Lenguage and nature

7/27/2019 Lenguage and nature

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Mind Association

Language and NatureAuthor(s): Noam ChomskySource: Mind, New Series, Vol. 104, No. 413 (Jan., 1995), pp. 1-61Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association

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Language and NaturelNOAM CHOMSKY

1. Language as a natural objectI wouldlike to discuss an approacho themind thatconsiders anguageandsimilarphenomenao be elementsof thenaturalworld, o be studiedbyordinarymethodsof empiricalnquiry. willbeusing heterms"mind"and"mental" erewithnometaphysicalmport.ThusI understand men-tal" obeon a parwith"chemical", optical", r "electrical". ertain he-nomena,events, processes andstates areinformallycalled"chemical"etc.,butno metaphysical ivide s suggested hereby.Thetermsareusedto selectcertainaspectsof theworldas a focusof inquiry.Wedonotseekto determine the true criterion of the chemical, or the markof the electri-cal, or the boundaries of the optical. I will use "mental"the same way,with something ike ordinary overage,butno deeper mplications.By"mind" just mean hementalaspectsof theworld,withno more nterestin sharpeningheboundaries rfindinga criterion han n othercases.I'll use the terms"linguistic" nd"language"n muchthe sameway.We focus attentionon aspects of the world that fall under his informalrubric,andtry to understandhem better. n the courseof doing so wemay-and apparently o-develop a concept hatmoreor less resemblesthe informalnotionof "language", nd.postulate hatsuchobjects areamong hethings n theworld,alongsideof complexmolecules,electricalfields,thehumanvisualsystem,andso on.A naturalistic pproach o linguisticandmentalaspects of the worldseeksto constructntelligibleexplanatoryheories, akingas "real"whatwe are edto positin thisquest,andhoping or eventualunificationwiththe"core"natural ciences:unification, otnecessarily eduction.Large-scalereductions rare n thehistoryof thesciences.Commonlyhemore"fundamental"ciencehas hadto undergo adical evision orunificationto proceed.The case of chemistryand physics is a recent example;

?1 of this paper is based on the Homer Smith lecture at the New YorkUni-versity School of Medicine, May 16, 1994 and on the Jacobsen lecture, Universityof London, May 23, 1994. ?2 is based on a lecture entitled "Linguistics from anIndividualistic Perspective" delivered at the Centre for Philosophical Studies,King's College London, May 24, 1994.Mind, Vol. 104. 413. January 1995 ?DOxford University Press 1995


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2 Noam ChomskyPauling'saccountof thechemicalbondunified hedisciplines,but onlyafterthe quantum evolution n physics madethese steps possible.Theunification f muchof biologywithchemistrya few years atermightberegarded sgenuinereduction, ut that s notcommon,andhasno partic-ular epistemologicalor other significance; "expansion"of physics toincorporate hatwas knownaboutvalence,the Periodic able,chemicalweights, and so on is no less valid a form of unification. n the presentcase,thetheoriesof languageandmind hatseem best established nnat-uralistic rounds ttributeo the mind/brainomputational roperties f akind that arewell-understood, houghnot enoughis known to explainhow a structure onstructed f cells canhave such properties.Thatposesa unification roblem,butof a familiarkind.

We do not know howeventualunificationmight proceed n thiscase,orif we have hitupontherightcategories o seek to unify,orevenif thequestion alls withinour cognitivereach.Wehaveno warrantimplytoassume hatmentalproperties reto be reduced o "neural etworkprop-erties", o take a typicalclaim(PatriciaChurchland 994).Similarpro-nouncements ave oftenprovenfalse in otherdomainsandarewithoutany particular cientific merit in this case. If the thesis aboutneuralnetworkss understoodsa research roposal,well andgood;we waitandsee. If more s intended, ather eriousquestionsarise.As forthematterof cognitivereach, f humansare partof the naturalworld,not supernaturaleings,thenhuman ntelligencehasits scopeandlimits,determined y initialdesign.We can thus anticipate hat certainquestionswill notfall within heircognitivereach, ustas ratsareunableto runmazeswith numerical roperties,acking he appropriateoncepts.Such questions we might call "mysteries-for-humans",ust as somequestions pose mysteries-for-rats.Among these mysteries may bequestionswe raise,andotherswe do not know how to formulate roperlyorat all. Thesetruismsdo notchargehumanswith "Feeble ntelligence".We do not condemn he humanembryoas "feeble"becauseits geneticinstructions rerich enoughto enableit to becomea human,hencetoblock otherpathsof development.Everyonewouldapplaudf "questionsshiftstatus romMysteriesWe Can Only Contemplaten Awe, to ToughProblemsWe AreBeginning o Crack"Churchland994).2 To demon-strate he shiftformatters f traditional oncerns nosmallorder, ndonemayfairlyask whether hehorizons emainasremoteasever,perhapsorreasons ooted n the humanbiologicalendowment.Daniel Dennettarguesthat the notion of "epistemicboundedness",while "doctrinallyconvenient", is "rhetorically unstable",because

2 The target of the derisive comments is McGinn (1991); McGinn points outthe fallacy of the argument. See also McGinn (1993) and Chomsky (1975a).


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Language and Nature 3"Chomsky nd[Jerry] odorhave hailed hecapacityof the humanbrainto parse,andhencepresumably nderstand,heofficial nfinityof gram-matical sentences of a natural anguage", including those "thatbestexpress the solutions to the problemsof free will or consciousness",which he mistakenly laimsI have declared"off-limits" Dennett1991).Buteven if the solutionscanbe formulatedn human anguage-whichhasto be shown,not asserted-the arguments fallacious.First,asis well-known, expressions of natural language are often unparseable (notbecauseof length,orcomplexityn some senseindependentf the natureof thelanguage aculty).Second,evenif parsedandassignedaninterpre-tation, hey may be utterly ncomprehensible;xamplesarealltoo easy tofind.

Thehistoryof the advanced ciencesofferssome insights ntothe questfor unification.Takeas a startingpointthe "mechanical hilosophy"hatreached ts apogee nthe17thcentury: he deathat he world s amachineof the kindthatcouldbe constructed y a skilledcraftsman. hisconcep-tion of the world has its roots in common sense understanding,romwhich it drew the crucial assumptionthat objects can interactonlythroughdirect contact.As is familiar, Descartes arguedthat certainaspectsof theworld-crucially, thenormaluse of language-lie beyondtheboundsof mechanism.To account orthem,he postulated newprin-ciple; in his framework, secondsubstance,whose essence is thought.The "unification roblem"aroseas a questionaboutthe interactionofbody and mind. This metaphysicaldualismwas naturalisticn essence,usingempirical vidence or factual hesesabout heworld-wrong ones,butthen,that s the rule.

The Cartesianheorycollapsed oonafterwards, henNewtonshowedthat errestrial ndplanetarymotion iebeyond heboundsof themechan-ical philosophy-beyond what was understood o be body, or matter.Whatremainedwas a pictureof theworld hatwas"antimaterialist",ndthat"reliedheavilyon spiritual orces",as Jacob 1988) puts t.

Newton's nvocation f gravitywassharply ondemned y leadingsci-entists.E.J.Dijksterhuis ointsoutthat"the eadersof the truemechanis-tic philosophyregarded he theory of gravitation to use the wordsofBoyleandHuygens)as arelapse nto medievalconceptionshathadbeenthoughtexploded,and as a kind of treasonagainstthe good cause ofnatural cience"(1986, pp. 479ff). Newton's"mysteriousorce"was areturn o the darkages from which scientists had"emancipatedhem-selves", "the scholastic physics of qualities and powers"",animisticexplanatory rinciples", ndthelike,whichadmittednteractionwithout"direct ontact". t was asif "Newtonhad stated hat he sungeneratesntheplanetsa qualitywhich makes hemdescribeellipses". ntheircorre-


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4 Noam Chomskyspondence,LeibnizandHuygens ondemnNewton or abandoningound"mechanicalrinciples"ndreverting o mystical"sympathies ndantip-athies","immaterial ndinexplicablequalities".Newtonseemsto haveagreed.The contextof his famouscomment hat"Iframeno hypotheses"was an expression f concernoverhis inability o"assign he causeof thispower"of gravity, which so departsfrom "mechanical causes". Hethereforehad to contenthimselfwiththe conclusion"thatgravitydoesreallyexist", ts laws explaining"all the motionsof the celestialbodies,and of oursea"-though he regarded he principlehe postulatedas an"absurdity". o the end of his life, Newton sought some "subtlespiritwhich pervadesand lies hid in all gross bodies"that would account orinteraction, lectricalattraction ndrepulsion, he effect of light, sensa-tion,and heway "members f animalbodiesmoveatthecommand f thewill".Similar ffortscontinued orcenturies see Dijksterhuis 986).

Theseconcerns,at the origins of modernscience,havesomethingofthe flavourof contemporarydiscussion of the "mind-bodyproblem".They also raise questionsaboutwhat s atstake.ThomasNagelobservesthat"thevariousattemptso carryoutthisapparentlympossible ask[ofreducingmind omatter] nd heargumentso showthat hey havefailed,makeupthehistoryof thephilosophy f mindduringhepastfifty years".Thehopeless ask s to "completehematerialistworldpicture" y trans-latingaccountsof "mentalphenomena"n termsof "adescriptionhat seitherexplicitly physicalor uses only terms thatcan applyto what isentirelyphysical",or perhapsgives "assertibilityonditions" n "exter-nallyobservable rounds"Nagel 1993,p. 37).Inan instructive eviewofacentury f thephilosophy f mind,TylerBurgediscusses heemergenceof "naturalism""materialism",physicalism")n the 1960s as "one ofthefew orthodoxiesnAmericanphilosophy":he view thatthereare nomental tates properties, tc.)"overandaboveordinary hysicalentities,entities dentifiablenthephysical ciencesor entities hatcommon ensewouldregard s physical" Burge1992, pp. 31-2).

Suchdiscussionsassume,contraryo Newton andhis contemporaries,thatNewtonremainedwithin"thematerialistworldpicture";hatwouldbe true only if we understand"the materialistworld picture"to bewhatever science constructs, however it departs from "mechanicalcauses".Toput t differently,hediscussionspresupposeome antecedentunderstanding f what is physical or material,what are the physicalentities.Thesetermshad some sense withinthe mechanicalphilosophy,butwhatdotheymean n a worldbasedon Newton's"mysteriousorce",orstill moremysteriousnotionsof fields of force,curvedspace,infiniteone-dimensionaltrings n ten-dimensionalpace,or whatever cienceconcoctstomorrow?Lackinga conceptof "matter" r "body"or "the


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Languageand Nature 5physical",we have no coherentway to formulate ssues relatedto the"mind-body roblem". hesewererealproblems f science n thedaysofthe mechanicalphilosophy. Since its demise, the sciences postulatewhatever finds a place in intelligible explanatory theory, howeveroffensive thatmay be to commonsense. Only on unjustifieddualisticassumptions ansuchqualmsbe raisedspecificallyabout hedomainofthe mental,not otheraspectsof theworld.

