Mind in the Mirror of Language (Preface)

I propose a new approach to the constitutive problem of psychology ‘what is mind?’ The first section introduces modifications of the received scope, methodology, and evaluation criteria of unified theories of cognition in accordance with the requirements of evolutionary compatibility and of a mature science. The second section outlines the proposed theory. Its first part provides empirically verifiable conditions delineating the class of meaningful neural formations and modifies accordingly the traditional conceptions of meaning, concept and thinking. This analysis is part of a theory of communication in terms of inter-level systems of primitives that proposes the communication-understanding principle as a psychological invariance. It unifies a substantial amount of research by systematizing the notions of meaning, thinking, concept, belief, communication, and understanding and leads to a minimum vocabulary for this core system of mental phenomena. Its second part argues that written human language is the key characteristic of the artificially natural human mind. Overall, the theory both supports Darwin’s continuity hypothesis and proposes that the mental gap is within our own species. Keywords: Cognitive science, communication, meaning, nature of mind, psychology, representation, thinking, understanding, written human language.

H. Götzsche (ed.), Memory, Mind and Language. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pub-lishing, 2009

This is the long-awaited third edition of Chomsky's outstanding collection of essays on language and mind. The first six chapters, originally published in the 1960s, made a groundbreaking contribution to linguistic theory. This new edition complements them with an additional chapter and a new preface, bringing Chomsky's influential approach into the twenty-first century. Chapters 1-6 present Chomsky's early work on the nature and acquisition of language as a genetically endowed, biological system (Universal Grammar), through the rules and principles of which we acquire an internalized knowledge (I-language). Over the past fifty years, this framework has sparked an explosion of inquiry into a wide range of languages, and has yielded some major theoretical questions. The final chapter revisits the key issues, reviewing the "biolinguistic" approach that has guided Chomsky's work from its origins to the present day, and raising some novel and exciting challenges for the study of language and mind. n o a m c h o m s k y

Synthese, 2013

Biolinguistics, 2011

Even if the human species is not the only one that has a mind, it may be the only one that knows that it does. Fascination with our own mind, with what we feel, sense, and think, lies at the heart of human nature and has unsurprisingly become a major part of scientific inquiry itself. Rigorous scientific inquiry into the character of mind has been a part of all major traditions in scientific thought, but the character of these inquiries varied across different traditions, some of which have also been essentially separate for millennia and are only being rediscovered now. Thus, the formal study of grammar was an essential ingredient in the Indian Classical tradition, leading to more than a thousand years of rich and intense discussions in linguistics and philosophy of language in the hands of Vyakaranvadis (grammarians) such as Pāṇini, Tolkappiyar, and other authors in their traditions respectively in northern and southern India (Matilal 1990). There is essentially no parallel to this in the Ancient Greek tradition, where not grammar but geometry was the entry point to science. And although Aristotle developed a model of the sentence that has proved relatively stable for two thousand years of linguistic theory (Moro 1997), the first tradition of Universal Grammar in the Western world emerged not before the 1200s in Paris (Covington 2009), where Modistic grammarians viewed grammar as a formatting principle for a species-unique kind of thought. Flourishing across much of Northern Europe by the end of the 13 th century, it eclipsed after less than a hundred years when nominalist doctrines entered the scene and logic took pride over grammar again as a meta-theoretic framework. Interestingly, a similar eclipse happened with the grammarian tradition in India as the logico-empiricist framework of the Nyayaikas (logicians) became dominant. The next tradition in scientific thinking about human grammar, namely Port Royal, emerged within Cartesian rationalism in the 17 th century, and was taken up by Noam Chomsky in the 20 th (Chomsky 1966). With this last tradition we associate the term 'second cognitive revolution', which now is little more than 50 years old. To review it was part of the goals of an international conference convened by Nirmalangshu Mukherji, Wolfram Hinzen, Funding from the grant 'Un-Cartesian Linguistics' (AHRC/DFG, AH/H50009X/1, to Hinzen), which went into the preparations for the conference and into the writing of this report, is gratefully acknowledged.

The Communicative Mind, 2013

Minds and Machines, 2006

First published in 1949, Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind is one of the classics of twentieth-century philosophy. Described by Ryle as a 'sustained piece of analytical hatchet-work' on Cartesian dualism, The Concept of Mind is a radical and controversial attempt to jettison once and for all what Ryle called 'the ghost in the machine': Descartes' argument that mind and body are two separate entities. As well as rejecting dualism about the mind, Ryle goes much further, arguing that more recent materialist or functionalist theories of mind do not solve the Cartesian puzzle either and even accept some of its fundamental, mistaken, propositions. It is because of these mistaken propositions that associated problems, such as mental causation and 'other minds', arise in the first place. Ryle builds his case via an erudite and beautifully written account of the will, emotion, self-knowledge, sensation and observation, imagination and the intellect. Some of the problems he tackles, such as the distinction between 'knowing how and knowing that', challenged some of the bedrock assumptions of philosophy and continue to exert important influence on contemporary philosophy. A classic work of philosophy, The Concept of Mind is essential reading for anyone interested in the nature of the mind and human behaviour. This sixtieth anniversary edition includes a substantial commentary by Julia Tanney. Together with the reissue of both volumes of Ryle's Collected Papers, it provides essential reading for new readers interested not only in the history of analytic philosophy but in its power to challenge major currents in philosophy of mind and language today.

2021

This is a screen-friendly version of the document. For the print version, please visit https://orbilu.uni.lu/handle/10993/47684 Comments are very welcome! This dissertation is concerned with the relation between mind and language. Parts I and II of the document deal with the impact of language on thought, while the concluding Part III investigates into the scope of language and thought respectively. In Part I it is shown that thought is not independent of language. This is done by applying an analogue of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument to the domain of reasoning, i.e., an important subset of our conscious cognitive processes. The resulting Private Reasoning Argument leads to the conclusion that reasoning is not available for a creature which does not master a public language. Part II is concerned with linguistic relativity and argues that a prevalent motivation for holding linguistic relativity theories is built on mistaken assumptions about the inseparability of language and culture. This wrongheaded picture is criticized by discussing two constructed languages, namely Klingon and Esperanto. Part III is guided by analysis and discussion of John Searle’s Principle of Expressibility, according to which whatever can be thought can also be said. Probing this principle and potential problem cases will lead to the conclusion that, indeed, nothing we can think is in principle ineffable.