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Full Idea
I don't believe that folk psychology says there is a language of thought.
Clarification
That is, ordinary talk of mental lives does not imply that we have an inner language in the brain
Gist of Idea
Folk psychology doesn't say that there is a language of thought
Source
David Lewis (Lewis: reduction of mind (on himself) [1994], p.422)
Book Ref
'A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind', ed/tr. Guttenplan,Samuel [Blackwell 1995], p.422
A Reaction
This is aimed at Jerry Fodor. Certainly folk psychology is a strong theory, but a so-called 'language of thought' (the brain's machine code) seems a much weaker one.
| 3990 | The whole truth supervenes on the physical truth [Lewis] |
| 3989 | I am a reductionist about mind because I am an a priori reductionist about everything [Lewis] |
| 3991 | Where pixels make up a picture, supervenience is reduction [Lewis] |
| 3992 | Folk psychology makes good predictions, by associating mental states with causal roles [Lewis] |
| 3993 | Arguments are nearly always open to challenge, but they help to explain a position rather than force people to believe [Lewis] |
| 3994 | Human pain might be one thing; Martian pain might be something else [Lewis] |
| 3995 | A mind is an organ of representation [Lewis] |
| 3996 | Folk psychology doesn't say that there is a language of thought [Lewis] |
| 3998 | If you don't share an external world with a brain-in-a-vat, then externalism says you don't share any beliefs [Lewis] |
| 3997 | Nothing shows that all content is 'wide', or that wide content has logical priority [Lewis] |
| 3999 | A spontaneous duplicate of you would have your brain states but no experience, so externalism would deny him any beliefs [Lewis] |
| 4000 | Wide content derives from narrow content and relationships with external things [Lewis] |