Chomsky 1992 (Part 4)

We had just stopped with Chomsky arguing that a scientific study of human behaviour must necessarily take an internalist stance - that we must confine ourselves to studying the individual in isolation, if we want to be able to predict/account for how people act. Although it would seem that appeal to others would be quite useful in this regard (I flinched because you threw a ball at my face), this is only apparent - what actually enters into an explanation of my actions is my cognitive state, and the input I get from my sense organs. Note that I would flinch just the same if I saw an illusion of you throwing a ball at my face, and would not flinch if I didn’t notice you throwing the ball at my face (if you were wearing your cloak of invisibility, say).

We began by considering the (hypothetical) discovery that Peter’s brain produces the configuration C when he thinks about cats. We then moved to the more realistic example of ERPs, and the still more real- istic case (from a scientific standpoint) of C–R systems; one may think of their elements as on a par with C, though now real, not hypothetical, we have reason to believe. The same would be true of a naturalistic approach that departs from these internalist limits, viewing Peter’s brain as part of a larger system of interactions. The analogy would no longer be to the configuration C produced in Peter’s brain when he thinks of cats, but to some physical configuration C′ involving C along with something else, perhaps something about cats. We are now in the domain of the hypothetical – I know of no serious candidate. But suppose that such an approach can be devised and proves to yield insight into questions of language use. If so, that might modify the ways we study language and psychology, but would not bridge the gap to an account of people and what they do.

Here Chomsky imagines how a science of human behaviour might look if we studied it without limiting ourselves to an individualistic perspective. He gives the not-really-concrete example of thinking about cats involving our brainstate plus something in the external world. (This is modeled on an example of Putnam’s.) He says that even if we assume that this sort of study gave us an insight into how language was used, it would not help us with a scientific explanation of people’s behaviour. This is something that Putnam seems to agree with (or at least to have agreed with at one point): Putnam has argued that we could imagine being teleported to a distant galaxy, identical in all ways with our own, with counterparts of friends and family, with the one difference that cats are there robots sent from that galaxy’s version of Mars (but of course no Earth’ling knows this). The facts about the world are different, but they would not change our behaviour. Therefore our behaviour is indepenent of our environment.

We have to distinguish between a hypothetical externalist naturalism of the kind just sketched, and nonnaturalist externalism that attempts to treat human action (referring to or thinking about cats, etc.) in the context of communities, real or imagined things in the world, and so on. Such approaches are to be judged on their merits, as efforts to make some sense out of questions that lie beyond naturalistic inquiry – like questions about energy, falling stones, the heavens, etc. – in the ordinary sense of the terms. I have mentioned some reason for skepticism about recourse to communities and their practices, or public languages with public meanings. Consider further the other facet of externalism, an alleged relation between words and things.

This is an important explication of his argument that is easy to forget. Although Chomsky is speaking in a very self-confident way, he is really just making an argument, and he could be wrong (he doesn’t think so, but he acknowledges that he could be). He says here that ultimately, the question of who is right and wrong needs to come down to whose story works and whose doesn’t. He notes that his argument against the externalist (the person arguing that a scientific study of human behaviour should take into account things external to the individual) is one of plausibility - he is posing (what he takes to be insurmountable) challenges to the externalist’s position.

Now he turns to the notion of ‘reference,’ the relation between your words ‘Greg Kobele’ and me.

Within internalist semantics, there are explanatory theories of con- siderable interest that are developed in terms of a relation R (read “refer”) that is postulated to hold between linguistic expressions and something else, entities drawn from some stipulated domain D (perhaps semantic values).

This is how we do (model theoretic) semantics. We set up rules relating linguistic expressions to mathematical entities, organized according to their ‘semantic type’ into various domains.

The relation R, for example, holds between the expressions London (house, etc.) and entities of D that are assumed to have some relation to what people refer to when they use the words London (house, etc.), though that presumed relation remains obscure. As noted, I think such theories should be regarded as a variety of syntax. The elements they postulate are on a par, in the respects relevant here, with phonological or phrase-structure representations, or the hypothetical brain configuration C; we might well include D and R within the SD (the linguistic expression), as part of an interface level.

