Making the private public: external grounding in inner States.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Classic cognitive theories anchor word meaning in internal concepts, but fail to explain symbol interpretability.
• Embodiment theories link concrete symbols to perception/action but still rely on introspection for mental terms.
• Theorists debate how public language can be founded on private, introspective access to inner states.

Purpose of the Study:

• To challenge the necessity and possibility of introspection-based classification of inner states in semantic learning.
• To propose an 'extrospective' account of mental concept grounding through social interaction.
• To investigate the role of external observers in semantic and mental state categorization.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing observations on the role of third-person evidence in interpreting internal states.
• Analysis of empirical studies on individuals with deficits linking internal experience and external behavior.
• Theoretical argumentation for an interactive, extrospective model of semantic learning.

Main Results:

• Purely introspection-based classification of inner states is neither possible nor required for semantic learning.
• Semantic learning of mentalistic concepts is an interactive process involving external observers.
• Third-person evidence and behavioral information are crucial for recognizing and categorizing mental states.

Conclusions:

• Language acquisition and meaning are grounded in social interaction and external observation, not solely private introspection.
• An extrospective approach provides a more viable account for how public language is founded on shared understanding of mental states.
• Deficits in linking first-person experience with observable behavior impair the understanding of mentalistic vocabulary.