Cognitive Turn and Linguistic Turn :: Philosophy Symbols Papers

Cognitive and linguistic circleMy first goal is to question a received check about the development of analytic Philosophy. According to this received view Analytical Philosophy is born out of a Linguistic Turn establishing the gougevass of language as the foundation of the discipline this primacy of language is then overthrown by the return of the study of mind as philosophia prima through a second Cognitive Turn taken in the mid-sixties. My contention is that this mental image is a gross oversimplification and that the Cognitive Turn should better be seen as an extension of the Linguistic angiotensin converting enzyme. Indeed, if the Cognitive Turn gives explicit lucid priority to the study of mind over the study of language, one of its commutation features is to see the mind as a representational remains offer no substantial difference with a linguistic one. However, no apology is offered for the fundamental assimilation of the nature of a mental representation with that of a linguistic symbol supporting this picture of the mind, although the idea that a system of mental representations is identical in structure with a system of linguistic symbols has been argued over and over. I try to demonstrate this point through a close critical examination of Fodors paradigmatic notion of double reduction. My second birdcall is that the widespread contemporary assimilation of a mental representation with a symbol of a linguistic kind is no more than a prejudice. Finally I indicate that this prejudice cannot survive a close critical examination. 1. Introduction linguistic symbol and mental representationA good deal of that important branch of contemporary philosophy which goes by the loose term of Analytical Philosophy lives, in my opinion, with a belie representation of its own past, and consequently, with an inaccurate appreciation of the nature of its own achievements.As a matter of fact the belief is widely spread among analytical circles that the birth of Analytical Philosophy is the result of a Linguistic Turn taken by its founding figures G. Frege and B. Russell and then expanded into various directions by their notorious or less notorious followers. (1) To put it in a nutshell, the Linguistic Turn of which historians give in fact conflicting accounts (2) can be characterized by saying that it turned (better said, intended to) every philosophical problem and most of all every psychological and epistemological one into a problem about language, or at least into a problem dependent upon problems about language.