We have a number of different kinds of thing here. On one hand, we have linguistic expressions, on the other, we have THINGS-AS-THEY-EXIST-IN-THE-WORLD. We also have the mathematical entities that our rules relate linguistic expressions to, and we also have our concepts for things (like London, or house, or home, etc). Semanticists often think of these mathematical entities as being related to our concepts for things, and we often think of our concepts for things being related to, or even identical with THINGS-AS-THEY-EXIST-IN-THE-WORLD. Chomsky has argued against this latter (latter) position, noting that it would be crazy for something to exist that has the properties that ‘London’ has, as we talk about it. He is using R for the relation between expressions and mathematical objects, and ‘some relation/that presumed relation’ for the relation between these mathematical objects and our concepts for things. This latter relation he says is fairly mysterious. He is not talking in this passage about any relation between THINGS-AS-THEY-EXIST-IN-THE-WORLD. Thus, everything in this passage is ‘in the head.’ This is why he says that semantics as she is done is what he thinks of as syntax - semantics relates linguistic expressions to things in our head.

Explanation of the phenomena of example (2) (on page 35) is commonly expressed in terms of the relation R.

Example (2) is repeated below.

(2) a. He thinks the young man is a genius.

1. The young man thinks he is a genius.
2. His mother thinks the young man is a genius.

It involves the binding theory, in particular the clause prohibiting a pronoun to be bound by an expression it c-commands.

The same theories of binding and anaphora carry over without essential change if we replace young in example (2) by average, typical, or replace the young man by John Doe, stipulated to be the average man for the purposes of a particular discourse. The same theories also carry over to anaphoric properties of the pronouns in examples (3) and (4):

(3) a It brings good health’s rewards. b Good health brings its rewards. c Its rewards are what make good health worth striving for. (4) a [There is a flaw in the argument], but it was quickly found. b [The argument is flawed], but it was quickly found.

In terms of the relation R, stipulated to hold between the average man, John Doe, good health, flaw, and entities drawn from D, we can account for the differential behavior of the pronoun exactly as we would with the young man, Peter, fly (“there is a fly in the coffee”). The relations of anaphora differ in (4a and 4b), though there is no relevant difference in meaning between the bracketed clauses. And it might well turn out that these expressions, along with such others as “the argument has a flaw” (with the anaphoric options of (4a)), share still deeper structural properties, possibly even the same structural representation at the level relevant to the internal semantics of the phrases, a possibility that has been explored for some years (see Tremblay 1991). The same is true in more exotic cases. It would seem perverse to seek a relation between entities in D and things in the world – real, imagined, or whatever – at least, one of any generality. One may imagine that the relation of elements of D to things in the world is more “transparent” than in the case of other syntactic representations, as the relation to sound waves is more “transparent” for phonetic than for phonological representation; but even if so, these studies do not pass beyond the syntax of mental representations. The relation R and the construct D must be justified on the same kinds of grounds that justify other technical syntactic notions; that is, those of phonology, or the typology of empty categories in syntax. An occasional resemblance between R and the term refer of ordinary language has no more significance than it would in the case of momentum or undecidability.

The idea here is just that although it is perhaps tempting to think of the young man to be about some thing out there in the world, the exact same binding facts hold if we replace this ‘obviously’ referring expression with things like the average man, or the unicorn, which seem much more dubious as being directly connected with things in the world. Thus, the semantics that enters into an explanation of these binding phenomena is a properly internalistic one, and it is irrelevant to this explanation whether our expressions are connected somehow with things in the world. If it sometimes seems as though the objects of semantics do line up with things in the world, this is not important.

