| 2605 | If everything uses mentalese, ALL concepts must be innate! [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Fodor concludes that every predicate that a brain could learn to use must have a translation into the computer language of that brain. So no "new" concepts can be acquired: all concepts are innate! | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (What is innate and why [1980], p.407) | |
| A reaction: Some misunderstanding, surely? No one could be so daft as to think that everyone has an innate idea of an iPod. More basic innate building blocks for thought are quite plausible. |
| 2606 | No machine language can express generalisations [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Computers have a built-in language, but not a language that contains quantifiers (that is, the words "all" and "some"). …So generalizations (containing "all") cannot ever be stated in machine language. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (What is innate and why [1980], p.408) | |
| A reaction: Computers are too sophisticated to need quantification (which is crude). Computers can work with very precise and complex specifications of the domain of a given variable. |
| 3086 | Are there any meanings apart from in a language? [Harman] |
| Full Idea: The theory of language-independent meanings or semantic representations is mistaken. | |
| From: Gilbert Harman (Thought [1973], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: This would make him (in Dummett's terms) a 'philosopher of language' rather than a 'philosopher of thought'. Personally I disagree. Don't animals have 'meanings'? Can two sentences share a meaning? |
| 3996 | Folk psychology doesn't say that there is a language of thought [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I don't believe that folk psychology says there is a language of thought. | |
| From: David Lewis (Lewis: reduction of mind (on himself) [1994], 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. |
| 2524 | A language of thought doesn't explain content [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Postulating a language of thought is a postponement of the central problems of content ascription, not a necessary first step. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.25) | |
| A reaction: If the idea of content is built on the idea of representation, then you need some account of what the brain does with its representations. |
| 4874 | The predecessor and rival of the language of thought hypothesis is the picture theory of ideas [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The ancestor and chief rival of the language-of-thought hypothesis is the picture theory of ideas - that thoughts are about what they are about because they resemble their objects. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Kinds of Minds [1996], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: When you place them side by side, neither seems quite right. How can a mental state resemble an object, and how can an inner language inherently capture the features of an object? Maybe we lack the words for the correct theory. |
| 2483 | Mentalese doesn't require a theory of meaning [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Mentalese doesn't need Grice's theory of natural-language meaning, or indeed any theory of natural-language meaning whatsoever. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: Presumably what is represented by mentalese is a quite separate question from whether there exists a mentalese that does some sort of representing. Sounds plausible. |
| 2480 | Language is ambiguous, but thought isn't [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Thinking can't just be in sequences of English words since, notoriously, thought needs to be ambiguity-free in ways that mere word sequences are not. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a strong argument in favour of (at least) propositions. Thoughts are unambiguous, but their expression need not be. Sentences could be expanded to achieve clarity. |
| 2487 | Mentalese may also incorporate some natural language [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I don't think it is true that all thought is in Mentalese. It is quite likely (e.g. in arithmetic algorithms) that Mentalese co-opts bits of natural language. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (In a Critical Condition [2000], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: Presumably language itself would have to be coded in mentalese. If there is some other way for thought to work, the whole mind could use it, and skip mentalese. |
| 8090 | Since the language of thought is the same for all, it must be something like logical form [Fodor, by Devlin] |
| Full Idea: Fodor and Jackendorff argue that since the internal language of thought, or conceptual structure, has to be more or less the same for all people, of whatever language, it will surely be something like logical form. | |
| From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (The Language of Thought [1975]) by Keith Devlin - Goodbye Descartes Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: The discovery (by, e.g., Frege and Russell) that there is something called 'logical form', which we can track down and represent in precise and fairly unambiguous symbolism, may be one of the greatest of all human discoveries. Perhaps. |
| 12643 | Ambiguities in English are the classic reason for claiming that we don't think in English [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: That there are ambiguities in English is the classic reason for claiming that we don't think in English. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (LOT 2 [2008], Ch.3.5) | |
| A reaction: I have always been impressed by this simple observation, which is my main reason for believing in propositions (as brain events). 'Propositions' may just be useful chunks of mentalese. |
| 2604 | We must have expressive power BEFORE we learn language [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I am denying that one can learn a language whose expressive power is greater than that of a language that one already knows. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (How there could be a private language [1975], p.389) | |
| A reaction: I presume someone who had a native language of limited vocabulary could learn a new language with a vast vocabulary. I can increase my expressive power with a specialist vocabulary (e.g. legal). |
| 3010 | Belief and desire are structured states, which need mentalese [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: A defence of the language of thought has to be an argument that believing and desiring are typically structured states. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (Psychosemantics [1987], p.136) | |
| A reaction: A structure is one thing, and a language is another. Both believings and desirings can be extremely vague, to the point where the owner is unsure what is believed or desired. They can, of course, be extremely precise. |
| 3213 | Animals may also use a language of thought [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The language of thought need not only be confined to creatures which speak a natural language. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 10.1.1) | |
| A reaction: I take it as axiomatic that our brains are no different in principles and fundamental mechanics from the lowliest of creatures. See Idea 7509. |
| 3170 | We train children in truth, not in grammar [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Very young children have been shown (Brown and Halon 1970) to be 'reinforced' not for their grammar but for the informational content of what they say. | |
| From: Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is what you would expect. It doesn't follow that the grammar comes from innate mechanisms, because the pressure to get the information right could impose increasing accuracy in grammar. |
| 7715 | Mentalese isn't a language, because it isn't conventional, or a means of public communication [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: 'Mentalese' would be neither conventional nor a means of public communication so that even to call it a language is seriously misleading. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: It is, however, supposed to contain symbolic representations which are then used as tokens for computation, so it seems close to a language, if (for example) symbolic logic or mathematics were accepted as languages. But who understands it? |
| 4927 | Information-processing views of the brain assume the existence of 'information', and dubious brain codes [Edelman/Tononi] |
| Full Idea: So-called information-processing views of the brain have been criticized because they typically assume the existence in the world of previously defined information, and often assume the existence of precise neural codes for which there is no evidence. | |
| From: G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.11) | |
| A reaction: Fodor is the target here. Searle is keen that 'intrinsic intentionality' is required to see something as 'information'. It is hard to see how anything acquires significance as it flows through a mechanical process. |
| 11121 | Language of thought has subject/predicate form and includes logical devices [Margolis/Laurence] |
| Full Idea: The language of thought is taken to have subject/predicate form and include logical devices, such as quantifiers and variables. | |
| From: E Margolis/S Laurence (Concepts [2009], 1.1) |
| 17767 | The alternative to a language of thought is map-like or diagram-like thought [Bayne] |
| Full Idea: One could think that the structure of thought has more in common with that of maps or diagrams, and is not particularly language-like. | |
| From: Tim Bayne (Thought: a very short introduction [2013], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems unwise to be ensnared by analogies on this one, since the phenomenon is buried deep. You can no more infer what goes on underneath than you can infer electrons from looking at trees? |