Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-t6st2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-04-21T03:59:44.775Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The language-of-thought hypothesis as a working hypothesis in cognitive science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2023

Jake Quilty-Dunn Open the ORCID record for Jake Quilty-Dunn [Opens in a new window] ,
Nicolas Porot  and
Eric Mandelbaum Open the ORCID record for Eric Mandelbaum [Opens in a new window]
Jake Quilty-Dunn
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA quiltydunn@gmail.com; sites.google.com/site/jakequiltydunn/
Nicolas Porot
Affiliation:
Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Ben Guerir, Morocco nicolasporot@gmail.com; nicolasporot.com
Eric Mandelbaum
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Department of Psychology, The Graduate Center & Baruch College, CUNY, New York, NY, USA eric.mandelbaum@gmail.com; ericmandelbaum.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The target article attempted to draw connections between broad swaths of evidence by noticing a common thread: Abstract, symbolic, compositional codes, that is, language-of-thoughts (LoTs). Commentators raised concerns about the evidence and offered fascinating extensions to areas we overlooked. Here we respond and highlight the many specific empirical questions to be answered in the next decade and beyond.

Information

Type
Authors' Response
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 46 , 2023 , e292
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

All authors contributed equally; authorship is in reverse alphabetical order.

References

Akhlaghpour, H. (2022). An RNA-based theory of natural universal computation. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 537, 110984.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Alderete, S., & Xu, F. (2023). Three-year-old children's reasoning about possibilities. Cognition, 237, 105472. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105472CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Block, N. (2023). The border between seeing and thinking. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. (1999). Homeostasis, species, and higher taxa. In Wilson, R. A. (Ed.), Species: New interdisciplinary essays (pp. 141–185). MIT Press.Google Scholar
Camp, E. (2018). Why maps are not propositional. In Grzankowski, A. & Montague, M. (Eds.), Non-propositional intentionality (pp. 19–45). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carey, S. (2011). Précis of the origin of concepts. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34(3), 113–124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carey, S. E. (2022). Becoming a cognitive scientist. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 4, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carston, R. (2012). Word meaning and concept expressed. The Linguistic Review, 29(4), 607–623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cavanagh, P. (2021). The language of vision. Perception, 50(3), 195–215.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cesana-Arlotti, N., Kovács, A. M., & Téglás, E. (2020). Infants recruit logic to learn about the social world. Nature Communications, 11(5999).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cesana-Arlotti, N., Martín, A., Téglás, A., Vorobyova, L., Cetnarski, R., & Bonatti, L. L. (2018). Precursors of logical reasoning in preverbal human infants. Science (New York, N.Y.), 359, 1263–1266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clarke, S. (2022). Mapping the visual icon. The Philosophical Quarterly, 72(3), 552–577.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colaço, D. (2022). What counts as a memory? Definitions, hypotheses, and “kinding in progress”. Philosophy of Science, 89(1), 89–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craver, C. F. (2009). Mechanisms and natural kinds. Philosophical Psychology, 22(5), 575–594.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engelmann, J., Völter, C. J., O'Madagain, C., Proft, M., Haun, D. B., Rakoczy, H., & Herrmann, E. (2021). Chimpanzees consider alternative possibilities. Current Biology, 31, R1–R3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feiman, R., Mody, S., & Carey, S. (2022). The development of reasoning by exclusion in infancy. Cognitive Psychology, 135, 101473. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2022.101473CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2), 203.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fodor, J. A. (1998). Concepts: Where cognitive science went wrong. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. A., & Lepore, E. (1998). The emptiness of the lexicon: Reflections on James Pustejovsky's The generative lexicon. Linguistic Inquiry, 29(2), 269–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, E. J. (2023). The perception–cognition border: Architecture or format? In McLaughlin, B. P. & Cohen, J. (Eds.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of mind (pp. 469–493). Blackwell.Google Scholar
Haladjian, H., & Pylyshyn, Z. W. (2008). Object-specific preview benefit enhanced during explicit multiple object tracking. Journal of Vision, 8(6), 497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D., Treisman, A., & Gibbs, B. J. (1992). The reviewing of object files: Object-specific integration of information. Cognitive Psychology, 24(2), 175–219.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leahy, B., Huemer, M., Steele, M., Alderete, S., & Carey, S. (2022). Minimal representations of possibility at age 3. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(52), e2207499119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2207499119CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lin, Y., Stavans, M., & Baillargeon, R. (2022). Infants’ physical reasoning and the cognitive architecture that supports it. In O. Houdé & G. Borst (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of cognitive development (pp. 168–194). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Y., Li, J., Gertner, Y., Ng, W., Fisher, C. L., & Baillargeon, R. (2021). How do the object-file and physical-reasoning systems interact? Evidence from priming effects with object arrays or novel labels. Cognitive Psychology, 125, 101368. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2020.101368CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luck, S. J., & Vogel, E. K. (1997). The capacity of visual working memory for features and conjunctions. Nature, 390(6657), 279–281.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mandelbaum, E. (2014). Thinking is believing. Inquiry: A Journal of Medical Care Organization, Provision and Financing, 57(1), 55–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandelbaum, E. (2016). Attitude, inference, association: On the propositional structure of implicit bias. Noûs, 50(3), 629–658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandelbaum, E. (2018). Seeing and conceptualizing: Modularity and the shallow contents of perception. