Now that I'm getting into the field of Linguistics I'm finding the famous "Linguistic Wars", especially regarding the existence of what Noam Chomsky called "universal grammar", a theory endorsed and popularized very recently in the field of Cognitive Science by Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. According to both, Chomsky and Pinker, it seems that our brain has a "language instinct", a cognitive faculty of our mind with a basic syntactic structure that lets us form language in all the world. In other words, there is inborn knowledge in us, a brain activity that comes from our genes and lets us conceptualize, create words, create relationships between words so they are meaningful, and so on.
Now, I've read The Language Instinct and it seems to me that Pinker's arguments are not only convincing, but in most cases very obvious. However, Geoffrey Sampson has argued against this position, first in Educating Eve and then, most recently, in The 'Language Instinct' Debate. I do agree with Sampson that Chomsky's own characterizations of his opponents is many times very unfair. However, as I began to read his book (second edition) about the debate, I began noticing serious flaws in Sampson's own reasoning.
I'm not a linguist, but I am a philosopher, and I do notice Sampson's flaws regarding the way he presents certain philosophers. For instance, he wants to develop an Empirical viewpoint of language development. That's ok. The problem is that he wants to base his linguistic theory on two philosophers: John Locke and Karl Popper. Now, I have never seen in my life two philosophers who are more incompatible than these two. How can he harmonize the two ... especially regarding his views on language?
Well, Sampson subscribes to the idea that our mind is like a blank slate, or, as Locke would say, a "blank sheet of paper". According to Locke, there is no knowledge prior to experience, only experience provides knowledge, and our concepts come from generalizations of experience. He contrasts this with nativist positions, which, for him, inherit their doctrine from Plato. For Plato, there is no new knowledge, but just hidden knowledge in our soul that we need to remember through the mayeuctic method. He stresses that Plato's doctrine supported dictatorship while Locke's are the basis for democracy. It's amazing how Sampson charges Chomsky of attacking strawmen, and here we find Sampson doing the same thing! If you look at Locke's theory of government, it is not strictly speaking a democratic doctrine, although he did contribute to democratic thought. Not all Platonists have favored dictatorships either: think Bernard Bolzano, Edmund Husserl, Kurt Gödel, Jerrold Katz, among others.
Anyway ... he says he also favors a more sophisticated philosophy such as that of Karl Popper. And there I find my first problem. According to Sampson (and Locke) there is no knowledge previous to experience. I don't know which part of Popper's philosophy he read, but Popper's position is the exact opposite of what he supports. Popper says very explicitly in The Self and Its Brain that we have genetic a priori knowledge. We have inborn theories in the form of expectations: such as our mental theory that there are patterns to be expected, or our mental theory when we were babies that if we cry enough, our moms will come and feed us. In fact, Popper's theory leaves no space at all for "empty white sheets" or "blank slates". In Conjectures and Refutations he states very clearly that one never begins with observation. Observation itself is determined by theory, because the theory tells us WHAT we should observe. And in other works such as Objective Knowledge, and Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem, Popper ridicules the idea that knowledge growth is like an empty bucket that is filled with sensations, a position held by John Locke. He calls this the "bucket theory of knowledge".
Popper points to the opposite way of looking at the mind. Genetically, we all come with a brain full of theories of how interpret what the body perceives. As Popper rightfully points out against phenomenalists, what we see, hear, touch, etc. are not sense-data. Contrary to what Sampson says, for Popper, we all have already an entire network of theories and we begin a process of conjectures and refutations through contrast with experience, those theories are revised, and our knowledge grows. Furthermore, when we observe and consider data relevant, it is in light of things we consider problems, and only something is a problem according to a theory that interprets it as a problem. Our mind are full of these problems since we are born. Popper has written lots of literature on this subject, not only in babies, but even from other living organisms, and from a genetic standpoint, they already see certain situations as problems and how they try to solve them.
How does Sampson reconcile this Popperian viewpoint with his Empiricist (Lockean) point of view? In fact, Popper himself was one of the causes of the end of Logical Empiricism, the philosophers who inherited the Empiricist tradition. And Popper was not the only one who pointed out the fact that we carry something in our mind previous to any kind of experience. Immanuel Kant, before David Hume, talked extensively about the forms of intuition of space and time, and the categories of understanding. Cognitive science inherited much from Kant's philosophy. Furthermore, Kant even was far more advanced than John Locke in this and other aspects. And Sampson wants to embrace Locke? It's like dismissing all important philosophical and scientific advances.
