Paul H Hirst; Language and Thought, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 1, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 63–75, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1967.tb.

A fascinating analysis of human language and its influence on other disciplines by one of the nation's most respected linguists. Chomsky is also the author of What Uncle Sam Really Wants and The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (15,000 copies sold).

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

What is the place of language in human cognition? Do we sometimes think in natural language? Or is language for purposes of interpersonal communication only? Although these questions have been much debated in the past, they have almost dropped from sight in recent decades amongst those interested in the cognitive sciences. Language and Thought is intended to persuade such people to think again. It brings together essays by a distinguished interdisciplinary team of philosophers and psychologists, (...) who discuss various ways in which language may be implicated in human cognition. The editors have provided an introduction which lays out the basic terms and history of the debate, and a consolidated bibliography which will provide a valuable reference resource for all those interested in this area. The volume will be of great interest to all researchers and students interested in language and its place in cognition. (shrink)

Princeton University Press, 1982. This book is out of print, but can be downloaded as a pdf file (5 MB).

This volume puts forward a distinct new theory of direct reference, blending insights from both the Fregean and the Russellian traditions, and fitting the general theory of language understanding used by those working on the pragmatics of natural language.

Donald Davidson holds that thought and talk emerge together. His view is an alternative to the views that language precedes thought and that thought precedes language. His basic argument is that in order to understand a language, an interpreter has to simultaneously assign beliefs, not to mention desires and intentions, to the speaker. So bits of language can be interpreted only if thoughts are attributed to the speakers of those bits. Davidson is arguably (...) mistaken because interpretation of nonlinguistic utterances occurs before the interpretation of linguistic ones. (shrink)

This issue brings together papers by Australasian philosophers on language, thought, and their relationship. Contributors were given complete freedom to treat these topics in any way they saw fit. The results reflect the diverse interests of Australasian philosophers, and, perhaps even more strikingly, the diversity of philosophical methods they employ to pursue these interests.

The central idea of the Semantic Descent account, namely qualification, can be used in a substantial way to clarify the debates about the relationship between thought and language, both within philosophy and psychology. Some remarks by Henle on how this notion has been just below the surface in writings about metaphor are highlighted. Brief suggestions are made about how it bears on debates about thought and language.

A psychological study of thought and language which takes an exposition of scientific linquistics as a point of departure.

This chapter set outs the variety of eighteenth-century approaches to the relations between language and thought, beginning with post-Lockean debates focused on the status of abstract general ideas, and ending with anti-empiricist Scottish philosophy at the end of the century. The empiricist theory of signs, notably in George Berkeley, is one important dimension of the discussions: ‘Ideas’ are centre stage, although they do not exhaust the empiricist furniture of the mind. There is also a different philosophical trend illustrated (...) by neglected figures, which may be termed Platonic, and which affects eighteenth-century philosophical conceptions of language. The project of conjectural histories of language and views about the connections between linguistic skills and the social nature of human beings are also covered. (shrink)

[Written in 1999. Still relevant, but references are not up-to-date.] If one asks about the relation between thought and language, people expect the issue to concern such matters as whether we think in language, whether creatures without language can "think", and the way language shapes our concepts. In my opinion, there is a much deeper question, which concerns the nature of linguistic communication. Philosophers and linguists standardly conceive of language as basically a means by (...) which speakers convey the content of their thoughts to others. The question is whether that is a correct picture of linguistic communication. This is a question about the relation between thought and language because this standard picture of communication gives propositional thought a certain priority over language. If, as I intend to show, there are reasons to doubt the standard picture, then we cannot expect to make much progress with the more superficial questions without thinking about the nature of linguistic communication. (shrink)

According to an influential research program in cognitive science, philosophy, and linguistics, there is a deep, special connection between generics and pernicious aspects of social cognition such as stereotyping. Specifically, generics are thought to exacerbate our propensity to essentialize, lead us to overgeneralize based on scarce evidence, and lead to other epistemically dubious patterns of inference. Recently, however, several studies have put empirical and theoretical pressure on some of the main tenets of this research program. The goal of this (...) paper is to bring these results together in a comprehensive narrative and systematically evaluate their impact on the hypothesis that generics have a uniquely problematic effect on our social and cognitive capacities. (shrink)

Abbott replies to each of Hauser's arguments. Problem solving by chimpanzees and evidence of recursion in the thought of a feral human being suggest that natural language is not necessary for productive thought. Communication would be trivial if the inner language were the outer language, but it is not. The decryption analogy Hauser uses is flawed, and it is not clear which way Occam's razor cuts.

"Shell offers admirably close readings [which are] often brilliant... Summary could do little more than hint at the riches laid open."-- The Eighteenth Century "A remarkable piece of work. Valuable for a wide range of readers from the expert to the inquiring generalist."-- Religious Studies Review In Money, Language, and Thought , Marc Shell explores the interactions between linguistic and economic production as they inform discourse from Chretien de Troyes to Heidegger.

