Material symbols
Material symbols
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DOI：
10.1080/09515080600689872
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发表时间：
2006-06-01
影响因子：
1.4
通讯作者：
Clark, Andy
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Clark, Andy
我们在口语和书面语中遇到的物质的、传统的符号结构与人类思维之间有什么关系？一个常见的假设是，这些材料、传统的符号结构的工作方式是通过被翻译成某种与内容匹配的内部代码来实现的，这一假设构建了各种各样的相互竞争的观点。这种观点的一个替代方案是一种诱人但完全难以捉摸的想法，我们不知何故用某种自然语言(如英语)来思考。在目前的治疗中，我探索了第三种选择，我称之为语言的“互补性”观点。根据第三种观点，给定语言的实际符号结构通过补充(而不是被复制)生物大脑特有的更基本的操作和表征模式来增加认知价值。在这个模型中，语言带来的“认知红利”既不能通过“用一种特定的自然语言思考”这一最终神秘的概念兑现，也不能通过某种详尽的翻译成另一种内在代码的过程来兑现。相反，我们应该试着从一种协调动力的角度来思考，在这种动力中，作为物质符号系统的语言的形式和结构起着关键的和不可减少的作用。我认为，将语言理解为一种互补的认知资源，是将人类认知理解为本质上和倍增的混合体的更大项目的重要组成部分(有时被称为“扩展思维”)：因为它涉及内部生物资源和外部非生物资源之间的复杂相互作用。
What is the relation between the material, conventional symbol structures that we encounter in the spoken and written word, and human thought? A common assumption, that structures a wide variety of otherwise competing views, is that the way in which these material, conventional symbol-structures do their work is by being translated into some kind of content-matching inner code. One alternative to this view is the tempting but thoroughly elusive idea that we somehow think in some natural language (such as English). In the present treatment I explore a third option, which I shall call the "complementarity'' view of language. According to this third view the actual symbol structures of a given language add cognitive value by complementing (without being replicated by) the more basic modes of operation and representation endemic to the biological brain. The "cognitive bonus'' that language brings is, on this model, not to be cashed out either via the ultimately mysterious notion of "thinking in a given natural language'' or via some process of exhaustive translation into another inner code. Instead, we should try to think in terms of a kind of coordination dynamics in which the forms and structures of a language qua material symbol system play a key and irreducible role. Understanding language as a complementary cognitive resource is, I argue, an important part of the much larger project (sometimes glossed in terms of the "extended mind'') of understanding human cognition as essentially and multiply hybrid: as involving a complex interplay between internal biological resources and external non-biological resources.