The Irreducibility of Linguistics to Biology

Abstract

Chomsky claims that linguistics will become part of biology and that truths about language can be given in terms of facts about the brain. While allowing that psycholinguistic structures may be objects of science, I argue that any account of language must involve more than descriptions of the states of individuals. This implies that many linguistic truths cannot be reduced to neurobiological facts, or even captured on the psychological level within Chomsky's framework. Chomsky's rebuttals to arguments of this sort are examined, but found wanting. This leads to anomalous monism and doubts about whether propositionally construed entities will find analogues in brain science.