Theory developed by Jerry A Fodor, though going back to the English philosopher William of Ockham (c. 1285-1349).
It seeks to explain thinking by postulating a hypothetical language of thought (or mentalese) such that to have a belief or desire and so on is to be related in certain ways to one or more sentences of this language.
There are difficulties in spelling out these relations, and in saying how the items in mentalese – whatever form they may take – relate to the outer world which is being thought about.
We must not rely on analogies with ordinary languages, since these presuppose thinking while the language of thought is supposed to explain it. Its reliance on discrete items (‘words’) to correspond to the various bits of our thinking contrasts it with connectionism.
Source:
J A Fodor, The Language of Thought (1975)
Table of Contents
- 1 Videos
- 2 Related Products
- 2.1 The Language of Thought (The Language and Thought Series)
- 2.2 Language in Thought and Action: Fifth Edition
- 2.3 Poetry, Language, Thought (Harper Perennial Modern Thought)
- 2.4 Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf
- 2.5 The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
- 2.6 Irony in Language and Thought: A Cognitive Science Reader
- 2.7 Thought and Language - Revised Edition
- 2.8 Language in Thought and Action : Second Edition
- 2.9 The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom
- 2.10 Thought and Language (The MIT Press)
- private language argument
- three laws of thought
- bundle theories
- truth conditional semantics
- linguistic phenomenology
Videos
The Language of Thought (The Language and Thought Series)
- Used Book in Good Condition
- Fodor, Jerry A. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 224 Pages - 01/22/1980 (Publication Date) - Harvard University Press (Publisher)
Language in Thought and Action: Fifth Edition
- S.I. Hayakawa (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 196 Pages - 01/01/1991 (Publication Date) - Harvest Original (Publisher)
Poetry, Language, Thought (Harper Perennial Modern Thought)
- Harper Perennial
- Heidegger, Martin (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 256 Pages - 12/03/2013 (Publication Date) - Harper Perennial Modern Classics (Publisher)
Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf
- Used Book in Good Condition
- Whorf, Benjamin Lee (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 294 Pages - 06/15/2011 (Publication Date) - Martino Fine Books (Publisher)
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
- Penguin Books
- Pinker, Steven (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 499 Pages - 08/26/2008 (Publication Date) - Penguin Books (Publisher)
Irony in Language and Thought: A Cognitive Science Reader
- Used Book in Good Condition
- Hardcover Book
- English (Publication Language)
- 624 Pages - 05/30/2007 (Publication Date) - Routledge (Publisher)
Thought and Language - Revised Edition
- Vygotsky, Lev S. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 344 Pages - 08/28/1986 (Publication Date) - The MIT Press (Publisher)
Language in Thought and Action : Second Edition
- S. I. Hayakawa (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 03/31/1964 (Publication Date) - Harcourt (Publisher)
The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom
- English (Publication Language)
- 229 Pages - 05/01/2008 (Publication Date) - The New Press (Publisher)
Thought and Language (The MIT Press)
- Vygotsky, Lev S. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 392 Pages - 07/06/2012 (Publication Date) - The MIT Press (Publisher)
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