The Idea Behind an Idea: Chasing Meaning (original) (raw)
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The relation between language and theory of mind remains in need of clarification, both at the level of language evolution, language acquisition and the very content of theory of mind. This raises the question of the very nature of theory of mind. Is it a monolithic, more or less modular mental faculty; or is it a combination of different mechanisms, some of which may be rather low-level? How much theory is there in theory of mind and how much is needed to evolve a language? Very much the same questions apply to language acquisition. This workshop will attempt to analyse the coevolution of these two uniquely human capacities, their co-dependence and interaction. The Workshop is organized by the Institut des Sciences Cognitives CNRS, Lyon. Starting from February 2004, a new paper will be put on line and open to discussion every two weeks. The research presented in this workshop is supported in the framework of the European Science Foundation EUROCORES programme.
SEMANTIC IMAGINATION AS CONDITION TO OUR LINGUISTIC EXPERIENCE
Principia: an international journal of epistemology, 2017
The main purpose of this article is, from a semiotic perspective, arguing for the recognizing of a semantic role of the imagination as a necessary condition to our linguistic experience, regarded as an essential feature of the relations of our thought with the world through signification processes (and the sign systems they perform); processes centered in but not reducible to discourse. The text is divided into three parts. The first part presents the traditional position in philosophy and cognitive sciences that had barred until recent times the possibility to investigate the semantic function performed by imagination, mainly due to the anti-psychologist arguments on which it is based. After that, I situate my perspective inside of the recent research panorama in philosophy and cognitive science. The second part presents the semiotic framework on the relation between thought, language, and world, conceived through the concepts of signification processes and sense-conditions. Within this framework, I introduce the concept of linguistic experience, characterizing semantic imagination as one of its sense-conditions. In the third part, several pieces of evidence for corroborating the semantic function of imagination are discussed. These pieces come from the fields of phenomena denoted as diagrammatic thought and counterfactual thought. Di-agrammatic thought, briefly discussed, points out the semantic work of imagination in the semi-discursive sign systems constructed in mathematics, logic, and natural science. After defending a widening of the concept of counterfactual thought, and its intrinsic relation with semantic imagination, the role of semantic imagination is briefly discussed in some types of counterfactual thought found in our conceptions of modal concepts, in thought experiments, in apagogical arguments, and in the creative discursive devices.
2014
An Essay on the Origin of Ideas pursues two ambitious and original projects. First, Gauker develops and defends the Sellarsian thesis that public language is the medium of conceptual thought, all thought that involves distinguishing between particulars on the basis of the kinds to which they belong. Concepts, on Gauker's view, are not expressed or conveyed by means of language. Rather, concepts are words and phrases used in meaningful acts of speech (p. 257). Second, Gauker undertakes to show that dispositions to produce and consume sentences containing ordinary, empirical words, like 'icicle', 'window', and 'blackbird', can be learned on the basis of a kind of imagistic thinking that does not involve the application of concepts. (Imagistic representations include both 'receptive' perceptions as well as 'prospective' mental imagery.) Since these words, when used in intersubjective communication or inner speech, according to Gauker, just are the concepts icicle, window, and blackbird, an account that explains how speakers acquire the aforementioned dispositions also functions as an account of concept learning. In the course of pursuing these projects, Gauker also outlines a radically pragmatist theory of language. Language is portrayed not as a means of conveying thoughts from one speaker to another, but rather as a tool for optimizing the performance of multi-agent tasks. More specifically, overt acts of speech are instruments that enable one agent to guide from outside, as it were, how another agent engages in prospective, imagistic planning. By making assertions, an agent can instill in those who hear her imagistic representations of their situation that permit each participant to carry out her part of a collaborative project in an optimal way (p. 242). On Gauker's view, the only genuine representations in the mind are nonconceptual, imagistic ones. Language does not augment or 'upgrade' our endogenous, imagistic mindware with novel representational resources à la Andy Clark (see Clark's 'Magic Words' in Language and Thought: Interdisciplinary Themes, edited by P. Carruthers and J. Boucher, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 162-83), but instead enables human beings to create and manipulate imagistic representations in ways that would otherwise be impossible. In this respect, Gauker's view sharply departs from other strong cognitive conceptions of language (for discussion, see Peter Carruthers, 'The Cognitive Functions of Language', Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25 (2002), pp. 657-726). Chapters one through four critically examine alternative, languageindependent theories of concepts and are intended to clear the ground for positive developments in the second half of the book. Chapter one begins by raking the empiricist view that concepts are 'abstracted' from perceptions over
Considers the mechanics of meaning and meaningfulness in linguistic practices
Word, Language, and Thought – A New Linguistic Model
This article proposes a new account of the general architecture of language, this time based on the word and on the processual unity of Saussurean parole and langue in the dynamical cognitive reality of language. A literary example, from Félix Fénéon, is offered. For reasons of brevity, this presentation omits criticism of the host of linguistic theories that do not ground their view on the multiple dimensions and properties of the word as such. Offering a viable alternative may be as useful as theoretical criticism, or may usefully precede it.