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 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. Belief, Misc in Philosophy of Mind. Implicit Bias in Social and Political Philosophy.
Inference in Epistemology. The Nature of Reasoning in Epistemology. I argue that most of what Fodor says in his discussion of Frege's problem is mistaken. Propositional Attitudes, Misc in Philosophy of Mind. 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.
The concepts of idiolect, use, and statement made are critically discussed, and a classification of kinds of 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.
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 Please cite from published final version. Semantic Anti-Realism in Metaphysics. Thomas Aquinas in Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. But what are practical modes of presentation? And what makes them distinctively practical?
In this essay, I develop a Fregean account of practical modes of presentation: I argue that there are such things as practical senses and I give a theory of what they are. One of the challenges facing the proponent of a distinctively Fregean construal of practical modes of presentation is to provide I take up this challenge, arguing that we find examples of practical senses in the semantic values assigned to programs by operational semantics for programming languages.
By looking at a species of practical senses, we will have taken one important step towards legitimizing the genus. In particular, I show that certain features of operational semantic values can be generalized towards a comprehensive theory of practical senses. The upshot is a full-fledged account of what practical senses are, which can be put to use in an explanatory theory of know how.
Philosophy of Mind, Misc in Philosophy of Mind. Propositions, Misc in Philosophy of Language. Varieties of Representation in Philosophy of Mind. Building on Fodor, Margolis and Laurence defend the latter view by arguing that the mind-independence of Fregean senses renders them ontologically suspect in a way that Mentalese symbols are not.
This paper shows how Fregeans can withstand this objection. Along the way, a clearer Fregean Sense in Philosophy of Language. Ontology of Concepts in Philosophy of Mind. It is often assumed that, though we may speak in sentences that express propositions only inexplicitly, our thoughts must express their propositional contents explicitly. This paper argues that, on the contrary, thoughts too may be inexplicit. Inexplicit thoughts may effectively drive behavior inasmuch as they rest on a foundation of imagistic cognition.
The paper also sketches an approach to semantic theory that accommodates inexplicitness in mental representations as well as in spoken sentences. Linguistic Communication in Philosophy of Language. This chapter set outs the variety of eighteenth-century approaches to the relations between language and thought, beginning with post-Lockean debates focused on the status of abstract general ideas, and ending with anti-empiricist Scottish philosophy at the end of the century.
There is also a different philosophical trend illustrated by neglected The project of conjectural histories of language and views about the connections between linguistic skills and the social nature of human beings are also covered.
Remove from this list. It's often hypothesized that the structure of mental representation is map-like rather than language-like. The possibility arises as a counterexample to the argument from the best explanation of productivity and systematicity to the language of thought hypothesis—the hypothesis that mental structure is compositional and recursive.
In this paper, I argue that the analogy with maps does not undermine the argument, because maps and language have the same kind of compositional and recursive structure. Mental Imagery in Philosophy of Mind. Remove from this list Direct download 10 more. Fodor Mind Lang —15, endorses the mixed view that thought, yet not language, is compositional. That is, Fodor accepts the arguments of radical pragmatics that language is not compositional, but he claims these arguments do not apply to thought.
My purpose here is to evaluate this mixed position: Assuming that the radical pragmaticists are right that language is not compositional, what arguments can be provided in support of the claim that thought is compositional?
Before such arguments can be So I first clarify this notion of compositionality, and then consider three arguments in support of the mixed position.
All three of these arguments are found to be inadequate, and thus I conclude that the mixed position is unstable: If one endorses the arguments of radical pragmatics against the compositionality of language, then one should also reject the compositionality of thought. Intentionality in Philosophy of Mind. Remove from this list Direct download 5 more. 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, In chapters , I defend a contextualist, non-Millian theory of propositional attitude ascriptions.
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 I show how holism can still play an important role in our best theory of concepts. 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. Concept Possession in Philosophy of Mind. Sellars developed an account of the intersubjective basis of our knowledge of the inner mental states of both self and others, an account which included the claim that such knowledge is in some sense theoretical knowledge.
Wilfrid Sellars in 20th Century Philosophy. 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.
We address this challenge by describing a simple computational implementation that exhibits internal knowledge representations whose similarity structure alters 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. Mental States and Processes in Philosophy of Mind. Representation in Connectionism in Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Remove from this list Direct download 6 more.
A philosophical refashioning of the Language of Thought approach and the related computational theory of mind. Philosophy of Cognitive Science. I identify and evaluate three claims that motivate embodied social cognition.
More Details Original Title. Other Editions 5. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Language of Thought , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about The Language of Thought. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of The Language of Thought.
