Thinking without words / José Luis Bermúdez.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bermúdez, José Luis.

Series:

Philosophy of mind series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Philosophy of mind.

Physical Description:

xiii, 225 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.

Summary:

Thinking without Words presents the first full-length philosophical study of the nature of nonlinguistic thought, offering a conceptual framework for treating human infants and nonhuman animals as genuine thinkers. Although many scientific disciplines routinely regard nonlinguistic creatures as thinkers -- explaining their behavior in terms of their thoughts about themselves and their environments -- theorizing of this kind has proceeded without a clear account of the types of thinking available to nonlinguistic creatures. The ascription of thoughts to such creatures has frequently been treated as metaphorical and not to be taken at face value. Bermudez overturns this common view through an extensive exploration of the differences between thinking without words and language-based thinking. He acknowledges that there are clear limits to the expressive power of nonlinguistic thought; nonetheless he identifies types of thinking at the nonlinguistic level that can be used to explain sophisticated nonlinguistic behaviors.

Whereas existing discussions of nonlinguistic thought have concentrated on how such thoughts might be physically realized, Bermudez approaches the problem by considering what is required to explain behavior in psychological terms. Making use of the experimental tools of developmental psychology and the study of animal behavior, he shows how a precise account of the way in which human infants and nonhuman animals represent the world is possible. Consequently, this book has a broad interdisciplinary range and will appeal to philosophers, psychologists, students of animal behavior, and anyone interested in the relationship between thought and language.

Contents:

1 The Problem of Thinking without Words 3

1.1 Morgan's canon and psychological explanations of behavior 6

1.2 The parameters of the problem 10

2 Two Approaches to the Nature of Thought 13

2.1 The Fregean approach: Thoughts as the senses of sentences 14

2.2 The language of thought hypothesis 22

2.3 The language of thought and the epistemology of thought without language 27

2.4 The road ahead 31

3 Minimalist Approaches to Nonlinguistic Thought 34

3.1 Thinking-how and thinking-that: An intuitive contrast 36

3.3 The minimalist construal of intentional action and explanation 46

3.4 The argument from planning 51

3.5 The argument from intelligent action 56

3.6 The argument from psychological explanation 60

3.7 Taking stock 62

4 Ascribing Thoughts to Nonlinguistic Creatures: Toward an Ontology 64

4.1 Success semantics: Problems and prospects 65

4.2 Success semantics and radical interpretation 69

4.3 Two types of reification 72

4.4 Dishabituation and higher-order principles 78

4.5 From object-properties to ontology 82

5 Ascribing Thoughts to Nonlinguistic Creatures: Modes of Presentation 88

5.1 Individuals, modes of presentation and the sortal problem 89

5.2 Structured thoughts and psychological explanation 95

5.3 Success semantics and nonlinguistic thought: An overview 104

6 Rationality without Language 109

6.1 Theoretical and practical rationality 109

6.2 Level 0 rationality 116

6.3 Level 1 rationality 120

6.4 Level 2 rationality 123

6.5 Nonlinguistic rationality and psychological explanation 128

7 Practical Reasoning and Protologic 133

7.1 The decision-theoretic model of practical reasoning 133

7.2 Inference and proto-logic 140

8 Language and Thinking about Thoughts 150

8.1 Language as a cognitive tool 151

8.2 Intentional ascent and semantic ascent 158

9 The Limits of Thinking without Words 165

9.1 Belief revision and second-order cognitive dynamics 166

9.2 Higher-order desires 170

9.3 Intentional ascent and understanding other minds 171

9.4 Embedding and intentional ascent 178

9.5 Two types of general thought 183

9.6 From domain-specificity to domain-generality 185.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [205]-217) and index.

ISBN:

0195159691

OCLC:

50184907