The Language of Thought hypothesis.

J.A. Fodor: 'Why there still has to be a Language of Thought' (11)

Language and intentionality

If you think of language for a moment as something that is independent and outside the mind, you will notice that statements or propositions or sentences possess 'aboutness', intentionality.
'George Fox was a religious man' is about GF.
'Charles Dickens wrote "Dombey and Son" is about CD, and about the novel.
'I have this troublesome toothache' is about me and a toothache.



What we have so far about language is this: sentences seem to have intentionality.
Already we have bumped into the idea that that mental states have intentionality.
Take the thought which I may report goes through my mind as I watch The Avengers: the thought that my brother lives in London.
Here again is something that seems to have 'aboutness'. It seems to be about my brother and his living in London.
There is on the one hand my thought.
And on the other a fact.
And the thought seems to be 'about' the fact.
Two aboutnesses, two intentionalities - thoughts and sentences.
You can see the natural suggestion then that these two intentionalities are connected - that the intentionality of mental states and the intentionality of language are connected.

A clarification

I say that intentionality is 'aboutness'.
But being 'about' something is perhaps too broad a notion when it comes down to detail.
You might say that a tidal wave was 'about' the earthquake that produced it. Here you have just a causal relation ship between two things. This is not the 'amounts' that is intentionality.
Just think of the sense in which a thought is about something. (My thought that my brother lives in London.) When I say this thought is about my brother's being in London, I don't just mean that my brother's being in London brought it about.
I mean my thought somehow in itself points to a certain state of affairs, namely my brother's being in London.
It points to this state of affairs in a way that the tidal wave does not point to the earthquake that generated it.
Think against this background about pains. Suppose I have toothache. The question is, does this ache 'point' to something beyond itself in the way that my belief that my brother lives in London points to something beyond itself, namely a state of affairs, my brother's living in London.
[Buzz]
For my part, I think it is not absolutely clear that a pain does point to something beyond itself, in the way that a belief points (often) to a state of affairs.
I'm not wanting you to say one way or another. I'm just trying to get across something of the subtlety of the notion of 'aboutness' which I was I think over simplifying last time.
If you concentrate on the way in which beliefs are about things beyond themselves you will have a paradigm example of intentionality. Whether other mental items are intentional you can leave for thought later, but in order to get clear about what intentionality is concentrate on the clearest case.

'Semantic'
Let me now just introduce a piece of jargon:
Sentences seem to be about their subjects or topics because of their meaning.
In general it seems to be the meaning of linguistic items that gives them their intentionality. Considered as marks on paper, a sentence doesn't have intentionality. It gets intentionality through meaning something.
Meaning is sometimes called 'semanticity' or 'semantic content', just to be difficult.
I have said that sentences get their intentionality in virtue of having meaning.
In the jargon, this is the claim that it is the semantic dimension of language items that gives them their aboutness, their intentionality.


The connection between the intentionality of thoughts and the intentionality of sentences
I said that thoughts appeared to have intentionality, and that sentences seemed to have it too. How might these two facts be connected?
Here is one possible way.
When a belief passes through my mind,
say the belief that my brother is in London,
it reflects a state of my brain.
And that state of my brain bears meaning,
the same meaning as the sentence 'My brother is in London'.
This thesis has been labelled 'the Representational theory of thinking'
Here it is:


The Representational theory of thinking


'For a subject S to think or "concurrently believe" that P
is for there to be
a state of S's central nervous system
that bears the semantic content that P;
the state bears that content
in much the same sense
and in much the same way
that a sentence of English or another natural language means that P.'

Lycan, in Lycan, p.277.

So on this view, when I have the belief that my brother is in London there is a state of the brain which means what the sentence 'My brother is in London' means.

The 'language of thought' hypothesis
The language of thought hypothesis goes one step beyond this. It says that the structure of the two things will be similar - the structure of the brain state corresponding to the belief will parallel the structure of the sentence expressing the belief.
Thus:

'... the logical form of the proposition believed will be copied in the structural form of the states in correspondence with them.' LT, in Lycan, p.164.

In terms of an example:
Take the belief passing through my mind that the cat is on the mat.
You might express the belief in words like this:
'The cat is on the mat.'