Specifically, we have no intuitions about R, any more than we do about momentum or undecidability in the technical sense, or about c-command or autosegmental in (other parts) of the C–R theories of syntax; the terms have the meanings assigned to them. We have intuitive judgments about the notion used in such expressions as Mary often refers to the young man as a friend (to the average man as John Doe, to good health as life’s highest goal). But we have no such intuitions about the relation R holding between Mary (or the average man, John Doe, good health, flaw) and postulated elements of D. R and D are what we specify that they are, within a framework of theoretical explanation. We might compare R and D to P and PF, where P is a relation holding between an expression and its PF representation (between “took” and [thuk], perhaps), though in the latter case the concepts fit into a much better-grounded and richer theory of interface relations.

Chomsky: “You do not have ‘intuitions’ about theoretical constructs!” (Meaning of course that your intuitions about theory do not count as an argument either for or against an analysis.) Believe it or not, some people used to argue for (or against) analyses partly on the grounds of whether the structures they assigned seemed right to them. Here Chomsky is claiming that we can very well have intuitions about how we use the word ‘refer’ in daily life, and these are relevant to linguistics, etc. But the theoretical construct R relating linguistic expressions to semantico-mathematical objects is not something that our intuitions about should matter.

Suppose that postulation of R and D is justified by explanatory success within the C–R theory of I-language, alongside of P and PF, c-command, and autosegmental. That result lends no support to the belief that some R-like relation, call it R′, holds between words and things, or things as they are imagined to be, or otherwise conceived. Postulation of such a relation would have to be justified on some grounds, as in the case of any other invented technical notion. And if we devise a relation R′ holding between linguistic expressions and “things,” somehow construed, we would have no intuitions about it – matters become only more obscure if we invoke unexplained notions of “community” or “public language,” taken in some absolute sense. We do have intuitive judgments concerning linguistic expressions and the particular perspectives and points of view they provide for interpretation and thought. Furthermore, we might proceed to study how these expressions and perspectives enter into various human actions, such as referring. Beyond that, we enter the realm of technical discourse, deprived of intuitive judgment.

Here we have Chomsky taking the (to me, based on what I’ve read of him before) surprising position that we should not believe in the truth of our current best scientific theories. I personally find this position quite reasonable, but my intuitions about how the world works are not relevant to how the world works (although, my intuitions are part of the world…). I don’t really know how to interpret Chomsky here without taking an anti-realist position about science, which I don’t think he has. I think that, if Chomsky were to have left out the phrase “or things as they are imagined to be, or otherwise conceived,” then I would have been happy to interpret him as saying that just because our scientific theory postulates a relation between expressions and mathematical objects, doesn’t mean we should assume there to be some relation between these objects and things-in-the-world, or between expressions and the same.

One thing that would make sense to me is that, as there are different ways to account for inferences in logic which crucially coincide (proof theory and model theory), it might be the case that our model theory of linguistic expressions were implemented proof theoretically in our CR system.

At any rate, Chomsky is more interested in exploring the consequences of the proposition that our intuitions about theoretical constructs do not need to be taken seriously when we develop the theory of these constructs.

Take Putnam’s influential Twin-Earth thought experiment (Putnam 1975). We can have no intuitions as to whether the term water has the same “reference” for Oscar and twin-Oscar: that is a matter of decision about the new technical term “reference” (some particular choice for R′). We have judgments about what Oscar and twin-Oscar might be referring to, judgments that seem to vary considerably as circumstances vary. Under some circumstances, Putnam’s proposals about “same liquid,” a (perhaps unknown) notion of the natural sciences, seem very plausible; under other circumstances, notions of sameness or similarity drawn from common-sense understanding seem more appropriate, yielding different judgments. It does not seem to me at all clear that there is anything general to say about these matters, or that any general or useful sense can be given to such technical notions as “wide content” (or any other notion fixing “reference”) in any of the externalist interpretations.

