ABSTRACT
First, philosophers who downplay Wittgenstein’s critique of Cartesianism do so because they take Wittgenstein’s target to be the introspectionist conception of consciousness, which theoretically we have moved far beyond. However, contemporary cognitivist theories of mind are continuous with the Cartesian tradition in various respects, in particular, in their commitment to the explanatory role of mental processes and mental representations. Wittgenstein is at least as interested in the explanatory significance of psychological vocabulary as he is in consciousness. (Not that the critique of consciousness is out of date.)1
Second, Wittgenstein’s rejection of the Cartesian model of mind – including those elements that lie within contemporary cognitivism – cannot be easily detached from his philosophy of language. The interpenetration of the structure of language and the structure of mind is such that his conception of language cannot but have deep implications for his conception of mind. This is also true of Chomsky and Fodor. What is at stake is the direction of explanation. Where Wittgenstein argues that there is no thought without language, no thinking in addition to its linguistic expression, Chomsky and Fodor argue for the priority of thought, rules, and mental representations over natural language usage.
