Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Mentalese: The language of thought, also sometimes called mentalese, is a language of which is assumed that it is used for information processing in the brain. It is supposed to differ from the everyday language, which would require a twofold translation. Critics argue that this makes the explanations more complicated, or the brain requires a higher work performance than necessary. The homunculus argument has become known against the language of thought.
Jerry Fodor. (1975). The Language of Thought. Harvard University Press.
H. PutnamVs Mentalese explains nothing, only shifts the problem. R. SearleVsFodor.
R. SearleVs Regress of homunculi (translation agents). Rorty's solution is a hierarchy of dumber homunculi._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Christopher Peacocke on Mentalese - Dictionary of Arguments
I 206 Mentalese/belief/Field/Peacocke: Field Thesis: systems that are sufficiently complex for belief terms, have systems of internal representations in which the sentence-analogues have significant grammatical structure. >Complexity, >Structure, >Systems, >Beliefs, >Thoughts, >Propositional Attitudes, >Thinking, >Representation, >Internal States, >Internal Objects, >Belief Objects, >Thought Objects, cf. >Artificial Intelligence. I 209 Mentalese/Peacocke: a model that works without the assumption of a language of thought would have to explain two things: 1. How can one ascribe propositional content, without referring to syntactic structures? - That means, relatively complex content must be attributed to syntactically unstructured (psychic) states. >Propositional content, >Content. 2. It must be shown, how these states interact with perception and behavior. >Perception, >Behavior. I 215 A simple model (relation instead of language) does not seem to require the instrumentalist conception of a rational actor. - On the contrary, if someone meets the relational model, a realism regarding mechanisms of rational belief-desire psychology would be justified. >Realism, >Rationality._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Peacocke I Chr. R. Peacocke Sense and Content Oxford 1983 Peacocke II Christopher Peacocke "Truth Definitions and Actual Languges" In Truth and Meaning, G. Evans/J. McDowell, Oxford 1976 |
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