But there is something else that make me think that the Nativist viewpoint is right, and Sampson's so-called Empiricist viewpoint is wrong. He states as a factor against Nativism the fact that there are civilizations that cannot count beyond seven. Well, I can give Sampson better examples, civilizations that are not able to count beyond three or four. Obviously, says Sampson, that means that numbers beyond seven are products of culture, they are cultural creations. Well, in part this is true. I mean, depending on the culture needs or problems (using Popperian terms), mathematical knowledge will keep stalled or will develop in that culture. If you live in such a condition where there is no need to count beyond four, you won't develop mathematics. If because of economic, political or architectonic reasons you need to count beyond four, then mathematics will be developed.
However, there is a sense where numbers are not cultural creations. If you go to the Incas, the Maya, the Aztecs, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Indians, the Arabs, the Ancient Chinese, and so on, you'll find exactly the same numbers beyond four or seven! In fact, several of these discovered the notion of zero, and even some of them have discovered negative numbers and negative roots. Needless to say that their development of the field of geometry, shown extensively through their architectural accomplishments, is astoundingly the same. And this should not be a surprise!
Not only we perceive sensible objects, we are also able to establish certain formal relationships between them. This is what Husserl called "categorial intuition", specifically that act of understanding that lets us constitute these formal relationships. Also, we are able to establish essential relationships between numbers and discover their essential properties. Thanks to signs we are able to represent these formal relations in different manners. Furthermore, there must be a kind of morphology of meanings, a kind of syntax that makes us not only relate objects, but make statements about them. Statements are not given sensibly, they require acts of signification by our mind. We need a capacity to do grammar! Otherwise, we would constitute sensible objects, or objectualities (objects related formally among themselves), but would not construct sentences in such a way that we can reveal the state of affairs we're talking about. Also, formal relationships among objects is needed to relate these objects and to conceptualize them!
Now, the problem with the Empiricist (Lockean) framework is that it reduces everything to the sensibly given. Now how can you constitute formal (not sensible) relationships or formal categories if we reduce all knowledge to the sensibly given? Obviously, it is because not everything can be reduced to sensible objects and "intelligence" (a vague term Sampson uses throughout the book), it also requires an ability to carry out categorial objectualities, and also a mental ability to do grammar. There must be a minimum syntactic capacity of the mind.
I need to read the rest of his book. I've read only the first half. I hope his other arguments are convincing. Up until now, he has just shown me all the contrary of what he tried to prove.
Now, I've read The Language Instinct and it seems to me that Pinker's arguments are not only convincing, but in most cases very obvious. However, Geoffrey Sampson has argued against this position, first in Educating Eve and then, most recently, in The 'Language Instinct' Debate. I do agree with Sampson that Chomsky's own characterizations of his opponents is many times very unfair. However, as I began to read his book (second edition) about the debate, I began noticing serious flaws in Sampson's own reasoning.
I'm not a linguist, but I am a philosopher, and I do notice Sampson's flaws regarding the way he presents certain philosophers. For instance, he wants to develop an Empirical viewpoint of language development. That's ok. The problem is that he wants to base his linguistic theory on two philosophers: John Locke and Karl Popper. Now, I have never seen in my life two philosophers who are more incompatible than these two. How can he harmonize the two ... especially regarding his views on language?
Well, Sampson subscribes to the idea that our mind is like a blank slate, or, as Locke would say, a "blank sheet of paper". According to Locke, there is no knowledge prior to experience, only experience provides knowledge, and our concepts come from generalizations of experience. He contrasts this with nativist positions, which, for him, inherit their doctrine from Plato. For Plato, there is no new knowledge, but just hidden knowledge in our soul that we need to remember through the mayeuctic method. He stresses that Plato's doctrine supported dictatorship while Locke's are the basis for democracy. It's amazing how Sampson charges Chomsky of attacking strawmen, and here we find Sampson doing the same thing! If you look at Locke's theory of government, it is not strictly speaking a democratic doctrine, although he did contribute to democratic thought. Not all Platonists have favored dictatorships either: think Bernard Bolzano, Edmund Husserl, Kurt Gödel, Jerrold Katz, among others.
