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The contemporary (Fodor-style) Language of Thought (LOT) hypothesis (not to be confused with Sellars’s reasonable hypothesis that some neural processes are somewhat analogous to linguistic episodes) is that many cognitive capacities widespread within the animal kingdom, such as perception, navigation, or caching, are explained by processing language-like representations like those …

In my final post, I want to consider a very compelling objection. The objection can be pitched abstractly enough to undermine – seemingly – what I have claimed so far this week. The response to the objection is contained in the final Chapter of Talking About, called ‘Good Cases, Bad …

Ignacy Jan Paderewski was famous both as pianist and the Prime Minister of Poland. Thus, it is easy to imagine that someone is familiar with him in both roles but mistakenly thinks that there are two people involved, not one. It is easy because being both a famous pianist and …

Is it really possible to believe something while lacking the capacity to represent that belief? Intuitively, one could only believe that colonialism is the product of white supremacism if one can somehow represent this very belief in language or thought. But this intuitive idea is highly misleading. Or so I …

What does reference consist in? In virtue of what does a speaker refer to one object rather than another by uttering something on a given occasion? Well, I think the answer to this question is both more complicated and more straightforward than many theorists appear to assume. Straightforward because it …