In the twin-earth thought experiment, we are asked to imagine a world which is an exact copy of ours, but where there is no H_2O, but some other substance XYZ which is in every macro observable way identical to it (it quenches thirst, etc). We imagine Oscar and his exact copy Twin-Oskar, who have gone through identical paths in life, meeting the ‘same’ people, doing the ‘same’ things. When they use the term ‘water’, what are they referring to? Putnam says that Oscar is referring to H_2O, and Twin-Oscar is referring to XYZ. Putnam notes that while it is clear what Oscar and Twin-Oscar are talking about, if we imagine them suddenly swapping places (so now Oscar is on Twin-Earth, and Twin-Oscar is on Earth), it is no longer so clear what Oscar is talking about when he now says ‘water is tasty.’ Chomsky is claiming that Putnam’s intuitions about this are irrelevant because this notion of reference is a theoretical one. I’m not quite sure I buy this, as we could replace the locution ‘referring to’ with ‘talking about,’ which certainly seems to be a standard way to use the term.

But, if Chomksy is right that this way of thinking is misguided, then…

If so, questions arise about the status of what Putnam, in his Locke lectures (Putnam 1988a: Chapter 2), calls the “social co-operation plus contribution of the environment theory of the specification of reference,” a fuller and more adequate version of the “causal theory of reference” developed in his paper “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” (Putnam 1975) and Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (Kripke 1972), both now landmarks in the field.

…theories of how this notion of reference is fixed are also misguided, because they are studying something that doesn’t exist.

“Social co-operation” has to do with “the division of linguistic labor”: the role of experts in determining the reference of my terms elm and beech, for example. Putnam provides a convincing account for certain circumstances. Under some conditions, I would, indeed, agree that what I am referring to when I use the term elm is what is meant by an expert, perhaps an Italian gardener with whom I share only the Latin terms (though there is no meaningful sense in which we are part of the same “linguistic community” or speak a “common language”); under other conditions, probably not, but that is to be expected in an inquiry reaching as far as all of “human functional organization,” virtually a study of everything. As mentioned earlier, it is not clear whether the question relates to I-language or I-belief, assuming the theoretical construction to be valid.

The thought experiment here is that I use words that I generally am unable to define, for example elm (Ulme) and beech (Buche). Nevertheless, I somehow succeed in using these terms to say true (or false) things about elms and beeches. How is this possible? Putnam suggests that the reference of my terms is partly determined by other people (botanists, etc), and my tacit agreement to allow my usage of these and other terms to be normatively governed by experts.

Chomsky here, in describing the thought experiment, brings in an interesting wrinkle - Chomsky’s expert (his Italian gardener) does not speak the same language as Chomsky. In fact, they communicate about elms and beeches by means of their shared and barely remembered high-school Latin. How can Chomsky’s reference for the English terms elm and beech be governed by the Italian gardener, with whom Chomsky shares only the Latin words ulmus and fagus?

Chomsky suggests that his use of the terms elm and beech can sometimes be correctly described as normatively goverened by his Italian gardener, but sometimes not.

It also seems unclear that metaphysical issues arise in this context. To take some of Kripke’s examples, doubtless there is an intuitive difference between the judgment that Nixon would be the same person if he had not been elected President of the USA in 1968, while he would not be the same person if he were not a person at all (say, if he were a silicon-based person replica). But that follows from the fact that Nixon is a personal name, offering a way of referring to Nixon as a person; it has no metaphysical significance. If we abstract from the perspective provided by natural language, which appears to have no pure names in the logician’s sense (the same is true of variables, at least if pronouns are considered variables, and of indexicals, if we consider their actual conditions of use in referring), then intuitions collapse: Nixon would be a different entity, I suppose, if his hair were combed differently. Similarly, the object in front of me is not essentially a desk or a table; that very object could be any number of different things, as interests, functions, intentions of the inventor, etc. vary. To cite some recent work, Joseph Almog’s judgment that the mountain Nanga Parbat is a mountain essentially might be intelligible under some circumstances; however, contrary to what he assumes, his “coherent–abstraction test” seems to me to permit us, under other circumstances, to deprive Nanga Parbat of this property, leaving it as the same entity: say, if the sea level rises high enough for its top to become an island, in which case it is no more a mountain than Britain is; or if earth is piled around it up to its peak, but a millimeter away, in which case it is not a mountain but part of a plateau surrounded by a crevice, though it remains the very same entity (Almog 1991).

