I’ve recently read a few books on cognition and psycholinguistics which has put a name to a concept I’ve become increasing the familiar with, the Language of Thought Hypothesis; wherein researchers theorize that mentalese, and subsequently most of human thought, follow syntactical rules.
They attempt to translate sentences into language independent symbolic propositions, for example:
“Sam spray-painted the walls.” Becomes
“(Sam spray paint) cause (paint go to (on wall))”
I find this endlessly fascinating but I struggle to think of an actual application of this kind of knowledge. What could we actually do with an understanding of how thoughts are structured syntactically?
The one and only thing that comes to mind would be intelligently designing future languages to fit more snugly with cognition, which is no small thing admittedly. But I would love to discuss the implications of this research if anything comes to mind to anyone.
[Question] Significance of the Language of Thought Hypothesis?
I’ve recently read a few books on cognition and psycholinguistics which has put a name to a concept I’ve become increasing the familiar with, the Language of Thought Hypothesis; wherein researchers theorize that mentalese, and subsequently most of human thought, follow syntactical rules.
They attempt to translate sentences into language independent symbolic propositions, for example: “Sam spray-painted the walls.” Becomes “(Sam spray paint) cause (paint go to (on wall))”
I find this endlessly fascinating but I struggle to think of an actual application of this kind of knowledge. What could we actually do with an understanding of how thoughts are structured syntactically?
The one and only thing that comes to mind would be intelligently designing future languages to fit more snugly with cognition, which is no small thing admittedly. But I would love to discuss the implications of this research if anything comes to mind to anyone.