Most of the action in linguistic theory under Chomsky’s aegis has focused on questions of how words are put together into sentences rather than on the words themselves. Fair enough: the universal hallmark of human language is its parametrically organized combinatorial structure. In linguistic systems, the individual word classes (for instance, the nouns, the verbs, the complementizers) play particular and crucial structural roles; rules and parameters directly implicate these classes. But what about the items that comprise these classes? It has been widely maintained that these individual atoms or particles of language play no central role in its core, or, to use recent terminology, in “language narrowly conceived” (Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch 2002). No distributional property of English worth its salt is dependent on whether some particular noun - let us say elephant rather than rhinoceros or gnu - appears in it. Rather, what words seem to be relevant to is the conceptual system that interfaces with language. In this latter domain, relevant to “language broadly conceived,” the difference between an elephant and a gnu really matters.

Similarly, the linguistic-theoretical study of language acquisition has focused primarily on the nature and setting of syntactic parameters rather than on the evolving character of the lexicon (e.g. Manzini & Wexler; 1987; Lightfoot 1999; Baker 2001). Again, this is no surprise. Acquisition of the combinatorial features of a language poses a classical poverty-of-the-stimulus problem, requiring the learner to extract abstract organizing principles from input structured only (or almost only) as morpheme sequences (see, particularly, Chomsky 1986).

Plato’s Problem

Plato’s Problem was expressed generally by Bertrand Russell: “How comes it that human beings, whose contacts with the world are brief and personal and limited, are nevertheless able to know as much as they do know?” The problem arises in the domain of language acquisition in that children attain infinitely more than they experience. Literally so, we shall see: they attain a productive system, a grammar, on the basis of very little experience. So there is more, much more, to language acquisition than mimicking what we hear in childhood, and there is more to it than the simple transmission of a set of words and sentences from one generation of speakers to the next. There is more to it than a reproduction of experience and, in maturity, our capacity goes well beyond what we have experienced.

Consider some subtleties that people are not consciously aware of. The verb is may be used in its full form or its reduced form: people say Kim is happy or Kim’s happy. However, certain instances of is never reduce, for example, the underlined items in Kim is happier than Tim is or I wonder what the problem is in Washington. Most people are not aware of this, but we all know subconsciously not to use the reduced form here. How did we come to this? The question arises because the eventual knowledge is richer than relevant experience. As children, we heard instances of the full form and the reduced form, but we were not instructed to avoid the reduced form in certain places; we had no access to “negative data,” information about what does not occur.

Many observers have been fascinated by the puzzle of tracing connections between Noam Chomsky’s extraordinary contributions to two quite distinct domains of modern culture. Ronald Lunsford points out that some of these parallels would exist whatever area of inquiry Chomsky had chosen for his life’s work - parallels that “arise from Chomsky’s way of thinking, rather than from the disciplines themselves” (Haley & Lunsford; 1994: 172). One critical element in his “way of thinking” manifest in both his professional and non-professional work is his commitment to rationality (a commitment summed up in the observation, “There are no arguments that I know of for irrationality” [Chomsky 1987a:22]). On a more abstract level, one finds in both his political and his non-political work a quality that Chomsky has sometimes referred to as “psychic distance.” In linguistics, “if we can establish a kind of psychic distance from the object and try to see how similar normal common characteristics really are, against the background of a possible variety that can be imagined,” we discover that “language structures really are uniform” (1988a: 151f). In politics, once we have extricated ourselves from conventional thought, we discover underlying similarities between apparent polarities - an underlying commitment to US power shared by, for example, Joseph Alsop (a Vietnam War “hawk”), and Arthur Schlesinger (a Kennedy liberal and a “dove”). The ability to achieve “psychic distance ” is actually an essential element of the ability to inquire, and to achieve scientific progress.

Introduction

Language is an immensely rich phenomenon, presenting vast challenges for the linguist, the scientist of this phenomenon. Among the most central, and most difficult, questions are ones concerning the nature of the capacity we all have to speak a language. Just what is this capacity, and how does it arise in the individual? We thus have (among many others) the two following related questions:

1. - What is the correct characterization of someone who “knows a language” (in general terms, who has command of a systematic connection between sound and meaning)?

