Abstract:

Theories of cognition that are based on information processing and representation are reactive (Rosen, 1985) or backwards looking, not anticipatory. In a previous article
(Thibault, 2005a), I looked at the reasons why humans and bonobos do not need an innate language faculty in order to be minded, languaging beings. The present article takes up some of the questions explored there, but, it asks, on the other hand, what sort of a minded agent has language and what kind of account of language and more broadly meaning do we need to explain minded, languaged agents and the activities they participate in? Following Rosen (1985), I also take up and further develop a point first raised in Thibault (2004a: 187) on language as an anticipatory system, rather
than a reactively ‘representational’ one (see also Bickhard, 2005).

Author: Paul J. Thibault