language of thought hypothesis
In plain wordsThe theory that we think in an inner, wordless mental language with its own symbols and grammar, which the brain manipulates when we reason, much as a computer manipulates code.
The hypothesis, developed by Jerry Fodor, that we think in an inner symbolic medium structured like a language, 'Mentalese': a system of internal symbols with combinatorial syntax and compositional semantics, so that complex thoughts are built from simpler constituents by rule, as sentences are built from words. Thinking is then computation over these symbol structures, as in the classical computational theory of mindcomputational theory of mind, n.: The idea that thinking is a kind of computation: the mind processes information by following rules, much as a computer runs a program, and the brain is the machine doing it.. Fodor argued that only such a system explains the productivity of thought (its unbounded capacity for new thoughts) and its systematicitysystematicity, n.: The way thinking and language come in connected packages: if you can understand 'the dog chases the cat', you can also understand 'the cat chases the dog'. Whether neural networks manage this has long been debated., and that learning concepts presupposes an innate representational medium. The hypothesis underlies classical symbolic AIsymbolic AI, n.: An approach to AI that writes knowledge down as human-readable symbols and rules, such as 'every bird has wings', and reasons by manipulating them step by step instead of learning patterns from data. and the physical symbol system hypothesisphysical symbol system hypothesis, n.: The 1976 claim by two AI pioneers that a machine which stores and rearranges symbols according to rules has everything needed for general intelligence, and that anything generally intelligent must be such a machine.; researchers continue to debate whether neural networks, including language modelslarge language model, n.: A computer program trained on enormous amounts of text to predict the words that come next. At vast scale, that simple skill lets it chat, answer questions, translate, summarize and write code., implement something like a language of thought, approximate one, or show that cognition can do without it.
Origin
Set out and defended by Jerry Fodor in The Language of Thought (1975) and revisited in LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited (2008). The idea of an inner mental language has antecedents in medieval philosophy, notably William of Ockham.
Related
- computational theory of mindcomputational theory of mind, n.: The idea that thinking is a kind of computation: the mind processes information by following rules, much as a computer runs a program, and the brain is the machine doing it.
- systematicitysystematicity, n.: The way thinking and language come in connected packages: if you can understand 'the dog chases the cat', you can also understand 'the cat chases the dog'. Whether neural networks manage this has long been debated.
- physical symbol system hypothesisphysical symbol system hypothesis, n.: The 1976 claim by two AI pioneers that a machine which stores and rearranges symbols according to rules has everything needed for general intelligence, and that anything generally intelligent must be such a machine.
- symbolic AIsymbolic AI, n.: An approach to AI that writes knowledge down as human-readable symbols and rules, such as 'every bird has wings', and reasons by manipulating them step by step instead of learning patterns from data.
- connectionismconnectionism, n.: The view that minds and intelligent machines are best built from huge networks of simple, neuron-like units whose connection strengths are learned, rather than from explicit rules and symbols.
- intentionalityintentionality, n.: The way thoughts, beliefs and desires are about things: a belief is about rain, a wish is for cake. Philosophers ask whether a machine's internal states can be about anything.
- connectionismconnectionism, n.: The view that minds and intelligent machines are best built from huge networks of simple, neuron-like units whose connection strengths are learned, rather than from explicit rules and symbols.
Sources
- Fodor, J. A. (1975). The Language of Thought. Thomas Y. Crowell.
- Fodor, J. A. (2008). LOT 2: The Language of Thought Revisited. Oxford University Press.
Mentioned in
computational theory of mindcomputational theory of mind, n.: The idea that thinking is a kind of computation: the mind processes information by following rules, much as a computer runs a program, and the brain is the machine doing it., intentionalityintentionality, n.: The way thoughts, beliefs and desires are about things: a belief is about rain, a wish is for cake. Philosophers ask whether a machine's internal states can be about anything., Jerry FodorJerry Fodor, prop. n.: An American philosopher who argued that thinking is computation in an inner 'language of thought', and that neural networks cannot explain the structured nature of thought., systematicitysystematicity, n.: The way thinking and language come in connected packages: if you can understand 'the dog chases the cat', you can also understand 'the cat chases the dog'. Whether neural networks manage this has long been debated.