Internalizing communication

PUBLISHED VERSION O'Brien, Gerard Joseph; Opie, Jonathan Philip. Internalizing communication, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2002; 25 (6):694-695. Copyright © 2002 Cambridge University Press PERMISSIONS http://journals.cambridge.org/action/stream?pageId=4088&level=2#4408 The right to post the definitive version of the contribution as published at Cambridge Journals Online (in PDF or HTML form) in the Institutional Repository of the institution in which they worked at the time the paper was first submitted, or (for appropriate journals) in PubMed Central or UK PubMed Central, no sooner than one year after first publication of the paper in the journal, subject to file availability and provided the posting includes a prominent statement of the full bibliographical details, a copyright notice in the name of the copyright holder (Cambridge University Press or the sponsoring Society, as appropriate), and a link to the online edition of the journal at Cambridge Journals Online. Inclusion of this definitive version after one year in Institutional Repositories outside of the institution in which the contributor worked at the time the paper was first submitted will be subject to the additional permission of Cambridge University Press (not to be unreasonably withheld). 10th December 2010 http://hdl.handle.net/2440/37599 Commentary/Carruthers: The cognitive functions of language involve cross-domain integration of persons, objects, actions, space, Reflection on our phenomenology furnishes two very different and time, and there is good evidence that such representations views of the role of natural language in human cognition. On the provide conceptual input to early language (Toma-sello 1992). De- one hand, as Carruthers observes at the beginning of the target ar- layed imitation in later infancy is based on event representations ticle, we are constantly running words and sentences through our and provides a prelinguistic social-experiential semi-symbolic heads, even when performing quite trivial cognitive tasks. This cognitive representation (Donald 1991). At the perceptual, motor, provides some support for what Carruthers terms the “cognitive and nonsymbolic level of the cognitive system, automatic non- conception of language,” according to which natural language conscious processes continue to subserve both the nonlinguistic constitutes a representational medium of thought. On the other conceptual and linguistic representations. Non-domain-specific hand, there is the familiar feeling that our thoughts are present in conceptual processes, including language, may be thought of as some form before we attempt to express them in natural language layers added to earlier evolved cognitive operations. (“I know what I want to say, I just don’t know how to say it”). This A transition period of language practice in social contexts con- feeling is more consistent with what Carruthers terms the “com- tinues up to the fifth or sixth year when linguistic representations municative conception of language,” which denies that natural and processing supplement the basic experience-based system. I language is a representational medium of thought and holds in- have proposed a dual process theory to explain the important ad- stead that its role is restricted to the communication of thoughts vances in cognitive development during the preschool years (ages coded in other representational media. 3 –5) (Nelson 1996; in press; Nelson et al. 2003). Specifically, the Because phenomenology doesn’t settle this question, and be- achievement of representational language supplements the initial cause one of his aims is to defend the cognitive conception of lan- nonlinguistic experientially based conceptual system with a sec- guage, Carruthers turns to the empirical evidence. His trump card ond linguistic representation component available to the cognitive is a series of experiments conducted by Hermer-Vazquez et al. processing system. Among other things, this enables holding in (1999), which suggest that natural language has a crucial role in mind two competing or complementary representations at the the human capacity to integrate information across different do- same time (e.g., past and present states of affairs, first- and sec- mains (in this case geometric information and information con- ond-person perspective on the same event, etc.), with implications cerning object-properties). Carruthers concludes (as do Hermer- for performance on theory of mind tasks and category choice Vazquez et al.) that natural language performs this integrating tasks, as well as self-reflective thought. The achievement of rep- function by acting as a mental lingua franca: a medium for repre- resentational language involves the acquisition of complex se- senting items of information drawn from distinct domain-specific mantics and syntax necessary to express propositional thoughts modules in the brain. about things not evident in the immediate scene, such as descrip- In our view, however, the situation is not so straightforward. We tions, explanations, narratives, plans, and so on. This level of lan- accept, on the basis of the experimental evidence Carruthers pre- guage competence, which follows several years of conversational sents, that natural language contributes to the cross-modular inte- practice with adults, particularly those concerned with the past gration of information in human subjects. What we question is the and future, is reached by about four to five years of age. further claim that it does so by acting as a representational medium Subsequently, domain-specific conceptual structures and asso- (and hence that the cited experimental work vindicates the cogni- ciated learning and memory strategies begin to be constructed tive conception of language). Carruthers does allow that language and consolidated, in collaboration with the social-cultural world