Language and the mind

Abstract

‘We may usefully think of the language faculty, the number faculty, and others, as “mental organs”, analogous to the heart or the visual system or the system of motor coordination and planning. There appears to be no clear demarcation line between physical organs, perceptual and motor systems, and cognitive faculties in the respects in question.’ (N. Chomsky, Rules and representations , p. 39.) I shall argue that the view thus expressed is open to philosophical criticism that is not adequately rebutted by the lengthy philosophical discussion in Rules and representations . The notion of a mental structure appears to involve a philosophical confusion, one that is sometimes nicknamed the ‘hardware-software fallacy’; but this nickname is unfortunate since the postulated structures appear to be intended to be too ghostly to be hardware and too concrete to be software. Philosophical criticism of the notion of a mental structure does not imply that there cannot be illuminating structural descriptions assignable by grammar to linguistic expressions. But it concerns the characterization of the appropriate vehicle to embody the capacities that are expressed in linguistic performance, and thus the relation between mind and body. If the role of linguistics, like the role of psychology, is described in a way that is free of philosophically inappropriate analogy, then the discipline of linguistics can indeed be regarded as a branch of psychology; for language is the paradigm expression of mind.