Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T14:11:35.509Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Commitment to LOT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2016

VÍCTOR M. VERDEJO
VÍCTOR M. VERDEJO*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
*<[email protected]>
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I argue that acceptance of realist intentional explanations of cognitive behaviour inescapably lead to a commitment to the language of thought (LOT) and that this is, therefore, a widely held commitment of philosophers of mind. In the course of the discussion, I offer a succinct and precise statement of the hypothesis and analyze a representative series of examples of pro-LOT argumentation. After examining two cases of resistance to this line of reasoning, I show, by way of conclusion, that the commitment to LOT is an empirically substantial one in spite of the flexibility and incomplete character of the hypothesis.

Je soutiens qu’accepter les explications réalistes intentionnelles du comportement cognitif conduit inévitablement à endosser l’hypothèse du langage de la pensée («language of thought», LOT), et que cette position théorique est, par conséquent, largement répandue chez les philosophes de l’esprit. Au cours de la discussion, je propose un exposé succinct et précis de cette hypothèse et j’analyse une série d’exemples représentatifs de l’argumentation pro-LOT. Après avoir examiné deux cas de résistance à ce type de raisonnement, je conclus en montrant que le soutien accordé à la LOT est empiriquement substantiel, en dépit de la flexibilité et du caractère incomplet de cette hypothèse.

Keywords

intentional explanationlanguage of thoughtrealismrepresentationsuperveniencecomputationsystematicity
Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 313 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aizawa, Ken 2003 The Systematicity Arguments. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aydede, Murat 1997 “Language of Thought: The Connectionist Contribution.” Minds and Machines 7: 57–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aydede, Murat 2010 “The Language of Thought Hypothesis.” In Zalta, E.N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. URL=<http://plato.stanford.eduarchives/fall2010/entries/language-thought/>Google Scholar
Calvo, Paco and Symons, John (eds.) 2014 The Architecture of Cognition: Rethinking Fodor and Pylyshyn’s Systematicity Challenge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Camp, Elisabeth 2007 “Thinking with Maps.” Philosophical Perspectives 21: 145–182.Google Scholar
Carruthers, Peter 2006 The Architecture of the Mind: Massive Modularity and Flexibility of Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy D. 2006 “From Causation to Explanation and Back.” In Leiter, B. (ed.) The Future of Philosophy. Oxford Clarendon Press, 230–245. Also as: Causality: Metaphysics and Methods. Technical Report CTR 09-03, CPNSS, LSE.Google Scholar
Chemero, Anthony 2009 Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Churchland, Paul M. 1989 A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Churchland, Patricia S. and Seijnowski, Terrence 1989 “Neural Representation and Neural Computation.” In Nadel, L., Cooper, L.A., Culicover, P. and Harnish, R.M. (eds.) Neural Connections, Mental Computation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 15–48.Google Scholar
Crane, Tim 1990 “The Language of Thought: No Syntax Without Semantics.” Mind and Language 5: 187–212.Google Scholar
Crane, Tim 1992 “Mental Causation and Mental Reality.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 92: 185–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crane, Tim and Mellor, D.H. 1990 “There is No Question of Physicalism.” Mind 99: 185–206.Google Scholar
Craver, Carl F. and Bechtel, William 2006 “Mechanism.” In Sarkar, S. and Pfeifer, J. (eds.) Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 469–478.Google Scholar
Cummins, Robert 1996 “Systematicity.” Journal of Philosophy 93: 591–614.Google Scholar
Cummins, Robert, Blackmon, James, Byrd, David, Poirier, Pierre, Roth, Martin and Schwarz, Georg 2001 “Systematicity and the Cognition of Structured Domains.” Journal of Philosophy 98: 167–185.Google Scholar
Davies, Martin 1991 “Concepts, Connectionism, and the Language of Thought.” In Ramsey, W., Stich, S. and Rumelhart, D. (eds.) Philosophy and Connectionist Theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 229–257.Google Scholar
Davies, Martin 2000a “Persons and their Underpinnings.” Philosophical Explorations 3: 43–62.Google Scholar
Davies, Martin 2000b “Interaction without Reduction: The Relationship between Personal and Sub-personal levels of Description.” Mind and Society 2, 87–105.Google Scholar
