I formati comunicabili del pensiero

[Autom. eng. transl.] The contribution deals with the theme of the relationship between thought and communication, that is between how reality is represented and how it is communicated. To paraphrase Barlow, one may ask whether the mind also thinks about communicating, or rather, whether the communicability of thought is not only a potential characteristic, but a structural constraint of what we gradually represent and elaborate. It is not clearly a neuronal prerogative, but an original condition of the human being, which has always explored, organizes and represents reality in inter-action with it and with others. The knowledge that derives from it is shared and intersubjective. It develops and is articulated in a multitude of communication acts. In this assumption, the extraordinary human capacity to "think" - that is, to design, conceptualize, categorize and narrate reality - comes in this text presented and explored not as the fascinating mechanism of a "mind monad", an incredible and isolated machine of thought. Attention is focused on the mutual implications and skills of those who "think communicating" or, in other words, on the binomial thought / communication. In this chapter we will examine some aspects of the complex relationship between thought processes and communication acts. In the first part we will consider the connection between thought and language and between thought and sign. In the second we will try to identify the different formats through which thought is articulated and expressed - from propositional and narrative thinking, to mental images, to the organization of action in procedures - and we will evaluate its communicative dimension.