can influence cognition without acting as an (internal) representa- that defines useful domains such as writing and arithmetic, poetry tional medium, because it both sculpts and scaffolds cognition (sect. and physics, or alternatively, hunting and gathering, spinning and 2). But, as he points out, the function of language in these cases is woodworking (see also Karmiloff-Smith 1992). Such domain-spe- primarily diachronic – it contributes to the acquisition of certain cific knowledge does not of course prevent children or normal cognitive capacities rather than the real-time exercise of those ca- adults from engaging in cross-domain thinking, either in science pacities. Consequently, such processes are incapable of accounting or in everyday life. for the synchronic integration of internally coded information, and In summary, language is a cross-domain communicative and the cognitive conception of language appears to be obligatory. cognitive representational system made possible by a preexisting However, we believe that Carruthers has overlooked a significant non-domain-specific conceptual system perhaps unique to human cognitive role for language that is both synchronic and consistent cognition. Together they compose a dual representation cognitive with the communicative conception – one, moreover, that has the processing system of the extraordinary flexibility and power that potential to account for the cross-modular integration of informa- we are familiar with. tion in human subjects. To demonstrate this we’ll need to consider the communicative conception of language in more detail. What distinguishes the communicative and cognitive concep- tions of language is that the former excludes natural language from among the human brain’s representational media of thought. Nat- Internalizing communication ural language is in the communication business, not the thinking business. Most proponents of this view accept that language en- Gerard O’Brien and Jon Opie ables communication precisely because it is a representational Department of Philosophy, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia medium, but deny that it is a medium of thought. Some go fur- 5005. [email protected] ther. Robert Cummins, for example, argues that written and ver- http://www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/philosophy/gobrien.htm bal tokens of natural language communicate thoughts, not by rep- [email protected] resenting them, but merely by acting as conventional “signals” that http://www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/philosophy/jopie.htm trigger appropriate representing vehicles in target brains (see es- pecially Cummins 1996, pp. 135–40). Such signals are produced Abstract: Carruthers presents evidence concerning the cross-modular in- when representing vehicles in a source brain interact with motor tegration of information in human subjects which appears to support the systems via mechanisms that realize the governing conventions of “cognitive conception of language.” According to this conception, lan- language. And they influence the receiving brain by impacting on guage is not just a means of communication, but also a representational its sensory surfaces. Communication succeeds when the emitted medium of thought. However, Carruthers overlooks the possibility that language, in both its communicative and cognitive roles, is a nonrepre- signals cause the receiving brain to token vehicles in its represen- sentational system of conventional signals – that words are not a medium tational medium of thought whose contents are sufficiently simi- we think in, but a tool we think with. The evidence he cites is equivocal lar to those tokened in the source brain. Cummins’s insight is that when it comes to choosing between the cognitive conception and this rad- linguistic signals need not (indeed should not) be conceived as ical communicative conception of language. content-bearers to explain their role in this process. 694 BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2002) 25:6  Commentary/Carruthers: The cognitive functions of language This more radical communicative conception of natural lan- Speech as an opportunistic vehicle guage is echoed in a recent paper by Paul Churchland, who adds of thinking an interesting twist. He claims that language is not a system for representing the world, but the “acquired skill of perceiving . . . Csaba Pléh and manipulating . . . the brain activities of your conspecifics, and Center for Cognitive Science, Budapest University of Technology and of being competent, in turn, to be the subject of reciprocal brain- Economics, Budapest, Hungary. [email protected] manipulation” (Churchland 2001). From this perspective, lan- http://www.itm.bme.hu/ktk/csaba guage is not just a means of communicating thoughts but also a way for one brain to shape the cognitive activities of another – lin- Abstract: Carruthers clearly identifies the basic issues involved in lan- guistic signals fundamentally operate as a means by which we ma- guage and thought relations and argues for an adaptive central model. Sim- nipulate the contents and trajectory of thought in other people. ilar conclusions were reached by classical research in the inner speech What sort of cognitive role does this leave for natural language? tradition. Sokolov (1968; 1972) especially emphasized that inner speech Clearly, sculpting and scaffolding are not ruled out, but a far more appears only when the task is difficult. The use of inner speech is not a ne- significant possibility is that the communicative process we have cessity to transform representations, but it is called for when transforma- described also goes on inside individual brains. It was Vygotsky’s tions become difficult. This might be related to the cognitive reorganiza- great insight that after children acquire a natural language as a tool tions leading to language as emphasized