Theanti-materialismf theNewtonians oon becameestablished.Bymid-eighteenthentury,Diderot'smaterialist ommitmentswereappar-entlya factor n his overwhelmingejectionrfor embershipn theRoyalSociety.Humewrote hat"Newton eemed o drawofftheveil fromsomeof themysteriesof nature", ut "heshowedatthe same time the imper-fections of the mechanicalphilosophy;andtherebyrestored Nature's]ultimatesecretsto thatobscurity n which they ever did andever willremain"citedby Gay (1977, p. 130)).

Thatthese secrets might remain in obscurity had sometimes beendenied. IsaacBeekman,whom Jacob identifiesas "thefirstmechanicalphilosopher f theScientificRevolution",wasconfidenthat"Godhadsoconstructed the whole of nature that our understanding ... may thor-oughly penetrateall the things on earth" Jacob 1988, p. 52). Similarthesesarepropounded ith thesameconfidenceoday,notablyby peoplewho describethemselves as hard-headed cientificnaturalists ndwhotypicallyrephraseBeekman'sormula, eplacing God" y"naturalelec-tion"-with even lessjustification, ecause hedeusex machinas betterdefined n thiscase, so it is easy to see whytheargumentsail.

ThoughNewton'santi-materialism ecame scientificcommon sense,his qualmswerenot really put to rest. Oneexpressionof them was thebelief that naturewas unknowable.Anothervariantheldthattheoreticalposits shouldbe given only an operationalistnterpretation. avoisierbelieved that "the numberand natureof elements" s "an unsolvableproblem, capableof an infinity of solutions none of which probablyaccord with Nature .... It seems extremely probable we know nothing atall about ... [the] ... indivisible atoms of which matter s composed",andnever will (cited by Brock 1992, p. 129). Boltzmann describedhismolecularheoryof gasesas nothingbut a convenientanalogy.Poincareheld that we have no reason to choose betweenethereal-mechanicalrelectromagneticheoriesof light,and hatwe accept hemolecularheoryof gasesbecausewe arefamiliarwith thegameof billiards.Thechemist'satoms were considered"theoretical,metaphysicalentities",WilliamBrockobserves; nterpreted perationally,hey provideda "conceptualbasis for assigning relative elementary weights and for assigningmolecularormulae", nd these instrumental evicesweredistinguished


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6 Noam Chomskyfrom"ahighlycontroversial hysicalatomism,whichmadeclaimscon-cerning heultimatemechanical ature f allsubstances". nificationwasonly achievedwith radicalchanges n physicalatomism:Bohr'smodel,quantumheory,andPauling'sdiscoveries.3The unification inally overcamewhat had seemedan unbridgeabledivide,pre-Planck: Thechemist'smatterwasdiscreteanddiscontinuous,the physicist'senergycontinuous", "nebulousmathematicalworld ofenergyandelectromagnetic aves... "(Brock1992,p. 489).

In mid-19thcentury,he formulasanalysingcomplexmoleculeswereconsidered o be "merelyclassificatorysymbols that summarized heobserved course of a reaction";the "ultimate nature of moleculargroupingswasunsolvable",t was held, and "theactualarrangementsfatomswithin a molecule", f that even meansanything, s "never o beread" nto the formulas.Kekule,whose structural hemistrypaved theway to eventual unification, doubted that "absolute constitutionsoforganicmolecules could ever be given";his models and analysis ofvalencywere to havean instrumentalnterpretationnly.Untilthe 1870s,Kekulerejectedthe idea that the "rational ormulae... actually repre-sentedthe realarrangements f a molecule's atoms".As late as 1886,French choolswerenotpermittedo teachatomic heorybecause t wasa "merehypothesis", y decisionof the Ministerof Education,hewell-knownchemistBerthelot.

Fortyyears ater,eminent cientists idiculed s a conceptual bsurditytheproposalof G.N. Lewis that"theatomicshellsweremutually nter-penetrable"o thatanelectron"may ormpartof theshell of twodifferentatoms"-later "a cardinalprinciple of the new quantummechanics"(Brock1992, p. 476). Itwas"equivalento saying hathusband ndwife,by havinga totalof two dollars n a joint accountandeachhavingsixdollars n individualbankaccounts,havegot eightdollarsapiece",oneobjection an; t wasas if theelectronswere"sittingaround n drygoodsboxes at every corner,ready to shake handswith... electrons n otheratoms",a distinguishedFaraday ecturer commented with derision.America's first Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Theodore Richards,dismissed alkaboutthe real natureof chemicalbondsas metaphysical"twaddle". hiswas nothingmore than"avery crudemethodof repre-sentingcertainknown factsaboutchemicalreactions.A mode of repre-sent[ation]" nly.Therejectionof thatskepticismby Lewis and otherspaved hewayto the eventualunification.

I Citedby Brock(1992, pp. 165, 171). Forreference o Boltzmann ndPoin-care, eeChomsky1986),whichalso cites JohnHeilbron's npublished hDdis-sertationUniversity f California tBerkeley).


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Languageand Nature 7It is not hard o findcontemporaryounterpartsn thediscussionof themind-bodyproblem,whatever hat s supposed o be. There s, I think,agooddealto learn romthehistoryof thesciences sincetheyabandonedcommon ensefoundations, lwayswithsome uneasiness bout ust whatthey weredoing.Weshouldby now be ableto acceptthatwe cando nomorethanseek "best heories",withno independenttandardorevalua-tionapart romcontributionounderstanding,ndhopeforunification utwithno advancedoctrineabouthow, or whether,t can be achieved.AsMichaelFriedman utsthepoint,"thephilosophers f themodern radi-tion",fromDescartes,"arenot best understoodas attempting o standoutside the new science so as to show, from some mysteriouspoint

outsideof science tself,thatourscientificknowledge omehow mirrors'an independently xisting reality. Rather,[they] startfromthefact ofmodern cientificknowledgeas a fixedpoint,as it were.Theirproblemsnotso much ojustifythisknowledge romsome'higher' tandpointstoarticulate he newphilosophicalconceptions hat areforceduponus bythe newscience." nKant'swords,mathematicsnd hescienceof naturestand nnoneedof philosophicalnquiry orthemselves,"but orthesakeof another cience:metaphysics"Friedman 993).Onthisview,the natural ciences-whether thetopicis themotionoftheplanets, hegrowthof anorganism, rlanguageand mind-are "firstphilosophy".The idea is by now a commonplacewithregard o physics;it is a rarephilosopherwho wouldscoff at its weirdandcounterintuitiveprinciplesas contrary o rightthinkingandthereforeuntenable.Butthisstandpoints commonly egarded sinapplicableocognitivescience, in-guisticsin particular. omewherebetween,there is a boundary.Withinthatboundary,cience is self-justifying;he criticalanalyst eeksto learnabout he criteriaor rationality nd ustification romthestudyof scien-

tific success.Beyond hatboundary,verything hanges; hecriticappliesindependentriteriao sit injudgmentoverthetheoriesadvanced nd heentities they postulate.This seems to be nothingmore than a kind of"methodological ualism",armorepernicioushan hetraditionalmeta-physicaldualism,which was a scientifichypothesis,naturalisticn spirit.Abandoninghisdualist tance,we pursue nquirywhere t leads.Wealso shouldbe ablenow toadoptan attitudeowardshemind-bodyproblem ormulatedn the wakeof Newton'sdemolitionof materialism

and the "mechanicalphilosophy":for example, by Joseph Priestley,whoseconclusionwas "notthatall reduces o matter,but ratherhatthekindof matter n which thetwo-substance iew is baseddoesnotexist",and "with the alteredconceptof matter, he more traditionalways ofposing hequestion f the nature f thought ndof itsrelationsothebraindo not fit. Wehaveto thinkof acomplexorganized iologicalsystemwith


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8 NoamChomskypropertieshetraditional octrinewouldhavecalledmentalandphysical"(Yolton1983, p. 114).

In Priestley'swords,matter"is possessedof powers of attraction ndrepulsion" hatact at a "realand in generalan assignabledistance romwhatwe call thebodyitself', properties hat are "absolutely ssential o[the]verynature" f matter.Wethusovercome he naivebelief thatbodies(atoms aside) have inherentsolidity and impenetrability,dismissingargumentsasedon "vulgar hraseology"nd"vulgar pprehensions",sin the quest for the me referred o in the phrase"my body". With theNewtoniandiscoveries,matter"ought o rise in our esteem, as makinganearerapproach o the natureof spiritualandimmaterialbeings",the"odium[of] solidity,inertness,or sluggishness"havingbeen removed.Matter s no more"incompatiblewithsensationandthought"hanwithattractionand repulsion. "The powers of sensation or perceptionandthought" reproperties f "acertainorganized ystemof matter"; roper-ties "termedmental" re"theresult whethernecessaryor not) of such anorganical tructure s thatof the brain". t is asreasonableobelieve "thatthepowersof sensation nd hought re henecessary esultof aparticularorganization, s thatsound s thenecessary esultof a particularoncus-sion of the air".Thoughtn humans"is a property f the nervous ystem,orrather f the brain".4Morecautiously,we may saythat n appropriateircumstanceseoplethink,not theirbrains,which do not, thoughtheir brainsprovidethemechanisms f thought. maydo long divisionby a procedure learnedin school, but my braindoesn'tdo long divisioneven if it carriesouttheprocedure. imilarly, myself amnot doing long divisionif I mechani-cally carryout instructionshatare nterpreteds thevery algorithm use,responding o inputs n some code in a Searle-style"arithmeticoom".Nothing ollows aboutmybrain's xecutinganalgorithm;ikewise n thecaseof translationndunderstanding. eoplein certain ituationsunder-standalanguage;mybrainno moreunderstandsnglish hanmyfeettakea walk. It is a great eapfrom commonsense intentional ttributionsopeople,to such attributionso partsof peopleor to otherobjects.Thatmove has been made far too easily, leadingto extensive and it seemspointlessdebate over suchalleged questionsas whethermachinescanthink: or example,as to "howone might empiricallydefend the claimthat hata given (strange)objectplayschess"(Haugeland 979, p. 620),or determinewhether omeartifact ralgorithm an translateChinese,orreach oranobject,orcommitmurder, r believe that t will rain.Many

4The quotations from Priestley in this paragraphcome from Passmore (1965),especially pp. 103ff. Similar conclusions had been drawn by La Mettrie a gener-ation earlier, though on different grounds.


