DEC Colloquium

Do non-linguistic creatures have a Fodorian language of thought?

Speaker(s)
Susan Carey (Harvard)
Practical information
24 May 2014
12:00-1:30pm
Place

Salle 235A

Philosophers have debated whether some non-linguistic creatures (complex non-human animals/prelinguistic infants) form conceptual representations with propositional content, with a language/like, logic/like combinatorial structure. Some have argued that the answer is clearly NO (Davidson, Bermudez) whereas others have argued that the answer is clearly YES (Fodor). Clearly, this is an empirical question. Taking two case studies (logical connectives; especially not and or, and the abstract relational concepts same and different), I explore how to bring empirical data to bear on this question as well as begin to explore what the question comes to.