Thought and Language and Humans and Animals

该项目的目的是描述语言对人类认知的独特贡献，并解释语言在个体思想中的基础。这项研究将以专著的形式出版。一个长期存在的哲学争论是语言的能力是否为人类提供了思考的能力，以及是否只有语言生物才有思考的能力。当哲学家们似乎依赖于发展和比较心理学家对未出现语言的婴儿和动物的心理生活进行的实证研究时，这些争论是否可以由哲学家先验地解决？一些哲学家认为，心理学家研究的那种认知与语言使用者表现出的那种复杂思维无关。但是，如果思维的定义方式过于接近语言——由语言使用者表达的那种东西——那么问题就变成了口头的，语言对于思维是必要的这种情况的力量就失去了。为了避免回避这个问题，我们需要一种方法加入哲学家和心理学家之间的争论，即询问语言是否为我们提供了一种思考其他生物所缺乏的形式。我的计划是要证明，虽然语言不是思考的必要条件——没有语言也可以有思考——但语言是思考关于思考的必要条件。后一种能力取决于语言结构使之成为可能的思维结构；即逻辑形式；而前语言思维的形式主要是空间思维。语言能力使反思思维的能力成为可能，这标志着人类和动物拥有的思维之间的一个重要区别。有些：生物有思想，有些生物有思想，并且知道自己有思想。我的研究将表明，语言标志着这一界限。这种观点有几个重要的结果。语言将被证明是我们将心理状态归因于自己和他人的心智化能力所必需的，因此它将在自我认识中发挥基本作用。没有语言的生物将缺乏这些心智化能力（通常被称为“心智理论”）；因此，我的提议要求我反驳一些灵长类动物学家得出的结论，即黑猩猩和猴子有心智理论。将有一章回顾证据并对基于证据的主张提出异议。我还将考虑丹尼尔·波维内利（Daniel Povinelli）著作中灵长类动物学的反证。由于语言是识别人的心理状态的必要条件，语言习得不能依赖于先前识别他人意图的能力。我们并不是通过了解别人的想法或意图才首先弄明白他们说话的意思。将提供个人如何习得语言的说明。我们的语法知识不需要了解别人的思想，很大程度上是由于先天的语言系统。然而，词义知识并不属于天生的语言能力，必须在公共和社会环境中获得。单词的含义在孩子的语言中出现语法之前就已经学会了。一个词和两个词的组合存在于句子结构之前，我将得出结论，在这个阶段，词义本质上不是语言的，而是反映了我们对联合感知和分类的一般表征能力。因此，我们所说的语言固有性是两种完全不同的认知系统的产物，当句法结构的语言系统在20-24个月左右开始运转，并将现有的词义纳入特定的句法角色时，两种截然不同的认知系统就产生了。在这一阶段出现了以前无法获得的思维形式，并将人类的认知与所有其他生物的认知区分开来。这个项目的一个重要部分是从理解的内在和意识方面以及言语的外在和公共方面来解释词义的知识。

The aim of the project is to describe the distinctive contribution language makes to human cognition, and to explain the basis for language in the minds of individuals. The research will take the form of a monograph.A long standing philosophical debate is whether the capacity for language provides humans with the capacity for thought, and whether only linguistic creatures are capable of thinking. Can such debates be settled by philosophers a priori when they seem to rest on empirical research in developmental and comparative psychologist about the mental lives of pre-linguistic infants and animals? Some philosophers argue that the kind of cognition studied by psychologists is irrelevant to the kind of complex thought exhibited by language users. But if thought is be defined in a way that makes it too close to language - the kind of thing voiced by language users - the issue becomes verbal and the power of the case that language is necessary for thought is lost. To avoid begging the question, we need a way to join the debate between philosophers and psychologists by asking if language provides us with a form of thinking other creature's lack. My project is to show that while language is not necessary for thinking - there can be thought without language - it is necessary for thought about thought. The later capacity depends on the structure of thought made possible by the structure of language; namely logical form; while the form of pre-linguistic thinking is primarily spatial.The capacity for reflective thought made possible by the capacity for language marks an important division between the kinds of minds possessed by humans and animals. Some: creatures have minds and some creatures have minds and know that they have minds. My research will show that language marks this boundary.There are several important consequences of this view. Language will be shown to be necessary for our mentalising ability to attribute mental states to ourselves and others, and so will play a fundamental part in self-knowledge.Creatures without language will lack these mentalising abilities (often known as 'theory of mind'); and thus my proposal requires me to argue against the conclusions drawn by some primatologists that chimpanzees and monkeys have a theory of mind. There will be a chapter reviewing the evidence and contesting the claims based on it. I shall also consider counter-evidence from primatology in the work of Daniel Povinelli.Since language is a necessary condition for recognising people's mental states, language acquisition cannot depend on the prior ability to recognise others' intentions. It is not by knowing what other people think or intend that we first figure out what they mean by their words. An account will be offered of how individuals acquire language. Our knowledge of syntax requires no knowledge of other minds and is largely due to an innate linguistic system. However, knowledge of word meaning does not belong to the innate language faculty and must be acquired in a public and social context. Word meanings are learned before the advent of grammar in the child's speech. One word and two word combinations exist before sentence structure and I will conclude that at this stage word meaning is not essentially linguistic, but instead reflects our general representational capacities for joint perception and classification. Thus what we call language proper is the upshor of two quite different cognitive systems created when the linguistic system for syntactic structure comes on stream around 20-24 months and recruits existing word meanings into particular syntactic roles. Forms of thinking emerge at this stage that were previously unavailable, and which distinguish human cognition from the cognition of all other creatures.An important part of this project is to explain knowledge of word meaning in terms of both the inner and conscious aspect of comprehension and the outer and public dimension of speech.