‘Material Symbols’ – Clark 2006

Clark describes an alternative to Fodorian ‘mentalese’ and rich-internal-representation accounts (e.g. Churchland, Barsalou) of language comprehension and usage. He calls his model ‘the complementarity hypothesis’.

The complementarity hypothesis says that language functions to enhance the intrinsic abilities of the biological mind (c.f. the ‘extended mind hypothesis’). The difference from Fodor’s account is clear; the difference from accounts like Barsalou’s ‘perceptual symbol system’ less obvious.

Knowledge of our own thoughts is just as interpretive as knowledge of the thoughts of others

Peter Carruthers argues at On The Human that the idea that knowledge of our own thoughts is qualitatively different than knowledge of the thoughts of others is one we need to abandon. He proposes instead that the much-discussed ‘mindreading’ faculty used to understand others is used to understand one’s own internal state, as well, in a theory he calls Interpretive Self-Access. 

Edge In Paris: SIGNATURES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Stanislas Dehaene describes to Edge his Global Neuronal Workspace model of consciousness.

Dehaene’s model is that consciousness of an experience is created when modular brain regions synchronize, and that global working memory (and the PFC as an organ linked throughout the brain) is the key to consciousness. The potential role of language here is clear: symbolic referents to brain configurations are a cheap way to stabilize them and maintain them in working memory.

That is a cheap way, not the only way. Consciousness without symbols as an organizing system would be, one imagines, much more difficult, but still possible.

Edge In Paris: SIGNATURES OF CONSCIOUSNESS — A TALK BY STANISLAS DEHAENE.