The Language of Thought

Ockham is usually considered the first to hold a proper theory of mental language, but Aquinas is willing to call the concept, or the act of intellect by which something is understood, a verbum mentis or “mental word.” This essay explores the sense in which Aquinas regarded concepts as language-like. It argues that Aquinas's understanding of concepts and their objects meant that his application of syntactic and semantic analysis to them did not and could not lead in the direction of (...) theories of mental language as it was conceived by nominalist philosophers. -/- (Version for download here is uncorrected proofs. Please cite from published final version.). (shrink)

Do we think in a language-like format? Taking the marker of language-like formats to be the property of unconstrained systematicity, this paper considers the following master argument for the claim that we do: language is unconstrainedly systematic, if language is unconstrainedly systematic then so is thought, so thought is unconstrainedly systematic. It is easy to feel that there is something right about this argument, that there will be some way of filling in its details that will vindicate the idea that (...) our thought must be unconstrainedly systematic given that the language in which we express it is. Clearly, however, the second premise needs support—we need a principled reason for moving from the unconstrained systematicity of language to the unconstrained systematicity of thought. This paper gives three passes at formulating such a principle. This turns out to be much harder than it might seem. We should, I conclude, resist falling too easily for the lure of this master argument for the language-like format of thought. (shrink)

This book is a speculative, idiosyncratic, and important successor to Fodor, Bever, and Garrett’s Psychology of Language. It is also the first book in Crowell’s Language and Thought Series edited by J. J. Katz, T. Langedoen, and H. Savin. This is a manifesto which will determine the direction of some research and debate in the next few years. Given that, it is unfortunate that word play and verbal conceits are funnelled into what becomes almost a dialogue between text and footnotes (...) in which the footnotes on occasion become the main text. For example : "If such statements are offered as arguments for the truth of the presupposition of the question on its first reading, then it would appear that General Mills has either misused the method of difference or committed the fallacy of affirmation of the consequent. Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less.". (shrink)

Typical emotions share important features with paradigmatic intentional states, and therefore might admit of distinctions made in theory of intentionality. One such distinction is between attitude and content, where we can specify the content of an intentional state separately from its attitude, and therefore the same content can be taken up by different intentional attitudes. According to some philosophers, emotions do not admit of this distinction, although there has been no sustained argument for this claim. In this article, I argue (...) that the way values figure in emotional experience qualifies the content of emotional experience such that the attitude-content distinction cannot be applied. (shrink)

The overwhelming majority of those who theorize about implicit biases posit that these biases are caused by some sort of association. However, what exactly this claim amounts to is rarely specified. In this paper, I distinguish between different understandings of association, and I argue that the crucial senses of association for elucidating implicit bias are the cognitive structure and mental process senses. A hypothesis is subsequently derived: if associations really underpin implicit biases, then implicit biases should be modulated by counterconditioning (...) or extinction but should not be modulated by rational argumentation or logical interventions. This hypothesis is false; implicit biases are not predicated on any associative structures or associative processes but instead arise because of unconscious propositionally structured beliefs. I conclude by discussing how the case study of implicit bias illuminates problems with popular dual-process models of cognitive architecture. (shrink)

What is it for two people to think of an object, natural kind or other entity under the same mode of presentation (MOP)? This has seemed a particularly difficult question for advocates of the Mental Files approach, the Language of Thought, or other ‘atomistic’ theories. In this paper I propose a simple answer. I first argue that, by parallel with the synchronic intrapersonal case, the sharing of a MOP should involve a certain kind of epistemic transparency between the token thoughts (...) of the two thinkers. I then explain how shared words help bring about this transparency. Finally, I show how this account can be extended for thoughts expressed using demonstratives or indexicals. (shrink)

Robert Cummins argues that any causal theory of mental content (CT) founders on an established fact of human psychology: that theory mediates sensory detection. He concludes,.