Sep 17, Jesse rated it it was amazing. You might get one of two responses, the most likely being this one: that the language in which we think is the language which we externalize e.
The problem with this is that non-verbal thought is a bona fide fact preverbal infants and many animals display considered action, concept learning, and perceptual integration - basically anything you wanna think of as "thinking". But that means there's thinking without language. And that means that language can't be the primary medium in which we think.
Now that's a problem for many people not least for the people who can't even follow the argument , from behaviorists to Wittgensteinians, who especially want to say we think publicly because we speak publicly with a public key word: public instrument all of this is just the flip side of the idea that there just ain't no private language.
But that can't be axiomatic if we have reason to believe that there not only is a private language, but there has to be one. For look: concept learning, to take one definition of thinking and you can run this for the other candidates , is a process of hypothesis formation and confirmation.
But if hypotheses, then representations of states of affairs dependent on others. But if representations, then symbols a representation is a sign of the thing signified. But if symbols, and if they're being systematically manipulated, i. So you've got a language of thought. As Chomsky notes, the empirical evidence, to say the least, is not overwhelmingly in favor of Fodor's hypothesis here; but the arguments, conceptually speaking, are so good, the implications so vast, and the prose so tasty, that to not read Fodor's "Language of Thought" is to commit a grievous philosophical sin.
If philosophy weren't moribund and dominated by the likes of Daniel Dennett whose mind is, let's be honest, far from impressive - anyone ever read that depressingly empty tome "Consciousness Explained"? View all 4 comments. Apr 01, Bhzamangmail. Com rated it really liked it. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here. Dec 11, Sam rated it really liked it. He's right. About quite a bit. Benjamin rated it liked it Apr 07, If concepts are not learned, then how are they acquired?
Fodor offers some preliminary remarks — , but by his own admission the remarks are sketchy and leave numerous questions unanswered — The rejoinder acknowledges that concepts are not learned through hypothesis testing but insists they are learned through other means. Three examples:. A closely connected question is whether concept acquisition is a rational process or a mere causal process.
To the extent that acquiring some concept is a rational achievement, we will want to say that one learned the concept. To the extent that acquiring the concept is a mere causal process more like catching a cold than confirming a hypothesis , we will feel less inclined to say that genuine learning took place Fodor These issues lie at the frontier of psychological and philosophical research.
The key point for present purposes is that there are two options for halting the regress of language learning: we can say that thinkers acquire concepts but do not learn them; or we can say that thinkers learn concepts through some means other than hypothesis testing. Of course, it is not enough just to note that the two options exist. But there is no reason to think that doing so would reinitiate the regress. In any event, explaining concept acquisition is an important task facing any theorist who accepts that we have concepts, whether or not the theorist accepts LOTH.
Thus, the learning regress objection is best regarded not as posing a challenge specific to LOTH but rather as highlighting a more widely shared theoretical obligation: the obligation to explain how we acquire concepts. For further discussion, see the entry on innateness. See also the exchange between Cowie and Fodor What is it to understand a natural language word?
LOT theorists will say that you use Mentalese words to represent denotations. The question now arises what it is to understand a Mentalese word. If understanding the Mentalese word requires representing that it has a certain denotation, then we face an infinite regress of meta-languages Blackburn 43— The standard response is to deny that ordinary thinkers represent Mentalese words as having denotations Bach ; Fodor 66— Mentalese is not an instrument of communication.
A typical thinker does not represent, perceive, interpret, or reflect upon Mentalese expressions. Mentalese serves as a medium within which her thought occurs, not an object of interpretation. For example, her deductive reasoning coheres with the truth-tables expressed by Mentalese logical connectives. More generally, her mental activity is semantically coherent.
Nor is there any evident reason to suspect that explaining semantic coherence will ultimately require us to posit mental representation of Mentalese denotations. So there is no regress of understanding. For further criticism of this regress argument, see the discussions of Knowles and Laurence and Margolis Naturalism is a movement that seeks to ground philosophical theorizing in the scientific enterprise. Usage within philosophy of mind typically connotes an effort to depict mental states and processes as denizens of the physical world, with no irreducibly mental entities or properties allowed.
In the modern era, philosophers have often recruited LOTH to advance naturalism. The other main example turns upon the problem of intentionality. How does intentionality arise? How do mental states come to be about anything, or to have semantic properties? In response, contemporary naturalists seek to naturalize intentionality. They want to explain in naturalistically acceptable terms what makes it the case that mental states have semantic properties.
In effect, the goal is to reduce the intentional to the non-intentional. Beginning in the s, philosophers have offered various proposals about how to naturalize intentionality. Another approach, functional role semantics , emphasizes the functional role of a mental state: the cluster of causal or inferential relations that the state bears to other mental states.
