Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introducing Embodied Grounding
- PART ONE EMBODIED LANGUAGE AND CONCEPTS
- 1 Grounding Symbolic Operations in the Brain's Modal Systems
- 2 Toward the Integration of Bodily States, Language, and Action
- 3 Brain Embodiment of Category-Specific Semantic Memory Circuits
- 4 What Thoughts Are Made Of
- PART TWO EMBODIMENT OF SOCIAL COGNITION AND RELATIONSHIPS
- PART THREE EMBODIMENT AND AFFECT
- Index
- References
4 - What Thoughts Are Made Of
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introducing Embodied Grounding
- PART ONE EMBODIED LANGUAGE AND CONCEPTS
- 1 Grounding Symbolic Operations in the Brain's Modal Systems
- 2 Toward the Integration of Bodily States, Language, and Action
- 3 Brain Embodiment of Category-Specific Semantic Memory Circuits
- 4 What Thoughts Are Made Of
- PART TWO EMBODIMENT OF SOCIAL COGNITION AND RELATIONSHIPS
- PART THREE EMBODIMENT AND AFFECT
- Index
- References
Summary
INTRODUCTION
What are thoughts made of? Do we think in pictures? In words? In symbols? What is the currency of human cognition and how do the representations that make up thinking come to be in our minds? In this chapter, we explore the rich sources of input that humans receive from perception and language and how combining information from these two input streams can be used to create the amazing complexity and sophistication of the human knowledge system.
Cognitive science is often seen as emerging from the confluence of two research programs: Chomsky's nativist critique of behaviorist learning theories and the rise of artificial intelligence. Together these two tides lead to a seemingly inevitable pair of conclusions: we think in language-like symbols, and the primitive symbols used in thought are innate. If we think in innate language-like symbols, then obviously we do not think in English, or Russian, or Kuuk Thaayorre. Instead, we think in the universal language of thought – Mentalese” (Fodor, 1975). This conclusion has been explicitly defended by some in cognitive science, but more often it is an unarticulated background assumption. For example, in the literature on concepts and categorization, conceptual representations are often described using structured lists of linguistically labeled features, and researchers rarely suggest that the words used in their theories correspond to mental representations that are radically unlike words.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Embodied GroundingSocial, Cognitive, Affective, and Neuroscientific Approaches, pp. 98 - 116Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
References
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