In G.K. Chesterton’s The Man who was Thursday, six of the seven anarchists named after different days of the week turn out to be secret policemen. Chesterton’s hero Syme finds himself opposed to not just a disparate group of anarchists, but to the unified forces of authority. A similar thing seems to have happened in recent years to Jerry Fodor. When Fodor published The Language of Thought in 1975 his targets were, as he says, ‘a mixed bag’: reductionists, behaviourists, empiricists, (...) operationalists, holists and various followers of Wittgenstein. But today these disparate targets have become distilled into one movement, which Fodor calls ‘pragmatism’. Fodor sees pragmatism (‘perhaps the worst idea that philosophy ever had’) everywhere, and one aim of this sequel to The Language of Thought is to stamp it out. (shrink)

_The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology, Second Edition_ is an invaluable guide and major reference source to the major topics, problems, concepts and debates in philosophy of psychology and is the first companion of its kind. A team of renowned international contributors provide forty-nine chapters organised into six clear parts: Historical background to Philosophy of Psychology Psychological Explanation Cognition and Representation The biological basis of psychology Perceptual Experience Personhood. _The Companion_ covers key topics such as the origins of experimental (...) psychology; folk psychology; behaviorism and functionalism; philosophy, psychology and neuroscience; the language of thought, modularity, nativism and representational theories of mind; consciousness and the senses; dreams emotion and temporality; personal identity and the philosophy of psychopathology. For the_ second edition_ many of the current chapters have been updated, and seven new chapters added on important new topics such predictive processing, comparative cognition, learning, and group cognition, as well as a new introductory chapter by the editors on the demarcation between philosophy and psychology. Essential reading for all students of philosophy of mind, science and psychology, _The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology _will also be of interest to anyone studying psychology and its related disciplines. (shrink)

What is the place of language in human cognition? Do we sometimes think in natural language? Or is language for purposes of interpersonal communication only? Although these questions have been much debated in the past, they have almost dropped from sight in recent decades amongst those interested in the cognitive sciences. Language and Thought is intended to persuade such people to think again. It brings together essays by a distinguished interdisciplinary team of philosophers and psychologists, who discuss various ways in (...) which language may be implicated in human cognition. The editors have provided an introduction which lays out the basic terms and history of the debate, and a consolidated bibliography which will provide a valuable reference resource for all those interested in this area. The volume will be of great interest to all researchers and students interested in language and its place in cognition. (shrink)

Online collection of papers by Devitt, Dretske, Guarino, Hochberg, Jackson, Petitot, Searle, Tye, Varzi and other leading thinkers on philosophy and the foundations of cognitive Science. Topics dealt with include: Wittgenstein and Cognitive Science, Content and Object, Logic and Foundations, Language and Linguistics, and Ontology and Mereology.

My thesis tackles two related problems that have taken center stage in the recent literature on concepts: • What are the individuation conditions of concepts? Under what conditions is a concept C₁ the same concept as a concept C₂? • What are the possession conditions of concepts? What conditions must be satisfied for a thinker to have a concept C? I will develop a pluralist and contextualist theory of concept individuation and possession: different concepts have different individuation and possession conditions, (...) and contextual factors play a crucial role in determining what concepts we attribute to other subjects when we ascribe propositional attitudes to them. In chapters 1-3, I defend a contextualist, non-Millian theory of propositional attitude ascriptions. Then, I suggest contextualist theories of ascriptions can be applied to the problem of concept individuation/possession. In particular, I use contextualism to provide a new, more effective argument for Fodor’s “publicity principle”, according to which concepts must be shared in order for interpersonally applicable psychological generalizations to be possible. Publicity has important implications: in particular, it is inconsistent with existing versions of holism, on which concepts cannot be shared by ordinary thinkers. Nonetheless, in chapters 4-5 I show how holism can still play an important role in our best theory of concepts. More specifically, I argue that the tradition of appealing to modes of presentation in order to give an account of “Frege cases” is in fact committed to holism. To develop a version of holism that will give a successful account of Frege cases without violating publicity, I suggest we should adopt my pluralist-contextualist picture: on that picture, the concepts involved in a Frege case will be holistically individuated and not public, while other concepts will be more coarsely individuated and widely shared. In chapter 6, I will develop this view further by contrasting it with other pluralist theories and with rival theories of concepts, such as the localist views defended by Peacocke, Rey and Jackson. (shrink)

Annotated online bibliography on the Language of Thought Hypothesis.

