James McGilvray - Chomsky: Language, Mind and Politics

Table of Contents

Key Contemporary Thinkers

Published:

Jeremy Ahearne, Michel de Certeau

Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 19291989

Michael Caesar, Umberto Eco

M. J. Cain, Fodor

Filipe Carreira da Silva, G. H. Mead

Rosemary Cowan, Cornel West

George Crowder, Isaiah Berlin

Gareth Dale, Karl Polanyi

Oliver Davis, Rancire

Maximilian de Gaynesford, John McDowell

Reidar Andreas Due, Deleuze

Eric Dunning, Norbert Elias

Matthew Elton, Daniel Dennett

Chris Fleming, Rene Girard

Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir

Andrew Gamble, Hayek

Neil Gascoigne, Richard Rorty

Nigel Gibson, Fanon

Graeme Gilloch, Walter Benjamin

Karen Green, Dummett

Espen Hammer, Stanley Cavell

Christina Howells, Derrida

Fred Inglis, Clifford Geertz

Simon Jarvis, Adorno

Sarah Kay, iek

S. K. Keltner, Kristeva

Valerie Kennedy, Edward Said

Chandran Kukathas and Philip Pettit, Rawls

Moya Lloyd, Judith Butler

James McGilvray, Chomsky

Lois McNay, Foucault

Dermot Moran, Edmund Husserl

Michael Moriarty, Roland Barthes

Stephen Morton, Gayatri Spivak

Harold W. Noonan, Frege

James O'Shea, Wilfrid Sellars

William Outhwaite, Habermas, 2nd Edition

Kari Palonen, Quentin Skinner

Herman Paul, Hayden White

Ed Pluth, Badiou

John Preston, Feyerabend

Chris Rojek, Stuart Hall

William Scheuerman, Morgenthau

Severin Schroeder, Wittgenstein

Susan Sellers, Hlne Cixous

Wes Sharrock and Rupert Read, Kuhn

David Silverman, Harvey Sacks

Dennis Smith, Zygmunt Bauman

James Smith, Terry Eagleton

Nicholas H. Smith, Charles Taylor

Felix Stalder, Manuel Castells

Geoffrey Stokes, Popper

Georgia Warnke, Gadamer

James Williams, Lyotard

Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick

Copyright James McGilvray 2014

The right of James McGilvray to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2014 by Polity Press

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Preface

Unlike many second editions, this book is substantially rewritten. I rewrote it to emphasize two things. First, I emphasize here much more than I did in the earlier edition Chomsky's view that the science of language should be and in the case of his work, is a natural science. He does not study language in the way the sociolinguist, almost every philosopher, and most psychologists and computational modelers do as language in use, a form of human behavior. He instead uses the methods of the natural scientist, and treats language as a biological organ, a biophysical system in the human head (and human head alone) that like any other biologically based organ grows and develops automatically, given appropriate input.

Second, I emphasize the nature of natural science methods, and explain why and how language is best studied scientifically by respecting the goals of these methods. Because of this, a much larger part of this version than of the last deals with what philosophers call epistemology, and specifically, to a branch of this form of study found in the philosophy of science.

And new to this edition, I add a glossary of some of the technical terms in Chomsky's linguistics. It appears at the end of the main text.

As in the earlier edition, though, I continue to emphasize the difference between the kind of understanding of the world afforded us by commonsense understanding and that offered by natural science. Chomsky's political work is found in the commonsense domain, his study of language in the scientific. And again as in the earlier edition, I suggest a way in which these two aspects of his work can be related.

I am grateful to many for discussion, criticism, and insight, but particularly to Prof. Chomsky himself. I have enjoyed many interchanges with him and benefitted greatly from discussion, including that which appears in print in a volume called The Science of Language, hereafter designated as C&M. I am also very grateful for critical comments and suggestions from readers for Polity, for the patience and encouragement of Polity's Senior Commissioning Editor, Emma Hutchinson, and for the careful and clarifying attention to the text by my copy editor, Fiona Sewell. Finally, I thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for invaluable financial support used in the preparation and writing of this work.

Errors in the text that remain are entirely my responsibility.

Introduction

This book is an introduction to Chomsky's work in linguistics, politics, and the philosophies of mind and language. I have tried to make the material in it accessible to anyone willing to read carefully and think about the text. But it will require attention and thought. There are several reasons for this.

Because Chomsky's work questions generally received assumptions about the nature of language, the understanding of the human mind, the status of social organizations and their justification, the sciences of language and mind, limitations on the human mind, the nature of biological evolution, the status of science and its form of understanding, and the concept of human nature and its needs, no one should expect that understanding Chomsky's views will be easy.

Further, it is not enough in an introduction to Chomsky's work just to outline his views on topics like these. In order to actually understand what he is up to, you must also understand why he adopts the views that he does. That requires investigating his basic assumptions and why he maintains them what justification they have, if any. He has tried in various ways to help his reading audiences do this. Perhaps the most successful of those ways is found in his contrast between what he calls the rationalist approach to the study of mind and the empiricist one. That contrast is explained in detail in the text. He places his work as a scientist in the rationalist camp and, ironically, points out that the empiricists are not empirical scientists in their attempts to understand the mind, while the rationalists are. I will explain why and, like Chomsky, will make historical references to figures in both the rationalist (especially Ren Descartes) and empiricist traditions. But judging by the reactions and decisions even of many of those who claim to offer sciences of language and mind, it can be difficult to abandon the empiricist view. It is for many the default approach.