Philosophy of Literary Cognition

Abstract: I contrast a cognitive approach to language and meaning with literary theory’s regnant assumptions, arguing against the empiricism and antifoundationalism of poststructuralism for a nativist foundationalism underlying syntactic-semantic meaning. Works of literature should not be considered communicative speech requiring the interpretation of literary meaning but rather linguistic scripts that guide the human faculty of language to engender conceptual understanding through mental representation. I explicate aspects of the literary cognition by which we understand a work of literature, and conclude that literary scholarship can eschew endless interpretation and criticism in favor of explanation and commentary.