Assuming that ‘reference’ is a theoretical construct, and that therefore our ‘intuitions’ about it are not really about anything real, we don’t need to draw conclusions about the world based on our intuitions about this theoretical construct.

I’m a little uncomfortable with this whole discussion to be honest. I think that these philosophers are meaningfully investigating our intuitions about what we would be talking about in really weird cases. (It is often the weird cases that are most meaningful for a theory.) If I were a philosopher, I might claim that what Chomsky is doing is the same as a non-linguist disagreeing with the grammaticality judgment of a syntactician. The philosopher (so I would then argue) is trying to come up with a theory of ‘talking about’, using sometimes delicate judgments, just as a syntactician is trying to come up with a theory of grammaticality, using the same. Chomsky seems to be arguing that the philosophers' judgments differ from the syntacticians' judgments in being about something that doesn’t exist. He is doing this in two ways, the first being this almost a priori argument that ‘reference’ is a theoretical construct, and the second being his assertion that his judgments are different, but without fleshing the context of his judgment out; maybe he thinks it’s obvious…

In summary, it is questionable that standard conclusions can survive a closer analysis of the technical notions “reference” (in some R′-like sense) or “specification of reference.” There may well be justification for the notion R internal to C–R theories (basically a syntactic notion, despite appearances). But there seems to be little reason to suppose that an analogous notion R′ can be given a coherent and useful formulation as a relation holding between expressions and some kind of things, divorced from particular conditions and circumstances of referring. If that is so, there will also be no reasonable inquiry into a notion of “sense” or “content” that “fixes reference” (R′), at least for natural language, though there is a promising (syntactic) inquiry into conditions for language use (including referring).

Here we see the precise statement of Chomsky’s claim: although the semantic relation R between expressions and model theoretic objects is well-motivated, there is no reason to think that we can define a relation of reference between linguistic expressions and things, which is independent of the situation and intent of utterance. If this is the case, says Chomsky, then we cannot expect to formulate a theory of this relation by associating with each lexical item its sense, which determines its reference. Chomsky’s proviso divorced from particular conditions and circumstances of referring is based on his assertion a few paragraphs ago, that whether ‘Nixon’ is essentially a human depends on various assumptions (which he doesn’t spell out). It is not supposed to be denying the role of context on which sense of a word we want to use, or which individual with the same name we might be trying to talk about.

As discussed earlier, naturalistic inquiry may lead to the creation of language-like accretions to the I-language; for these, an R′-like notion may be appropriate, as terms are divested of the I-language properties that provide interpretive perspectives and semantic relations, are dissociated from I-belief, and are assigned properties lacking in natural language. These constructed systems may use resources of the I-language (pronunciation, morphology, sentence structure, etc.), or may transcend them (introducing mathematical formalisms, for example). The I-language is a product of the language faculty, abstracted from other components of the mind; this is an idealization of course, hence to be justified or rejected on the basis of its role in an explanatory framework. The picture could be extended, plausibly it seems, by distinguishing the system of common-sense belief from products of the science-forming faculty. The latter are neither I-languages nor I-belief systems, and for these it may well be appropriate to stipulate a relation R′.

Although reference doesn’t seem to be important for linguistics, there may be a role a relation between expressions and the world in some other domain. Chomsky reminds us again that linguistics is just our current best guess about how the world is structured - we currently think it is fine to study the language faculty independently of other aspects of our mind (as he has spent the whole article arguing for), but it is ultimately a question of whether doing this gives rise to a better theory than not.

We now turn to the ‘science-forming faculty’…

Some of the motivation for externalist approaches derives from the concern to make sense of the history of science. Thus, Putnam argues that we should take the early Niels Bohr to have been referring to electrons in the quantum-theoretic sense, or we would have to “dismiss all of his 1900 beliefs as totally wrong,” (Putnam 1988a) perhaps on a par with someone’s beliefs about angels, a conclusion that is plainly absurd. The same is true of pre-Dalton chemists speaking of atoms. And perhaps, on the same grounds, we would say that chemists pre-Avogadro were referring to what we call atoms and molecules, though for them the terms were interchangeable, apparently.

