What is the place of language in human cognition? Do we sometimes think in natural language? Or is language for purposes of interpersonal communication only? Although these questions have been much debated in the past, they have almost dropped from sight in recent decades amongst those interested in the cognitive sciences. Language and Thought is intended to persuade such people to think again. It brings together essays by a distinguished interdisciplinary team of philosophers and psychologists, who discuss various ways in (...) which language may be implicated in human cognition. The editors have provided an introduction which lays out the basic terms and history of the debate, and a consolidated bibliography which will provide a valuable reference resource for all those interested in this area. The volume will be of great interest to all researchers and students interested in language and its place in cognition. (shrink)

Onians' remarkable work of scholarship sought to deal with the very roots of European civilization and thought: the fundamental beliefs about life, mind, body, soul, and human destiny that are embodied in the myths and legends of the ancients. The volume is remains a fascinating collection of ideas and explanations of cultures as diverse as the Greeks and the Norse, the Celts and the Jews, and the Chinese and the Romans.

been recently proposed (Morin, 2003; 2004). The model takes into account most known mechanisms and processes leading to self-awareness, and examines their multiple and complex interactions. Inner speech is postulated to play a key-role in this model, as it establishes important connections between many of its ele- ments. This paper first reviews past and current references to a link between self-awareness and inner speech. It then presents an analysis of the nature of the relation between these two concepts. It is (...) suggested that inner speech can inter- nally reproduce and expand social and physical (ecological) sources of self- awareness. Inner speech can also create a psychological distance between the self and mental events it experiences (thus facilitating self-observation) it can act as a problem-solving device where the self represents the problem and self-information the solution, and can label aspects of one’s inner life that would otherwise be difficult to objectively perceive. Empirical evidence supporting the role of inner speech in self-awareness is also presented. (shrink)

The central problem of social theory is 'structure and agency'. How do the objective features of society influence human agents? Determinism is not the answer, nor is conditioning as currently conceptualised. It accentuates the way structure and culture shape the social context in which individuals operate, but it neglects our personal capacity to define what we care about most and to establish a modus vivendi expressive of our concerns. Through inner dialogue, 'the internal conversation', individuals reflect upon their social situation (...) in the light of current concerns and projects. On the basis of a series of unique, in-depth interviews, Archer identifies three distinctive forms of internal conversation. These govern agents' responses to social conditioning, their individual patterns of social mobility and whether or not they contribute to social stability or change. Thus the internal conversation is seen as being the missing link between society and the individual, structure and agency. (shrink)

The relationship between thought and language has been of central importance to philosophy ever since Plato characterised thinking as 'a dialogue the soul has with itself'. In this volume, several major twentieth-century philosophers of mind and language make further contributions to the debate. Among the questions addressed are: is language conceptually prior to thought, or vice versa? Must thought take place 'in' a medium? To what extent can creatures without language be credited with thoughts? Do we have to suppose that (...) thinking involves the use of concepts? What does it mean to have and deploy a concept? How do recent psychological experiments bear on these issues? Are beliefs, desires, hopes and fears rightly construed as 'attitudes towards propositions'? Should twentieth-century philosophy be conceived of in terms of Michael Dummett's distinction between 'analytical philosophy' and the 'philosophy of thought'? (shrink)

Augustine intended the Soliloquies and the Immortality of the soul to form a single book. For those who are unacquainted with Augustine it is a good book with which to begin. It deals, as he says, with those matters about which he most wanted to know at this time, i.e. between his conversion in the summer of 386 and his baptism at Easter, 387. The matters are the primacy of mind over things of sense, and the immortality of the soul. (...) These central tenets of Neoplatonism are not simply theoretical questions for Augustine. He had been through a period of intense strain, close to a nervous breakdown, and the Soliloquies are the description of his most intimate feelings, a form of therapy. The Soliloquies and the Immortality of the soul are the finished and the unfinished parts respectively of the same work. The latter shows us the raw material of a dialogue: in the Soliloquies we have a piece of theatre, the dramatised conflict between two personae. They are two aspects of the one character (he invented the word soliloquies), and the presentation gives us a picture of Augustine at this time which is even more immediate than his self-portrait in the Confessions. This early work gives us the first direct evidence on the temperament of the man who created the Confessions: someone fascinated with the mystery of the personality, and particularly memory, a lover of puzzles and paradoxes, a rhetorician with a deep interest in philosophy, a highly emotional human being, and above all, a questioner concerned with knowing the truth. (shrink)

In this book, Norbert Wiley offers a new interpretation of the nature of the self in society.

Here I suggest that Virginia Woolf was a great artist who has provided descriptions of concrete sequences of events in consciousness and perhaps insights into its nature. Of course, we can never be completely sure of the accuracy of her descriptions. But they at least offer instances with which theories of consciousness can be grounded, and inspiration for models of consciousness. For this purpose I use an incident that occurs near the beginning of To The Lighthouse by Woolf , and (...) the commentary on it by Auerbach . Auerbach's commentary is important in itself, and has also figured in two substantial traditions in the development of literary criticism. Auerbach was the first to analyse the ‘interior monologue’ of Mrs Ramsay, the protagonist of the novel, and to comment on its significance. The problem that concerns me is identifying and understanding the multipersonal voices that figure in the interior monologue during the incident. (shrink)

German classicist's monumental study of the origins of European thought in Greek literature and philosophy.

First published in 1934, this book evaluates the characteristic doctrines of the idealism which dominated philosophy during the last century. It seeks to combine realism, as to epistemology and physical objects, with a greater appreciation of views which emphasize the unity and rationality of the universe. This work is not a history and does not try to compete with any histories of idealism but it instead reaches an independent conclusion on certain philosophical problems by criticising what others have said. The (...) book considers differing arguments in order to determine their validity. (shrink)