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 97(2), 267–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandelbaum, E. (2019). Troubles with Bayesianism: An introduction to the psychological immune system. Mind and Language, 34(2), 141–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandelbaum, E. (2020). Assimilation and control: Belief at the lowest levels. Philosophical Studies, 177, 441–447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandelbaum, E., Dunham, Y., Feiman, R., Firestone, C., Green, E. J., Harris, D., … Quilty-Dunn, J. (2022). Problems and mysteries of the many languages of thought. Cognitive Science, 46(12), e13225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mitchell, C. J., De Houwer, J., & Lovibond, P. F. (2009). The propositional nature of human associative learning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(2), 183–198.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Murez, M., & Smortchkova, J. (2014). Singular thought: Object-files, person-files, and the sortal PERSON. Topics in Cognitive Science, 6(4), 632–646. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12110CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Murphy, E. (2021). Linguistic representation and processing of copredication (Doctoral dissertation), University College London, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mylopoulos, M., Pacherie, E., & Shepherd, J. (MS). The format of motoric representations.Google Scholar
Odic, D., Roth, O., & Flombaum, J. I. (2012). The relationship between apparent motion and object files. Visual Cognition, 20(9), 1052–1081.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortega-Andrés, M., & Vicente, A. (2019). Polysemy and co-predication. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 4(1), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pepperberg, I. M., Gray, S. L., Cornero, F. M., Mody, S., & Carey, S. (2019). Logical reasoning by a grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus)? A case study of the disjunctive syllogism. Behaviour, 156, 409–445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pietroski, P. M. (2018). Conjoining meanings: Semantics without truth values. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pomiechowska, B., & Gliga, T. (2021). Nonverbal category knowledge limits the amount of information encoded in object representations: EEG evidence from 12-month-old infants. Royal Society Open Science, 8(200782), 1–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Porot, N. J. (2019). Some non-human languages of thought (Doctoral dissertation). CUNY Graduate Center.Google Scholar
Porot, N., & Mandelbaum, E. (2020). The science of belief: A progress report. WIREs Cognitive Science, 12(2), e1539. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1539CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Porot, N., & Mandelbaum, E. (2022). The science of belief: A progress report. In Musolino, J., Sommer, J., & Hemmer, P. (Eds.), The cognitive science of belief: A multidisciplinary approach (pp. 55–91). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781009001021.005 (Reprinted with additions from WIREs Cognitive Science. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1539)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pustejovsky, J. (1995). The generative lexicon. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pylyshyn, Z. (2009). The empirical case for bare demonstratives in vision. In R. J. Stainton & C. Viger (Eds.), Compositionality, context and semantic values: Essays in honour of Ernie Lepore (pp. 254–274). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quilty-Dunn, J. (2020c). Perceptual pluralism. Noûs, 54(4), 807–838.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quilty-Dunn, J. (2021). Polysemy and thought: Toward a generative theory of concepts. Mind & Language, 36, 158–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quilty-Dunn, J., & Green, E. J. (2023). Perceptual attribution and perceptual reference. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 106(2), 273–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quilty-Dunn, J., & Mandelbaum, E. (2018). Against dispositionalism: Belief in cognitive science. Philosophical Studies, 175, 2353–2372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quilty-Dunn, J. (forthcoming). Sensory binding without sensory individuals. In Mroczko-Wasowicz, A. & Grush, R. (Eds.), Sensory individuals, properties, & perceptual objects: Unimodal and multimodal perspectives. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sablé-Meyer, M., Ellis, K., Tenenbaum, J., & Dehaene, S. (2021a). A language of thought for the mental representation of geometric shapes. PsyArXiv. doi:10.31234/osf.io/28mg4Google Scholar
Shepherd, J. (2019). Skilled action and the double life of intention. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 98(2), 286–305.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Srinivasan, M., & Rabagliati, H. (2015). How concepts and conventions structure the lexicon: Cross-linguistic evidence from polysemy. Lingua. International Review of General Linguistics. Revue Internationale de Linguistique Generale, 157, 124–152.Google Scholar
Stavans, M., & Baillargeon, R. (2018). Four-month-old infants individuate and track simple tools following functional demonstrations. Developmental Science, 21, e12500.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stavans, M., Lin, Y., Wu, D., & Baillargeon, R. (2019). Catastrophic individuation failures in infancy: A new model and predictions. Psychological Review, 126(2), 196–225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taylor, J., & Xu, Y. (2021). Joint representation of color and form in convolutional neural networks: A stimulus-rich network perspective. PLoS ONE, 16(6), e0253442.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Treisman, A., & Schmidt, H. (1982). Illusory conjunctions in the perception of objects. Cognitive Psychology, 14(1), 107–141.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Treisman, A. M., & Gelade, G. (1980). A feature-integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology, 12(1), 97–136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vicente, A. (2018). Polysemy and word meaning: An account of lexical meaning for different kinds of content words. Philosophical Studies, 175(4), 947–968.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westfall, M. (forthcoming). Perceiving agency. Mind & Language.Google Scholar
Wolfe, J. M. (2021). Guided Search 6.0: An updated model of visual search. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28(4), 1060–1092.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xu, F. (2019). Toward a rational constructivist theory of cognitive development. Psychological Review, 126(6), 841–864.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xu, F., & Carey, S. (1996). Infants’ metaphysics: The case of numerical identity. Cognitive Psychology, 30(2), 111–153.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed