The Character of Mind

Wolfram Hinzen,Bijoy Boruah,Nirmalangshu Mukherji

doi:10.5964/bioling.8853

Wolfram Hinzen, Bijoy Boruah + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.5964/bioling.8853

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Journal: Biolinguistics	Publication Date: Sep 26, 2011
Citations: 3	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: Durham University, University of Delhi

Abstract

Even if the human species is not the only one that has a mind, it may be the only one that knows that it does. Fascination with our own mind, with what we feel, sense, and think, lies at the heart of human nature and has unsurprisingly become a major part of scientific inquiry itself. Rigorous scientific inquiry into the character of mind has been a part of all major traditions in scientific thought, but the character of these inquiries varied across different traditions, some of which have also been essentially separate for millennia and are only being rediscovered now. Thus, the formal study of grammar was an essential ingredient in the Indian Classical tradition, leading to more than a thousand years of rich and intense discussions in linguistics and philosophy of language in the hands of Vyakaranvadis (grammarians) such as Pāṇini, Tolkappiyar, and other authors in their traditions respectively in northern and southern India (Matilal 1990). There is essentially no parallel to this in the Ancient Greek tradition, where not grammar but geometry was the entry point to science. And although Aristotle developed a model of the sentence that has proved relatively stable for two thousand years of linguistic theory (Moro 1997), the first tradition of Universal Grammar in the Western world emerged not before the 1200s in Paris (Covington 2009), where Modistic grammarians viewed grammar as a formatting principle for a species-unique kind of thought. Flourishing across much of Northern Europe by the end of the 13 th century, it eclipsed after less than a hundred years when nominalist doctrines entered the scene and logic took pride over grammar again as a meta-theoretic framework. Interestingly, a similar eclipse happened with the grammarian tradition in India as the logico-empiricist framework of the Nyayaikas (logicians) became dominant. The next tradition in scientific thinking about human grammar, namely Port Royal, emerged within Cartesian rationalism in the 17 th century, and was taken up by Noam Chomsky in the 20 th

Highlights

Even if the human species is not the only one that has a mind, it may be the only one that knows that it does
With this last tradition we associate the term ‘second cognitive revolution’, which now is little more than 50 years old. To review it was part of the goals of an international conference convened by Nirmalangshu Mukherji, Wolfram Hinzen, Funding from the grant ‘Un-Cartesian Linguistics’ (AHRC/DFG, AH/H50009X/1, to Hinzen), which went into the preparations for the conference and into the writing of this report, is gratefully acknowledged
Bringing together eminent scholars and scientists from India, Canada, Italy, the UK, and the US — coming from disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, linguistics, law, biology, and physics — the following questions were asked: What has been achieved in half a century of study of the cognitive mind? How does it connect with millennia of human effort to bring light to the structure of our mind, in different traditions with radically different emphases and cultural conditions? Are there lasting insights unifying these traditions? Is the evidential basis clear on which claims about the character of mind can rest?

Summary

Introduction

Even if the human species is not the only one that has a mind, it may be the only one that knows that it does. Is the epistemology different, and there was a more definite focus on the grammatical mind, as noted, such that grammar was viewed as playing a role in the structuring of both thought and reality.

Results

Conclusion