Skip Navigation



The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Advance Access published online on August 10, 2005
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, doi:10.1093/bjps/axi130
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (Rapid PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
56/3/469    most recent
axi130v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Machery, E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Article

You Don't Know How You Think: Introspection and Language of Thought

Edouard Machery 1*

1 Max-Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin, Germany

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Edouard Machery, E-mail: machery{at}mpib-berlin.mpg.de


  Abstract

The question ‘Is cognition linguistic?’ divides recent cognitive theories into two antagonistic groups. Sententialists claim that we think in some language, while advocates of non-linguistic views of cognition deny this claim. The Introspective Argument for Sententialism is one of the most appealing arguments for sententialism. In substance, it claims that the introspective fact of inner speech provides strong evidence that our thoughts are linguistic. This article challenges this argument. I claim that the Introspective Argument for Sententialism confuses the content of our thoughts with their vehicles: while sententialism is a thesis about the vehicles of our thoughts, inner speech sentences are the content of auditory or articulatory images. The rebuttal of the introspective argument for sententialism is shown to have a general significance in cognitive science: introspection does not tell us how we think.

1 The problem

2 The introspective argument for sententialism

3 The argument for the blindness of introspection thesis

4 Objections and replies

5 Conclusion


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.