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Language and Nature 9of these debates raceback to the classicpaperby AlanTuringn whichhe proposedheTuring estformachine ntelligence,but they fail to takenoteof hisobservationhat"Theoriginalquestion,Canmachines hink?'I believe to be too meaningless o deservediscussion" Turing1950,p.442). It is nota questionof fact,but a matter f decisionas to whether oadopta certainmetaphoricalusage, as when we say (in English) thatairplanesly butcometsdo not-and as for space shuttles, hoices differ.Similarly, ubmarineset sail but do not swim. Therecanbe no sensibledebateaboutsuch topics; or aboutmachine ntelligence,with the manyfamiliarvariants.

It is perhapsworthcomparingcontemporary ebatewith 17th-1 thcenturydiscussionof similar opics.Then, too, manywere intriguedbythe capacitiesof artifacts, nd debatedwhetherhumansmight simplybedevices of greater omplexityanddifferentdesign.But that debatewasnaturalistic n character,having to do with propertiesapparentlynotsubsumedunder he mechanicalphilosophy.Focusingon languageuse,Descartesand his followers, notablyGeraudde Cordemoy,outlinedexperimentalests for "otherminds",holdingthat f some objectpassesthe hardest xperiments candeviseto test whether t expressesand nter-pretsnew thoughts sI do,it wouldbe "unreasonable"o doubt hat t hasa mind ike mine.Thisis ordinarycience, on a parwith a litmus estforacidity.The projectof machine simulationwas actively pursued,butunderstoodas a way to find out somethingaboutthe world.The greatartificerJacquesde Vaucansondid not seek to fool his audience intobelieving hathis mechanical uckwasdigesting ood,butrathero learnsomething bout iving thingsby constructionf models,as is standardnthe sciences.Contemporaryebate ontrastsather nfavourably iththistradition.5

Similar onsiderations oldwithregard o theintentionalerminologycommonlyused ndescribingwhathappensn theworld.Thuswe saythatthe asteroid s aimingtoward he earth, he missile is rising toward hemoon, he flower s turningoward helight,the bee is flyingtotheflower,thechimpanzees reaching orthecoconut,John s walking o his desk.Somefuturenaturalisticheorymighthavesomething o say both aboutnormalusage,andabout he cases it seeks to address,wo quitedifferenttopics. Neither inquirywouldbe bound by "vulgarphraseology[and]apprehensions",ustas we do notexpectthetheoryof vision to dealwithClinton's vision of the internationalmarket,or expect the theory oflanguage o dealwith the fact thatChinese s thelanguageof Beijingand

I See Marshall (1989); and Chomsky et al. (1993) for furthercomment; andfor more extensive discussion, Chomsky (1966).


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10 NoamChomskyHongKong, houghRomances notthelanguageof Bucharest ndRio deJaneiro-as a resultof suchfactorsas thestabilityof empires.

It wouldbe misleading o say thatwe abandon he theories thattheasteroids aiming owards heearth, hat he sun s settingand he heavensdarkening,hat hewavehitthe beachand henreceded,hat he winddiedandthe wavesdisappeared,hatpeople speakChinesebut notRomance,andso on,replacing hembybetterones. Rather, he search ortheoreticalunderstanding ursues ts own paths, eadingto a completelydifferentpicture f the world,which neithervindicatesnoreliminates urordinaryways of talkingandthinking.Theesewe can cometo appreciate,modifyand enrich in many ways, thoughscience is rarelya guide in areas ofhuman ignificance.Naturalisticnquirys a particular umanenterprisethatseeks a specialkindof understanding,ttainableor humans n somefew domainswhenproblemscan be simplifiedenough.Meanwhile,welive our ives, facingasbestwe canproblems f radicallydifferentkinds,fartoo rich in characteror us to hopeto be able to discernexplanatoryprinciples f any depth, f these evenexist.6

The basiccontention f Priestleyandother18thcentury iguresseemsuncontroversial: thought and language are properties of organizedmatter-in this case, mostly the brain,not the kidney or the foot. It isunclearwhy the conclusion should be resurrected enturies ater as anaudacious and innovative proposal:"the bold assertion that mentalphenomenaareentirelynaturaland causedby the neurophysiologicalactivities of the brain" Paul Churchland1994), the hypothesis"thatcapacitiesof the humanmind arein fact capacitiesof the humanbrain"(PatriciaChurchland 994);or that"consciousnesss a higher-leveloremergentproperty f thebrain","asmuchof thenatural iologicalorderas ... photosynthesis, igestion,ormitosis" Searle1992),norwhy Nagelshoulddescribe his lastas the"metaphysicaleart" f a "radicalhesis"that"wouldbe amajoradditiono thepossibleanswers o themind-bodyproblem"f properlyclarified(as he considersunlikely: Nagel 1993).Everyyearor twoabookappears y somedistinguishedcientistwiththe"startlingonclusion" r"astonishing ypothesis"hat houghtnhumans"is a property f the nervoussystem, or rather f thebrain", he"neces-saryresult of a particular rganization" f matter,as Priestley putthematter ong ago, in terms hatseemclose to truism-and asuninformativeastruisms end obe, since the brain ciences,despite mportant rogress,are far from closing the gap to the problems posed by thought andlanguage,or evento what s moreor less understood bout hese topics.

6 Forsomewhatsimilarconclusionson differentgrounds, ee Baker(1988)andChastain1988).


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Language and Nature 11Here,we face typicalproblems f unification. The varianceof neuralmaps is not discreteor two-valuedbut rather ontinuous, ine-grained,andextensive",Edelman 1992) writes,concluding hatcomputationalr

connectionistheoriesof the mindmustbe wrongbecauseof theirdiscretecharacter. hat s no morereasonablehan he conclusion,a centuryago,thatchemistrymust be wrongbecause t could notbe unifiedwith whatwe now knowtobe afar-too-impoverishedhysics; nparticular,ecause"the chemist's matterwas discrete and discontinuous, he physicist'senergy continuous".7The disparity is real enough, but it is not, asEdelman sees it, a "crisis"for cognitive science; rathera unificationproblem, n whichthe chips fall where hey may.There s no problem f principle n devisingsystems hatmapcontinu-ous inputs into very specific discrete outputs; the "all-or-nothing"character f neural nteractions an example.Another llustrations givenin a recent tudy hatuses "athermodynamicomputermodel o showthatgreatregularityn the positionof a subtle eature, switch romsixto fourlayers, can result froma slight discontinuityn the inputsto the lateralgeniculateduringdevelopment", "smallperturbation"hat"markedly

affect[s] heoverallorganizationf... alargestructure",ne of manysuchexamples, he author otes(Stryker 994,p. 263).Whateverheempiricalstatus of particularproposals, the problems of unificationof discrete(computationalor connectionist)and cellulartheorieshave not beenshownto be different n kindfromothers hathavearisen hroughouthecourseof science.

Thecurrent ituations thatwe havegood andimproving heoriesofsomeaspectsof languageandmind,butonly rudimentarydeasabout herelationof any of this to the brain.Considera concreteexample.Withincomputationalheoriesof the language aculty of the brain, here s bynow a fairly good understandingf distinctionsamongkindsof "devi-ance"-departure rom one or anothergeneralprincipleof the languagefaculty.Recent work on electricalactivityof thebrainhas foundcorre-latesto severalof thesecategoriesof deviance,anda distinctivekind ofelectrophysiologicalesponse o syntacticvs. semanticviolations.8Still,thefindings emain omething f acuriosity, ecause here snoappropri-ate theoryof electricalactivity of the brain-no known reason,that is,whyone should ind heseresults,not others.Thecomputationalheories,incontrast, remoresolidlybased rom he pointof view of scientificnat-

7 See p. 6, above. For some comment on Edelman's misinterpretationof thecomputational theories to which he alludes, and of the nature of semantics, inwhich he expects to find a solution to the "crisis", see Chomsky et al. (1993).8 See Neville et al. (1991), Hagoort et al. (1992), and Hagoort and Brown(1993).


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12 Noam Chomskyuralism; heanalysisof deviance,nparticular,allswithinanexplanatorymatrixof considerablecope.

Anaturalisticpproacholanguageandmindwill seektoimprove achapproach,hoping for more meaningfulunification.It is common tosuppose hatthere s somethingdeeplyproblematicn the theory hat smoresolidlyestablished nnaturalisticrounds, he"mental ne";and oworryaboutproblems f "eliminationism"r"physicalism"hathaveyetto be formulatedoherently.Furthermore,hisdualist endencynotonlydominatesdiscussionanddebate,but is virtuallypresupposed, curiousphenomenonf thehistoryof thought hatmeritscloser nvestigation.Putting aside such tendencies, how would a naturalistic inquiryproceed?Webeginwithwhat we taketo be natural bjects, orexampleJones.Weare nitially nterestednparticularspectsofJones, helinguis-tic aspects.Wefindthatsomeelementsof Jones'sbrainarededicatedolanguage-call themthe language faculty. Otherpartsof thebodymayalsohavespecific anguage-relatedesign, andelementsof thelanguagefacultymaybeinvolved notheraspectsof life,as wewouldexpectof anybiologicalorgan.We set thesematterso one side at first,keeping o thelanguageacultyof thebrain, learly undamental. heres goodevidencethat helanguage acultyhasat leasttwo different omponents: "cogni-tive system" hatstoresinformation n some manner,andperformancesystemsthatmake use of this information or articulation,perception,talkingaboutthe world,askingquestions, ellingjokes, andso on. Thelanguage acultyhasaninputreceptive ystemandanoutputproductionsystem,butmore han hat:no onespeaksonlyJapanese ndunderstandsonly Swahili. These performance ystems access a commonbody ofinformation,which links them andprovidesthemwith instructionsofsomekind.Theperformanceystemscanbeselectively mpaired, erhapsseverelyso, whilethecognitivesystemremainsntact,andfurther isso-ciations havebeen discovered,revealingthe kindof modular tructureexpected n anycomplexbiologicalsystem.

Note that"modularity" ere is not understood n the sense of JerryFodor's nterestingwork,whichkeepsto inputandoutputsystems.Thecognitivesystemof thelanguage aculty s accessedby suchsystems,butis distinctfromthem. It may well be truethat"psychologicalmecha-nisms"are"composed f independent ndautonomousaculties ike theperceptionof faces andof language" MehlerandDupoux 1994), butthese"mental rgans"do notappearo fitwithin heframework f mod-ularity,as morenarrowly onstrued.Similarly,DavidMarr's nfluentialideasabout evels of analysisdo not applyhere at all, contrary o muchdiscussion, becausehe too is considering nput-outputystems; n thiscase,themappingof retinal timulationso somekindof internalmage.


