ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that language is essentially constitutive of institutional reality. Institutional reality requires language, what about language itself? If institutional facts require language and language is itself an institution, then it seems language must require language, and we have either regress or circularity. The chapter focuses on language-dependent thoughts and language-dependent facts. We need first to distinguish between language-independent facts, such as the fact that Mt. Everest has snow and ice at the summit, and language-dependent facts such as the fact that 'Mt. Everest has snow and ice at the summit' is a sentence of English. A second distinction we need is between language-dependent thoughts and language-independent thoughts. The chapter also focuses on the prelinguistic beliefs. An animal can have prelinguistic perceptions and prelinguistic beliefs derived from perceptions. A dog can see and smell a cat run up a tree and form the belief that the cat is up the tree.
