Abstract
I will defend the claim that we need to differentiate between thinking and reasoning in order to make progress in understanding the intricate relation between language and mind. The distinction between thinking and reasoning will allow us to apply a structural equivalent of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument to the domain of mind and language. This argumentative strategy enables us to show that and how a certain subcategory of cognitive processes, namely reasoning, is constitutively dependent on language. The final outcome and claim of this paper can be summarized as follows: We can think without language, but we cannot reason without language. While this still leaves several questions about the relation between mind and language unanswered, I hold that the insights defended in this paper provide the basis and proper framework for further investigation about the relationship between language and the mind.Keywords: Private language argument, Wittgenstein, thought/mind and language, reasoning, linguistic relativity, non-linguistic cognition.
Highlights
When we ask about the relation between thought and language, or language and the mind, we can demarcate possible answers to this question along a spectrum
While Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument tells us that a private language cannot exist, it points us towards the conclusion that private reasoning cannot exist, because reasoning is dependent on language
In order to roughly position my reading of the relevant paragraphs in Wittgenstein (2009) I would be willing to state that I loosely follow Norman Malcolm’s (1954) take on Wittgenstein’s reasoning, which I even dare to call the standard or traditional interpretation of the Private Language Argument
Summary
When we ask about the relation between thought and language, or language and the mind, we can demarcate possible answers to this question along a spectrum. My aim in this paper is to make a case for the claim that language does have a substantial impact on the mind – since a certain kind of conscious cognitive processes, namely reasoning, constitutively depends on language – but no form of linguistic relativity whatsoever follows from this. I will sketch a distinction between thinking and reasoning (section 2), which needs to be drawn among conscious cognitive processes This distinction is necessary before Wittgenstein’s rationale can be applied to the domain of mind and language. This is what I will do, where I present a Private Reasoning Argument – PRA for short – which is constructed in close analogy with PLA.
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