Explanation and the language of thought

David Braddon-Mitchell

John Fitzpatrick

pp. 3-29

in: Synthese 83 (1), 1990.

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the insistence by Fodor et. al. that the Language of Thought hypothesis must be true rests on mistakes about the kinds of explanations that must be provided of cognitive phenomena. After examining the canonical arguments for the LOT, we identify a weak version of the LOT hypothesis which we think accounts for some of the intuitions that there must be a LOT.