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4 - What Thoughts Are Made Of

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Gün R. Semin  and
Eliot R. Smith
By
Lera Boroditsky  and
Jesse Prinz
Gün R. Semin
Affiliation:
Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam
Eliot R. Smith
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington
Lera Boroditsky
Affiliation:
Stanford University, CA, USA
Jesse Prinz
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

What are thoughts made of? Do we think in pictures? In words? In symbols? What is the currency of human cognition and how do the representations that make up thinking come to be in our minds? In this chapter, we explore the rich sources of input that humans receive from perception and language and how combining information from these two input streams can be used to create the amazing complexity and sophistication of the human knowledge system.

Cognitive science is often seen as emerging from the confluence of two research programs: Chomsky's nativist critique of behaviorist learning theories and the rise of artificial intelligence. Together these two tides lead to a seemingly inevitable pair of conclusions: we think in language-like symbols, and the primitive symbols used in thought are innate. If we think in innate language-like symbols, then obviously we do not think in English, or Russian, or Kuuk Thaayorre. Instead, we think in the universal language of thought – Mentalese” (Fodor, 1975). This conclusion has been explicitly defended by some in cognitive science, but more often it is an unarticulated background assumption. For example, in the literature on concepts and categorization, conceptual representations are often described using structured lists of linguistically labeled features, and researchers rarely suggest that the words used in their theories correspond to mental representations that are radically unlike words.

Type
Chapter
Information
Embodied Grounding
Social, Cognitive, Affective, and Neuroscientific Approaches
 , pp. 98 - 116
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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