Davies, Martin 2004 “Aunty’s Argument and Armchair Knowledge.” In Larrazabal, J.M. and Pérez Miranda, L.A. (eds.) Language, Knowledge, and Representation. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 19–37.Google Scholar
Davies, Martin 2015 “Knowledge—Explicit, Implicit and Tacit: Philosophical Aspects.” In Wright, J.D. (ed.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Elsevier, 74–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennett, Daniel 1992 “The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity.” In Kessel, F.S., Cole, P.M. and Johnson, D.L. (eds.) Self and Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates, 103–115.Google Scholar
Devitt, Michael 1990 “A Narrow Representational Theory of the Mind.” In Lycan, W.G. (ed.) Mind and Cognition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 369–402.Google Scholar
Devitt, Michael 1996 Coming to Our Senses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Egan, Frances 2012 “Representationalism.” In Margolis, E., Samuels, R. and Stich, S.P. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Chapter 11, 250–272.Google Scholar
Eliasmith, Chris and Anderson, Charles H. 2003 Neural Engineering: Computation, Representation and Dynamics in Neurobiological Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Evans, Gareth 1981 “Semantic Theory and Tacit Knowledge.” In Phillips, A. (ed.) Collected Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 118–137.Google Scholar
Evans, Gareth 1982 The Varieties of Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Field, Hartry 1978 “Mental Representation.” Erkenntnis 13: 9–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. 1975 The Language of Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. 1987 Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. 1990 A Theory of Content and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. 2000 The Mind Doesn’t Work that Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. 2008 LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. and McLaughlin, Brian P. 1990 “Connectionism and the Problem of Systematicity: Why Smolensky’s Solution Doesn’t Work.” Cognition 35: 183–204.Google Scholar
Fodor, J.A. and Pylyshyn, Zenon 1988 “Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis.” Cognition 28: 3–71.Google Scholar
Fresco, Nir 2012 “The Explanatory Role of Computation in Cognitive Science.” Minds and Machines 22: 353–380.Google Scholar
García-Carpintero, Manuel 1995 “The Philosophical Import of Connectionism: A Critical Notice of Andy Clark’s Associative Engines.” Mind and Language 10: 370–401.Google Scholar
García-Carpintero, Manuel 1996 “Two Spurious Varieties of Compositionality.” Minds and Machines 6: 159–172.Google Scholar
Garson, James W. 1997 “Syntax in a Dynamic Brain.” Synthese 110: 343–355.Google Scholar
Gomila, Antoni, Travieso, David and Lobo, Lorena 2012 “Wherein is Human Cognition Systematic?” Minds and Machines 22: 101–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadley, Robert F. 1994 “Systematicity in Connectionist Language Learning.” Mind and Language 9: 247–272.Google Scholar
Hadley, Robert F. 2004 “On the Proper Treatment of Semantic Systematicity.” Minds and Machines 14: 145–172.Google Scholar
Harman, Gilbert 1973 Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hempel, Carl G. and Oppenheim, Paul 1948 “Studies in the Logic of Explanation.” Philosophy of Science 15: 135–175.Google Scholar
Horgan, Terence E. and Tienson, John L. 1996 Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Kent 2004 “On the Systematicity of Language and Thought.” Journal of Philosophy 101: 111–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaye, Lawrence J. 1995 “The Languages of Thought.” Philosophy of Science 62, 92–110.Google Scholar
Knowles, Jonathan 2001 “Does Intentional Psychology Need Vindicating by Cognitive Science?” Minds and Machines 11: 347–377.Google Scholar
Knowles, Jonathan 2002 “Is Folk Psychology Different?” Erkenntnis 57: 199–230.Google Scholar
Lycan, William G. 1993 “A Deductive Argument for the Representational Theory of Thinking.” Mind and Language 8: 404–422.Google Scholar
Maloney, Christopher J. 1984 “The Mundane Mental Language: How to Do Words with Things.” Synthese 59: 251–294.Google Scholar
Marcus, Gary F. 2001 The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Marr, David 1982 Vision. San Francisco, CA: Freeman.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, Brian P. 1993 “The Connectionism/Classicism Battle to Win Souls.” Philosophical Studies 71: 163–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaughlin, Brian P. 2009 “Systematicity Redux.” Synthese 170: 251–274.Google Scholar
