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The Languages of Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Lawrence J. Kaye
Lawrence J. Kaye*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy University of Massachusetts at Boston
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Abstract

I critically explore various forms of the language of thought (LOT) hypothesis. Many considerations, including the complexity of representational content and the systematicity of language understanding, support the view that some, but not all, of our mental representations occur in a language. I examine several arguments concerning sententialism and the prepositional attitudes, Fodor's arguments concerning infant and animal thought, and Fodor's argument for radical concept nativism and show that none of these considerations require us to postulate a LOT that is innate or otherwise distinct from spoken languages. Instead, I suggest that we maintain the more conservative hypothesis, supported by introspection, that some of our thoughts occur in the languages that we speak.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 92 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1995

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Footnotes

†

Many thanks to Nancy Daukas for her helpful comments on the manuscript. Thanks also to Nelson Lande, Bob Rosenfeld and Bob Stalnaker for useful discussion of the issues.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts at Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd., Boston, MA 02125-3393, USA.

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