On the language of thought hypothesis,
inside the brain there will be a physical state corresponding to this belief, and that state will be analysable into substrates: a substate for 'cat', another for 'mat' - and so on for the other words.
Fodor develops arguments for this thesis in his paper 'Why there still has to be a Language of Thought'


Fodor's contribution is to provide arguments for the thesis that the mental states we call 'beliefs' have to be regarded as structured in the way that sentences are structured.



Three arguments for the proposition that mental states called 'beliefs' must have structure:
1. Methodological

The idea here is that there is structure in some of the things that we do, and that it would be surprising if there was no corresponding structure in the causation. If the causation is a matter of mental events, like intentions, we might expect those causes to be structured correspondingly.



Fodor defends a general methodological principle of the form: one type of explanation is preferable to another because it is simpler.
What is the principle?
Suppose you have two events, a bang and a stink, each of which sometimes occurs.

Suppose you know that what causes the bang is carbon monoxide exploding
and that what causes the stink is the release of hydrogen sulphide.

Now suppose the two events, the bang and the stink occur together.
You don't know what caused the double event.
But, says Fodor, the reasonable inference, other things being equal,
is that carbon monoxide exploding and hydrogen sulphide getting released were together the cause.

Putting this schematically:

[overhead]
carbon monoxide ignition > bang
hydrogen sulphide release > stink
cause X > bang + stink

Then, other things being equal, it is reasonable to infer that X is a complex event whose constituent elements include carbon monoxide ignition and hydrogen sulphide release.


Or in principle:
Assume:
c1 is a kind of event of which the normal effect is a kind of event e1
c2 is a kind of event of which the normal effect is a kind of event e2
c3 is a kind of event of which the normal effect is a complex event e1 & e2

c1 > e1
c2 > e2
c3 > e1 & e2
Then, other things being equal, it is reasonable to infer that c3 is a complex event whose constituents include c1 and c2.

Applying this to mental events and the actions they may be supposed to cause:
Let c1 be intending to raise your left hand
Let e1 be raising your left hand
Let c2 be intending to hop on your right foot
Let e2 be hopping on your right foot
Let c3 be intending to raise your left hand and hop on your right foot
Let e3 be raising your left hand and hopping on your right foot
Then the choices for explaining the causation here are these:
1. the cause of e3 is a complex of which e1 and e2 are likely to be constituents
2. the cause of e1has nothing to do with the cause of e3.

Fodor thinks (1) must be preferred on methodological grounds. It cuts down dramatically on the number of explanations required, or, to put it another way, on the number of coincidences or accidents that have to be acknowledged.

Let me put this again:

It is simpler to have one integrated account of two happenings than to have two accounts which have nothing to do with each other.
For example, take the complex action of lifting the left foot and raising the right arm.
Take the explanation that this is produced by a single intention, to lift the left foot and raise the right arm.
The consider raising the left foot on its own. This could be put down to having the intention of raising the left foot.
Unless mental states (in this case intentions) were structured, these two accounts would not be related. They would be two independent accounts. But if they are structured, the second could be shown as part of the first.

Other arguments for the conclusion that menatl states called 'beliefs' must be structured:

He offers two further arguments

2. Psychological processes.

3. Productivity and systematicity.
[Extra material:]

Language is 'productive'
How many sentences would you understand should they be presented with them? An infinite number.
(Consider:
'There is a snake in this room.'
'There are 2 snakes in this room'
And so on.)


Language is productive: you don't learn sentences as such, you somehow learn rules which enable you to generate an indefinite number of sentences
The likeliest hypothesis: this is because language is structured. That e.g. sentences are made up of components which are semi-autonomous, i.e. can be used over and over in different sentences. Sentences are not blobs.


Is this a helpful analogy?

At the cheaper end of the market you can buy
a plastic garage
a plastic airport
a plastic town
a plastic harbour
a plastic farm

Or you can buy sets of lego which enable you to build each of these things one after the other.
Language is systematic
Language is systematic: 'the ability to produce/understand some of the sentences is intrinsically connected to the ability to produce/understand many of the others.' (Fodor, quoted by Jimmy, Lecture 2, page 19.)
You don't expect a native speaker to know how to say in English that John loves Mary without knowing how to say that Mary loves John.
The likeliest explanation: (again)
language is structured. That e.g. sentences are made up of components which are semi-autonomous, i.e. can be used over and over in different sentences. Sentences are not blobs.


If language is like this, so must thoughts be. Because anything we can express in language we can think.
What you need to explain systematicity of thought is LOT.


FIN