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Languageand Nature 13Jones's anguage acultyhas an "initial tate", ixedby geneticendow-ment.It is generally ssumed hat he performanceystemsare ullydeter-minedby the initial state that any statechangesare internallydirected

or arethe resultof extraneous actorssuch as injury,not exposure o oneoranotheranguage.This is thesimplestassumption, nd t is not knownto be false, thoughit may well be; adopting t, we attributeanguage-relateddifferencesn perception say,our nability o perceivedifferencesof aspirationas a Hindispeakerwould)to differences n the phoneticaspectsof thecognitivesystem,withouthavingmuch aith n theassump-tion,though here s some evidence or it. (Under xperimentalonditionsEnglish peakers etect heHindicontrastshat hey do not"hear"n a lin-guisticcontext.)The performance ystemsmay well be specialized orlanguage.Even very young infantsappear o have something ike theadultphonetic ystem n place, perhaps specialrefinement f a broadervertebrate ategory.Mehler andDupoux (1994) proposethe workinghypothesishat"newborns re sensitive o all contrasts hatcanappearnall natural anguages, and in exactly the same way as adults",with"learning y forgetting" nderearlyexposure, o thatbeforethe child isayearold,thecognitivesystemhas selectedsomesubpart f theavailablepotential.

Onthesesimplifyingassumptions boutdevelopment,we lookjustatthecognitivesystemof thelanguage aculty, ts initialstate,and ts laterstates.Plainly, herearestatechanges hatreflectexperience:English snot Swahili, at least, not quite. A rational Martian scientist wouldprobablyindthevariation ather uperficial, oncludinghat here s onehumananguagewith minorvariants.But thecognitivesystemof Jones'slanguage faculty is modified in response to linguistic experience,changingstate untilit prettymuchstabilizes,perhapsas earlyas six toeight yearsold, whichwouldmeanthatlater(nonlexical)changesthathave beenfound,upto aboutpuberty, re nner-directed.

Let us tentatively call a state of the cognitive system of Jones'slanguagefaculty a "language"-or to use a technicalterm,an "I-lan-guage","I" o suggest"internal",individual",incethis is astrictlynter-nalist,individualistapproach o language, analogous n this respecttostudiesof the visualsystem.9 f thecognitivesystemof Jones's anguagefaculty s in stateL, we will say thatJoneshas the I-languageL. An I-9Note that this interpretationof such studies differs from some that appearinthe philosophical literature.The term "I-language" was introduced to overcomemisunderstanding engendered by the systematic ambiguity of the term "gram-mar", used both to refer to an I-language and to the linguist's theory of it. ThusJones's knowledge of his I-language (grammar, n one sense) is nothing like somelinguist's (partial)knowledge.


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14 NoamChomskylanguage s somethingike"away of speaking", ne traditional otionoflanguage.

Despite some similarity o standardocutions,however, he terminol-ogyhere s different, s weexpecteven in the earliest tagesof naturalisticinquiry.The languagesof the worlddescribe such matters n variousways.In English,we say thatJonesknowshis language; thers ay thathespeaks it, or speaks with it, and so on, and terms for somethinglikelanguagevary,thoughI know of no seriouscross-cultural tudy.Thesetopics are of interest or natural anguagesemantics,andotherbranchesof naturalistic nquirythat seek to determinehow cognitive systems,including anguage,yield whatis sometimescalled "folkscience".Wespeak of flowersturning oward he sun,the heavensdarkening, pplesfalling to theground,people havingbeliefs andspeakinganguages,andso on; our ways of thinkingandunderstanding, ndour intuitive deasabouthowthe world s constituted,mayormaynot relatedirectly o suchlocutions.Theelementsof folksciencederive romourbiologicalendow-ment, takingparticularormsundervaryingcultural onditions.There sevidencethatyoung childrenattributebeliefs andplansto otherswellbefore heyhaveterms odescribehis,and he samemaybe trueof adultsgenerally, houghmost languages, t is reported, o nothave termscorre-sponding o the English"belief'. These areserious nquiries,not to beundertakenasually;our intuitionsaboutthemprovidesome evidence,butnothingmorethan hat.Furthermore,hatevermaybe learnedaboutfolk sciencewill have no relevance o the pursuitof naturalisticnquiryinto the topicsthatfolk scienceaddressesn its own way,a conclusiontaken obe a truismnthestudyof what s called"thephysicalworld"butconsideredcontroversialor false (on dubiousgrounds,I think)in thestudyof the mentalaspectsof theworld.

So farI havekeptto Jones,hisbrain, ts language aculty,andsome ofits components, ll natural bjects.Turningo Smith,we discover hat heinitial state of his languagefacultyis virtually dentical;given Jones'sexperience,hewouldhaveJones's anguage.Thatseemsto be trueacrossthe species, meaning hatthe initialstate s a species property,o a verygood firstapproximation.f so, the human anguage acultyandthe (I-)languages hataremanifestationsf it qualifyas natural bjects.If Joneshas thelanguageL, he knows manythings: orexample, hathouserhymeswithmouseandthatbrownhouse consistsof two words nthe formal relation of assonance, and is used to refer to a structuredesignedand usedfor certainpurposesand with a brown exterior.Wewould like to find out how Jones knows such things. It seems to worksomethingike this.


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Languageand Nature 15The I-language onsists of a computational rocedure nd a lexicon.The lexiconis a collectionof items,each a complexof propertiescalled"features"),uchas the property bilabial top"or "artifact".he compu-

tationalprocedure elects temsfrom he lexicon and ormsan expression,amorecomplexarray f such features.There s reason o believe that hecomputationalystem s virtually nvariant;here s somevariation t thepartsclosely related o perception ndarticulation, otsurprisingly,inceit is here hatdataareavailable othe childacquiringanguage-a processbetter describedas "growth" hanas "learning",n my opinion.Thataside, languagevariationappears o reside n the lexicon.One aspect s"Saussureanarbitrariness",he arbitraryinks between concepts andsounds:hegeneticprogram oes notdeterminewhetherree, heconcept,is associatedwith the sounds"tree" r "Baum".Thelinkageof conceptand soundcan be acquired n minimalevidence,so variationhere s notsurprising.But the possible sounds arenarrowlyconstrained,andtheconceptsmaybe virtually ixed.It is hard o imagineotherwise,giventherateof lexicalacquisition-abouta wordanhour romages two to eight,with lexical items typically acquiredon a single exposure, in highlyambiguous ircumstances, ut understoodn delicate andextraordinarycomplexity hatgoes vastlybeyondwhat s recordedn themostcompre-hensive dictionary-which, like the most comprehensivetraditionalgrammar,merelygives hints that suffice for people who basicallyknowtheanswers, argely nnately.

Beyondsuchfactors,variationmaybe limited o formalaspectsof lan-guage-case of nouns,verbal nflection,and so on. Even here, variationmay be slight. On the surface, English appears o differ sharplyfromGerman,Latin,Greekor Sanskritn richnessof inflection;Chineseevenmoreso. Butthere s evidence hat he languageshavebasically he sameinflectional systems, differing only in the way formal elements areaccessedbythepartof thecomputationalrocedurehatprovidesnstruc-tions to articulatoryand perceptualorgans.The mentalcomputationseems otherwise identical, yielding indirect effects of inflectionalstructure hat areobservable,even if the inflections hemselvesare notheardn speech.Thatmaywell be the basisof languagevariation,nlargemeasure.Smallchanges n the way a systemfunctionsmay, of course,yieldwhatappearso be greatphenomenal ariety.

Thecomputationalrocedure aspropertieshatmaybe unique o it, insubstantialart. t is also"austere", ithnoaccess to manyof theproper-ties of other cognitive systems. For example, it seems to have no"counters".t registersadjacency; huseveryothersyllablecouldhavesome property say,stress).But it cannotuse thenotionthree.Thereareno knownphonological ystems n whichsomethinghappens verythird


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16 Noam Chomskysyllable, or example;and syntaxseems to observea property f "struc-ture-dependence",nable o make use of linearand arithmetical roper-ties thataremuchsimpler o implement utside helanguage aculty.

Recent experimentalwork by Neil Smith and his colleagues (1993)bearson this matter.They have been studyinga person-called "Christo-pher"-who seemsto have an ntact anguage acultybutseverecognitivedeficits,anexampleof the kindof modularity f mentalarchitecturehathas been foundrepeatedly.Christopher admastered ome 16 languages,andcan translateromthemto English.The experimentsnvolvedChris-topherand a control group. Both were taughtBerberand an inventedsystemdesigned o violate principlesof language.As expected,Christo-pher earnedBerbereasily, but lackingothercognitivecapacities,coulddo littlewith the invented ystem.The controlgroupmadesome progressontheinvented ystem,apparentlyreatingt as a puzzle.But thereweresome extremely implerulestheydidnotdiscover: orexample, he rulethatplacedanemphaticmarker n thethirdwordof a sentence. t seemsthat he "austerity"f the language acultysufficed o bardiscoveryof asimplestructure-independentule,withina linguisticcontext.Ouruseoflanguageof course involves numbers;we can understand ndidentifysonnets, or example.Italso involves inference, hough t seems thatthecomputational rocedures too austere o use theseresources ither.Thelanguage aculty s bothveryrichandvery impoverished, s anybiologi-cal systemis expectedto be: capableof a high-level of achievementnspecificdomains,andcorrespondingly nable o dealwithproblems hatlie outsidethem.As notedearlier,we shouldexpect thatto be trueof allour faculties, including what might be called the "science-formingfaculty",heparticularollectionof qualitiesandabilitieswe use in con-ductingnaturalisticnquiry.

Thoughhighly specialized, helanguage aculty s not tied to specificsensorymodalities, ontraryowhatwasassumednotlong ago. Thus, hesign languageof thedeafis structurallymuch ike spoken anguage,andthecourseof acquisitions verysimilar.Large-scale ensorydeficitseemsto have limitedeffect on language acquisition.Blind childrenacquirelanguageas thesighteddo, evencolour ermsandwords orvisualexpe-rience ike "see"and"look".Therearepeoplewho have achievedcloseto normal inguisticcompetencewithno sensory nputbeyondwhatcanbe gainedby placingone'shandon another erson's aceandthroat.Theanalyticmechanisms f thelanguage acultyseem to betriggeredn muchthe sameways whether he inputis auditory, isual, even tactual,and,seem to be localized n the samebrainareas.

