A Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Edition
. Fodor’s name for his view (also called the representational theory of mind) that mental states have a syntactic (see SEMIOTIC) structure corresponding to the semantical structure of the propositions which form their objects, i.e. that mental states represent their objects by having parts which represent parts of the objects in a systematic way. The language is also called ‘Mentalese’.
*T.Crane, The Mechanical Mind: A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Mechanics and Mental Representation, Penguin, 1995, chapter 4. (Elementary introduction; see pp. 154–62 for comparison of language of thought with CONNECTIONISM.)
J.A.Fodor, The Language of Thought, T.Y.Crowell, 1975, Harvester, 1976. (See also his Psychosemantics, MIT Press, 1987, esp. its Appendix, for briefer version and see bibliography to PSYCHOSEMANTICS and also W.G.Lycan (ed.), Mind and Cognition, Blackwell, 1990, part v.)
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