by Donald (2001). for communication, they internalise it, that is, they appropriate it as a cognitive tool (Vygotsky 1962/1986). For Vygotsky, as for Car- The clear differentiation by Carruthers between two basic ques- ruthers, this process is one in which an external communicative tions involved in the complex language and thought interface is- scheme becomes an internalized representational medium. What sue, namely, the involvement of language as a system and speech we are suggesting, by contrast, is that the internalisation of natural as an actual bodily process, on the one hand, and the mandatory language is a process whereby a conventionally governed set of or adaptive involvement of linguistic systems in thought, on the communicative signals is put to work inside a single brain. Lan- other, is a most welcome effort in the domain of cognitive science. guage becomes a system of signals apt not only for manipulating In my commentary I shall concentrate on two issues: What can we the brains of others, but also for recurrent self-manipulation. Such learn in this regard from traditional experimental work on dual internalisation involves establishing communicative links (routed tasks in the inner speech research tradition, and how should one through the language centres) that can be employed by one part envisage the shaping of domain general or cross-domain mecha- of the brain to steer the cognitive activities occurring in other parts nisms in the genesis of human cognition? of the brain.1 In this picture, natural language is not an internal As Carruthers points out, cognitive science usually starts off representational medium, it is a powerful cognitive tool – one that from a communicative conception of language when dealing with establishes coherent, multimodal representations, by facilitating the language-thought relationship. This is, according to Car- communication within the brain, and regulates the sequencing of ruthers, Fodor’s (1983) input/output modules. There is, however, thought via the constant interplay between networks that encode another work of Fodor (1975), the one Carruthers has in mind linguistic signals and those that encode thoughts (for a fuller dis- when he talks about the outputs of mental modules, that is, the cussion, see O’Brien & Opie 2002). Fodor of the language of thought, where an abstract proposition There is emerging evidence that language, implemented pri- like representation is claimed to be the vehicle of any internal marily in temporal cortex, plays just this kind of role. Recurrent thought process. However, this claim is being made with no clear connections that loop from language centres out to the repre- position regarding whether this lingua mentis is related to actual senting vehicles they trigger, and back again, catch up language speech in either its genesis or its workings. and thought in a tight web of mutual influence that extends our Determination in its different forms and scaffolding character- cognitive capacities well beyond those of infraverbal organisms. ize the argumentation in the language and thought literature as Such connections may well function to integrate information Carruthers surveys it, from the conceptual analysis of philosophy across the brain’s perceptual and conceptual faculties, without re- through the studies on category use in cultural interactions down course to a linguiform medium of thought. What we are propos- to laboratory research on inner speech. One can summarize and ing is a synchronic, fully internalized cognitive role for language extend the different existing positions in Table 1. that is consistent with the communicative conception. As we have Carruthers presents a rather well-argued view according to put it elsewhere (O’Brien & Opie 2002), words are not a medium which central process modularity should be reconciled with a we think in, they are a tool we think with. The possibility of this weakened version of linguistic determinism to the effect that lan- radical communicative conception of language is one that Car- guage is used as a central mediator between modules, as the ve- ruthers has failed to consider. And the empirical evidence he cites hicle, if you wish, for the outputs of central processes – along the is equivocal when it comes choosing between his favoured cogni- line of Fodor (1975) – which is used to compute complex trains of tive conception and the alternative we have sketched. representations. I basically agree with this type of limited and adaptive linguistic determinism, and with the evolutionary argu- NOTE ments put forth in favor of it. One could enrich the evolutionary 1. This idea is somewhat similar to (but not identical with) the specu- tracing by realizing how the scaffolding introduced by culture sup- lations that Dennett makes about the role of natural language in organiz- ing our thinking (see, e.g., Dennett 1991, pp. 193 – 99). plements or organizes the mental workings postulated by Car- ruthers. I have in mind specifically the position of Merlin Donald (1991; 1993; 2001) who claims that language and then writing in- volve feedbacks toward our own cognitive architectures (see Pléh 2002.) Donald claims, “We are a culturally bound species and live in a symbiosis with our collective creation. We seek culture, as birds seek the air. In return, culture shapes our minds, as a sculp- tor shapes clay” (Donald 2001, p. 300). This is a nontrivial issue, because it touches on the way we con- ceive the relationships between the external social world, together with the communicative functions of language and the cognitive domain and functions. There is disagreement about this, but I do not wish to it solve here, just to allude to it with another quote from Donald (2001, p. 254). “The great divide in human evolution was not language, but the formation of cognitive communities in the BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2002) 25:6 695