Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA.
Cogn Neuropsychol. 2020 Jul-Sep;37(5-6):288-311. doi: 10.1080/02643294.2019.1637338. Epub 2019 Jul 4.
What role does language play in our thoughts? A longstanding proposal that has gained traction among supporters of embodied or grounded cognition suggests that it serves as a cognitive scaffold. This idea turns on the fact that language-with its ability to capture statistical regularities, leverage culturally acquired information, and engage grounded metaphors-is an effective and readily available support for our thinking. In this essay, I argue that language should be viewed as more than this; it should be viewed as a neuroenhancement. The neurologically realized language system is an important subcomponent of a flexible, multimodal, and multilevel conceptual system. It is not merely a source for information about the world but also a computational add-on that extends our conceptual reach. This approach provides a compelling explanation of the course of development, our facility with abstract concepts, and even the scope of language-specific influences on cognition.
语言在我们的思维中扮演什么角色？一种在具身认知或扎根认知的支持者中逐渐流行的长期观点认为，语言充当认知支架。这个观点的关键在于，语言具有捕捉统计规律、利用文化习得信息和运用基于体验的隐喻的能力，因此是我们思维的有效且现成的支持。在本文中，我认为语言的作用不止于此；它应该被视为一种神经增强。神经实现的语言系统是灵活的、多模态和多层次概念系统的重要子组件。它不仅是关于世界的信息来源，还是一个计算附加组件，扩展了我们的概念范围。这种方法为发展过程、我们对抽象概念的掌握，甚至语言对认知的特定影响的范围提供了一个引人注目的解释。
