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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2016
This dialogue on thought and language is a sequel to my dialogue ‘Thought and Thinking’, but can be read independently of it. The five disputants are the same as in the previous dialogue, namely Socrates; an imaginary neuroscientist from California (whose opinions reflect those of contemporary cognitive neuroscientists); an Oxford don from the 1950s (who employs the linguistic analytic techniques of his times); a Scottish post-doctoral student; and John Locke (who speaks for himself). The discussion takes place in Elysium in the early evening after dinner. They discuss the relationship between what one thinks and what one says, examine the reasons for supposing that there must be a language of thought and show why there cannot be one, investigate the supposition that thought must have a medium – that one must think in something (words, ideas, pre-linguistic concepts) – and demonstrate that it cannot have one. They investigate whether there can be non-linguistic thinking and whether non language-using animals can be said to think, and determine the limits of thought and thinking.
1 Hadamard, J., The Mathematician's Mind: the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field [1945] (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996), 142Google Scholar.
2 Penrose, R., The Emperor's New Mind, rev. ed. (Oxford University Press, 1999), 548fGoogle Scholar.
3 F. Galton, quoted by Penrose, op. cit., 548.
4 J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding [1690], III-ii-1.
5 Damasio, A., The Feeling of What Happens (Heineman, London, 1999), 107Google Scholar.
6 Edelman, G. M. and Tononi, G., Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, London, 2000), 215fGoogle Scholar.
7 Frege, G., Posthumous Writings (Blackwell, Oxford, 1979), 270Google Scholar.
8 Ibid., 145.
9 Ibid., 142, 269.
10 Wittgenstein, Notebooks 1914–16 (Blackwell, Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar, under 12. 9. 16.
11 Wittgenstein, letter to Russell 19. 8. 1919, repr. ibid., 129.
12 Chomsky, N., Language and the Problems of Knowledge (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 27fGoogle Scholar.
13 James, W., The Principles of Psychology (Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1890), vol. I, 266fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Locke, op. cit. n.4, II-i-19.
15 Ibid., II-xi-11.
16 Paul Grice introduced a variety of pragmatic conversational principles by means of which he defended the view that, for example, whenever we see, we seem to see, but it is not worthwhile saying so, since it is too obviously true. Similarly, he suggested, whenever we do something, we try to do it and succeed, but we don't say that we tried because it is too obvious. This analysis has not gone unchallenged.
17 See, for example, Frans de Waal, Primates and Philosophers (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2006).
18 I am indebted to Hanoch Ben-Yami, Parashkev Nachev, Hans Oberdiek, Herman Philipse, Dan Robinson, Amit Saad, and David Wiggins for their encouragement and kind comments on earlier drafts. I am grateful to Keith Thomas for his corrections to my seventeenth century English, and to my son Jonathan Hacker for his excellent advice on the dialogue form.