In this monograph Nicholas Georgalis further develops his important work on minimal content, recasting and providing novel solutions to several of the fundamental problems faced by philosophers of language. His theory defends and explicates the importance of ‘thought-tokens’ and minimal content and their many-to-one relation to linguistic meaning, challenging both ‘externalist’ accounts of thought and the solutions to philosophical problems of language they inspire. The concepts of idiolect, use, and statement made are critically discussed, and a classification of kinds of (...) utterances is developed to facilitate the latter. This is an important text for those interested in current theories and debates on philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and their points of intersection. (shrink)

In psychologists' attempts to explain the nature of language and thought, all pretense of building an axiomatic system was laid aside. The severely limited success of formal axiomatic systems in psychology eliminated most of the desire to even attempt such a project shortly after Hull's work was completed. Whatever axiomatic qualities psychological theories possess, they are rarely expressed as such. We have seen that Dollard and Miller translated some Freudian principles into those of Hull, and although they demonstrated the similarities (...) that existed between the two theories, this never induced Freudians to change their vocabulary or their theoretical concepts to those of Hull. Freudian theory was so extensively interpretative and so restructured in a formal, or even semi-formal, axiomatic manner. However, as we have seen, since Skinner developed a system that lent itself to axiomatic arrangement, a successful attempt to account for the functional aspects of language and thought through the principles of behavior analysis would constitute a major advance in psychological theory. (shrink)

According to a computational view of mind, thinking is identified with the manipulation of internal mental representations and intelligent behavior is the output of these computations. Although Thomas Hobbes's philosophy of mind is taken by many to be a precursor of this brand of cognitivism, this is not the case. For Hobbes, not all thinking is the manipulation of language-like symbols, and intelligent behavior is partly constitutive of cognition. Cognition requires a 'passionate thought', and this Hobbsian synthesis of inner thought (...) and outer behavior suggests a resolution to the contemporary conflict between cognitive theories of mind that make KNOWING THAT primary and pragmatic theories that make KNOWING HOW primary. (shrink)

The first half of the paper reflects on a couple of folk-psychological notions. "Belief and "judgement" are selected for special attention. They cover two varieties of thinking, a mental state and a mental act. Both lay claim to truth, and thereby stand in marked contrast to their nowadays sadly neglected non-committal counterparts. Meinong, of course, did not neglect them, and his notions of "Annehmen " and "Denken " play a decisive role in the paper. - The Lingua Mentis Hypothesis is (...) a bold contribution to cognitive subpersonal psychology. The second half of the paper tries to show that careful reflection on the conceptuäl resources of folk psychology makes certain arguments for this Hypothesis as well as certain philosophical arguments against it look rather feeble. The paper culminates in a discussion of Jerry Fodor's Systematicity Argument for the Language of Thought Hypothesis. In this discussion critical use is made of certain Meinongian insights. (shrink)

The current debate over systematicity concerns the formal conditions a scheme of mental representation must satisfy in order to explain the systematicity of thought.1 The systematicity of thought is assumed to be a pervasive property of minds, and can be characterized (roughly) as follows: anyone who can think T can think systematic variants of T, where the systematic variants of T are found by permuting T’s constituents. So, for example, it is an alleged fact that anyone who can think the (...) thought that John loves Mary can think the thought that Mary loves John, where the latter thought is a systematic variant of the former. (shrink)

