…each of the radical theories about language and thought refutes one of the others in a game of rock-paper-scissors. Differences among languages, the point of pride for Linguistic Determinism, is a headache for Extreme Nativism, which assumes that concepts are innate, hence universal. The precision of word senses, which Extreme Nativism uses to discredit definitions, cast doubt on Radical Pragmatics, which assumes that one’s knowledge of a word is highly malleable. And polysemy, which motivates Radical Pragmatics, spells trouble for Linguistic Determinism, because it shows that thoughts must be much finer-grained than words.
The theory of conceptual semantics, which proposes that word senses are mentally represented as expressions in a richer and more abstract language of thought, stands at the center of this circle, compatible with all of the complications. Word meanings can vary across languages because children assemble and fine-tune them from more elementary concepts. They can be precise because the concepts zero in on some aspects of reality and slough off the rest. And they can support our reasoning because they represent lawful aspects of reality –space, time, causality, objects, intentions, and logic– rather than the system of noises that developed in a community to allow them to communicate. Conceptual semantics fits, too, with our commonsense notion that words are not the same as thoughts, and indeed, that much of human wisdom consists of not mistaking one for the other. “Words are wise men’s counters,” wrote Hobbes; “they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools.” Centuries later, Siegfried Sassoon invoked a similar association when he wrote:
Words are fools
Who follow blindly, once they get a lead.
But thoughts are kingfishers that haunt the pools
Of quiet; seldom-seen..
(Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, 2007)
dupa principiul: open the window, but you’ll get a glimpse of the map, not the territory. and if you start with cognitive defusion, you might lose even that….
de curiozitate, atinge si subiectul RFT (relational frame theory)?
nu se refera explicit la RFT, dar si in ‘the language instinct’ si in ‘the stuff of thought’ n-are o parere prea buna despre ‘behaviorism’. inteleg ca rft se trage de la skinner, iar skinner nu e chiar autorul favorit al lui pinker. 🙂