Anyway ... he says he also favors a more sophisticated philosophy such as that of Karl Popper. And there I find my first problem. According to Sampson (and Locke) there is no knowledge previous to experience. I don't know which part of Popper's philosophy he read, but Popper's position is the exact opposite of what he supports. Popper says very explicitly in The Self and Its Brain that we have genetic a priori knowledge. We have inborn theories in the form of expectations: such as our mental theory that there are patterns to be expected, or our mental theory when we were babies that if we cry enough, our moms will come and feed us. In fact, Popper's theory leaves no space at all for "empty white sheets" or "blank slates". In Conjectures and Refutations he states very clearly that one never begins with observation. Observation itself is determined by theory, because the theory tells us WHAT we should observe. And in other works such as Objective Knowledge, and Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem, Popper ridicules the idea that knowledge growth is like an empty bucket that is filled with sensations, a position held by John Locke. He calls this the "bucket theory of knowledge".
Popper points to the opposite way of looking at the mind. Genetically, we all come with a brain full of theories of how interpret what the body perceives. As Popper rightfully points out against phenomenalists, what we see, hear, touch, etc. are not sense-data. Contrary to what Sampson says, for Popper, we all have already an entire network of theories and we begin a process of conjectures and refutations through contrast with experience, those theories are revised, and our knowledge grows. Furthermore, when we observe and consider data relevant, it is in light of things we consider problems, and only something is a problem according to a theory that interprets it as a problem. Our mind are full of these problems since we are born. Popper has written lots of literature on this subject, not only in babies, but even from other living organisms, and from a genetic standpoint, they already see certain situations as problems and how they try to solve them.
How does Sampson reconcile this Popperian viewpoint with his Empiricist (Lockean) point of view? In fact, Popper himself was one of the causes of the end of Logical Empiricism, the philosophers who inherited the Empiricist tradition. And Popper was not the only one who pointed out the fact that we carry something in our mind previous to any kind of experience. Immanuel Kant, before David Hume, talked extensively about the forms of intuition of space and time, and the categories of understanding. Cognitive science inherited much from Kant's philosophy. Furthermore, Kant even was far more advanced than John Locke in this and other aspects. And Sampson wants to embrace Locke? It's like dismissing all important philosophical and scientific advances.
But there is something else that make me think that the Nativist viewpoint is right, and Sampson's so-called Empiricist viewpoint is wrong. He states as a factor against Nativism the fact that there are civilizations that cannot count beyond seven. Well, I can give Sampson better examples, civilizations that are not able to count beyond three or four. Obviously, says Sampson, that means that numbers beyond seven are products of culture, they are cultural creations. Well, in part this is true. I mean, depending on the culture needs or problems (using Popperian terms), mathematical knowledge will keep stalled or will develop in that culture. If you live in such a condition where there is no need to count beyond four, you won't develop mathematics. If because of economic, political or architectonic reasons you need to count beyond four, then mathematics will be developed.
However, there is a sense where numbers are not cultural creations. If you go to the Incas, the Maya, the Aztecs, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Indians, the Arabs, the Ancient Chinese, and so on, you'll find exactly the same numbers beyond four or seven! In fact, several of these discovered the notion of zero, and even some of them have discovered negative numbers and negative roots. Needless to say that their development of the field of geometry, shown extensively through their architectural accomplishments, is astoundingly the same. And this should not be a surprise!
Not only we perceive sensible objects, we are also able to establish certain formal relationships between them. This is what Husserl called "categorial intuition", specifically that act of understanding that lets us constitute these formal relationships. Also, we are able to establish essential relationships between numbers and discover their essential properties. Thanks to signs we are able to represent these formal relations in different manners. Furthermore, there must be a kind of morphology of meanings, a kind of syntax that makes us not only relate objects, but make statements about them. Statements are not given sensibly, they require acts of signification by our mind. We need a capacity to do grammar! Otherwise, we would constitute sensible objects, or objectualities (objects related formally among themselves), but would not construct sentences in such a way that we can reveal the state of affairs we're talking about. Also, formal relationships among objects is needed to relate these objects and to conceptualize them!
Now, the problem with the Empiricist (Lockean) framework is that it reduces everything to the sensibly given. Now how can you constitute formal (not sensible) relationships or formal categories if we reduce all knowledge to the sensibly given? Obviously, it is because not everything can be reduced to sensible objects and "intelligence" (a vague term Sampson uses throughout the book), it also requires an ability to carry out categorial objectualities, and also a mental ability to do grammar. There must be a minimum syntactic capacity of the mind.
I need to read the rest of his book. I've read only the first half. I hope his other arguments are convincing. Up until now, he has just shown me all the contrary of what he tried to prove.
