ABSTRACT

The importance of unconscious processing has already been evident from the numerous appeals that have been made to tacit knowledge. J. Searle advocated the view that an unconscious mental state must be one that is capable of becoming conscious. The brain produces success in such endeavors by processes that are largely unconscious. Unconscious processes that produce a sentence that is not a ‘match’ to a previous sentence or thought can be assumed to involve flexible, complex processes that are not themselves linguistic. The chapter offers further reasons to recognize the importance of unconscious processing. It deals with an argument concerning the view that we control our thoughts, and examines the apparent truism that our words express our thoughts. The history of the development of language is conceived, on the view, as the history of development of the ability to express thoughts that already have their intentionality.