Concepts and words: the case of colors

Abstract

Although the relation between thought and natural language has been discussed by many philosophers from many different angles, according to Peter Carruthers (1996, 2002) two main opposing views can be identified. One is the communicative conception of language, according to which the central role of language is to express thought. The other is the cognitive conception of language, according to which natural language is constitutively involved in at least some types of thought. Carruthers himself expounds a version of the cognitive conception, arguing that our conscious propositional thoughts necessarily involve natural language sentences as their vehicle. Jerry Fodor, on the other hand, is a paradigmatic proponent of the view according to which natural language's only role is to express thoughts, the vehicle of thought being a language of thought different from any natural language. In order to investigate what the best view is, I am going to focus on the relation between words and concepts, more specifically on the relation between color words and concepts. Color words and concepts offer a good case study because their mutual influence has been widely studied by linguists and psychologists, though rarely with any attempt to clarify more general philosophical questions. My hypothesis is that some scientific works about color words and concepts support an intermediate position (in between Carruthers and Fodor) about the role of language on thought - one according to which the vehicle of thought is not a natural language, but where natural languages do more than merely communicating thoughts. In order to assess that, I will draw both on philosophical work about the nature of concepts and their relation with words, and on scientific work about the role of color words on thought and perception.