Theseexamplesof impoverishednput ndicate herichnessof innateendowment-thoughnormalanguageacquisitions remarkablenough,


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Language and Nature 17as even lexical access shows, not only becauseof its rapidityand theintricacy f result.Thus,very youngchildren an determinehemeaningof a nonsense wordfromsyntactic nformationn a sentence farmorecomplex hananythey canproduce Gleitman1990).

A plausibleassumption odayis that the principlesof language arefixed andinnate,andthatvariation s restricted n the mannerndicated.Eachlanguage, hen,is (virtually)determined y a choice of values forlexicalparameters: ithonearray f choices,we shouldbe abletodeduceHungarian;with another,Yoruba. This principles-and-parametersapproach ffers a way to resolvea fundamentalensionthataroseat thevery outset of generativegrammar.As soon as the firstattemptsweremade oprovideactualdescriptions f languages, 0 yearsago, it wasdis-covered hat heintricacy f structures farbeyondanything hathadbeenimagined, that traditionaldescriptionsof form and meaning merelyskimmedhe surface,whilestructuralistnes werealmost rrelevant. ur-thermore,he apparent ariability f languagesexplodesas soon as oneattends o facts thathadbeentacitlyassigned o the unanalysed intelli-gence of the reader". To attain "descriptive adequacy", it seemednecessary o give very intricate ccounts, pecific oparticularanguages,indeed o particularonstructionsn particularanguages: omplexrulesfor relative clauses in English, for example. But it was obvious thatnothingof the sortcouldbe true.Theconditionsof languageacquisitionmake t plainthattheprocessmustbe largely nner-directed,s in otheraspectsof growth,whichmeans hatall languagesmustbe close to iden-tical, largely fixedby initialstate. Themajorrecentresearchefforthasbeen guidedby this tension,pursuing he naturalapproach: bstractingfrom the welter of descriptivecomplexity certaingeneralprinciplesgoverning omputationhatwouldallowtherulesof aparticularanguageto be givenin very simpleforms,withrestricted ariety.

Efforts o resolve the tension n thisway led finallyto the principles-and-parameterspproachustoutlined. t is morea boldhypothesis hana specifictheory, houghpartsof thepicturearebeingfilledin, and newtheoretical deas are leadingto a vast expansion n relevantempiricalmaterialsromtypologicallydiverse anguages.These deasconstitute radicaldepartureromarichtradition f some

2500years.If correct, heyshow notonlythat anguagesare castto verymuch hesamemould,witha near nvariantomputationalrocedure ndonly restricted exical variation,butalso that there areno rulesor con-structionsnanythingike thetraditionalense,whichwascarried ver toearly generativegrammar: o rulesfor formationof relativeclauses inEnglish, orexample.Rather,hetraditionalonstructions-verbphrase,


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18 NoamChomskyrelativeclause,passive, etc.-are taxonomicartifacts, heirpropertiesresulting romtheinteraction f farmoregeneralprinciples.

Theprinciples-and-parameterspproachdissociatestwo notionsthatfell togetherunder heconceptof I-language: here s a clearconceptualdistinction etween hestateof thelanguage aculty,on theonehand,andan instantiation f the initial statewith parametersixed,on the other.Apart rommiracles, he objectsso identifiedwill always differempiri-cally.The actual tateof one'slanguage aculty s the resultof interactionof a greatmany factors,only someof which arerelevant o inquiry ntothe nature f language.Onmore heory-internalrounds,hen,wetakeanI-language o be aninstantiationf the initialstate, dealizing romactualstates of the languagefaculty.As elsewhere n naturalisticnquiry, heterm"idealization"s somewhatmisleading:t is theprocedurewe followin attemptingo discoverreality, he realprinciples f nature.Only n thestudy of mental aspects of the world is this consideredillegitimate,another xampleof perniciousdualism hatshouldbe overcome.

Progressalongthese lines hasopenedup new questions,notably, hequestion to what extent the principles themselves can be reducedtodeeperandnaturalproperties f computation.To whatextent,that s, islanguage"perfect", elying on naturaloptimalityconditions andverysimplerelations?Onetheoryholdsthat,apart romthephonetic eaturesthatare accessedby articulatory-perceptualystems,theproperties f anexpression hat enter nto languageuse arecompletelydrawn rom thelexicon: hecomputationrganizeshese nveryrestrictedways,butaddsno furtherfeatures. That is a considerable simplification of earlierassumptions,whichwould,if correct, equire onsiderableethinking fthe "interface" etween the languagefacultyandothersystems of themind.Anotherrecenttheory,proposed n essenceby RichardKayne, sthatthere s no parametricariation n temporal rder.Rather, rder s areflexof structuralroperties eterminednthe courseof computation:lllanguagesare of the basicformsubject-verb-object. therrecentworkseeksto showthatpossibleexpressionshatwouldbe interpretablettheinterface, f formed,arebarredby the factthatothercomputationswiththe same exical resourcesaremoreeconomical.10

On such assumptions,we expect that languages are "learnable",because here s littletolearn,butare npart"unusable",nereasonbeingthatglobaleconomyconditionsmay yield highlevels of computationalcomplexity. That languages are "learnable"would be a surprisingempiricaldiscovery; here s no generalbiologicalor otherreasonwhylanguagesmadeavailableby thelanguage acultyshouldbe fully acces-sible,astheywill be if languagesarefixedbythesettingof simpleparam-

10On these matters, see Chomsky (1993b, 1994); and sources cited therein.


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LanguageandNature 19eters. The conclusion hat anguagesarepartiallyunusable,however, snot at all surprising. t has long been known that performanceystemsoften "fail",meaning hatthey providean analysis hatdiffersfromthatdetermined y the cognitivesystem(the I-language).Manycategoriesofexpressionshave been studied hatpose structural roblems or interpre-tation: multiple-embedding,so-called "gardenpath sentences",andothers.Evensimple conceptsmay pose hardproblemsof interpretation;words hat nvolvequantifiersr negation, or example.Suchexpressionsas"Imissed(not)seeingyoulast summer"meaning expected o see youbut didn't) cause endless confusion. Sometimes confusion is evencodified,as in the idiom "nearmiss", which means "nearlya hit", not"nearly miss"(analogouso "near ccident").

Thebelief thatparsings "easyandquick",nonefamiliarormula, ndthat he theoryof languagedesignmustaccommodatehisfact,is errone-ous;it is not a fact.Theproblem,however, s to show thatthose partsoflanguage hatare usableareproperlydetermined y the theoriesof com-putation ndperformance,o smallmatter.Questionsof thissortbringus to theborders f currentnquiry.Thesearequestionsof a new orderof depth,henceof interest, n the studyoflanguageandmind.Otherquestionshave to do with interfaceproperties: ow do the per-formance ystemsmakeuse of expressionsgenerated y theI-language?Somefeaturesof theseexpressionsprovide nstructions nly to articula-tory and perceptual ystems; husone elementof a linguisticexpressionis its phonetic orm. It is generallyassumed hat these instructionsarecommon o botharticulationndperception,which is notat all obvious,hence interestingif true. Otherpropertiesof the expressionprovideinstructions nly for conceptual-intentionalystems; hiselementof the

expression s usuallycalled logicalform, but in a technicalsense thatdiffers romotherusages;call it LF to avoidmisunderstanding.gain, tis assumed hatthere s onlyone sucharrayof instructions,ndthat t isdissociated from phonetic form. These assumptionsare even moreimplausible, enceif true,very interesting iscoveries.On suchassumptions,he computational roceduremapsan arrayoflexicalchoicesintoapairof symbolicobjects,phonetic ormandLF,anddoesso in awaythat s optimal, roma certainpointof view. Theelementsof these symbolic objects can be called "phonetic"and "semantic"features, espectively,but we shouldbear n mindthatall of this is puresyntax, completely nternalist, he studyof mentalrepresentationsndcomputations,much ike theinquirynto howtheimageof acuberotatingin spaceis determined rom retinalstimulations, r imagined.Wemaytakethe semantic eaturesS of anexpressionE to be its meaningandthe


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20 NoamChomskyphonetic eaturesP tobe itssound;E meansS in somethingikethe senseof the corresponding nglishword,andE soundsP in a similarsense, SandP providing he relevantnformationortheperformanceystems.

An expression uchas "Ipaintedmy house brown"s accessedby per-formance ystems hat nterprett, on thereceptive ide,and articulatetwhile typicallyusingit for one or another peech act, on the productiveside. How is thatdone?The articulatory-perceptualspectshave beenintensively tudied,but these mattersare still poorly understood.At theconceptual-intentionalnterfaceheproblems reevenmoreobscure,andmay well fall beyondhumannaturalisticnquiryn crucialrespects.Perhaps he weakestplausibleassumption bout he LF interface s that

the semantic propertiesof the expression focus attentionon selectedaspectsof the world as it is takento be by othercognitive systems,andprovide ntricate ndhighlyspecializedperspectivesromwhichto viewthem, crucially involving humaninterests and concerns even in thesimplestcases.In the case of "Ipaintedmy housebrown",he semanticfeatures mposean analysisin terms of specific propertiesof intendeddesignanduse, a designated xterior,and indeedfarmoreintricacy. f Ipaintmy house brown, t hasa brownexterior,butI can paintmy housebrownon the inside.The exterior-interiorimensionhas a markedandunmarked ption; f neither s indicated, heexterior s understood.Thatis a typicalproperty f thelexicon; f I say Jonesclimbed hemountain,mean hathe was(generally) oing up,butIcansaythathe climbeddownthemountain,usingthe markedoption.If I am insidemy house,I cancleanit, affectingonly theinterior, utI cannotsee it, unlessanexteriorsurface s visible(through window, or example).And I certainly annotbe nearmy house if I am inside it, even thoughit is a surface,in theunmarkedase. Similarly,a geometrical ube is just a surface,but if weareusingnaturalanguage,apoint nside hecubecannotbe near t. Thesepropertieshold quitegenerally:of boxes, igloos, airplanes,mountains,andso on. If I lookthrough tunnel n a mountain nd see a lightedcavewithin,I do not see themountain; nly if I see its exterior urface say,from nside thecave, lookingthrough he tunnelat a mirror utside hatreflects he surface).The same is trueof impossibleobjects.If I tell youthatI painteda spherical ubebrown,youtake ts exterior o be brown nthe unmarkedase,and f I am insideit, youknowI am not near t.Andso on, to intricacythat has been far underestimated,and that posesproblems f "poverty f stimulus"oextreme hatknowledgeof languagein these regards oo can only be assumedto be in substantialmeasureinnatelydetermined, encevirtuallyuniformamong anguages,much aswe assume withoutdiscussion or understanding or other aspects ofgrowthanddevelopment.


