Fodor's language of thought (LOT) hypothesis states that cognition is a process of computation over compositional mental representations. This means that thoughts are represented in a "language" (sometimes known as mentalese) which allows complex thoughts to be built up by combining simpler thoughts in various ways. It is clear from the biology of the brain that these mental representations are not present in the same way as symbols written on paper; rather, the LOT is supposed to exist at the cognitive level, the level of thoughts and concepts. For example the thought that "John is tall" is clearly composed of at least two sub-parts: the concept of John (the person), and the concept of tallness. The manner in which these two sub-parts are combined could be expressed in first-order predicate calculus:

T(j)

This expression states that the predicate 'T' ("is tall") holds of the entity 'j' (John). A real proposal for what a language of thought might look like would have to be more complex than any pure logical language, since it would have to take into account complex aspects of human thought such as the propositional attitudes. These are the various attitudes people can have towards statements; for example I might believe that John is tall, but on the other hand I could merely suspect that John is tall.

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@sparklesyuki I thought of signing up at Hougang Japanese Language School. It's nearer to my house xD
arishiia (Alicia Yuen) Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:08:21 -0000
@sparklesyuki I thought of signing up at Hougang Japanese Language School. It's nearer to my house xD
Oh really! Never thought of that. RT @OMGFacts: No words in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple. #omgfacts
starnitezshine (Amabel Lim) Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:59:06 -0000
Oh really! Never thought of that. RT @OMGFacts: No words in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple. #omgfacts
@caniszczyk @dougschaefer I thought it was Ruby, Scala, Groovy, Clojure....pick flavor of the month language.
kingargyle (David Carver) Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:18:43 -0000
@caniszczyk @dougschaefer I thought it was Ruby, Scala, Groovy, Clojure....pick flavor of the month language.
@Aponee I was mistaken. I thought the other language you were writing in was Spanish. Is it German, Swedish, Estonian or a type of slang?
Ant5Hill (Benson Brock) Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:15:55 -0000
@Aponee I was mistaken. I thought the other language you were writing in was Spanish. Is it German, Swedish, Estonian or a type of slang?
I love fucking with telemarketers. Just did five minutes of a fake guttural language. She really thought I was talking a different language
spidermann (Spider Mann) Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:28:47 -0000
I love fucking with telemarketers. Just did five minutes of a fake guttural language. She really thought I was talking a different language
Welcome back @MiffySusan - thought you were gone for good after the @valverde outburst of unacceptable language...
wilforiley (wilforiley) Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:59:24 -0000
Welcome back @MiffySusan - thought you were gone for good after the @valverde outburst of unacceptable language...

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