Words and Images: An Essay on the Origin of Ideas
Christopher Gauker
Abstract
At least since Locke, philosophers and psychologists have usually held that concepts arise out of sensory perceptions, thoughts are built from concepts, and language enables speakers to convey their thoughts to hearers. This book holds that this tradition is mistaken about both concepts and language. The mind cannot abstract the building blocks of thoughts from perceptual representations. More generally, we have no account of the origin of concepts that grants them the requisite independence from language. The book's alternative is to show that much of cognition consists in thinking by means o ... More
Keywords: concepts, language, cognition, mental imagery, shared goals, conceptual thought, thoughts
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 | Print ISBN-13: 9780199599462 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2011 | DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599462.001.0001 |