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Language and Nature 21Quite typically, words offer conflicting perspectives.A city is bothconcreteand abstract, othanimateand inanimate:LosAngeles maybe

ponderingts fate grimly,fearingdestructionby anotherearthquake radministrative ecision. London s not a place. Rather, t is at a place,though t is not the thingsat thatplace,whichcouldberadically hangedor moved, eavingLondon ntact.London ouldbedestroyed ndrebuilt,perhapsaftermillennia,still being London;Carthage ould be rebuilttoday, ust as TomJones, houghperfectly oncrete, ouldbe reincarnatedas an insectorturnedby a witch into a frog, awaiting heprincess'skiss,butTomJones all along-concepts available o young childrenwithoutinstruction rrelevant xperience.The abstractcharacterof Londonis crucial to its individuation. fLondons reduced o dust, t-that is, London-can be re-built lsewhereand be the same city, London.If my house is reducedto dust, it (myhouse)can be rebuiltelsewhere,but it won't be the same house.If themotorof my car is reduced o dust,it cannotbe rebuilt, hough f onlypartiallydamaged,t be can.Pronounsnvolvedependency f reference,butnot necessarily othe same hing;andbothreferential ependence ndthe narrower otionof sameness nvolve rolesin a highlyintricate pace

of humaninterests and concerns. Judgmentscan be ratherdelicate,involving actors hathave barelybeenexplored.Thereareplentyof realexamples llustratinguch properties f termsof naturalanguage.Wehave no problemunderstanding report n thedaily pressabout he unfortunateown of Chelsea,which s "preparingomove"(viewed as animate),with some residentsopposedbecause"bymoving hetown, t will takethespiritoutof it",whileotherscounterhat"unless Chelseamoves, floods will eventuallykill it". There is a citycalled both "Jerusalem"and "al-Quds",much as London is called"London"nd"Londres".What s thiscity?Its siteis a matter f nosmallcontention,even of UN SecurityCouncil resolutions.The governmentthat claimsit as its capitalcity has been consideringplansto move al-Quds,while eavingJerusalemnplace.Thechairman f thedevelopmentauthority xplainedhat"Weneedtofindacapital orthePalestinians,wehave to finda site foral-Quds"--somewhere ortheast f Jerusalem.Theproposals perfectly ntelligible,which is why it greatly roublespeopleconcernedaboutal-Quds.The discussionwouldpose puzzlesof a kind

familiar n thephilosophicaliterature,ven more so if theproposalwereimplemented-if, failing to observesome of Wittgenstein's ood advice,we were to supposethatwords like "London" r "Jerusalem" efertothings n the worldin somepublic anguage,andwere to tryto sharpenmeaningsand ideas for conditionsunderwhichthe presuppositions fnormalusedo not hold.


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22 Noam ChomskyEven the statusof (nameable) thing, perhapsthe most elementaryconceptwe have, dependscruciallyon suchintricatemattersas acts ofhumanwill, againsomethingunderstoodwithoutrelevantexperience,

determined y intrinsicproperties f the language acultyand others.Acollectionof sticksin the groundcould be a (discontinuous)hing-say,a picketfence, a barrier, workof art.But thesame sticks n the groundarenota thing f left thereby a forestfire."The matterof space-time continuity has no particular elevancetothese issues, contraryo what s sometimesassumed see Putnam1993).Discontinuity f things s not at all in question; he United States s dis-continuous n space, though it has become a nameable hing (shifting

over time from plural o singularusage);an utterance r theatricalper-formancemay be discontinuous n time.As just noted,discontinuousobjects are readily understoodas nameable things, within a propermatrix of human nterests.Whethera city is understoodwithin "folkscience" as a (possibly) discontinuousfour-dimensionalobject is aquestion of fact. The assumptionthat it is, or that semantic theoryshould say that it is, requires quite unnaturalnterpretations f suchterms as "move(Chelsea)","the former(Chelsea)",etc., issues easilyoverlooked, given a narrowconcentrationon object-reference.Theproperties ndperspectivesnvolved n individuating ities, houses,andthe like remain to be discovered and explained, independentof thequestionof continuity.

Substances evealthe same kindsof specialmentaldesign.Taketheterm"water",n the sense proposedby HilaryPutnam:as coextensivewith"H20give or take certain mpurities"Putnam1993, alluding o his1975).Evenin such a usage,withits questionablenvocationof naturalscience, we find thatwhethersomethingis waterdependson specialhumannterestsandconcerns,again n waysunderstoodwithout elevantexperience; heterm"impurities"overssome difficult errain.Supposecup, is filled fromthetap.It is a cupof water,butif a teabag is dippedintoit, that s no longer he case.It is nowa cupof tea,somethingdiffer-ent.Supposecup2s filledfromatapconnected o areservoirn whichteahasbeendumped say,as anew kindof purifier).What s incup2s water,nottea,evenif a chemistcouldnotdistinguishtfrom hepresent ontentsof cup1.Thecupscontain he samething romonepointof view,differentthingsfromanother; utin eithercase cup2 ontainsonlywaterandcup,onlytea.Incup2, he teais an"impurity"n Putnam's ense, in cup, it isnot,andwe do nothavewateratall(except n the sensethatmilk s mostlywater,ora person orthatmatter). f CUp3containspureH20into which a

" On such matters,and their significance for Quinean and similar theories oflearning, see Chomsky (1975a, p. 203).


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Language and Nature 23tea bag has been dipped, it is tea, not water, though it could have a higherconcentrationof H20 molecules than what comes fromthe tap or is drawnfrom a river. Note that this is a particularlysimple case, unlike its classiccounterparts"earth","air","fire",among many others.

Proceeding beyond the simplest cases, intricacies mount. I can paintthedoorto the kitchen brown, so it is plainly concrete;but I can walk throughthe door to the kitchen, switching figure and ground. The baby can finishthe bottle and then break it, switching contents and container with fixedintended reference. There is interesting work by James Pustejovskystudying regularities in such systems, drawing on ideas of JuliusMoravcsik (1975, 1990), Aristotelianin origin.12 As we move on to wordswith more complex relational propertiesand the structures n which theyappear,we find that interpretations guided in fine detail by the cognitivesystem in ways that we expect to vary little because they are so remotefrom possible experience.

Neurologist Rodolfo Llina's (1987) puts the matter well when hedescribes perception as "a dreammodulated by sensory input",the mindbeing a "computational state of the brain generated by the interactionbetween the external world and an internalset of reference frames". Butthe internal frames that shape the dreams are far more intricate andintriguingthan often assumed, even at the level of the lexicon, still moreso when we turnto expressions formedby the computational procedures.

Spelling out the properties of expressions, we learn more about theinstructions atthe LF ("semantic") nterface,which are interpretedn somemanner to think andtalk aboutthe world, along with much else. Importantand obscure questions still lie beyond: in what respects, for example, dothese properties belong to the language faculty as distinct from otherfaculties of mind to which it is linked? How do lexical resources relate tobelief systems, for example? Such questions remainwithin the domain ofwhat people know, not what they do. Answers to them would still leave usfar short of understandinghow the resources of the cognitive systems areput to use. Fromthis welter of issues it is hardto see how to extricate verymuch thatmight be subjectedto naturalisticinquiry.13

Note that the propertiesof such words as "house", "door", "London","water", and so on do not indicate that people have contradictory orotherwiseperplexingbeliefs. There is no temptationto drawany such con-clusion, if we drop the empirical assumption that words pick out things,apart romparticularusages, which they constrainin highly intricateways.

12 See also Pustejovsky (1993b), and other papers in Pustejovsky (1993a); andalso Chomsky (1975a).I3 For some comment, see Chomsky (1993a).


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24 NoamChomskyShouldwe assume hatexpressions ickoutthings, ntrinsically?Moregenerally, hould he "weakest ssumptions" bout he interface elationsand he way theyenter ntothought ndactionbe supplementedo include

relationshathold betweencertain xpressionsandexternal hings?Thatis commonlyassumed, houghwe have to take care to distinguish wovariants: 1) things in the world, or (2) things in some kind of mentalmodel,discourse epresentation,nd helike.14If thelatter,hen hestudyis again nternalist, formof syntax.Suppose he former, ndcontinue oassume hat hereare twointerfaceevels,-phonetic orm andLF.Supposewe postulate hatcorrespondingo an elementa of phoneticformthere is anexternalobject *a thata selects as itsphonetic value; thustheelement ba] n Jones's -language icksoutsomeentity*[ba],"shared"withSmithf there sacounterpartn hisI-language.Communicationouldthenbedescribedntermsof such partially) hared ntities,whichareeasyenough to construct:take *a to be the singleton set {a}, or {3, a}; or ifone wantsa morerealistic eel, some construct asedon motionsof mol-ecules. Withsufficientheroism,one coulddefendsucha view,thoughnoonedoes,because t's clearthatwe are ust spinningwheels.The samecanbe doneattheLFinterface.Suppose hata is constructedby the computationalystemfrom one or more exical choices,whereais anLFrepresentationrsomefurtheryntacticobjectcomputed rom t(an expression n some formallanguage, some kind of mental model,etc.). We could then posit an object *a as its semantic value, externaltothe I-language,perhaps haredby Jonesand Smith.Again,*a couldbesome arbitraryonstructiono which we assignthe desiredproperties, rgiven a touchof realism n a varietyof ways. We could then constructtruththeories,and develop an accountof communication n terms ofshared ntities-often of a very strange ort,to be sure.As in the case ofanytheoretical roposal hat ntroduces ewentitiesandprinciples,whathas to be shown is that this one is justified n the usualempirical erms(explanatory ower,etc.).Agood partof contemporaryhilosophy f languages concernedwithanalysing alleged relations between expressions and things, oftenexploring ntuitionsaboutthe technicalnotions "denote", refer", trueof', etc., said to hold betweenexpressionsandsomething lse. But therecan be no intuitionsabout hesenotions, ustas therecanbe noneabout"angular elocity"or "protein". hese are technical ermsof philosophi-cal discoursewith a stipulated ense thathas no counterpartn ordinarylanguage-which is why Fregehad to providea new technicalmeaning

14 Iput aside, here and below, the further assumption that these relations holdof objects in a public language. This notion is unknown to empirical inquiry,andraises what seem to be irresolvableproblems, so far unaddressed.For some recentdiscussion, see Chomsky (1993a) and Chomsky et al. (1993).


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LanguageandNature 25for"Bedeutung",orexample. f we re-run hethought xperimentswithordinary erms,judgmentsseem to collapse, or rather, o become sointerest-relatives to yieldnomeaningful esults.