O’Reilly, Randall C. and Munakata, Yuko 2000 Computational Explorations in Cognitive Neuroscience: Understanding the Mind by Simulating the Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Peacocke, Christopher 1986a “Explanation in Computational Psychology: Language, Perception and Level 1.5.” Mind and Language 1: 101–123.Google Scholar
Peacocke, Christopher 1986b “Replies to Commentators.” Mind and Language 1: 388–402.Google Scholar
Peacocke, Christopher 1989 “When Is a Grammar Psychologically Real?” In Alexander, G. (ed.) Reflections on Chomsky. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 111–130.Google Scholar
Peacocke, Christopher 1992 A Study of Concepts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Peacocke, Christopher 1994 “Content, Computation and Externalism.” Mind and Language 9: 301–335.Google Scholar
Peacocke, Christopher 2004 “Interrelations: Concepts, Knowledge, Reference and Structure.” Mind and Language 19: 85–98.Google Scholar
Peacocke, Christopher 2008 Truly Understood. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Piccinini, Gualtiero 2009 “Computationalism in the Philosophy of Mind.” Philosophy Compass 4: 515–532.Google Scholar
Piccinini, Gualtiero 2015 Physical Computation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Piccinini, Gualtiero and Bahar, Sonya 2012 “Neural Computation and the Computational Theory of Cognition.” Cognitive Science 34: 453–488.Google Scholar
Piccinini, Gualtiero and Scarantino, Andrea 2011 “Information Processing, Computation, and Cognition.” Journal of Biological Physics 37: 1–38.Google Scholar
Port, Robert F. and Gelder, Tim van 1995 Mind as Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pour-El, Marian Boykan 1974 “Abstract Computability and its Relation to the General Purpose Analog Computer.” Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 199: 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pylyshyn, Zenon 2003 Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ramsey, William, Stich, Stephen and Garon, Joseph 1991 “Connectionism, Eliminativism, and the Future of Folk Psychology.” In Ramsey, W., Stich, S. and Rumelhart, D. (eds.) Philosophy and Connectionist Theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 199–228.Google Scholar
Rescorla, Michael 2009 “Cognitive Maps and the Language of Thought.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60: 377–407.Google Scholar
Rey, Georges 1991 “An Explanatory Budget for Connectionism and Eliminativism.” In Horgan, T. and Tienson, J. (eds.) Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 219–240.Google Scholar
Rey, Georges 1995 “A Not Merely Empirical Argument for a Language of Thought.” Philosophical Perspectives 9, 201–222.Google Scholar
Rey, Georges 1997 Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: A Contentiously Classical Approach. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rumelhart, David E., James M. McClelland and the PDP Research Group 1986 Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Schneider, Susan 2009 “LOT, CTM, and the Elephant in the Room.” Synthese 170: 235–250.Google Scholar
Schneider, Susan 2011 The Language of Thought. A New Philosophical Direction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Schneider, Susan and Katz, Matthew 2012 “Rethinking the Language of Thought.” WIREs Cognitive Science 3: 153–162.Google Scholar
Schröder, Jürgen 1998 “Knowledge of Rules, Causal Systematicity, and the Language of Thought.” Synthese 117: 313–330.Google Scholar
Shagrir, Oron 2001 “Content, Computation and Externalism.” Mind 110: 369–400.Google Scholar
Smolensky, Paul 1988 “On the Proper Treatment of Connectionism.” Behavioural and Brain Sciences 11: 1–23.Google Scholar
Stich, Stephen 1983 From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Verdejo, Víctor M. 2012a “Meeting the Systematicity Challenge Challenge: A Nonlinguistic Argument for a Language of Thought.” Journal of Philosophical Research 37: 155–183.Google Scholar
Verdejo, Víctor M. 2012b “The Visual Language of Thought: Fodor vs. Pylyshyn.” Teorema 31: 59–74.Google Scholar
Verdejo, Víctor M. 2015 “The Systematicity Challenge to Antirepresentational Dynamicism.” Synthese 192: 701–722.Google Scholar
Verdejo, Víctor M. Manuscript. “Determinability of Perception as Homogeneity of Representation.”Google Scholar
Verdejo, Víctor M. and Quesada, Daniel 2011 “Levels of Explanation Vindicated.” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 2, 77–88.Google Scholar
Von Eckardt, Barbara 1993 What is Cognitive Science? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Wallace, Brendan, Ross, Alastair, Davies, John and Anderson, Tony 2007 The Mind, the Body and the World: Psychology after Cognitivism? Exeter: Imprint Academic.Google Scholar