3. Mentalese

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3. Mentalese

• 1. Thought is manipulation of representations
• 2. Representations may take several forms or
  modalities
• 3. Language would be a poor --an absurd choice
• 4. Surely thought is possible without language
• 5. Mentalese is the hypothetical language of
  thought

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What does that mean?

• Thoughts transcend particular human languages
• Our beliefs are not in English
• Nor is chemistry in German
• Is sensory info coded into mentalese? Is a
  objects form conceptualized differently if one
  sees it or feels it?

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Newspeak (Orwell, 1984)

• "the purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide
  a medium of expression for the world-view and
  mental habits proper to ..(English Socialism of
  the day) but to make all other modes of thought
  impossible.55 (Orwell's 1984)"

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Newspeak 2

• "there would be many crimes and errors which it
  would be beyond his (a person growing up with
  Newspeak) power to commit simply because they
  were nameless and therefor unimaginable. 56

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Newspeak today?

• January 23, 2005 Boston Globe
• In debate over Social Security changes, one word
  is key
• Semantics are very important no one is
  advocating privatizing Social Security (Rep.
  Bill Thomas, House.. Committee chairman.)
• theyre personal accounts, not private
  accounts..

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a conventional absurdity that LT!

• "The idea that thought is the same thing as
  language is an example of what can be called a
  conventional absurdity..(which) goes against all
  common sense.."57

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Are Thoughts merely clothed in words?

• "Is thought dependent on words?...Or are our
  thoughts couched in some silent medium of the
  brain--a language of thought--, or
  "mentalese"--and merely clothed in words whenever
  we communicate them...? No question could be
  more central to understanding the language
  instinct. p.56"

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More or less!

• "Knowing a language, then, is knowing how to
  translate mentalese into strings of words, and
  vice versa. 82
• "if babies did not have mentalese to translate to
  and from English, it is not clear how learning
  would take place.."

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T?L

• "We have all had the experience of uttering or
  writing a sentence, then stopping and realizing
  that it wasn't exactly what we meant to
  say....there has to be a 'what we meant to say'
  that is different from what we said. p.57"

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Language thought background

• EMPHASIS ON TL
• Locke (1632-1704)
• W. Humboldt (1767-1835)
• 19th century linguists
• Vygotsky (1896-1934)
• Sapir (1884-1939)
• Whorf (1897-1941)
• behaviorists

• EMPHASIS ON T?L
• Descartes (1596-1650)
• Leibniz (1646-1716)
• W. Humboldt (1767-1835)
• de Saussure (1857-1913)
• W. Kohler (1887-1967)
• Piaget (1896-1980)
• Turing (1912-1954)
• Chomsky (1928- )
• Fodor
• Pinker

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Descartes

• Language reflects thought
• Those without language find a way to express them
  if they have them
• (D was familiar with sign language use)
• (D knew a larynx unnecessary for language)

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Locke

• men .. by the use of their natural faculties, may
  attain to all the knowledge they have, without
  the help of any innate impressions and may
  arrive at certainty, without any such original
  notions or principles..p.38...No proposition can
  be said to be in the mind which it was never
  yet conscious of....15.
• "Words, are like knots that tie bundles of ideas
  together...Ideas may be "bundled" differently
  among individual speakers ...and among different
  languages." p.346.

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Leibniz

• Anti-Locke -- innate ideas are like a bust in
  marble
• Predispositions to certain ideas exist in mind
• All ideas based on recombination of basic ones -
  kind of mental chemistry -
• a calculus of thought

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Wilhelm von Humboldt

• Claimed by empiricists and others
• First explicit writer on linguistic relativity
  (Whorfs hypothesis)
• Yet also recognized the universal and infinite,
  creative aspect of language beyond words

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19th century linguists

• Figured out that many languages shared a common
  ancestor and reconstructed much of the history of
  human language from fragments
• Established some rules of language change, e.g.
  Latin f-gtGermanic b
• frater, brother, brat

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De Saussure

• father of modern linguistics
• Signs are arbitrary (cf. Pinker)
• Distinction between competence and performance
• Distinction between diachronic knowledge
  (history) and synchronic (current) knowledge

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Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

• Language structures determine thought and/or
  perception
• (weaker) language influences thought and/or
  perception
• Current research shows some perceptual effects,
  e.g. on color categorization
• But little evidence for large, cognitive effects,
  e.g. Papafragoua, A., Li, P., Choi, Y., Han,
  C.-h. (2007). Evidentiality in language and
  cognition. Cognition, 103(2), 253-299. (BB)

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They have a word for it does it matter?

