Thinking without Words

by Jose Luis Bermudez

Overview

Thinking Without Words provides a challenging new theory of the nature of non-linguistic thought. Jos? Luis Bermudez offers a conceptual framework for treating human infants and non-human animals as genuine thinkers. The book is written with an interdisciplinary readership in mind and will appeal to philosophers, psychologists, and students of animal behavior.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195347869
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/27/2003
Series:	Philosophy of Mind Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	689 KB

About the Author

Jos? Luis Berm?dez is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis.

Table of Contents

	Note to the Reader	xv
1	The Problem of Thinking without Words	3
1.1	Morgan's canon and psychological explanations of behavior	6
1.2	The parameters of the problem	10
2	Two Approaches to the Nature of Thought	13
2.1	The Fregean approach: Thoughts as the senses of sentences	14
2.2	The language of thought hypothesis	22
2.3	The language of thought and the epistemology of thought without language	27
2.4	The road ahead	31
3	Minimalist Approaches to Nonlinguistic Thought	34
3.1	Thinking-how and thinking-that: An intuitive contrast	36
3.2	Minimalist approaches to nonlinguistic thought	38
3.3	The minimalist construal of intentional action and explanation	46
3.4	The argument from planning	51
3.5	The argument from intelligent action	56
3.6	The argument from psychological explanation	60
3.7	Taking stock	62
4	Ascribing Thoughts to Nonlinguistic Creatures: Toward an Ontology	64
4.1	Success semantics: Problems and prospects	65
4.2	Success semantics and radical interpretation	69
4.3	Two types of reification	72
4.4	Dishabituation and higher-order principles	78
4.5	From object-properties to ontology	82
5	Ascribing Thoughts to Nonlinguistic Creatures: Modes of Presentation	88
5.1	Individuals, modes of presentation and the sortal problem	89
5.2	Structured thoughts and psychological explanation	95
5.3	Success semantics and nonlinguistic thought: An overview	104
6	Rationality without Language	109
6.1	Theoretical and practical rationality	109
6.2	Level 0 rationality	116
6.3	Level 1 rationality	120
6.4	Level 2 rationality	123
6.5	Nonlinguistic rationality and psychological explanation	128
7	Practical Reasoning and Protologic	133
7.1	The decision-theoretic model of practical reasoning	133
7.2	Inference and proto-logic	140
8	Language and Thinking about Thoughts	150
8.1	Language as a cognitive tool	151
8.2	Intentional ascent and semantic ascent	158
9	The Limits of Thinking without Words	165
9.1	Belief revision and second-order cognitive dynamics	166
9.2	Higher-order desires	170
9.3	Intentional ascent and understanding other minds	171
9.4	Embedding and intentional ascent	178
9.5	Two types of general thought	183
9.6	From domain-specificity to domain-generality	185
	Afterword	189
	Notes	195
	References	205
	Index	219

Editorial Reviews

"Even opponents of representationalism will greatly benefit from Bermúdez's book, not least because it sets very high standards, that any non-representationalist account of thinking without words will have to match.—H.J.Glock, Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher