according to associationistic rules. Furthermore, I show that language is neither restricted to interfacing between a ‘Language of Thought’ and the conscious level, nor is it constitutively involved in thinking. Unlike available alternatives, the suggested view predicts and accommodates a large battery of empirical evidence. Furthermore, it avoids problems that associationistic views traditionally faced, e.g. problems of propositional thinking and compositionality of thought.