more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
A private attitude is not intelligible except as an adjustment to the public norms provided by language. It follows that a creature must be a member of speech community if it is to have the concept of belief.
Gist of Idea
Concepts are only possible in a language community
Source
Donald Davidson (Thought and Talk [1975], p.170)
Book Ref
Davidson,Donald: 'Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (2nd ed)' [OUP 2001], p.170
A Reaction
This obviously draws on Wittgenstein's private language argument, and strikes me as blatantly wrong, because I take higher animals to have concepts without language. Pure vision gives rise to concepts. I don't even think they are necessarily conscious.
8155 | Without speech we cannot know right/wrong, true/false, good/bad, or pleasant/unpleasant [Anon (Upan)] |
19758 | Language may aid thinking, but powerful thought was needed to produce language [Rousseau] |
7084 | What can be said is what can be thought, so language shows the limits of thought [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
23065 | If only we could write like a reptile, of endless sensations and no concepts! [Cioran] |
11144 | Concepts are only possible in a language community [Davidson] |
12592 | Concepts in thought have content, but not meaning, which requires communication [Harman] |
18577 | The word 'grandmother' may be two concepts, with a prototype and a definition [Machery] |