Because we humans speak a public language, there has always been a special reason to suppose that we have a language of thought. For nonhuman animals, this special reason is missing, and the issue is less straightforward. On the one hand, there is evidence of various types of nonlinguistic representations, such as analog magnitude representations, which can explain many types of intelligent behavior. But on the other hand, the mere fact that some aspects of animal cognition can be explained by (...) nonlinguistic representations hardly suffices to show that animal minds are bereft of any sentence-like representations. This paper explores these complexities and argues that empirical research into the logical abilities of nonhuman animals provides a more direct way of evaluating whether they have a language of thought. Along the way, I offer a novel suggestion of how the hypothesis that animals draw disjunctive syllogisms can be empirically distinguished from the hypothesis, defended by Michael Rescorla, that animals reason probabilistically in accordance with Bayes’ Law. (shrink)

Carruthers offers a refreshing piece of “substantive philosophy.” Going beyond the limitations of pure analysis, he adopts a methodology which is one part analysis, one part empirical data, and a heavy dose of inference to the best explanation. The overarching goal is to advance the commonsense—yet unfashionable—thesis that natural language is the primary medium of thought, and to defend the related cognitive conception of NL. In particular, Carruthers argues that imaginative phonological representations of “inner speech” are constitutive of conscious thoughts, (...) and that thinking involves operations on such symbols. While there is still a role for mentalese cognition, such thinking is always unconscious, and probably of limited innate conceptual resources. The weak thesis is that, of natural necessity, all conscious propositional thought requires NL. The strong thesis is that, of natural necessity, distinctively human thoughts can only be tokened in natural language—hence even much of our unconscious thinking occurs in English. (shrink)

This is a critical examination of Jerry Fodor's language of thought hypothesis . Fodor postulated a system of mental representations in which mental processes are supposed to be coded. The language of thought is alleged to be a discrete representational system which has a finite vocabulary, a compositional syntactic structure and a set of semantic rules that determine the meanings of the expressions. This mental language is supposed to be innate and instantiated in the brain, where neural objects or processes (...) serve as the physical signs of the language. In the first chapter I trace the origins of the LOT hypothesis, showing the influence of generative grammar and Turing's algorithms on Fodor's work. I also show how functionalist philosophy of mind arose as an alternative to philosophical behaviorism and reductionistic materialism. In the second chapter I argue against Fodor's computational theory of propositional attitudes by questioning the very idea of physical symbols that have intrinsic semantic content and showing that his theory does not capture our normal notions of belief and desire. In chapter three I examine in some detail the hypothetical structure of LOT and I argue that there cannot be a language where the syntax perfectly mirrors the semantics, a language where there is no place for vagueness or ambiguity. I examine in chapter four the alleged innate character of LOT, and I argue that Chomsky's poverty of the stimulus argument does not support the thesis of innate concepts. Moreover, I argue that Fodor's innatism is inconsistent with his causal theory of meaning for LOT terms. In chapter five, I examine Fodor's arguments against connectionism, the main rival of the LOT hypothesis in contemporary cognitive science, and I argue that Fodor is wrong in believing that thought has the characteristics of constituency, productivity and systematicity in virtue of some natural law, but that it is rather a conceptual, or grammatical, truth that thought has those characteristics. It is not a factual issue whether thought has a symbolist or a connectionist structure. (shrink)

