On the Nature of 'Categorial Attitudes'

Abstract

K. Goldstein asserted that amnesic aphasiac patients lose the'categorial (or abstract) attitude, ' that is the faculty to subsume particular things or situations under categories. Later, E.Cassirer interpreted Goldstein's patients' disturbances as the impairment of the 'symbolic function' that makes the symbolic system of language possible. In contrast, M. Merleau-Ponty and A. Schutz proposed that amnesic aphasia is not the impairment of a high mental function, but of prepredicative activity which unifies our senses with our intelligence. This paper in principle takes the latter position and explicates, based on some new conceptions in cognitive semantics-prototype, image-schema, basic-level categorization, etc. -What Goldstein's patients really lost.