Chapter 4: Externalism and Internalism about Language, Meaning,

Transcription

1 Chapter 4: Externalism and Internalism about Language, Meaning, and Reference Putting aside metaphysical issues for now, let s turn to the notion of I-language that Ludlow appeals to in the beginning of his argument. The distinction between I-language and E-language we will consider was first made by Chomsky (1986). Language Externalism and Language Internalism Chomsky notes that many approaches to the study of language take language to be a system or entity independent of the properties of the mind/brain 1 of individual speakers. Saussurean structuralists, for example, considered a language to be a system of sounds and an associated system of concepts ; Bloomfield considered a language to be the totality of utterances that can be made in a speech community ; and David Lewis defines a language as a pairing of sentences and meanings (the latter taken to be set-theoretic constructions in terms of possible worlds) (p. 19). To the extent that each of these technical concepts is defined independently of the internal states of an individual speaker s mind/brain, Chomsky considers them to be instances of externalized language (E-language). Let us call the view that languages are externalized in this sense language externalism. Chomsky argues for a major shift in the scientific study of language from E-language to I-language ( internalized language ); a shift from actual or potential behavior and the products of behavior to the system of knowledge that underlies the use and understanding of language, from the study of language regarded as an externalized object to the study of the system of knowledge attained and internally represented in the mind/brain (p. 24). Let us call the view that languages are internal in this sense language internalism. Chomsky considers the shift from language externalism to language internalism to be a shift toward realism, and toward the eventual incorporation of linguistics into the rest of the natural sciences: The technical concept of E-language is a dubious one in at least two respects. In the first place... languages in this sense are not real-world objects, but are artificial, somewhat arbitrary, and perhaps not very interesting constructs. In contrast, the steady state of knowledge [of language] attained and the initial state [of the mind/brain]... are real elements of particular 1 Chomsky presumes that talk about the mind is simply, or can safely be assumed to be, talk about the brain at a certain level of abstraction. 1

2 mind/brains, aspects of the physical world, where we understand mental states and representations to be physically encoded in some manner... Statements about I-language... are true or false statements about something real and definite, about actual states of the mind/brain and their components... [T]heories of I-languages... are on a par with scientific theories in other domains; theories of E-languages, if sensible at all, have some different and more obscure status because there is no corresponding real-world object. Linguistics, conceived as the study of I- language... becomes part of psychology, ultimately biology. (pp ) While this shift or something like it has occurred within linguistics, there are still many instances of language externalism in philosophy, for example Dummett (1981) and Katz (1981), and David Lewis views mentioned above. Semantic Externalism and Semantic Internalism Chomsky further argues that semantics as the study of the relations between language and the world has no place in an internalist theory of language: The scope of the shift to a mentalist or conceptualist interpretation, to internalized rather than externalized language... also includes much of what is misleadingly called the semantics of natural language I say misleadingly because I think that much of this work is not semantics at all, if by semantics we mean the study of the relation between language and the world in particular, the study of truth and reference. Rather, this work deals with certain postulated levels of mental representation, including representations of syntactic and lexical form and others called models or pictures or discourse representations or situations, or the like... One can speak of reference or coreference with some intelligibility if one postulates a domain of mental objects associated with formal entities of language by a relation with many of the properties of reference, but all of this is internal to the theory of mental representations; it is a form of syntax. There seems no obvious sense in populating the extra-mental world with corresponding entities, nor any empirical consequence or gain in explanatory force in doing so. (pp ) For Chomsky, then, meaning, inasmuch as it can be addressed by science, is also internal. Let us call this view semantic internalism. Semantic internalism contrasts with much of philosophical semantics, in which meanings are frequently considered to be at least partially determined by factors external to the mind of the 2