Einleitung, Zwischen Sprache und Denken / Alex Burri -- Linearity and structure / Peter Simons -- The role of language in intelligence / Daniel C. Dennett -- Die Fiktion einer Sprache des Geistes in der zeitgenössischen Philosophie / Katia Saporiti -- Ist eine Sprache des Geistes möglich? / Ansgar Beckermann -- Searles chinesischer Zauber oder Wahrnehmung, Sprachverständnis und der Turing-Test / Wolfgang Lenzen -- On determining reference / Michael Devitt -- How perception fixes reference / Kevin Mulligan -- Rede (...) zwischen Aktion und Kognition / Kuno Lorenz -- Die kausale Relevanz des Geistigen / Thomas Ruprecht -- Kantian schemata and the unity of perception / Jay F. Rosenberg -- Der sichtbare Geist / Gérard Bornet -- Intention und Kognition / Dieter Münch -- Zur sog. Naturalisierung von Intentionalität / Andreas Kemmerling -- Thinking that one thinks / David M. Rosenthal -- The nature of thought / Fred Dretske -- Sprache und Wahrheit / Josef Seifert -- Anschauliches und symbolisches Denken / Andreas Kamlah -- Logisches und analogisches Denken / Gottfried Gabriel. (shrink)

With this book Hermann Cloeren presents to the English reader a historical treatment of a largely unknown alternative tradition in German philosophy which, though only an undercurrent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, becomes a "main current" in the twentieth century, that is, the sprachkritisch, or "language critical," current of thought. This tradition, which begins with thinkers like Hamann, Lichtenberg, and Herder in the eighteenth century and has representatives such as Runze and Mauthner at the end of the (...) nineteenth, shadows the dominant tradition of Kantian transcendental philosophy and German Idealism. With this historical study Cloeren wishes to correct two common and different theses about the historical background of twentieth-century analytical philosophy. The one thesis suggests that the linguistic turn of twentieth-century analytical philosophy had no precedent in previous philosophy. The other thesis finds models in Kantian transcendental philosophy which, unlike Kant, makes language a central theme. For Cloeren, there is a precedent and it is not Kant but rather the tradition that is discussed here. (shrink)

Our understanding of the nature and processing of figurative language is central to several important issues in cognitive science, including the relationship of language and thought, how we process language, and how we comprehend abstract meaning. Over the past fifteen years, traditional approaches to these issues have been challenged by experimental psychologists, linguists, and other cognitive scientists interested in the structures of the mind and the processes that operate on them. In Figurative Language and (...) class='Hi'>Thought, internationally recognized experts in the field of figurative language, Albert Katz, Mark Turner, Raymond W. Gibbs Jr., and Cristina Cacciari, provide a coherent and focused debate on the subject. The book's authors discuss a variety of fundamental questions, including: What can figures of speech tell us about the structure of the conceptual system? If and how should we distinguish the literal from the nonliteral in our theories of language and thought? Are we primarily figurative thinkers and consequently figurative language users or the other way around? Why do we prefer to speak metaphorically in everyday conversation, when literal options may be available for use? Is metaphor the only vehicle through which we can understand abstract concepts? What role do cultural and social factors play in our comprehension of figurative language? These and related questions are raised and argued in an integrative look at the role of nonliteral language in cognition. This volume, a part of Counterpoints series, will be thought-provoking reading for a wide range of cognitive psychologists, linguists, and philosophers. (shrink)

In a series of studies the assumption of a lack of colour concepts in indigenous societies, as proposed by Berlin & Kay (1969) and others, was examined. The research took place in the form of minimally invasive field encounters with indigenous subjects in South East Asia and in India, as well as in West, Central, and South Africa. Subjects were screened for colour blindness with Ishihara- and Pflüger-Trident-Test. Standardised colour tablets had to be designated in the indigenous languages; these terms (...) were later translated by native speakers of the indigenous languages into a European language. The indigenous subjects were able to name the colours presented. Indigenous vs. globalised cultural factors were reflected in the use of reference objects for naming colours. Both metonymical and non-metonymical indigenous colour names did not follow a stage pattern as Berlin & Kay (1969) and others have proposed. The high precision of indigenous colour names corresponds both to the precision of experts’ colour names in the industrial culture, and to the highly precise grammar that characterises indigenous languages. It is concluded that cognitive categorisation of visual perception takes place regardless of the cultural context, and that former misunderstandings resulted from inappropriate methodological designs. (shrink)

The problem of vagueness and the sorites paradox arise because we try to treat natural language as if it were a unitary formal system. In fact, natural language contains a large variety of representational ontologies that serve different purposes and which cannot be united formally, but which can intuitively be taken as ways of seeing a common basic ontology. Using this framework, we can save classical logic from vagueness and avoid the sorites.

Hauser defends the proposition that our languages of thought are public languages. One group of arguments points to the coincidence of clearly productive (novel, unbounded) cognitive competence with overt possession of recursive symbol systems. Another group relies on phenomenological experience. A third group cites practical and methodological considerations: Occam's razor and the "streetlight principle" (other things being equal, look under the lamp) that motivate looking for instantiations of outer languages in thought first.

