Here are a couple of assumptions that philosophers frequently make:
- There is a certain way that the world is.
- There is information all around us, telling us the way that the world is.
By “philosopher”, I really mean human. We almost all philosophize to some extent.
I see those two listed assumptions as mistaken.
What is the mistake?
If your primary concern is getting around in this world, then the assumptions are not unreasonable. The problem comes when we try to understand human cognition (or, roughly, what is it that the brain is doing?)
If we start with those assumptions, the ones that I consider mistaken, then there isn’t much for a cognitive system to do. It just has to pick up the information that is all around us, and find out what that information tells us about the world. That’s what leads to the idea of computationalism (“cognition is computation”). And our experience with digital computers suggests that computation can be done in a way that is mindless and mechanical.
But a cognitive system has to be far more creative than that.
To say “there’s a way that the world is” is pretty much the same as saying “there exists a correct description of the world.” This might be using “exists” in a Platonic sense. That is, it need not assume that we know that correct description. But it assume that there is such a description even if we do not know it.
The problem here, is that you cannot have a description without some kind of description system. That is to say, to have a description, you first need something like a suitable description language. And that’s where the need for creativity shows up.
If there isn’t a way that the world is, then there cannot be information around us telling us the way that the world is. So our cognitive systems also need to create ways of getting information about the world in a form that is appropriate for the description systems that they have created.
Can it be a natural language?
We do use our natural language as a description system. And we acquire our natural language from the community. But that cannot be the full story. For we cannot be part of a community unless we have some ability to cognize that community. So we first need some sort of internal description system (which need not be a language), before we can begin to recognize and join a community. And only then can we begin to use the community natural language as our description system. So we already need the ability to create our own description system, in order to be able to recognize and then adopt the community natural language.
What about a language of thought?
Fodor has proposed that there be an innate language of thought. And that would solve the problem. To me, it seems implausible. In any case, that only moves the need for creativity to biological evolution. It does not completely eliminate that need.
If there is an innate language of thought (or LOT), it is hard to explain why natural languages would not arise directly from that LOT. But there is too much diversity between different natural languages for that to be a reasonable likelihood.
Creativity and consciousness
The so-called “hard problem” of consciousness arises because people have thought cognition is something like computation. And we know from our experience with digital computers, that consciousness is not required for computation. So the hard problem has to do with explaining how we can be conscious when that seems unnecessary.
If, however, cognitive systems are doing something more creative, then we begin to get some other ideas. In particular, we begin to see that our cognitive systems have to create ways for us to see (or experience) the world as part of creating a description system for the world. And they have to find ways of developing information about the world, in a form that is suitable for that description system.
We now at least have the beginnings of an answer to the question “what does consciousness do?”
The Heretical Philosopher 