Withoutpursuinghematterhere, t is notat all clear hat hetheoryofnaturalanguageand ts use involvesrelationsof "denotation",true f',etc., in anything ike thesense of thetechnical heoryof meaning.It is sometimes claimedthat such technicalnotions arerequired oaccount orcommunicationrforconsideration f truthandfalsity.Theformer belief is groundless.The latter also seems incorrect.Simplyconsider he ordinaryanguage ermswith-which hisdiscussionbegan:"language" nd"mind".Consider wo statementsaboutlanguage andmind:(1) Chinese s thelanguageof BeijingandHongKong,butnot Mel-bourne.(2) The mind is its own place, andin itself can make a HeavenofHell,a Hellof Heaven.

Thefirst s true,but "Chinese"urelyhasno realworlddenotatum,n thetechnical ense,norneedone believethat t does to assigntruthvalue. Ifwe areconvincedby Milton'sargument,we will agreethatthe secondsentence s true,butwithoutcommittingourselves o the belief thatanyof the subject, he pronoun,or the reflexive(or the othernounphrases)refereither o something n the naturalworldor in someobscurementalworld.At least, there s no compulsion o succumb o suchtemptations,for reasonsputforth n the 18thcenturycritiqueof the theoryof ideas,muchenrichedn modernordinaryanguagephilosophy.Suchpropertiesaretypicalof thewordsof naturalanguage.This is notto deny thatsuchstatements anbe madewithreferentialntentions,but these areof a farmore ntricatenature.Inanyevent,thereseemsto be no specialconnectionbetweenattribu-tion of truthor falsity and some notionof referenceor denotation, nanythingike the senseof technicaldiscourse.Consider in contrastanotherterm I have used: I-language, whichfigures n suchstatements s:(3) I-languagehas a headparameter.

Thisstatements false ifKayne's heory s correct,perhaps rue f it is not.In this case, it makessenseto say that the term"I-language" as a realworlddenotatum, r at least is intended o. Thestatement elongsto thesame kindof discourse as statementsaboutH20, acids andbases, thespecification f proteinsby genes,etc. Thesentencesdonotreallybelongto naturalanguage; heycontain echnical erms,such as "I-language",introduced n a quite differentway. As the disciplinesprogress,they


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26 NoamChomskydepart tillfurtherrom he commonsenseandordinaryanguageoriginsof inquiry.

Itis reasonableosuppose hat nthe courseof such nquiry,we attemptto constructsystems in which well-constructedsymbolic objects areintended o pickoutobjects n theworld:molecules,I-languages, ndsoon. Thesesymbolicsystemsmaybe called"languages",ut that s justametaphor. heytypicallydo nothaveproperties f naturalanguage,areacquired nd used in a completelydifferentashion,and arenotinstanti-ations of the initial state of the languagefaculty. We may articulatesymbolicobjectsof thesesystemswiththephoneticsof our anguageandborrowconstructionsof our languagein using them, even when theycontaintermsthat are inventedor basedon languageswe do not know("eigenvector",homo apiens"), utall of that s irrelevant. hesystemsmay depart n arbitraryways from natural anguage,using calculus,chemicalnotations nddiagrams, rwhatever.

Thesesymbolicsystemsmay well aim towards o theFregean deal.According o this approach,here s a "common,publiclanguage"withformulasor signalsthatexpressshared houghts.The"language" as asyntax, namely, a class of well-formed formulas;there is no "rightanswer"o thequestionof how thatset is generated.t also has a seman-tics, based on the technical notion of Bedeutung, a relationbetweensymbolsandthings.Perhaps neproperty f thescience-formingacultyof thehumanmind s that t aimsto constructFregean ystems.But if so,thatwill tell us nothingaboutnaturalanguage.Here here s no counter-part o thenotion"common"r"public"anguage.Thesyntax s radicallydifferent.Therea realanswer o thequestionof what s the "rightgener-ativeprocedure";-languagesarefunctionsregardedn intension.Andthereappearso be no notionof "well-formedormula"nthesenseused,forexample,by Quine n his discussionsof extensional quivalenceandindeterminacy f translation, rby many inguists,psychologists,philos-ophers,andotherswho havebeenconcernedaboutgenerative apacity,decidabilityof well-formedness,reduction o context-freegrammars,excess strength f certain heories,andotherproblems hatcannotevenbe formulated or natural anguage, as far as we know (Cf. Chomsky1980, 1986).

As forsemantics,nsofaras we understandanguageuse,theargumentfor a reference-basedsemantics (apart from an internalistsyntacticversion)seemsto me weak.It is possiblethatnaturalanguagehasonlysyntaxandpragmatics;t hasa"semantics"nlyinthesense of "the tudyof how this instrument,whose formal structureand potentialitiesofexpression rethesubjectof syntacticnvestigation,s actuallyputto usein a speechcommunity",o quotethe earliest ormulationn generative


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Languageand Nature 27grammar 0 years ago, influencedby Wittgenstein,Austinandothers(Chomsky(1975b, Preface),andChomsky (1957, pp. 102-3). In thisview, natural anguageconsistsof internalist omputations ndperform-ance systems thataccess themalongwith muchother nformation ndbelief, carrying ut their nstructionsnparticular aystoenableustotalkand communicate,among other things.Therewill be no provisionforwhatScottSoamescalls"thecentral emantic actabout anguage, .. thatit is used to representhe world",because t is not assumed hat anguageis used to represent he world, n the intended ense (Soames 1989,citedby Smith 1992 as the core issue for philosophers f language).Before turning o moredetailed ssues relating o the internalistper-spective on language, et me mention some limits. Some have alreadybeen suggested: general issues of intentionality, including those oflanguageuse, cannot reasonablybe assumedto fall within naturalisticinquiry.The mattercan be furtherclarifiedby returning o Cartesiandualism, he scientifichypothesis hatsought o capture,n particular,heapparentact thatnormal anguageuse lies beyondthe bounds of anypossible machine. The Cartesian rameworkwas underminedby thediscoverythat even the behaviorof inorganicmatter ies beyondthesebounds.But the arguments an be reconstructed, houghnow withoutmetaphysicalmplications, ince the conceptof matterhas disappeared.So restated, hey still seem to pose a complete mystery.They are,forexample,unaffectedby the transition romthe complex artifacts hatintrigued he Cartesianso today'scomputers, nd he brain ciencesshedlittle light on them.Possibly,as some believe,theseproblems reunreal.Possibly heyarerealbutwe havenothitupon heway to approachhem.Possibly hatway,whatevert is, lies outsideourcognitive capacities,beyondthereachofthescience-formingaculty.Thatshouldnotsurprise s, if true,atleastifwe are willing to entertain he idea that humansare partof the naturalworld,with rich scope andcorrespondingimits, facing problems hatthey might hope to solve and mysteries that lie beyond their reach,"ultimatesecretsof nature" hat "everwill remain" n "obscurity" sHumesupposed, choingsome of Descartes'sown speculations.

2. Language from an internalistperspectiveI want to distinguish an internalist from a naturalistic approach. By thelatter mean ustthe attempto studyhumansas we do anything lse inthenaturalworld,as discussed n ?1. Internalist aturalisticnquiry eeksto understandhe internal tatesof anorganism.Naturalistic tudy s of


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28 Noam Chomskycoursenot limitedto such bounds; nternalistnquiry nto a planetor anant does not pre-empt r preclude he studyof the solarsystemor an antcommunity.Non-internalisttudiesof humanscan takemany forms:asphasesin an oxygen-to-carbondioxide cycle or gene transmission,asfarmersor gourmets,as participantsn associationsand communities,with theirpower structures, octrinal ystems,culturalpractices,and soon. Internalisttudiesarecommonlypresupposedn otherswith broaderrange,but t shouldbe obviousthat he legitimacyof one or another indof inquirydoes not arise.

To clarify urther, amkeepinghereto thequest or theoretical nder-standing,the specific kind of inquiry that seeks to account for someaspectsof the worldonthe basisof usuallyhiddenstructuresndexplan-atoryprinciples.Someonecommitted o naturalisticnquiry an consist-entlybelieve thatwe learnmoreof humannterest bouthowpeople hinkand eel andactby studyinghistoryorreadingnovelsthan romallof nat-uralisticinquiry.Outside of narrowdomains,naturalistic nquiryhasproven hallowor hopeless,andperhaps lwayswill, perhaps orreasonshaving o do with our cognitivenature.

The aspectsof the world hatconcernme hereI will call its mentalandlinguisticaspects,usingthe terms nnocuously-in themanner f "chem-ical", "electrical",or "optical"-to select a complex of phenomena,events,processesandso on thatseem have a certainunityandcoherence.By "mind", mean he mentalaspectsof the world. n noneof these casesis thereany need forantecedent larity,noranyreason o believe that hecategories will survive naturalistic nquirywhere it can make someprogress.

By "naturalism"mean"methodologicalaturalism",ounterposedo"methodological ualism":he doctrine hat in the questfor theoreticalunderstanding,anguageandmindaretobe studied n somemanner therthanthewayswe investigatenatural bjects,as a matterof principle.Asdiscussed in ?1, this is a doctrine that few may espouse, but thatdominatesmuchpractice.See alsoChomsky1992, 1993a, orthcoming.

One branchof naturalisticnquiry tudiescommonsenseunderstand-ing. Here we are concernedwithhow peopleinterpret bject constancy,the natureand causes of motion, thoughtandaction,andso on ("folkscience", in one of the senses of the term).Perhaps he right way todescribe his is intermsof beliefsabout heconstituents f theworld callthem"entities") ndtheirorganization,nteraction, ndorigins.Assumeso. It is anopen questionwhether, nd f so how,theconceptual esourcesof folksciencerelate othose nvolved n the reflectiveandself-consciousinquiryound n everyknownculture "early cience"),andto thepartic-


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Languageand Nature 29ular enterprisewe call "naturalcience".For convenience, et's refertothe studyof all suchmatters s "ethnoscience".

It is also an open questionhow the conceptual esources hatenter ntothese cognitive systems relate to the semantic (including lexical)resources f thelanguage aculty.Do peopleattribute eliefs if they speaklanguagesthat have no such term, the great majority, t appears?Cansomeone lacking the terms recognize savoir faire, Schadenfreude,machismo,or whateveris expressed by the countless locutions thatchallenge ranslators?f I say thatone of the things thatconcernsme istheaverageman andhis foibles,or Joe Sixpack'spriorities, r the innertrack hatRaytheonhasonthelatestmissilecontract, oes it follow thatIbelievethat he actualworld,orsomementalmodelof mine, s constitutedof such entities as the averageman, foibles,Joe Sixpack,priorities, ndinnertracks?When the press reportsthat a comet is aimingtowardsJupiterand that lobsterfishermenareoverfishingNew Englandwaters,doesthatmeanthat he writersandreaders hink hatcomets have inten-tionsand obstersare fish?