This dissertation defends the view that concepts encode causal information and, for the first time, applies this view to a range of topics in the philosophy of language and social philosophy. In my first chapter (“Cognitive Essentialism and the Structure of Concepts”), I survey the current empirical and theoretical literature on causal-essentialist theories of concepts. In my second chapter (“Meaning Externalism and Causal Model Theory”), I propose an account of natural kind concepts according to which they encode statistical information (...) of features of a natural kind, and represents these features as causally related to each other. I show that this internalist model of concepts correctly predicts intuitions about Putnam’s twin earth scenario and Kripke’s conceivability cases that historically motivated philosophers of language to accept externalist accounts of meaning. The defended theory of concepts also informs topics that go beyond traditional issues in philosophy of language. In my third chapter (“An Essentialist Theory of the Meaning of Slurs”), I defend the view that slurs are, too, a species of kind terms: slur concepts encode mini-theories which represent an essence-like element that is causally connected to a set of negatively-valenced stereotypical features of a social group. This explains both the peculiar linguistic behavior of slurs and slurs’ dehumanizing effects. In my fourth chapter, I build on this insight, showing that the explicit language in and around pornography depicts women as ‘kinds’ or ‘breeds’ that are naturally made to enjoy certain sexual acts, and argue that this deterministic picture of women dehumanizes them. (shrink)

This paper explores the relevance of Wittgenstein’s philosophi- cal psychology for the two major contemporary approaches to the relation between language and cognition. As Pinker describes it, on the ‘Standard Social Science Model’ language is ‘an insidious shaper of thought’. According to Pinker’s own widely–shared alternative view, ‘Language is the magnificent faculty that we use to get thoughts from one head to another’. I investigate Wittgenstein’s powerful challenges to the hypothe- sis that language is a (...) device for communicating independently constituted (or individuated) thoughts. I argue that Wittgenstein offers instead a subtle version of the thesis that language determines thought. (shrink)

Semantic composition in language must be closely related to semantic composition in thought. But the way the two processes are explained differs considerably. Focusing primarily on propositional content, language theorists generally take semantic composition to be a truth‐conditional process. Focusing more on extensional content, cognitive theorists take it to be a form of concept combination. But though deep, this disconnect is not irreconcilable. Both areas of theory assume that extensional (i.e., denotational) meanings must play a role. As (...) this article demonstrates, they also have the potential to fulfill a mediative function. What is shown is that extensional meanings are themselves inherently compositional. On this basis, it becomes possible to model semantic composition without assuming the existence of any specifically linguistic/conceptual apparatus. Examples are presented to demonstrate this direct style of modeling. Abstract connections between composition in thought and language can then be made, raising the prospect of a more unified, theoretical account of semantic composition. (shrink)

The distinction between literal and nonliteral meaning can be traced back to folk models about the relationship between language and the world. According to these models, sentences can be seen as building a representation of the world they describe, and understanding a sentence means knowing how each linguistic element affects the construction of the representation. Papers in this volume connect these folk models to the more scientific notions of the literal/nonliteral distinction proposed by philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists. The (...) current volume examines the literal/nonliteral distinction from a number of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, outlining some of the problematic assumptions in traditional paradigms and pointing to promising directions for the study of meaning. (shrink)

This paper aims to argue the idea that, by analyzing the relationship between thought and language, Aristotle decisively contributed to the foundation of the philosophy of language. Researching language in its relations with thinking and existence, the Stagirite demonstrated that the language is not just a communication tool, but a method of knowledge or of “deciphering” the world. The word reflects the reality throughthought and, in this situation, is not a slave of ideas or concepts. (...) On the contrary, it even represents a decisive factor in their elaboration.Despite its authority, Aristotelian thinking about language, along with the whole tradition that it generated, met with a strong critical reaction among contemporary philosophers, especially among those of the analytic school.My conclusion is that even if some Aristotelian theses about language are criticized by modern thinkers, this falls under the normal evolution of science. It seems excessive to hold Aristotle responsible for not providing solutions to contemporary problems. As for the rest, the Stagirite continues to be present among us and teach us extremely difficult and enlightening lessons. (shrink)

The contributors to this new philosophi­cal and historical examination of Vico, Herder, Schiller, and Goethe are Karl J. Fink, James W. Marchand, Harry Ritter, K. Michael Seibt, and David R. Ste­venson. Their essays and commentary address the question why this generation represent­ed by its great minds suddenly discov­ered science—a question posed previ­ously but only tentatively explored. Taken together, the essayists reveal significant new insights into the roles of language, imagination, intuition, em­pathy, modes of perception, and indiv­idualism in scientific creativity (...) and pro­vide important new contributions to the history of arts and sciences. (shrink)

Carruthers has proposed a novel and quite interesting hypothesis for the role of language in conceptual integration, but his treatment does not acknowledge work in cognitive science on metaphor and analogy that reveals how diverse knowledge structures are integrated. We claim that this body of research provides clear evidence that cross-domain conceptual connections cannot be driven by syntactic processes alone.

One of the most fundamental and recurring issues in the social sciences--the relation between language and thought--is examined in this work from a broad and coherent interdisciplinary perspective. Many of the great historical issues are also addressed and newly examined such as: the multifunctionality of language, the role of natural logic in the structuring of linguistic rules, and the place of linguistic disambiguation and repair in particular cultures.