2. - How does that systematic connection arise in the individual?

For the first of these questions, the linguist hopes to account, in an explicit way, for the speaker’s ability to put together and understand sentences, including ones new to the speaker (and often new to all speakers), and for the speaker’s ability to judge potential sentences as “acceptable” (John left) or “unacceptable” (Left John). For the second question, a particularly difficult one given how complex the capacity seems to be and how quickly it is acquired, the linguist seeks to discover what aspects of the capacity are determined by the child’s experience, and how this determination (“language learning”) takes place. For a half century, Noam Chomsky has been developing a theory of language that deals with these two questions, by positing explicit formulations of human language capacity in terms of a productive “computational” system, most of whose properties are present in advance of experience, “wired in” in the structure of the human brain. Thus, Chomsky conceives of his enterprise as part of psychology, ultimately biology.

Introduction

A major influence on Chomsky’s approach to the study of mind has come from rationalist philosophers such as Descartes. Like these thinkers, Chomsky’s work can be usefully seen in opposition to empiricist approaches to mind articulated by thinkers such as Locke. The aim of this chapter is to provide a conceptual backdrop against which one can locate some of Chomsky’s claims. I try to do this by outlining the different ways that the empiricist and rationalist traditions (actually, idealized versions of each) try to reconcile an apparent tension in epistemology (the theory of knowledge). The tension comes in trying to combine a theory of mind with a theory of truth to yield an account of how it is possible for humans to know anything, i.e. have true beliefs in some domain, especially true beliefs about the “outside world.” The two traditions endorse very different conceptions of the relation of minds to the world. However, it is possible to construct a shared conception of what the epistemological project amounts to that plausibly animates the details of the particular proposals that have been advanced. Doing this, I believe, allows for a better evaluation of the intuitions that drive these programs and thereby permits one to more fully appreciate some of Chomsky’s main philosophical proposals. In what follows, I will try to outline these general conceptions. I will then try to relate them to some of the concerns that Chomsky has raised in his linguistic and philosophical writing.

This chapter explores a very general philosophical and methodological theme in Noam Chomsky’s work - the scope and limit of scientific inquiry in the study of mind and language. It is a conspicuous fact about Chomsky that accompanying the vast and driving intellectual ambition of his program in what he conceives as the science of linguistics is a notable and explicit modesty about the extent to which he thinks he has given, indeed the extent to which one can give, scientific answers to fundamental questions. This modesty in terms of breadth of coverage is in a sense the other side of, and therefore indispensable to, the depth of what he has achieved in the area he has covered.

In his work, he seems to offer at least two different sorts of reasons for us to be made modest about ourselves as inquirers. First there is a modesty implicit in his guardedness about claiming for semantics what some other philosophers have claimed for it, and what he himself has claimed only for syntax understood in a broad sense viz., that there is in some interesting sense an explanatory theory to be offered which can be incorporated into the science of linguistics. Second, there are reasons for modesty having to do with the fact that either because of our conceptual limitations or because of faulty formulations of questions, we are in no position to give serious and detailed answers to them. The next two sections will take up each of these in turn.

Introduction

Often, philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists aiming to construct a theory of meaning for languages focus on how words are used by people to deal with the world. They might assume there is a regular way in which the word dolphin is used - that people regularly use dolphin to refer to or denote a class of aquatic beasts. And they might assume that there is a central, core use of words - using She has a pet dolphin to correctly describe some state of affairs, perhaps. If these assumptions were correct, dolphin might then be defined in terms of some regular function(s) it serves in a community of individuals who “speak the same language,” understood as “use words in the same way” (cp. Davidson 1967, Sellars 1974; contrast Chomsky 1996a, b, 2000a, Fodor 1998). These assumptions are built into technical terms: “truth (or correctness) conditions,” “functional (or conceptual) role,” etc. Because these attempts focus on communities, circumstances, things, and so on, I call them “externalist” approaches.