If our words don’t somehow connect to the world, it seems that we can’t make sense of the claim that ‘primitive’ people’s beliefs about the world are ‘sort of right.’ Scientists of yesteryear were clearly wrong about somethings, but it seems uncharitable to just say that everything they believed was false. Especially if their theories were ‘close’ to what we currently believe, we want to be charitable and say that they were right about there being molecules, but wrong about what they thought they were.

Chomsky of course proposes a solution to this problem that seems quite reasonable (to me):

The discussion assumes that such terms as electron belong to the same system as house, water, and pronominal anaphora, so that conclusions about electron carry over to notions in the latter category. That assumption seems to be implicit in Putnam’s proposal that “To determine the intrinsic complexity of a task is to ask, How hard is it in the hardest case?,” the “hardest case” for “same reference” or “same meaning” being posed by such concepts as momentum or electron in physics. But the assumption is dubious. The study of language should seek a more differentiated picture than that, and what is true of the technical constructions of the science-forming faculty might not hold for the natural-language lexicon. Suppose we grant the point nevertheless. Agreeing further that an interest in intelligibility in scientific discourse across time is a fair enough concern, still it cannot serve as the basis for a general theory of meaning; it is, after all, only one concern among many, and not a central one for the study of human psychology. Furthermore, there are internalist paraphrases. Thus we might say that in Bohr’s earlier usage, he expressed beliefs that were literally false, because there was nothing of the sort he had in mind in referring to electrons; but his picture of the world and articulation of it was structurally similar enough to later conceptions so that we can distinguish his beliefs about electrons from beliefs about angels. What is more, that seems a reasonable way to proceed.

We can say that the earlier scientists were actually literally wrong, but that their world view was close enough to our current one to draw meaningful parallels.

What follows is a useful example.

To take a far simpler example from the study of language, consider a debate some 30 years ago over the nature of phonological units. Structural phonologists postulated segments (phonemes) and phonetic features, with a certain collection of properties. Generative phonologists argued that no such entities exist, and that the actual elements have somewhat different properties. Suppose that one of these approaches looks correct (say, the latter). Were structural phonologists therefore referring all along to segments and features in the sense of generative phonology? Surely not. They flatly denied that, and were right to do so. Were they talking gibberish? Again, surely not. Structuralist phonology is intelligible; without any assumption that there are entities of the kind it postulated, much of the theory can be reinterpreted within generative phonology, with results essentially carried over. There is no principled way to determine how this is done, or to determine the “similarity of belief” between the two schools of thought or what thoughts and beliefs they shared. Sometimes it is useful to note resemblances and reformulate ideas, sometimes not. The same is true of the earlier and later Bohr. Nothing more definite is required to maintain the integrity of the scientific enterprise or a respectable notion of progress towards the truth about the world, insofar as it falls within human cognitive capacity.

It is worth noting that an analysis in these terms, eschewing externalist assumptions on fixation of reference, is consistent with the intuitions of respected figures. The discussion of the meaning of electron, water, etc. projects backwards in time, but we can project forward as well. Consider the question whether machines can think (understand, plan, solve problems, etc). By standard externalist arguments, the question should be settled by the truth about thought: what is the essence of Peter’s thinking about his children, or solving a quadratic equation, or playing chess, or interpreting a sentence, or deciding whether to wear a raincoat? But that is not the way it seemed to Ludwig Wittgenstein and Alan Turing, to take two notable examples. For Wittgenstein, the question whether machines think cannot seriously be posed: “We can only say of a human being and what is like one that it thinks” (Wittgenstein 1958: 113), maybe dolls and spirits; that is the way the tool is used. Turing, in his classic 1950 paper, wrote that the question whether machines can think “may be too meaningless to deserve discussion. Nevertheless I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted. (Turing 1950: 442)”

Chomksy notes that his approach is not wildly out there, and is shared by some of mankind’s greatest thinkers.