The idea is that meaning emerges at least partly through these causal and inferential relations. Some functional role theories cite causal relations to the external world Block ; Loar , and others do not Cummins Greenberg ; Loewer Partly for that reason, the flurry of naturalizing attempts abated in the s. He agrees that we should try to illuminate representationality by limning its connections to the physical, the causal, the biological, and the teleological.
But he insists that illumination need not yield a reduction of the intentional to the non-intentional. LOTH is neutral as to the naturalization of intentionality. An LOT theorist might attempt to reduce the intentional to the non-intentional. Alternatively, she might dismiss the reductive project as impossible or pointless. Assuming she chooses the reductive route, LOTH provides guidance regarding how she might proceed.
According to RTT,. As we have seen, functionalism helps with a. Moreover, COMP provides a blueprint for tackling b. We can then explain in naturalistically acceptable terms why the component words have the semantic properties that they have and why the constituency structure has the compositional import that it has.
How much does LOTH advance the naturalization of intentionality? Our compositional semantics for Mentalese may illuminate how the semantic properties of a complex expression depend upon the semantic properties of primitive expressions, but it says nothing about how primitive expressions get their semantic properties in the first place. To meet the challenge, we must invoke naturalizing strategies that go well beyond LOTH itself, such as the causal or nomic strategies mentioned above.
Those naturalizing strategies are not specifically linked to LOTH and can usually be tailored to semantic properties of neural states rather than semantic properties of Mentalese expressions. Thus, it is debatable how much LOTH ultimately helps us naturalize intentionality. Naturalizing strategies orthogonal to LOTH seem to do the heavy lifting.
How are Mentalese expressions individuated? We want to fill in the schema. The literature typically focuses on primitive symbol types, and we will follow suit here. It is almost universally agreed among contemporary LOT theorists that Mentalese tokens are neurophysiological entities of some sort.
One might therefore hope to individuate Mentalese types by citing neural properties of the tokens. This schema leaves open how neural types are individuated. We may bypass that question here, because neural individuation of Mentalese types finds no proponents in the contemporary literature.
The main reason is that it conflicts with multiple realizability : the doctrine that a single mental state type can be realized by physical systems that are wildly heterogeneous when described in physical, biological, or neuroscientific terms. Fodor 13—25 further developed the multiple realizability argument, presenting it as foundational to LOTH. Although the multiple realizability argument has subsequently been challenged Polger , LOT theorists widely agree that we should not individuate Mentalese types in neural terms.
Field 56—67 , Fodor — , and Stich — pursue functional individuation. Functional roles theories divide into two categories: molecular and holist. Molecular theories isolate privileged canonical relations that a symbol bears to other symbols. Canonical relations individuate the symbol, but non-canonical relations do not.
For example, one might individuate Mentalese conjunction solely through the introduction and elimination rules governing conjunction while ignoring any other computational rules.
One problem facing molecular individuation is that, aside from logical connectives and a few other special cases, it is difficult to draw any principled demarcation between canonical and non-canonical relations Schneider Which relations are canonical for SOFA? Holist individuation is very fine-grained: the slightest difference in total functional role entails that different types are tokened.
Since different thinkers will always differ somewhat in their mental computations, it now looks like two thinkers will never share the same mental language. This consequence is worrisome, for two reasons emphasized by Aydede First, it violates the plausible publicity constraint that propositional attitudes are in principle shareable.
Second, it apparently precludes interpersonal psychological explanations that cite Mentalese expressions. Schneider — addresses both concerns, arguing that they are misdirected. A crucial consideration when individuating mental symbols is what role to assign to semantic properties.
Here we may usefully compare Mentalese with natural language. It is widely agreed that natural language words do not have their denotations essentially. Virtually all contemporary LOT theorists hold that a Mentalese word likewise does not have its denotation essentially. The Mentalese word cat denotes cats, but it could have had a different denotation had it born different causal relations to the external world or had it occupied a different role in mental activity.
In that sense, cat is a piece of formal syntax. Fodor eventually , embraces the stronger thesis that a Mentalese word bears an arbitrary relation to its denotation: cat could have had any arbitrarily different denotation. Most contemporary theorists agree Egan ; Field 58; Harnad ; Haugeland —; Pylyshyn The historical literature on LOTH suggests an alternative semantically permeated view: Mentalese words are individuated partly through their denotations.
The Mentalese word cat is not a piece of formal syntax subject to reinterpretation. It could not have denoted another species, or the number 27, or anything else. It denotes cats by its inherent nature. From a semantically permeated viewpoint, a Mentalese word has its denotation essentially.
