Noam Chomsky - Cartesian Linguistics

Professor of Linguistics

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cartesian Linguistics ( CL ) began as a manuscript written while Noam Chomsky was a 35-year-old fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. An early version of it was prepared for presentation as a Christian Gauss lecture on Criticism at Princeton University early in 1964. Perhaps because it proved beyond the audience, it was not delivered, and Chomsky presented a general lecture on linguistics as understood at the time. The manuscript, however, was revised and published in 1966. An intellectual tour de force, CL is not an easy text to read, but it is certainly a rewarding one. It is an unprecedented and so far unequalled linguisticphilosophical study of linguistic creativity and the nature of the mind that is able to produce it.

CL begins by describing the sort of linguistic creativity that is found with virtually every sentence produced by any person, including young children. As its subtitle (A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought) suggests it will, though, CL soon turns to focus on the kind of mind that is required to make this sort of creativity possible, and on the best way to study such a mind, and language in it. The seventeenth-century philosopher Ren Descartes figures prominently in the discussion and the books title. This is because he was among the first to recognize the importance of this ordinary form of linguistic creativity creativity exhibited by everyone, not just poets for the study of the human mind. centrality in everyday life of freedom of thought and action, and they try with their view of the human mind to speak to how this creativity is possible. For many of them and certainly for Chomsky in particular the nature of language itself as a component of the mind/brain plays a central role in the explanation.

Cartesian Linguistics has many assets. One is that it places Chomskys effort to construct a science of language in a broad historical context. It does not pretend to be a work in intellectual history; it is too brief and too selective in the individuals it discusses for that. But it does offer important insights into the works of historical figures, and uncovers and discusses often-ignored but clearly relevant historical texts. It also revitalizes a rivalry that has lasted for centuries and that in 1966 and still now continues in the cognitive sciences.

Another asset is the understanding it gives of the basic observations that lie behind Chomskys and other rationalistromantics research strategy or fundamental methodology for the study of language and mind. There are two sets of observations. One the poverty of the stimulus facts focuses on the gap between what minds obtain when they acquire a rich and structured cognitive capacity such as vision or language and the small and impoverished input that the mind receives as it develops the capacity. Another the creative aspect of language use observations focuses on the fact that people, even small children, use language in ways that are uncaused and innovative, while still appropriate. Because of its extensive discussion of linguistic creativity, Cartesian Linguistics focuses more than any of the rest of Chomskys works on the creativity facts, and explores their implications for the science of mind and the explanation of behavior and it touches on their broader implications for politics and education, and even art especially poetry. By describing a form of creativity that everyone exercises in their use of language a creativity that figures in virtually all thought and action where language figures it highlights a common phenomenon that seems to defy scientific explanation. Humans use language creatively routinely, yet this routine use seems to be an exercise of free will. If it is, it would hardly be surprising if the tools of science, which work well with determination or randomness, fail to describe or explain the use of language. Free actions are uncaused, hence not determined, yet they are nevertheless typically appropriate, hence not random. To Chomsky, as to other rationalistromantics, this suggests that if you want to construct a science of mind and language, you should avoid trying to construct a science of how people use their minds, and especially their language. Do not try to construct a science of linguistic behavior. Perhaps, in fact, given the degree to which language infuses and shapes so much of how we understand and act, do not try to construct sciences of action and behavior in general.

This is not to say that one should not try to construct a science in fact, many sciences of the mind. And it did not stop any of the rationalistromantics with the partial but puzzling exception of Descartes from trying to construct sciences of mind and language.