Perhaps, meaning comes from dialogues {dialogism} {dialogic}, which have social and cultural settings. Settings use different languages {heteroglossia}, such as legal, political, economic, and personal languages. Persons result from social dialogues [Bakhtin, 1983] [Bakhtin, 1986].
Words can cause emotions {emotive meaning} {evaluative meaning} {prescriptive meaning} or carry cognitions {descriptive meaning}. Language can be about facts or about values {fact-value distinction} [Stevenson, 1963].
Perhaps, all thoughts use the same language {language of thought} {mentalese}, which differs from actual languages. Brain concepts are in languages, software programs, or virtual machines. Software is not physiological, mechanical, or phenomenological but has information content.
logic
Logical forms are probably not the language of thought.
statements
Perhaps, concepts and propositions are language-of-thought contents.
syntax
Phonology, phonetics, morphology, word-order rules, syntactic-redundancy rules, and parsing rules are not necessarily in the language of thought. Syntactic-redundancy rules are for pronouns, agreement, and case. Perhaps, language of thought has syntax and all proposition types.
token
Perhaps, qualities are tokens in language of thought.
Consciousness, complex behavior, complex mental processes, and language depend on ability to use tools and signs {significative behavior}. Words start as emotion expressions, then designate concrete objects, and later have abstract meaning. People have potential capacities {potential development zone} {zone of potential development} that develop in societies.
language development
Techniques {Vygotsky-Sakharov technique} {Vygotsky-Hanfman-Kasanin test} can track language development. Language develops from sign use into sign system. Semantics develops, and sign meanings change. Children think by memorizing, but adults memorize by thinking. People gain ability to solve problems by themselves and with aid from teacher or parent {social prompting}.
goals
In situations, tools and signs reach goals, usually with feedback.
culture
Higher mental processes require social settings to develop. Socialization processes lead to consciousness. Human conscious behavior relates subject of experience to social environment. Phenomena are large and complex relation-network parts {ascending to the concrete}, not irreducible personal experiences [Vygotsky, 1930].
Language is about situations and about relations among communicators {situation semantics} [Barwise and Perry, 1983].
Language develops from first gestures and then grooming and other physical interactions [Mead, 1934]. Creativity, self, and reason arise from social life, which uses language reflexively. Language and symbolic interaction {symbolic interactionism} can cause humans to be self-conscious.
In first-order languages, sentence truth {truth, expression} is provable from sentence-part semantic relations. All languages can transform into first-order languages, so speakers can have truth-theory. In first-order languages, meaning depends on truth-conditions. Beliefs and other intentions are mental states with contrasts. Speakers speak intentionally [Davidson, 1980].
Fundamental language-element meanings rely on subjective experiences. More-complex language meanings derive from language element meanings, using verification methods. Statement meanings depend on verification methods. Statements are meaningful only if observations and calculations can verify them {verification principle} {verifiability principle} [Ayer, 1936] [Ayer, 1940] [Ayer, 1963].
methods
Science facts can be verifiable by observation or experiment. Analytic logic and mathematics statements can be true by language rules. Ethical statements convey emotion or attitude and are not verifiable or analytic. Other statements are meaningless.
Perhaps, consciousness is a personal language {private language}, with syntax and grammar, for communicating with oneself. However, internal language independent of human social life cannot describe mental contents [Hunter, 1973] [Wittgenstein, 1953], because language presupposes public rules and symbols.
Languages are for shared-things communication. Private worlds can have no language, and private words have no meaning {private language argument}. In private languages, knowing and not knowing are meaningless [Hunter, 1973] [Wittgenstein, 1953]. Words about conscious states can only be about observable inclinations to behave, not about subjective experience. Public terms must be publicly verifiable. Languages must be public and about public things.
If people have private worlds, minds are like small boxes with moving objects inside {beetle in a box} [Wittgenstein, 1953].
Language has many functions {language game}. For example, language can state facts and define contexts.
Referents can be constant only in contexts. Contexts give referent features and functions, which supply meaning. Referents can be similar in some ways {family resemblance}.
Physiology differences cause speech to be variable {mechanistic theory}.
Mental differences cause speech to be variable {mentalistic theory}.
Outline of Knowledge Database Home Page
Description of Outline of Knowledge Database
Date Modified: 2022.0225