THE LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT AND THE EMBODIED NATURE OF LANGUAGE USE

Abstract

This paper attempts to clarify and critically examine Fodor’s language of thought (LOT) hypothesis, focusing on his contention that the systematicity of language use provides a solid ground for the LOT hypothesis. The usual response to Fodor’s systematicity arguments is to argue that systematicity is much less than Fodor assumes. And the sort of systematicity that Fodor draws our attention to is a language-based artifact constructed from a top-level task analysis of what a cognitive system does. The second tact, which I am willing to support, is to argue that it is by mastering an external symbol system that one acquires the systematicity Fodor identifies (more on this later). But this paper offers something more radical ‐ there is much more systematicity in language, and this cannot be accounted for by Fodor’s LOT hypothesis. 1 The systematicity, I will argue, cannot be explained merely by what is in the brain, but is inherently connected to an environment, in the sense that (1) language use depends on the perceptual and motor skills for detecting and confronting certain recurring patterns in an environment; and (2) the compositionality of language use is grounded in our bodily interactions with the environment, which provide a set of highly correlated principles that account for our basic sense of the systematicity and function as a general guideline for what a particular language will look like (cf. Johnson, 1987, 1992, 1993).