Mapas, lenguaje y contenido: inferencias

MARIELA AGUILERA

Ciudad de México

Conferencia; Seminario de Representación y Cognición; 2013

Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas y Posgrado de Filosofía de las Ciencias

In view of some observational and experimental research on animal cognition, cognitive ethologists and comparative psychologists often claim that non human animals are capable of making inferences1. According to the mainstream in cognitive science, inferential processes involve a language of thought, that is, an inner system of representational vehicles with linguistic form. So, if animals make inferences, then animal reasoning must involve a language of thought. This idea relies on the assumption that any other kind of non linguistic vehicle is incapable of supporting inferential transitions between contents. The above suppositions are related to a wider philosophical tradition which claims that thought and reasoning require some kind of language. Along this line, analytic philosophy has supposed that the capability to reason and make inferences depends on linguistic competence, instead of language of thought. Against these assumptions and from a philosophical perspective, in this paper I argue that inferential abilities do not necessarily require a language. In contrast, certain cartographic systems could be used to explain some forms of inferences. I focus on the requirements a system must satisfy for inferential process and I argue that some cartographic systems satisfy those requirements. Furthermore, I provide some support for a formal conception of cartographic systems. However, as I want to emphasize, there are important differences between maps and linguistic representations, not only in their syntax, but also in the internal structure of maps and sentences. In contrast to linguistic systems, maps do not have logical form; or at least, not in the way language does. More specifically, although maps are capable of representing predication, they neither have quantificational elements nor can be decomposed as in predicate calculus. As a consequence, I argue, while the content of linguistic representations has a propositional structure, the content of maps has what might be called cartographic structure4. What is more, as I want to suggest, this notion of content can explain interesting features of animal reasoning, that differentiate it from human reasoning.