Externalist assumptions are wrong. Chomsky (1959, 1966, 1975, 1980, 1981a, 1986, 1995b, 1996a,b, 2000a), recalling observations that go back to Descartes (see below), repeatedly points this out. Words do sometimes get used by people in similar ways; and they do sometimes come to be related to the world. But they do neither by themselves. Similar uses and relations to the world are products of human actions, of words' free and typically creative use by humans. Because people use words for all sorts of purposes, because the use of language is a form of free action, and because there is little reason to think that there can be a science of free action, there is little reason to think that there can be a naturalistic externalist theory of meaning.

Introduction

When the South African freedom fighter Steve Biko said that “the most powerful tool in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed,” he was expressing an idea very similar to that of David Hume who observed: “'Tis therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and the most military governments, as well as to the most free and the most popular” (quoted in Chomsky 1991: 352). From the fall of the Shah of Iran to the changes in Eastern Europe or South Africa, examples abound that illustrate this thesis: a powerful group may have at its disposal all the military might that it wants, if the soldiers and officers, or even the vast majority of the population, are not willing to follow orders, it is effectively powerless. Hence, the importance of the battle of ideas and the necessity for any ruling class who wants to maintain its privileges in the long run of “regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.”

Introduction

This chapter explores Chomsky’s political morality by focusing on his ideas about the individual, the corporation, and the state. This presentation is no substitute for reading Chomsky himself. His propositions become far more convincing upon studying the historical record he has assembled, a dismaying collection which reveals how the actions and rationalizations of the ruling class are remarkably predictable (at least by the standards of any social science).

I will follow Chomsky’s approach of focusing on the United States to understand the interlocking relationships between state and private power. For more than three decades, he has relentlessly pursued the task of documenting the American political system’s effects on its own citizenry and other nations. He provides so many facts to support his claims and verify his predictions that even the reader who ultimately rejects his analysis is likely to emerge less than enthralled with most American foreign and domestic policies and more skeptical of how government officials and the media present these decisions to the public. For instance, the idea of an idealistic, naïve United States easily manipulated by ruthless, clever foreigners is a sentimental myth. Far closer to the truth is the fear Simon Bolivar expressed in 1822: “There is at the head of this great continent a very powerful country, very rich, very warlike, and capable of anything” (cited in Chomsky 1993d: 142; see also Wilson 2002).

Here’s one way this chapter could go. After defining the terms “innate” and “idea,” we say whether Chomsky thinks any ideas are innate - and if so, which ones. Unfortunately, we don't have any theoretically interesting definitions to offer; and, so far as we know, Chomsky has never said that any ideas are innate. Since saying that would make for a very short chapter, we propose to do something else. Our aim is to locate Chomsky, as he locates himself, in a rationalist tradition where talk of innate ideas has often been used to express the following view: the general character of human thought is due largely to human nature.

One can endorse this view without saying that humans have specific concepts, like t u r n i p or c a r b u r e t o r, independent of experience. Correlatively, it is important to remember that while Chomsky is a nativist about language, he does not think that specific languages are innate. Whether a child ends up speaking Japanese or English, or both, clearly depends on the child’s experience. The nativist claim is that all natural languages share core features that reflect the biology of homo sapiens. Knowing a language, like having a heart, is a reflection of our biological endowment. Just as humans have internal organs with characteristic traits, they speak languages with characteristic traits. According to Chomsky, linguistic variation is severely constrained by the mental systems that make human language possible. But this is compatible with some linguistic variation across (and within) communities, since the traits of individuals are always products of nature and nurture. Diet and exercise affect one’s heart, within a limited range of possibilities. Similarly, experience affects the course of a child’s linguistic development, within certain parameters.

I first met Noam Chomsky through a project that attempted to get the baby chimp Nim Chimpsky to “talk.” At nineteen, with the certainty of youth, I knew that I would soon be “talking to the animals.” Nim was the focus of our Columbia University research team’s Grand Experiment: could we teach human language to other animals through environmental input alone with direct instruction and reinforcement principles? Or would there prove to be aspects of human language that resisted instruction, suggesting that language is a cognitive capacity that is uniquely human and likely under biological control? Nim was affectionately named “Chimpsky” because we were testing some of Chomsky’s nativist views. To do so, we used natural sign language. Chimps cannot literally speak and cannot learn spoken language. But chimps have hands, arms, and faces and thus can, in principle, learn the silent language of Deaf people.