3 speaker, and the referents of expressions to be physical objects in the external world; let us call this view semantic externalism. Semantic externalists like Dretske, Fodor, and Putnam (Bezuidenhout 2008) have argued that relations between words and the physical world must be taken into account in order to determine the meanings of expressions. For example, in the famous Twin Earth thought experiment, Putnam (1973, 1975) asks the reader to follow his or her intuitions about reference to the conclusion that changes in the world unaccompanied by any change in the internal state of the mind/brain of the speaker can change the meaning of an expression. 2 Putnam and Burge have argued further that social relations are crucial in determining the meaning of expressions. For example, Putnam (19??) argues that the words elm and beech may mean two different things to me, though I may not have any knowledge of the difference on any level; that is, elm and beech may both invoke the same complex of properties in my mind being a deciduous tree of a certain size, growing in a certain climate, etc. but nevertheless have different meanings. In this case, social externalists like Putnam argue, speakers must defer to other members of the language community, ones with more specialized knowledge (e.g., a botanist), to fully determine the meanings of elm and beech, and so in general do the meanings of words depend on social factors independent of the mental states of a given speaker. 2 The argument is roughly as follows: imagine another planet, Twin Earth, which is exacly like Earth in all respects except for the fact that what we call water on Earth that is, the substance with the chemical makeup H 2 O has a different makeup, X Y Z, on Twin Earth. Twin-Earthlings, however, since the planets are alike in every other respect, nonetheless call the substance water, use it in all the same ways, etc. Additionally, imagine that both Earth and Twin Earth are at a period in their histories where the the chemical composition of what each community calls water has not yet been discovered. Now imagine Earth-Bob and his Twin Earth analog, Twin-Earth-Bob, each making an utterance about water. They are both in the same mental state H 2 OandX Y Z have precisely the same role in each of their lives, thus their knowledge about each substance is identical yet nevertheless, the semantic externalist argues, their utterances refer to different substances and therefore have different meanings. The semantic externalist concludes that to determine the semantic properties of words, we have to take account of the external, causal relations that hold between words and the world (Bezuidenhout 2008). Chomsky (2000) has responded to this argument by claiming that if Earth-Bob and Twin-Earth-Bob switched places, without being aware of it, nothing would change nothing would change about their behavior, about the behavior of others toward them, etc. and thus that there is no reason to presume that when Earth-Bob and Twin-Earth-Bob utter water they mean anything different at all. Chomsky also notes that since the notion of reference or extension about which we are asked to follow our intuitions are technical notions, it makes little sense to ask about our intuitions about them about as much sense as it makes for a physicist to ask about our intuitions about the technical concept energy or temperature in physics. 3

4 There are now four possible views one might have about the location or nature of language and the determinants of meaning: Semantic Externalism Language Externalism Languages exist independently of language users; meanings are determined independently of the internal states of language users. Language Internalism Language supervenes on the internal states of individual language users; meanings are determined independently of the internal states of language users. Semantic Internalism Languages exist independently of the internal states of language users; meanings are determined by the internal states of language users. Language supervenes on the internal states of individual language users; meanings are determined by the internal states of language users. Referential Externalism and Referential Internalism Distinguishing between meaning and reference, the various positions within semantic externalism and semantic internalism can be more finely subdivided. Let us take meaning to be the function that determines the referent(s) of a given expression (intension), and reference to be the particular assignment of referent(s) (extension). Now we are faced with the further question whether the referents are inside the mind/brain of the speaker, or part of the external world. Let us call the first position referential internalism and the second referential externalism. Presupposingeitherlanguageexternalismorlanguageinternalism,thefollowing views about meaning and reference are now possible: Semantic Externalism Semantic Internalism Referential Externalism Meanings are determined independently of the internal states of language users; referents are objects in the external world. Meanings are determined by the internal states of language users; referents are objects in the external world. Referential Internalism Meanings are determined independently of the internal states of language users; referents are objects internal to the mind/brain. Meanings are determined by the internal states of language users; referents are objects internal to the mind/brain. 4

5 Chomsky s remarks about semantics above apply not only meaning in this more refined sense, but also to reference; Chomsky can therefore be considered both a semantic internalist and a referential internalist. Let us now go on to examine how Ludlow s position fits into this scheme, and whether any of Chomsky s arguments against externalism apply to it. 5