Chomsky's Language and Mind

Abstract

Noam Chomsky's Beckman Lectures, delivered at Berkeley in 1967, have been published as Language and Mind. The text makes a good introduction for the philosopher to Chomsky's linguistic theories and their impact on philosophy and psychology. He begins: “In these lectures, I would like to focus attention on the question, What contribution can the study of language make to our understanding of human nature”?

The Creative Aspect of Language Use and the Implications for Linguistic Science

“…Though one possibility of dispelling the mystery, still as remote today to pursue seriously as it was when Descartes suggested it, is to postulate a 'thinking substance', a new aspect of mind. As Bracken (1970a) explains, the Cartesians saw no way of extending their physical explanations to cover mental phenomena, and so it was suggested that a new principle, the 'creative' principle, must be added to the vocabulary of science. This is on the analogy of the postulation of the then new principle of gravity: The occult qualities of gravity were methodologically objectionable to both the Cartesians and to Newton but they accepted it "largely because the powerful mathematical model Newton employed carried against all a priori objections" (ibid., 237).…”

“…Today, Chomsky sees generative linguistics as reviving the Port-Royal efforts to provide a mathematical model of the mind that would take some steps towards an account of the essence of mind, but now with a more restricted subject matter and armed with modern mathematical tools such as those provided by Alan Turing and others (cf. Bracken 1970aBracken , 1970bBracken , 1983.…”