Press the right key for the next slide (or swipe left)

also ...

Press the left key to go backwards (or swipe right)

Press n to toggle whether notes are shown (no equivalent if you don't have a keyboard)

Press m or double tap to see a menu of slides

 

Does being able to think depend on being able to communicate with language?

Our question is, How do humans first come to communicate using words?
I want to step back from this question to consider an argument about thought and language.
Here's an argument to show that being able to think depends on (or is interdependent with) being able to communicate by language.
I take this argument from Davidson.
    \begin{enumerate}
    \item
  1. If someone can think, she must be capable of having a false belief.
    2. \item
  2. To be capable of having a false belief it is necessary to understand the possibility of false belief.
    3. \item
  3. Understanding the possibility of false belief entails being able to communicate by language.
    4. \end{enumerate}

Conclusion:

If someone can think, she can communicate with language.

This premise seems straightforward to me.
Note that by think we mean desire, intend, wish, guess, believe ...
There's a quote on your handout in support of this.
'belief is central to all kinds of thought. If someone is glad that, or notices that, or remembers that, or knows that, the gun is loaded, then he must believe that the gun is loaded. Even to wonder whether the gun is loaded, or to speculate on the possibility that the gun is loaded, requires belief, for example, that a gun is a weapon, that it is a more or less enduring physical object, and so on. … it is necessary that there be endless interlocked beliefs'
\citep[p.\ 157]{Davidson:1975eq}; cf. \citep[pp.\ 320--1]{Davidson:1982je}
Why accept the second premise of the argument? Consider Davidson's reasoning:
Why accept the second premise of the argument, that to be capable of having a false belief it is necessary to understand the possibility of false belief?
Here is Davidson's reasoning ...

‘We, observing and describing … a creature …, say that it discriminates certain shapes, objects, colors, and so forth, by which we mean that it reacts in ways we find similar to shapes, objects, and colors which we find similar.

But we would be making a mistake if we were to assume that because the creature discriminates and reacts in much the way we do, that it has the corresponding concepts.

The difference, as I keep emphasizing, lies in the fact that we, unlike the creature I am describing, can, from our point of view, make mistakes in classification.’

Davidson (2001: 11)

\citep[p.\ 11]{Davidson:2001np}
Here's an analogy for Davidson's argument.
I think it would be appropriate to say the yellers and stampers are making a mistake only if they themselves can see things that way.
I suggest that Davidson's claim is based on a similar intuition.
Note that the analogy I've offered isn't an argument for Davidson's claim.
At most, it's a challenge to someone who rejects it.
If you reject the premise, then you have to explain what makes it appopriate to assign blame or apply correctness conditions.

‘We, observing and describing … a creature …, say that it discriminates certain shapes, objects, colors, and so forth, by which we mean that it reacts in ways we find similar to shapes, objects, and colors which we find similar.

But we would be making a mistake if we were to assume that because the creature discriminates and reacts in much the way we do, that it has the corresponding concepts.

The difference, as I keep emphasizing, lies in the fact that we, unlike the creature I am describing, can, from our point of view, make mistakes in classification.’

Davidson (2001: 11)

So here's the argument again.
  1. If someone can think, she must be capable of having a false belief.
  2. To be capable of having a false belief it is necessary to understand the possibility of false belief.
  3. Understanding the possibility of false belief entails being able to communicate by language.

Conclusion:

If someone can think, she can communicate with language.

So far we've considered the first two premises.
What about the third premise?
This is really difficult.
I'd happily spend a lecture on it, but that would take us too far from the question that occupies us today.
So let me, for now at least, just put the claim in Davidson's own words ...

‘we grasp the concept of truth only when we can communicate the contents---the propositional contents---of the shared experience, and this requires language’

Davidson 1997, p. 27

\citep[p.\ 27]{Davidson:1997wj}.
Now just focus on the conclusion.
Recall that our overall question is, How do humans first come to communicate by language?
The conclusion of this argument provides one answer: Not by means of thinking.
To see what this rules out, consider this view from Higginbotham ...

‘the process of language acquisition [is] coming to know the meanings of words, where at a given stage the learner’s conception is an hypothesis about the meaning’

Higginbotham 1998, p. 153

\citep[p.\ 153]{Higginbotham:1998rm}
Higginbotham offers a beautifully simple answer to our question, How do humans come to communicate by language?
The answer is that we figure out the meanings of words in just the way we figure other things out, like why Ayesha is so glum or who ate my breakfast.
But now recall Davidson's claim that If someone can think, she can communicate by language.
I take it that Davidson's claim is incompatible with the view that language acquisition involves forming hypotheses about the meanings of words at the outset.
Be careful about the incompatibility: it's not that forming hypotheses about the meanings of words can't be part of the process, at a later stage.
The problem is that this---forming hypotheses---can't happen before at least some linguistic competence is present.
So there is something essential missing from Higginbotham's picture, at least if Davidson is right.

two directions

Let me be clear about what I'm saying.
There are two claims ...

  1. If someone can think, she can communicate with language.

  2. Acquiring language involves thinking from the start.
I am saying that if the first is true, the second is false.

If 1, then not 2.

So if Davidson is right, we know something about how langauges are not acquired.
But I'm not saying that Davidson is right.
Indeed, there is a remarkable lack of convincing argument for (1) and claims like it.
I am also saying that if the second is true, the first is false.

If 2, then not 1.

So one way to argue that Davidson's position must be wrong would be to argue that acquiring language involves thinking from the start.
I want to consider this direction first.
Suppose Davidson is right. Can we give a plausible account of language acquisition?