Bridging the Gap between the Meaning of Natural Language and Mental Content.
Analytic philosophy
Mental content
Mental image
Natural language
The philosophy of mind
The theory of meaning
Journal
Integrative psychological & behavioral science
ISSN: 1936-3567
Titre abrégé: Integr Psychol Behav Sci
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 101319534
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Mar 2022
Mar 2022
Historique:
accepted:
27
12
2020
pubmed:
8
1
2021
medline:
23
4
2022
entrez:
7
1
2021
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Since Frege, mental content (conscious content) has been distinguished from the meaning of natural language and not regarded mental content as the meaning of language expression. This anti-psychological view cuts off the connection between the meaning of language and mental content, giving rise to the failures in solving the problems of mind. Instead of thinking about linguistic meaning and mental content separately, philosophers of mind put more emphasis on mental content and even equate the meaning of linguistic expressions with it. Therefore, the issues that what the relationship between linguistic meaning and mental content is and how they are connected are not well answered so far. The author argues in this paper that: 1) People attach meaning to symbols through communication activities when they have mental contents, thus forming the language, which is also a process of achieving psychological certainty in turn; 2) the relationship between linguistic meaning and mental content is similar to the interdependent relationship between monetary value and the use value of commodities. Without the latter, the former will lose its source, and the former also affects the latter. Philosophers of mind pay little attention to the interplay between language and mental content. Based on the above arguments and previous theories, this paper conceives a general model of the generation of linguistic meaning.
Identifiants
pubmed: 33410117
doi: 10.1007/s12124-020-09596-3
pii: 10.1007/s12124-020-09596-3
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
163-179Subventions
Organisme : Major Program of National Fund of Philosophy and Social Science of China
ID : 18ZDA032
Informations de copyright
© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature.
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