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Conscious Thinking: Language or Elimination?
Author(s) -
Carruthers Peter
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0017.00087
Subject(s) - eliminative materialism , argument (complex analysis) , epistemology , philosophy , natural (archaeology) , cognitive science , philosophy of mind , natural language , philosophy of language , psychology , linguistics , metaphysics , chemistry , biochemistry , archaeology , history
Do we conduct our conscious propositional thinking in natural language? Or is such language only peripherally related to human conscious thought‐processes? In this paper I shall present a partial defence of the former view, by arguing that the only real alternative is eliminativism about conscious propositional thinking. Following some introductory remarks, I shall state the argument for this conclusion, and show how that conclusion can be true. Thereafter I shall defend each of the three main premises in turn.