Thesearequestionsof fact about hearchitecturef themind, mprop-erly formulated o doubt,becauseso littleis understood.If intuitions any guide,thereseemsto be a considerable apbetweenthe semantic resources of language literally interpretedandthoughtsexpressedusingthem.I am happyto speakof the sun settingover thehorizon,comets aiming directlyat Jupiter, nd waveshittingthe shore,receding,anddisappearings the wind dies.ButI'mnotawareof havingbeliefs thatcorresponditerally o the animisticand ntentional erminol-ogyIfreelyuse,orthatconflictwithanything understandbout elativityand hemotionsof molecules.Nordoes theworld,or mymentaluniverse,seemtometobepopulated y anythingikewhatI describeas things hat

concern me. Psychologists and anthropologistsexploring language-thoughtrelations e.g., the Sapir-Whorf ypothesis) ind suchproblemshardandchallenging; eadyanswersareoffered n muchof thecontem-poraryphilosophical iterature, uton grounds hatseemto me less thanpersuasive.

Infact, radicallydifferentanswersareoffered.Take anguage.DonaldDavidson 1990)writes hat"we all talkso freely about anguage,orlan-guages, hatwe tend to forgetthatthereare no suchthings n theworld;thereareonly peopleandtheirvariouswrittenand acousticalproducts.This point, obvious in itself, is nevertheless easy to forget ... ". To mostphilosophers f language, t is equallyobviousthatthereare suchthingsin the worldas languages: ndeed, "common,public languages"-Chi-nese, German,etc.-of which, some hold, we have "a partial, andpartially erroneous, grasp" (Dummett 1986). Hilary Putnam(1989,


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30 Noam Chomsky1993), amongmanyothers, akes theallegedfact to be as obvious as itsdenial s to Davidson,alongwithequallyobvious acts about hethings nthe world thatcorrespondo nounphrasesrather reely, so it seems, sothatthe worldcontainswhateverwe might referto as somethingthatinterests r bothersus, including he allegeddenotata f wordswe do notknow."5

A thirdposition is that conclusions about such mattersare rarelyobvious:answershaveto be foundcasebycase,and hequestions equiremorecarefulformulationn the firstplace.The ethnoscientist eeks todeterminewhatpeopletaketo be constituents f the world,however heymaytalkabout t. A differentnquiry eeksthe besttheoryof languageanditsuse, andthe states,processes,and structureshatenter nto it.Thequestionsarise nthesimplest ases:nameable bjects, ubstances,artifacts, ctions,and so on. I take the thing n frontof me to be a desk,but couldbe convinced hat t is a hardbed fora dwarf hatI ammisusingas a desk;that'sa matterof designer's ntentandregularuse. Fromonepointof view, I take it to be the samethingwhatever he answer, romanother ointof view,a differenthing.Factors nteringnto suchchoicesarediverseandcomplex.I takethe contentsof thecupon the desk to betea,butif informed hat t camefromthetapafterpassingthrougha tea

filteratthereservoir, conclude hat t is reallywater,nottea.Again, t isthe samethingfor me in eithercase from one pointof view, a differentthingfromanother.Some sticksI passon the roadare not a thingat all,unless t is explained o methat heywerespecifically onstructedssomekind of object,whetherby peopleor,perhaps,beavers.What s a thing,andif so whatthingit is, dependson specificconfigurations f humaninterests,ntentions, oals andactions,anobservation s old asAristotle.Itcouldbe that nsuchcasesI donot changemybeliefs about heconstit-uentsof the world as identificationhanges-that in my own variantof"folkscience", he entities hatholdup my computer ndfill thecup,andthatI passon theroad,remainas theywereindependent f theexplana-tions, whichplacethemin unexpectedrelations o designs, intentions,uses,andpurposes.As the study of the language faculty and other cognitive systemsprogresses,wemaycometo understandn whatrespectsmy picture f theworld s framed ntermsof thingsselectedand ndividuatedypropertiesof my lexicon,or even involves entitiesandrelationships escribable t15ThatPutnam ndDavidsondiffer s notentirely lear, ince Putnam oes notindicatewhathe meansby "language"whileDavidson pells out a notionmod-elled on formal anguage hat s surelynotPutnam's, houghDavidson's onclu-sion wouldseem to excludewhatever s intended. nternalistinguisticswouldalso be excludedunless we understandpeople" o include heir aculties,states,etc.


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Language and Nature 31all by the resources f the language aculty.Somesemanticproperties oseem specifically inked o language,developingaspartof it, closely inte-gratedwith its otheraspects,even representedn naturalways within tsmorphological nd syntactic tructures. ermsof languagemay indicatepositionsnbeliefsystems,whichenrich urtherhecomplexperspectivestheyafford orviewingtheworld.Someterms,particularlyhose ackinginternal elational tructure,may do littlemore han hat;notably"naturalkindterms", houghthe phrase s misleading,since they have little ifanything o do with the kinds of nature.Akeel Bilgramiobservesthatanalysisof lexicalresourcesn termsof "alinguisticagent'sperspectiveon things", resistingdubious notions of independentreference,leadsnaturally o linking the study of meaningto "such things as beliefs asmediatinghethings n theworldwithwhichwe standncausalrelations"and to the "radically local or contextual" notion of content that hedevelops n rejecting"theentirecurrentway of thinkingwhichbifurcatescontent nto wide andnarrow".These seem to me fruitfuldirections opursue. 6

The studyof semanticresourcesof the language aculty s not ethno-science, andbothenterprises, f course,areto be distinguishedromnat-uralistic nquiry nto the range of topics that naturalanguageandfolkscience addressntheirown ways. The observations a truismnthecaseof falling apples, plants turningtowardthe light, androcketsaimingtowardheheavens;herenoone expectsordinaryanguage r folkscienceto enterinto attempts o gain theoreticalunderstanding f the world,beyond heir ntuitive tarting oints. ncontrast,t is considered seriousproblem o determinewhether"mentalisticalkandmentalentities[will]eventually ose theirplace in our attempts o describeandexplaintheworld"Burge1992).The beliefthatmentalisticalkandentitieswill losetheirplace s "eliminationism"r"eliminativematerialism", hichBurgeidentifies as a majorstrandof the effort "to makephilosophyscien-tific"-perhaps wrong,but animportanthesis.

Whyit is importants unclear. f we replace"mental" y "physical"nthe thesis it loses its interest:"physicalistic alk andphysicalentities"have ong ago"lost heirplace nourattemptso describeandexplain heworld",if by "physicalistic"and "physical"we mean the notions ofcommon discourse or folk science, andby "attempts o describeandexplain he world"we mean naturalisticnquiry.Whyshouldwe expectanythingdifferentof "mentalistic alk andmentalentities"?Why, forexample,should we assumethatpsychology"seeks to refine, deepen,generalizeandsystematize ome of the statements f informed ommon

i Bilgrami, comments in Chomsky et al.9993); Bilgrami (1992). On naturalkind terms, see Bromberger(1992).


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32 NoamChomskysenseaboutpeople'smentalactivity" Burge1988),17houghchemistry,geology, andbiology have no comparableconcerns. No one expectsordinaryalkabout hingshappeningn the"physicalworld" o haveanyparticular elation o naturalisticheories; he termsbelong to differentintellectualuniverses. These facts are not taken to pose a body-bodyproblem, orhasanyoneproposed thesisof "anomalism f thephysical"to deal withthem. The sameshould, hen,be trueof such statements s"John peaksChinese"or "John ookhis umbrellabecausehe expectedrain"-though one may hope,in all cases,thatsciencemightyield someunderstandingndinsight n the domainsopened o inquiryby commonsenseperspectives.

Thereseems no basis here for anymind-bodyproblemandno reasonto questionDavidson's hesis thatthereareno psychophysicalaws thatconnectmentalandphysicalevents n anappropriatexplanatorycheme;for similarreasons, hereareno physico-physicalaws relatingordinarytalk aboutthings to the natural ciences, even if the particular ventsdescribedfall within their potential descriptive range. Distinctionsbetween mentalandotheraspects of the world,in theserespects,seemunwarranted, xcept in one respect:our theoreticalunderstanding flanguage,mind,andpeoplegenerally s so shallow,apart romlimiteddomains,that we can only use ourintuitive resources n thinkingandtalkingabout hese matters.

Itis not thatordinary iscourse ailsto talkabout heworld,orthat heparticularst describesdo notexist,or that heaccountsare ooimprecise.Rather, he categoriesused andprinciples nvokedneed not have evenloose counterpartsn naturalisticnquiry.That s trueeven of thepartsofordinary iscourse hathave a quasi-naturalisticast.Howpeopledecidewhether omethings wateror tea is of no concern o chemistry. t is nonecessary ask of biochemistryo decide at whatpointin the transitionfromsimple gasesto bacteriawe findthe "essenceof life", and if somesuchcategorizationwereimposed, hecorrespondenceo commonsensenotions would matterno more thanfor the heavens,or energy,or solid.Whether rdinary sagewouldconsiderviruses"alive" s of nointerestobiologists,whowill categorizeas they choose in termsof genes andcon-ditions underwhichthey function.Wecannot nvokeordinaryusage tojudgewhetherFranqois acob s correct n tellingus that"forthebiolo-gist, the living begins only with what was able to constitutea geneticprogram",hough"for hechemist, ncontrast,t is somewhat rbitraryomake a demarcationwheretherecan only be continuity" Jacob,1973).Similarly,the concept "humanbeing", with its curiouspropertiesof

17Burge is describing what he takes to be "psychology as it is", but the contextindicates that more is intended. On the assumption, see below p. 53f.


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Languageand Nature 33psychic continuity,does not enter the naturalsciences. The theoryofevolutionandotherpartsof biologydo tryto understandohnSmithandhis place n nature; ot,however,under hedescription human eing"or"person" s construedn ordinaryanguageandthought.Thesenotionsareinterestingor naturalanguagesemanticsandethnoscience,but notfor thebranchesof humanbiologythatseek to understandhe natureofJohnSmithandhisconspecificsorwhatdistinguisheshem romapesandplants.8

The specialsciencestoo go theirown ways.ToborrowJerryFodor'sexampleof a meanderingivererodingtsbanks, he earth ciencesdo notcare underwhat circumstances eopletakeit to be the sameriver f theflow is reversedor it is redirectedon a differentcourse,or whentheyregard omethingprojectingromthe seaas anislandora mountainwitha waterybase.The sameshouldbe expected n thecaseof suchnotionsaslanguage and belief, and termsof related semantic fields in variouslanguagesandcultural ettings.

Theparticular aturalciencesarecommonlyrecognized o be largelyartifacts nd conveniences,whichwe do notexpectto carv

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