Wittgenstein and Turing do not adopt the standard externalist account. For Wittgenstein, the questions are just silly: the tools are used as they are; and if the usage changes, the language has changed, the language being nothing more than the way we use the tools. Turing too speaks of the language of “general educated opinion” changing, as interests and concerns change. In our terms, there will be a shift from the I-languages that Wittgenstein describes to new ones, in which the old word think will be eliminated in favor of a new word that applies to machines as well as people. To ask in 1950 whether machines think is as meaningful as the question whether airplanes and people (say, high jumpers) really fly; in English airplanes do and high jumpers don’t (except metaphorically), in Hebrew neither do, in Japanese both do. Such facts tell us nothing about the (meaningless) question posed, but only about marginal and rather arbitrary variations of I-language. The question of what atom meant pre-Dalton, or electron for Bohr in 1900, seems comparable, in relevant respects, to the question of what think meant for Wittgenstein and Turing; not entirely comparable, because think, atom, and electron should probably not be regarded as belonging to a homogeneous I-language. In all these cases, the internalist perspective seems adequate, not only to the intuitions of Wittgenstein and Turing, but to an account of what is transpiring; or what might happen as circumstances and interests vary.

The discussion of different languages is I think meant to show us that, unless we want to say that (say) Japanese is deeply right about the world in ways that English is not, the question of whether airplanes and people can fly is not meaningful. In order to make it meaningful, we have to explain what we mean, which is redefining the word ‘fly’ away from its use in natural language. Then, as with thinking, there can be a meaningful question.

But if the externalist is right, then our word ‘fly’ already is connected with something in the world, as is the japanese ‘tobu.’ So we can ask whether people and airplanes can do this thing.

Naturalistic inquiry will always fall short of intentionality. At least in these terms, “intentionality won’t be reduced and won’t go away,” as Putnam puts it, and “language speaking” will remain not “theoretically explicable” (Putnam 1998a: 1).

What does this mean? Intentionality is the relation between the mental and the world. Why should we agree that we will never have a complete scientific account of how our mental states relate to the world? This isn’t clear to me. But if we grant this, then clearly we will not be able to have a complete account of anything involving the relation between the mental and the world.

The study of C–R systems, including “internalist semantics,” appears to be, for now, the most promising form of naturalistic inquiry, with a reasonably successful research program; understanding of performance systems is more rudimentary, but within the range of inquiry, in some respects at least. These approaches raise problems of the kind familiar throughout the natural sciences, but none that seem qualitatively different. Pursuing them, we can hope to learn a good deal about the devices that are used to articulate thoughts, interpret, and so on. They leave untouched many other questions, but it remains to be shown that these are real questions, not pseudo-questions that indicate topics of inquiry that one might hope to explore – but little more than that.

Studying the mind in terms of cognitive representations seems like the best way to go about it thus far. Not everyone agrees, of course: Gibson’s (1979) Ecological theory of perception argues that perception is unmediated by mental representation; this idea was expanded upon by proponents of ‘embodied’ theories of cognition, this might include some versions of cognitive linguistics.

Fazit

This article is an outline and defense of generative linguistics as a way of understanding language behaviour, especially against proponents of an externalist approach to language and mind. As we are probably not externalists, this might seem like overkill for us to read this. There are four reasons why I think that this is a good article to read.

1. it is very pedantic about what it takes to be the rationale of generative linguistics
2. it is a full-throated defense of semantics (Chomsky is sometimes thought to reject semantics)
3. it argues that the postulates of linguistics don’t need neural or behavioural vindication for respectability
4. it offers a way of thinking about whether and why certain things are meaningful that I think is something we should all adopt

When we confront meta-problems or -questions in linguistics, ‘what am I doing’ or ‘what does this mean’, I think it is always useful to come back to the basics - what is linguistics the study of, what are its methods, and why. I think that Chomsky addresses that in this work. Once we have reminded ourselves what we are doing, we can then revisit our meta-question with this in the background. I have often found that this gives me a clarity of purpose and of thought.

For further reading on this (without the distraction of arguing against externalism), I recommend the first chapter of aspects of the theory of syntax