By the early 1970s, a surprising number of researchers had turned to learning about human language through the study of non-human apes. Noam Chomsky had stated the challenge: important parts of the grammar of human language are innate and specific to human beings alone. Key among these parts is the specific way that humans arrange words in a sentence (syntax), the ways that humans change the meanings of words by adding and taking away small meaningful parts to word stems (morphology), and the ways that a small set of meaningless sounds are arranged to produce all the words in an entire language (phonology). The human baby, Chomsky argued, is not born a “blank slate” with only the capacity to learn from direct instruction the sentences that its mother reinforces in the child’s environment, as had been one of the prevailing tenets of a famous psychologist of the time, B. F. Skinner.

Introduction

“… no great power - not even one so selfless and beneficent as the United States - has the authority or the competence to determine by force the social and political structure of Vietnam or any other country, no right to serve as international judge and executioner” (Chomsky 1971b: 86). Noam Chomsky’s positionwas articulated with a characteristic blend of irony and blunt eloquence in his 1971 lecture in honor of Bertrand Russell. It was accompanied by his affirmation that “the radical reconstruction of society must search for ways to liberate the creative impulse, not to establish new forms of authority.”

To these guiding principles of Chomsky’s political thought, a third may be added, a commitment “to penetrate the clouds of deceit and distortion and learn the truth about the world, then to organize and act to change it” (1996a,b: 131). It is both a statement of purpose and a strategy for action. It defines Chomsky’s political work - his ongoing critique of US foreign policy, and his relentless exposé of “the clouds of deceit and distortion” designed to mask it. The result is a record of historical retrieval that has fundamentally altered what we know of US foreign policy. The Chomsky files testify to the power embedded in such retrieval. To engage in retrieval is to question who we are and what we know. It is to explain why we have accepted a distortion of history that is akin to its theft. And it is to face the responsibility of change.

At the time of writing, Noam Chomsky has produced over eighty books, hundreds of articles, and thousands of speeches. He has given thousands of interviews, written countless letters, and supervised scores of theses. He has made important, sometimes groundbreaking, contributions to three areas - linguistics, philosophy of mind and human nature, and politics. He set linguistics on a successful naturalistic, biologically oriented scientific course; his theoretical contributions continue to lead the field. Like Descartes, Galileo, and Hume, and unlike the eighteenth-century philosopher Kant and the great majority of philosophers thereafter, Chomsky is both scientist and philosopher, and his philosophical work is continuous with his scientific. His science of language and incipient science of mind offer a genuine prospect of coming to a biologically based grasp of human nature and of the way it allows for human understanding and action. His political work, like both Hobbes’s and Rousseau's, seeks a foundation in a science of human nature, although with better prospects for developing such a theory - and for exploring its implications for political ideals and goals - than Hobbes’s misguided attempt to construct a causal theory of human action or Rousseau’s fanciful assays into a “state of nature.” And unlike both of them - and far too many contemporary political “theorists” - there is no sign in Chomsky’s political work that his views and critical analyses are driven by a wish for power.

Language makes us human.

Whatever we do, language is central to our lives, and the use of language underpins the study of every other discipline. Understanding language gives us insight into ourselves and a tool for the investigation of the rest of the universe. Martians and dolphins, bonobos and bees, may be just as intelligent, cute, adept at social organization, and morally worthwhile, but they don't share our language, they don't speak “human.” One of Chomsky’s achievements is to have demonstrated that, despite the easily observable richness of the world’s languages, there is really only one human language: that the complex and bewildering array of different languages surrounding us are all variations on a single theme, most of whose properties are innately given.

The scientific study of language

Linguistics is conventionally defined as the “scientific study of language” - “language” in the singular. Although its domain is usually taken to include not just the wealth of the world’s languages - Amharic, Berber, Chinese, Dutch, English, etc. - but also all possible languages, past, present, and future, for Chomsky the focus of linguistics is the study of knowledge of language, of “human.” This chapter will attempt to justify and explain this emphasis, spell out its implications, and motivate the description of his linguistics as “scientific.”