[visarga]

> When you speak, what comes first, the idea or the word? Do you first feel a thought inside you, and only after that go searching for the right word to wrap around it?

Let's take a feral human, do they achieve the same with language powered humans? No, obviously. It means language does something we can't replace with "consciousness". Maybe something life preserving, putting consciousness downstream of language use.

But more generally - how can 8B humans make a living on this planet? Not without language, that is for sure! We long passed the stage where we could exist without language at our consumption rate. We can't even exist without math, population collapse would be the outcome.

Minds are downstream from language & math. For example, is music downstream of piano or piano downstream of music? I think you can't cut this cleanly. They developed in relation to the other, recursion between tool and art form is already old.