Thus, there is a profound difference between natural language and mental language. Mental words, unlike natural language words, bring with them one fixed semantic interpretation.
The semantically permeated approach is present in Ockham, among other medieval LOT theorists Normore , In light of the problems facing neural and functional individuation, Aydede recommends that we consider taking semantics into account when individuating Mentalese expressions. Rescorla b concurs, defending a semantically permeated approach as applied to at least some mental representations. He proposes that certain mental computations operate over mental symbols with essential semantic properties, and he argues that the proposal fits well with many sectors of cognitive science.
A recurring complaint about the semantically permeated approach is that inherently meaningful mental representations seem like highly suspect entities Putnam How could a mental word have one fixed denotation by its inherent nature?
What magic ensures the necessary connection between the word and the denotation? These worries diminish in force if one keeps firmly in mind that Mentalese words are types.
Types are abstract entities corresponding to a scheme for classifying, or type-identifying , tokens. To ascribe a type to a token is to type-identify the token as belonging to some category. Semantically permeated types correspond to a classificatory scheme that takes semantics into account when categorizing tokens. As Burge emphasizes , there is nothing magical about semantically-based classification.
On the contrary, both folk psychology and cognitive science routinely classify mental events based at least partly upon their semantic properties. A simplistic implementation of the semantically permeated approach individuates symbol tokens solely through their denotations:.
As Aydede and Schneider emphasize, denotational individuation is unsatisfying. Co-referring words may play significantly different roles in mental activity. Different modes of presentation have different roles within mental activity, implicating different psychological explanations.
Thus, a semantically permeated individuative scheme adequate for psychological explanation must be finer-grained than denotational individuation allows. It must take mode of presentation into account. Ultimately, semantically permeated theorists must grapple with these questions.
Rescorla forthcoming offers some suggestions about how to proceed. Chalmers complains that semantically permeated individuation sacrifices significant virtues that made LOTH attractive in the first place. LOTH promised to advance naturalism by grounding cognitive science in non-representational computational models. Representationally-specified computational models seem like a significant retrenchment from these naturalistic ambitions.
For example, semantically permeated theorists cannot accept the FSC explanation of semantic coherence, because they do not postulate formal syntactic types manipulated during mental computation. How compelling one finds naturalistic worries about semantically permeated individuation will depend on how impressive one finds the naturalistic contributions made by formal mental syntax.
We saw earlier that FSC arguably engenders a worrisome epiphenomenalism. Moreover, the semantically permeated approach in no way precludes a naturalistic reduction of intentionality. It merely precludes invoking formal syntactic Mentalese types while executing such a reduction. For example, proponents of the semantically permeated approach can still pursue the causal or nomic naturalizing strategies discussed in section 7. Nothing about either strategy presupposes formal syntactic Mentalese types.
Thus, it is not clear that replacing a formal syntactic individuative scheme with a semantically permeated scheme significantly impedes the naturalistic endeavor. No one has yet provided an individuative scheme for Mentalese that commands widespread assent. The topic demands continued investigation, because LOTH remains highly schematic until its proponents clarify sameness and difference of Mentalese types. I owe a profound debt to the Murat Aydede, author of the previous entry on the same topic.
His exposition hugely influenced my work on the entry, figuring indispensably as a springboard, a reference, and a standard of excellence. Some of my formulations in the introduction and in sections 1. Mental Language 1. Scope of LOTH 3. Mental Computation 4. Arguments for LOTH 4. The Connectionist Challenge 6. Naturalizing the Mind 8. Mental Language What does it mean to posit a mental language?
They can be specified using locutions of the form X believes that p. X desires that p. X intends that p. X fears that p. Rancurello, D. Terrell, and Linda McAlister trans. Chalmers, David J. Churchland, Patricia S. Cooper, Peter W. Culicover, and Robert M. Churchland, Paul M. Dennett, Daniel C. Ramsey, S. Stich, and D.
Loewer and Georges Rey eds. Fodor, Jerry and Brian P. Bauer-Mengelberg trans. Reprinted in the The Frege Reader , M. Beaney ed. Black trans. Reprinted in The Frege Reader , M. Geach and R. Stoothof trans.
Gallistel, Charles R. Gallistel, C. Hinton, G. Artificial Intelligence pp. Horgan, Terence and John Tienson eds. Nidditch ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Guyer and A.
Wood eds , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kazez, Jean R. Knill, David C. Lurz, Robert W. McLaughlin, B. Niklasson, Lars F. Smith ed. Biard ed. Ockham, William of, c.
0コメント