Vorstellbarkeit als Denkbarkeit. Referenz, Erste-Person-Perspektive und die Konstitution der semantischen Repraesentation

The main aim of this paper is to challenge the implicit formalism in classical cognitive theories of semantic competence. These models describe the human ability to master the words of natural language primarily using a model drawn from artificial intelligence, in which knowing a language means being able to connect linguistic symbols with each other in a proper way. According to the view we put forward in our paper, the capacity to connect words with others according to semantic rules only describes that small part of human semantic competence which can be identified as ‘inferential competence’. However, human semantic competence is also characterized by what is called ‘referential competence’,that is, the capacity to recognize those objects in the world to which words refer. Both these competences, the inferential and the referential, are proposedto be based on the availability of semantic representations, developed by the cognitive system. In the paper we show firstly that this second aspect of semantic competence is the most important one if we aim to understand how humans come to master natural languages. Secondly, a deeper articulation of the constitution of referential competence is put forward. The paper attempts to show that in order to account for referential competence we need to assume that semantic representations are constructed from both information coming from the external world via the sensorium and information produced by the cognitive system itself during the processing of the sensory input coming from the external world via the bodily sensorium (we refer to the latter as “qualitative information”). We argue that this qualitative information plays an essential role in explaining some aspects of referential competence which would otherwise remain obscure such as the capacity to recognize (in a referential sense) internal states corresponding to specific word. Our working hypothesis is presented and discussed in relation to linguistic deficits reported for clinical conditions some examples taken from clinical psychology (Asperger Syndrome and Alexithymia). People affected with these syndromes show specific impairment in their linguistic mastery that can be interpreted as a lack of referential competence with respect to words related to internal states due to problems in processing qualitative information. If so, these diseases would confirm that the achievement of full referential competence requires the availability of qualitative information as we define it.