Mentalese

Quick meaning: Mentalese is a noun meaning (philosophy, psychology) A hypothetical non-verbal language in which concepts are represented in the mind.

Meaning

(philosophy, psychology) A hypothetical non-verbal language in which concepts are represented in the mind.

Example Sentences

The concept of a proposition as something that can be expressed by sentences in both Mentalese and, say, English is an analogical extension of the concept of a proposition as something that can be expressed by sentences in both English and German.

[I]t is probably misleading to talk about the language of thought, or to talk about ‘Mentalese’, as if it were a single representational system. We should more properly, in the context of a thesis of massive mental modularity, talk about languages of thought, or Mentaleses.

But where does mentalese come from? If it is learned, then what is it related to in the preceding mentaleses? To avoid endless regress, [Jerry] Fodor postulates an internal language that is innate, a claim that he himself calls "horrendous" and "scandalous," yet inescapable.

One suggestion is that there is a de facto correlation between words or sentences of natural language and expressions of mentalese and between the logical relations among the former and the causal relations among the latter. This is a curious idea. The alleged correlation is not empirically grounded.

Word Forms

• mentaleses

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include imagism, conceptualism, mind, thought, descriptionalism, representationism.

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