The Mundane Matter of the Mental Language

Description

Christopher Maloney offers an explanation of the fundamental nature of thought. He posits the idea that thinking involves the processing of mental representations that take the form of sentences in a covert language encoded in the mind. The theory relies upon traditional categories of psychology, including such notions as belief and desire. It also draws upon and thus inherits some of the problems of artificial intelligence which it attempts to answer, including what bestows meaning or content upon a thought and what distinguishes genuine from simulated thought.

"The book is lively, well informed, and very well written. It will be of considerable interest to philosophers and cognitive scientists concerned with mental representation, intentionality, consciousness and rationality." Stephen P. Stich, University of California, San Diego