From Goethe to Godel: Against the Language of Thought Hypothesis

This paper re-examines the language of thought hypothesis by considering objections raised by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe against influential views about the relation of language and thought in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, such as those posited by Herder, Schleiermacher, Schlegel, and von Humboldt. Goethe’s Theory of Colors contains an instructive critique of the idea held by many of his contemporaries: that the bounds and limits of thought are linguistic in character. I argue that Goethe’s remarks anticipate later 20th-century challenges to the language of thought hypothesis regarding implicit cognition, such as Dennett’s “chess playing” example, as well as Gödel’s discussions of the issue of formal incompleteness

Revealing the language of thought

Language of thought theories fall primarily into two views. The first view sees the language of thought as an innate language known as mentalese, which is hypothesized to operate at a level below conscious awareness while at the same time operating at a higher level than the neural events in the brain. The second view supposes that the language of thought is not innate. Rather, the language of thought is natural language. So, as an English speaker, my language of thought would be English. My goal is to defend the second view. My methodology will see the project broken down into three major areas. First I will show that human thinking requires a language of thought, after which I will highlight some problems with assuming that this language is innate and hidden. Included in this section will be a small introduction to the compatibility problem. The compatibility problem offers some obvious difficulties for mentalese theories and these will be discussed. The next stage of the project will focus on evidence that can be put forward in support of the claim that natural language is the language of thought. Our most direct source of evidence comes from introspection, and this will play a dominant role in the discussion. The final part of the thesis will involve an examination of the principle arguments that have been put forward against the idea that natural language is the language of thought. My goal will be to show that these arguments do not entail the existence of mentalese, nor do they show that natural language is not the language of thought. I will provide answers to the arguments, and will explain the phenomena they point to in terms of natural language being the language of thought

Introduction

Jerry Fodor, by common agreement, is one of the world’s leading philosophers. At the forefront of the cognitive revolution since the 1960s, his work has determined much of the research agenda in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology for well over 40 years. This special issue dedicated to his work is intended both as a tribute to Fodor and as a contribution to the fruitful debates that his work has generated. One philosophical thesis that has dominated Fodor’s work since the 1960s is realism about the mental. Are there really mental states, events and processes? From his first book, Psychological Explanation (1968), onwards, Fodor has always answered this question with a resolute yes. From his early rejection of Wittgensteinian and behaviourist conceptions of the mind, to his later disputes with philosophers of mind of the elminativist ilk, he has always been opposed to views that try to explain away mental phenomena. On his view, there are minds, and minds can change the world

Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Technology and Mental Mechanisms

This article provides a survey of Wittgenstein’s remarks in which he discusses various kinds of technology. I argue that throughout his career, his use of technological examples displays a thematic unity: technologies are invoked in order to illustrate a certain mechanical conception of the mind. I trace how his use of such examples evolved as his views on the mind and on meaning changed. I also discuss an important and somewhat radical anti-mechanistic strain in his later thought and suggest that Wittgenstein’s attitude to mechanistic explanations in psychology was ultimately quite ambivalent

The content and nature of thought

Die Dissertation prüft das Potential von Fines Semantischem Relationismus für einen kognivistischen Ansatz der Sprache und des Geistes. Hauptziel ist es, den Semantischen Relationismus als einzig angemessene Inhalstheorie für die Gedankensprache zu verteidigen, indem die Vorzüge gegenüber den wichtigsten Alternativen, dem Referentialismus und dem Fregeanismus, aufgezeigt werden. Die Arbeit soll zeigen, dass nur der Semantische Relatinismus alle Varianten des Frege Puzzles für die Gedankensprache lösen kann, und zwar in einerWeise, die die erheblichen Schwierigkeiten der alternativen Theorien umgeht. Das Ergebnis ist sowohl eine Verteidigung des Sematischen Relationismus als auch eine Bestätigung der Tragbarkeit der Hypothese einer Gedankensprache. Auf Basis der Gedankensprache und einer relationistischen Semantik stellt die Arbeit zudem eine neue Theorie der Propositionen vor, die sich erheblich von allen bestehenden Alternativen, inbegriffen der von Fine, unterscheidet. Das Endergebnis ist eine Auffassung von Propositionen als syntaktisch strukturierten mentalen Repräsentationen, die Sätze in der Gedankensprache darstellen, sowie Träger von Inhalten, die durch ihren semantischen Inhalt typindividuiert sind. Ein Kernziel der Arbeit ist es, die Vorteile dieser Auffassung gegenüber klassischen und modernen Alternativen aufzuzeigen. Die Arbeit entwickelt ihr Gesamtergebnis durch die Aufarbeitung von drei aktuellen, eng miteinander verbundenen Debatten. Erstens, das Problem, dass Freges Puzzle für Gedanken und überzegungen darstellt, insbesondere in Form von Kripkes Puzzle. Zweitens, das Problem der Typindividuierung von Symbolen in der Gedankensprache. Drittens, die Debatte um die Ontologie von Begriffen und Propositionen. Indem eine vielversprechende relationistische Lösung in diesen Problembereichen entwickelt wird, bietet die Arbeit zusätzliche Bestätigung für Fines semantische Theorie durch eine erhebliche Erweiterung ihres Anwendungsbereichs.The thesis evaluates the potential of Fine’s Semantic Relationism for a cognitivist approach to language and the mind. The main aim is to champion Semantic Relationism as the only adequate theory of content for the Language of Thought by bringing out the benefits of the theory over its main rivals, Referentialism and Fregeanism. It seeks to show that only Semantic Relationism can address all the variants of Frege’s Puzzle for the Language of Thought, and that it can do so in a way that avoids the substantial difficulties that beset other semantic theories. The main outcome is at the same time a vindication of the adopted semantic theory and a confirmation of the viability of the Language of Thought hypothesis. The thesis also offers a new theory of propositions on the basis of the Language of Thought and a Relationist semantics that differs significantly from all such presently available theories, including Fine’s. The final result is a theory of propositions as syntactically structured mental representations, which are sentences in the Language of Thought, that are content bearers individuated by their semantic content as specified by Semantic Relationism. A major objective of the thesis is to highlight the advantages of this view over both classical and current alternatives. The thesis develops its overall view by offering solutions in three closely related ongoing debates. First, the challenge posed by Frege’s Puzzle for thought and belief, Kripke’s Puzzle notably included, secondly, the problem about the proper type-individuation of Language of Thought symbol tokens, and thirdly, the debate about the ontological nature of concepts and propositions. By developing a promising Relationist response to these problems, the thesis also provides additional support to Fine’s semantic theory by considerably expanding its scope of application