Continued Fight For

Mentalese

BRENT SILBY
Unlimited (UPT)
Pinkers continued resistance

The problem of Ambiguity

Many words have more than one meaning, which can make
ambiguous sentences.

For example: Jane is at the bank

Ambiguous because of the word “bank”. Could mean one of two

things—either Jame is at a financial institution, or Jane is at the
edge of a river.

Pinker highlights many of these type of example in his book

Pinkers continued resistance

Pinker claims that the thoughts underlying these words were not
ambiguous even though their English counterparts are.

If there can be more than one thought corresponding to a

specific sentence, then thoughts cannot be words.

So, according to Pinker, if Jane is adding money to her account,

my thought “Jane is at the bank” has a definite meaning, which
is determined by a mentalese sentence, and distinct from my
ambiguous English utterance “Jane is at the bank”.
Pinkers continued resistance

Is the problem of ambiguity convincing?

I am not convinced. Why?

Pinker claims that certain English sentences can correspond to

several different sentence of mentalese. But if this is true, then
why do we find it so easy to understand exactly what someone is
saying when they utter an ambiguous sentence like “Jane is at the
bank”?

How does my mind know which mentalese sentence “Jane is at

the bank” corresponds to?
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It is true that some words are ambiguous. It is true that sentences

containing these words is ambiguous.

But, these sentences are only ambiguous when viewed in

isolation.

When sentences are tied in to the context of a discussion, no

ambiguity exists.

It is a mistake to look for ambiguities in small, isolated sentences

without considering the context in which they belong.
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An analogous situation occurs when we view 2-dimensional

drawings of 3-dimensional objects.

If someone shows me a drawing of a small set of stairs, I can see

it from above or below. But this ambiguity only occurs when the
stairs are isoloted. When connected to a picture of a house, the
ambiguity disappears.

Same in language. “Bank” has several meanings, but when it is

used in a sentence which is part of a larger context, the ambiguity
disappears.

If I am in a park, near a river and I point to the river then the

sentence is not ambiguous.
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Einstein’s thoughts
Pinker points out that Einstein claimed to think in terms of visual
images. His theories of relativity originated in the manipulation of
visual imagery.

He started out by imagining what things would look like if he were

traveling on a beam of light.

I am not convinced that this example defeats the claim that

thinking is done in natural language.

I also think that this example does not support Pinker’s hypothesis
that thought is carried out in mentalese.
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If Einstein’s thoughts were entirely visual, then mentalese would

suffer as much a blow as Natural Language.

The example from Einstein does not strengthen the notion of

mentalese. In fact it weakens the idea that thinking involves any
sentential structures.

But we can disarm the threat from Einstein’s testimony by allowing

that his thinking involved images, but deny that his thoughts lacked
sentences of natural language.

Sure, his thoughts involved images, but these were augmented

with sentences of natural language (German in his case).
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His thought process may have been something like:

“If I were traveling at the speed of light, objects in front of me would
look like this [IMAGE], and objects behind me would look like this
[IMAGE]

Or:
“If I drop a coin while descending in a glass elevator, from my
point of view it would look like [ANIMATED SEQUENCE]. But from
the point of view of a person outside, it would look like
[ANIMATED SEQUENCE]”
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Some cognitive scientists believe we have pictorial representations

in our heads that can be mentally manipulated and inspected.

If someone asks you the question: “Do frog have lips?”, you will
form an image of the frog and mentally examine it.

Einstein’s thoughts could have involved mental inspection of

images, which he then reasoned about through the use of
sentences.
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Cognitive scientists believe we have pictorial representations in

our heads that can be mentally manipulated and inspected.

Visual images must be augmented by sentences in order to have

meaning.

It is difficult to see how a complex thought such as:

“Future cognitive scientists may one day discover how sentential
structures are implemented upon the connectionist architecture of
the brain”, could be represented as an image---or even a series of
images.
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Consider the sentence: “It might rain tomorrow”. It would not be

possible to have this thought in visual imagery alone with no
sentences.

Visual imagery alone cannot enable us to think temporal thoughts

like “tomorrow” or “yesterday”, nor can it be used to construct
thoughts involving concepts like “might”, “all”, or “necessarily”.

We can form a visual image of rain, but there is nothing in the

image to distinguish tomorrow from the next day.
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Wittgenstein askes us to think a thought such as “it might rain

tomorrow”, and then think the same thought again without any
words, while leaving the meaning intact.

It can’t be done!

But couldn’t a deaf person with no language think “tomorrow” by

constructing a visual sequence of sun-rise, fall, then rise again?

Problem is that without words it is still impossible to know what the

images represent. They could mean “change”, “movement”,
“light and dark”, “astrophysics”
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Consider these abstract concepts:

Equal, Speed, Cause. There are no images that can accurately
express what we mean by these concepts.

Images only represent the appearance of things. Abstract concepts

have no appearance, so cannot be represented by images.

Thinking may involve images, but it must also include a system to

think about abstractions, and to reason.
Powerpoint by BRENT SILBY

Produced at UPT
Christchurch, New Zealand
www.unlimited.school.nz