• Hopi concepts of time
• Mokan time
• Current English time
• Relative reference vs direct reference
• (when you take your shower vs 545am)

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Behaviorists

• Thinking is sub-vocal speech (Watson)
• Focus on words and meaning as conditioned
  response or association
• No concern for rules nor creativity
• Sympathy with Locke and relativists on language
  as a medium of thought

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Jerry Fodor

• Wrote The Language of thought coining term
  mentalese

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• language and thought?
• word concept

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linguistic determinism/relativity

• "Whorf-Sapir hypothesis"
• language as convention/behaviorism
• color vision/color names (see Miller)
• 100 words for snow myths
• Hopi "time" myths (see video)
• language-cognition experiments "so what?" p.66

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What about Whorfian studies?

• Read Pullums printer parody on words for snow!
  P.65
• Some studies show words have effects on memory or
  categorization
• Interesting but undemonstrated was Whorfs idea
  language might advance the acquisition of
  concepts

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thought without language 67

• infant cognition
• Humans without language?
• Non-human primate logic
• human imagery
• anecdotes
• Shepard letter rotation

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Turing machine

• "reasoning is deduction" p.74
• This follows the idea that much of thinking is a
  kind of computation.
• (does everyone know vaguely about Turings
  contributions?)
• The idea is even older--thought as algebra W.
  James cites several passages on this theme
  (1890270)

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Turing 2
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Thinking and being deaf

• Pinker on Schallers Ildefonso
• despite their isolation from the verbal world,
  they displayed many abstract forms of thinking,
  like rebuilding broken locks, handling money,
  playing card games, and entertaining each other
  with long pantomined narratives. 68

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James, W. (1892). "Thought before language A
deaf-mute's recollections." The Philosphical
Review 1(6) 613-624.(JL- recollections or
confabulations?)
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William James 1890-92

• Melville Ballard (p.266 James 1890)
• I could convey my thoughts.. To my parents.. By
  natural signs and pantomine
• Mr. dEstrella (1892 p.63) his narrative tends
  to discountenance the notion that no abstract
  thought is possible without words
• "..for nothing is commoner than to have a
  thought, and then to seek for the proper words in
  which to clothe its important features.(WJ--not
  Pinker!)

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More from Ballard

• Nearly all human emotions absent
• everything seemed to appear blank around me
  except the momentary pleasures of perception

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But..Compare with dreams

• You awake experiencing a dream.
• But when did the dream occur?
• In the past while you were sleeping?
• Or just a moment ago, constructed upon the
  specific bio-states of your brain at that time.
• Could there be a dream without a representational
  system like language?
• How well can language interpret other states of
  brain/mind?

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Helen Keller

• "Before my teacher came to me, I did not know
  that I am. I lived in a world that was
  no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately
  that unconscious, yet conscious time of
  nothingness...Since I had no power of thought, I
  did not compare one mental state with another".

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But

• Helen Keller lost her senses just before she was
  two-- plenty of time to internalize some language
  and concepts of the world.
• For example, she would be in Piagets symbolic
  stage of development. And in some ways more
  cognitively advanced than a normal chimp.
• Still interesting but not total proof of the role
  of language.

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Any Conclusions?

• I dont know any case where deaf/blind with NO
  input has been taught some communication system
  with a successful result.
• Home sign seems universal but needs a community
  to become a full language.
• compare pidgin-gtcreole

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Why can't English serve as our "internal medium
of computation?"

• Ambiguity (several types)
• lack of logical explicitness
• co-reference
• deixis or pointing references
• synonomy
• Representations inside the head and sentences at
  cross purposes 81

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Language details can have some impact on thinking

• Processing speed might be different due to syntax
  differences
• First phonology influences later perception of
  sounds (hence accents)
• Having a word for it influences
  memory-lexicalization effects
• any evidence of recoding memories into mentalese
  for multiple modality access?

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L-gtT continued

• Syllable length effects
• Priming/association effects
• (example?)

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Language and thought

• Thoughts automatically clothed in L.
• Thats how we know our thoughts.
• Language primes thoughts.
• Hence we can somewhat manipulate thoughts via
  language even though we dont think in L.
• This is probably reflective consciousness.
• And why we have the illusion of conscious will.

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The end
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For now
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• Simcock Hayne (2002)
• 3 age groups, 27,33,39 tested
• Retested 6 and 12 months later for memory of
  experience with machine.
• Vocabulary assessed
• Memory assessed in 3 modes - verbal, photo,
  action.
• Children remembered

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