Inner Speech, Determinacy, and Thinking Consciously about Thoughts

Abstract

Frege wrote: “The thought, in itself imperceptible by the senses, gets clothed in the perceptible garb of a sentence, and thereby we are enabled to grasp it.” This chapter defends a version of Frege’s claim, namely, that we can only think about thoughts when they are linguistically formulated. Section 7.1 makes the general argument that intentional ascent (thinking about thinking) requires semantic ascent (thinking about language). Section 7.2 addresses Martínez-Manrique & Vicente’s objection that the need to disambiguate indeterminacy in inner speech makes inner speech redundant as a potential vehicle for consciously thinking about thoughts. Section 7.3 takes issue with Langland-Hassan’s proposal that episodes of inner speech cannot carry the right kind of content to serve as vehicles for intentional ascent. The final section rebuts the objection that conscious inner speech presupposes the ability to bring a thought to consciousness, and so this latter ability is the true explanandum.