Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:09:30.606Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Must Beliefs be Sentences?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Brian Loar
Brian Loar*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The language of thought hypothesis is this: central among the causes of our behavior are inner states with linguistic structure that play roughly the role we pre-scientifically ascribe to our beliefs and desires. A philosophical thesis has been proposed on the basis of that scientific hypothesis- namely, that the way to explicate commonsense notions of the content of beliefs and desires, of their intentionality, is in terms of the meaning of such internal sentences. I am going to compare this explicative strategy with a certain functionalist theory of propositional attitudes, on which propositional attitude ascriptions of the form ‘x believes (desires) that —’ are explicatively more fundamental than anything linguistic and semantic. This is a modern dress version of an old dispute; but the issue is not between the naturalistic proponent of linguistic meaning and the antinaturalistic proponent of irreducible intentionality.

Type
Part XV. Language and Thought
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1982 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1982 , 1982 , pp. 626 - 643
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 Philosophy of Science Association

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

Field, Hartry. (1977). “Logic, Meaning and Conceptual Role.” Journal of Philosophy 74: 379-409.Google Scholar
Field, Hartry. (1978). “Mental Representations.” Erkenntnis 13: 9-61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, Jerry. (1975). The Language of Thought. New York: T.Y. Crowell.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry. (1980). “Methodological Solipsism.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 63-73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, Jerry. (forthcoming). “Psychosemantics.” In The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Edited by Pore, Ernest Le. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Harman, Gilbert. (1973). Thought. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Harman, Gilbert. (1982). “Conceptual Role Semantics.” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 23: 212-256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, David. (1977). “Demonstratives.” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Loar, Brian. (1981). Mind and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McGinn, Colin. (1981). “The Structure of Content.” In Thought and Object. Edited by Woodfield, A.. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 207-258.Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary. (1981). Reason. Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schiffer, Stephen. (1981). “Truth and the Theory of Content.” In Meaning and Understanding. Edited by Parret, H. and Bouveresse, J.. Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Pages 204-222.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert. (1976). “Propositions.” In Issues in the Philosophy of Language. Edited by Mackay, A. and Merrill, D.. New Haven: Yale University Press. Pages 79-91.Google Scholar
White, Stephen. (1982). “Partial Character and the Language of Thought.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 63: 347-365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar