Language of Thought Hypothesis

A Language of Thought Hypothesis is a cognitive representation system that is an internal non-linguistic processing framework in language of thought minds or language of thought models.

• AKA: Mentalese, Thought Language, Internal Cognitive Language, Mental Representation System, LOT Hypothesis.
• Context:
  • It can typically postulate Language of Thought Symbols representing language of thought concepts without natural language.
  • It can typically enable Language of Thought Computations manipulating language of thought mental representations.
  • It can typically support Language of Thought Compositionality combining language of thought simple ideas.
  • It can typically facilitate Language of Thought Productivity generating language of thought infinite thoughts.
  • It can typically maintain Language of Thought Systematicity preserving language of thought logical relations.
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  • It can often manifest in Language of Thought AI Systems through language of thought internal representations.
  • It can often differ from Language of Thought Surface Languages in language of thought structure.
  • It can often enable Language of Thought Cross-Linguistic Processing independent of specific languages.
  • It can often underlie Language of Thought Reasoning Processes before linguistic expression.
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  • It can range from being a Symbolic Language of Thought to being a Connectionist Language of Thought, depending on its language of thought representation type.
  • It can range from being a Universal Language of Thought to being a Domain-Specific Language of Thought, depending on its language of thought scope.
  • It can range from being a Innate Language of Thought to being a Learned Language of Thought, depending on its language of thought origin.
  • It can range from being a Human Language of Thought to being an AI Language of Thought, depending on its language of thought implementation.
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  • It can be studied through Philosophy of Mind examining language of thought mental processes.
  • It can be investigated via Cognitive Science analyzing language of thought representations.
  • It can be modeled in AI Systems implementing language of thought computational frameworks.
  • It can be detected using AI Interpretability Techniques revealing language of thought internal structures.
  • It can be compared across Neural Networks identifying language of thought common patterns.
  • ...
• Example(s):
  • Fodor's Language of Thought proposing language of thought innate symbol systems in human cognition.
  • AI Language of Thought emerging in large language models as internal representations.
  • Mathematical Language of Thought encoding language of thought numerical concepts before verbal expression.
  • Visual Language of Thought representing language of thought spatial relations without words.
  • Logical Language of Thought processing language of thought inference rules independently of natural language.
  • ...
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Natural Language Processings, which operate on linguistic symbols directly.
  • Behaviorist Theorys, which deny internal representations entirely.
  • Direct Perception Theorys, which bypass representational intermediarys.
• See: Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Science, Internal AI Abstraction, Chain-of-Thought Prompting, Graph-of-Thoughts Algorithm, Meaning (Philosophy of Language), Mental Representation.

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