OAO - Chomsky

[theapportioner]

Mentalese, in my view, assumes that there is a symbolic language in the mind, deep in the unconscious, that is logical and the generator of thought. This language is the same for everyone, so everyone thinks the same way. You do not need to go to the level of neuroscience to figure out what thought is - if you can figure out the language, you are set.

I have about a dozen problems with this view. First of all, it is insiduously Cartesian - some executive in the brain is using this mentalese to think, and translating between English etc. and mentalese all the time. Then there's the evolutionary problem - how did this mental language develop? Then there's the fact that this approach has failed in AI.

I think connectionism holds quite a bit more promise for developing a theory of thought.