Because thought is a process involving representations, philosophers have tried to understand it by invoking metaphors rooted in other known forms of representation. The two most common metaphors for thought are the language metaphor and the picture metaphor. Any viable theory regarding the representational format of thought will need to account for the central characteristics of thought. Foremost amongst these is the capacity to manipulate representations in a truth-preserving manner. It is on the basis of such representational manipulations that we (...) are able to predict the consequences of our actions. In addition, a viable theory will need to account for the representational expressiveness, or productivity, of thought. Early artificial intelligence researchers recognized that artificial languages such as predicate calculus are expressive enough to represent any of a wide variety of domains and provide a way to effect truth preserving representational manipulations. Philosophers in favor of the language/logic metaphor often take note of this fact about artificial languages. Early AI research also revealed, however, that this approach is seriously flawed. The problem with formal deduction techniques, called 'the frame problem', is that they do not support predictions regarding an open-ended set of alterations to a given represented domain. They exhibit representational productivity but not inferential productivity. An alternative to the language/logic metaphor for thought is the physically isomorphic model metaphor. A representation is physically isomorphic with what it represents if it has some of the very same properties as what it represents---as, for instance, do scale models, sculptures and pictures. Not only do the media used for the construction of PIMs often exhibit a high degree of representational productivity, but PIMs themselves exhibit inferential productivity. The most serious objection to the PIM metaphor stems from the recognition that systems like brains and computers fail to outwardly evidence any of the properties of PIMs . However, the same conceptual tools brought to bear in order to give a mechanistic reading to the language/logic metaphor can also be used in order to provide a more mechanistic reading of the PIM metaphor for thought. (shrink)

The language of thought hypothesis holds that propositional attitudes are causes of behavior and identical to relations between subjects and tokens in a language-like system of mental representation. Its main support is Jerry Fodor's argument that our only plausible psychological models of cognitive processes presuppose it. This dissertation examines criticisms of Fodor's argument by three philosophers: Christopher Peacocke, Stephen Stich, and Daniel Dennett. Peacocke argues that cognitive processes do not require a language of thought since the states realizing them need (...) have no syntactic structure. I argue that he mistakenly assumes LTH requires a correlation between features of content and syntax, and that his description of how psychological processes could be realized without an LT is inadequate. Stich argues that cognitive psychology commits us only to holding that there are syntactically structured mental representations that need have no content. I show that Stich is mistaken about the commitments of cognitive psychology, that the availability of the purely syntactic theory he prefers would not impugn current cognitive theory's models, and that there are sound reasons for ascribing contents to mental representations. Dennett raises the problem of what the difference is between those organisms having mental representations and those not. I consider Fodor's theory on this, amend it, and offer such a difference. Dennett also objects that the contents of mental representations are inappropriate for propositional attitudes, but I show he only establishes that some are. I consider two other of Dennett's arguments purporting to show that the intentional strategy has no realist implications, argue that neither motivates rejecting Fodor's argument, but contend that one does support a weaker claim: that we need not draw realist implications if we are willing to accept instrumentalism about Fodor's models. Finally, I argue that future psychology might not support Fodor's argument, hence that our commitment to LTH on the basis of current psychology must be to that extent provisional. (shrink)

In an attempt to show how rational explanation of human and animal behaviour has a place in the scientific explanation of our physical world, Fodor advances the language of thought hypothesis. The purpose of this dissertation is to argue that, contrary to the language of thought hypothesis, we need not possess a linguistic internal representational system distinct from any natural language to serve as the medium of thinking. I accept that we have an internal representational system, but by analyzing Fodor's (...) theory of content, I show Fodor's argument that the internal system must be as expressive as any natural language, which he uses in arguing that the internal system is the linguistic medium of thought, is unsound. Distinguishing an informational theory of content from a causal theory of content, which Fodor conflates, I argue that internal representations, whose content is determined by information they carry, cannot be related in a way that corresponds to semantic associations between terms in natural languages, reflecting actual associations of items in the world. Furthermore, provided certain animal cognition, which is homogeneous with human cognition, can be explained without requiring that the internal system possess anything corresponding to the logical connectives, the internal system need not possess anything corresponding to the logical connectives. I give such an explanation of animal cognition by developing an approach to content in the Rylean/Dennettian tradition, based on the notion of embodied cognition, in which animals embody the hypotheses they entertain in virtue of their total dispositional state, rather than explicitly representing them. It follows that there are two features of natural languages, semantic associations of terms and possessing logical connectives, that the internal system need not have. Hence a rational interpretation of linguistic behaviour need not be derived from an intentional interpretation of the transformations on internal representations, from which it follows that the internal system need not be the medium of thought, which can be a natural language. Also, if the internal system need not possess anything corresponding to the logical connectives, it need not be as natural languages, and hence it need not be linguistic. (shrink)

This dissertation is an examination of the Language of Thought thesis posited by Jerry Fodor. Fodor believes that our language of thought is a very robust language, one that essentially has all of the conceptual resources of any humanly possible language. I find Fodor's position regarding concepts extreme---too much is innate in the Language of Thought as he posits it. I believe that an analysis of the American Sign Language may cast light on some of the problems with Fodor's view. (...) My basic argument is as follows: ASL is conceptually impoverished in that it has no Signs for many of the important and sophisticated concepts used in science and philosophy. That is to say, ASL lacks the means to express many of the sophisticated conceptual meanings covered by a causal theory of meaning/reference using Signs. Because of that impoverishment, those prelingually deafened people whose primary means of communication is ASL have unusual difficulty in producing sentences expressing those philosophical and scientific meanings. They also have unusual difficulty in understanding sentences that express those meanings. The explanation of 2 is either The impoverishment of ASL has led to impoverishment in the thinking of those who have no other language---i.e., to an unusual difficulty in having thoughts with those meanings as their content; or There is no impoverishment in the thinking of those native signers who use only ASL for communication, but the impoverishment of ASL makes it unusually difficult to express thoughts with those meanings in that language. The explanation is not because if the ASL signers' thoughts were not impoverished then ASL would not be either. It would not lack Signs for so many of those particular concepts. Those Signs would be added to the language naturally, as they have been to spoken languages, as a means of facilitating rapid and accurate communication of the concepts involved. So, is the explanation. So the thoughts of those who rely solely on ASL as a means of communicating concepts cannot be in an innate Mentalese with a universal Lexicon of concepts, as Fodor posits---and if their language of thought is not innate, then we have no reason to think anyone else's is either, for what is innate must be innate to the species as a whole. (shrink)

It has been maintained that the so-called cognitive approach to explaining the nature of language and thought began as a reaction to the entrenched behaviorism of the 1950's. The reader will recall that during the period from roughly 1930 to 1957, strict behavioral interpretation of animal and human activities of all sorts was challenged both from within and without. Edwin Tolman - who called himself a behaviorist - spoke of "cognitive maps" developing in rats who were given certain learning tasks. (...) Wolfgang Kohler described "insight" in chimpanzees, in contrast to the step-like learning processes described by Hull . What I hope to do in this chapter is summarize some of the most important contemporary cognitive interpretations of the last forty years regarding the nature of language and thought with the intent of contrasting them with the behavior analytic interpretation of language acquisition and use presented in Chapter 2. (shrink)

We argue that are no such things as literal categories in human cognition. Instead, we argue that there are merely temporary coalescences of dimensions of similarity, which are brought together by context in order to create the similarity structure in mental representations appropriate for the task at hand. Fodor contends that context‐sensitive cognition cannot be realised by current computational theories of mind. We address this challenge by describing a simple computational implementation that exhibits internal knowledge representations whose similarity structure alters (...) fluidly depending on context. We explicate the processing properties that support this function and illustrate with two more complex models, one applied to the development of semantic knowledge , the second to the processing of simple metaphorical comparisons . The models firstly demonstrate how phenomena that seem problematic for literal categorisation resolve to particular cases of the contextual modulation of mental representations; and secondly prompt a new perspective on the relation between language and thought: language affords the strategic control of context on semantic knowledge, allowing information to be brought to bear in a given situation that might otherwise not be available to influence processing. This may explain one way in which human thought is creative, and distinctive from animal cognition. (shrink)