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Linguistics, Psychology and the Scientific Study of Language

M.J. Cain

Oxford Brookes University

Harcourt Hill Campus

Oxford

OX2 9AT

United Kingdom

Abstract

In this paper I address the issue of the subject matter of linguistics. According to the

prominent Chomskyan view linguistics is the study of the language faculty, a

component of the mind-brain, and is therefore a branch of cognitive psychology. In

his recent book Ignorance of Language Michael Devitt attacks this psychologistic

conception of linguistics. I argue that the prominent Chomskyan objections to

Devitt’s position are not decisive as they stand. However, Devitt’s position should

ultimately be rejected as there is nothing outside of the mind of a typical speaker that

could serve to fix determinate syntactic rules of her language or constitute the

supervenience base of her connection to any such rules.

1. Introduction

It is commonplace to characterise linguistics as the scientific study of language. But

such a characterisation raises a question as to the nature of that science: is linguistics a

branch of psychology, a social science or something more akin to mathematics in

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being concerned with abstract objects? According to Noam Chomsky (1965, 1981,

1986, 2000) linguistics is the study of a particular component of the mind-brain

(namely, the language faculty) and, hence, is a branch of cognitive psychology.

Several prominent philosophers1 have explicitly taken issue with Chomsky’s

psychologistic conception of language and linguistics. In his recent book Ignorance of

Language Michael Devitt (2006a) has made a significant addition to this literature

and in so doing has presented a detailed exposition and defence of a view of language

and its study that is inchoate in the views of many philosophers and cognitive

scientists. In this paper my aim is to defend a broadly Chomskyan psychologistic

conception of linguistics and language against Devitt’s attack.

2. Devitt’s conception of language and linguistics

In Ignorance of Language, echoing earlier work,2 Devitt argues that linguistics is the

study of linguistic reality. This linguistic reality has to do with the physical symbols

(in the form of sounds or marks) actually and potentially produced by speakers of a

target language. Linguistics describes these symbols in terms of such properties as

being a noun, being a verb, being co-referential with some other symbol, being c-

commanded, and so on. That symbols have these properties is bound up with the fact

that they are governed by rules, that they fit into a structure of rules. Devitt labels

such rules ‘structure rules’.

For Devitt the structure rules of a given language need not be represented or

embodied in the minds of individuals who speak that language and so need not play

                                                                                                               Notes

1 For example, Katz (1984) and Soames (1984).

2 Devitt and Sterelny (1987) and Devitt (2003).

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any role in the processing that is causally implicated in the production of the symbols

that are governed by the structure rules. Any rules that are represented or embodied in

the mind Devitt labels ‘processing rules’. All that is required of any processing rules

is that they support a competence that respects the structure rules.

Devitt describes Chomsky’s conception of the task of linguistics as that of

characterising the processing rules existing in the minds of the speakers of the target

language. This is because he identifies language with the processing rules as there is

nothing else for language to be. Devitt takes issue with this: a language is not to be

confused with the processing rules in the minds of the speakers of that language so

that the relevant rules are structure rules. That is not to deny, concedes Devitt, that

linguistic reality is partly a product of facts about the mind (in addition to

environmental facts). Thus, there is a supervenience relationship that the mental

enters into. But the supervenience base of the linguistic properties of symbols (the

output of competence) may well include psychological properties other than those that

Chomsky envisages.3

In a nutshell, with respect to language there is the study of what we do and there is

the study of how we do it. Both may appeal to rules but the rules may well be

divergent. Linguistics is the study of the former, namely, linguistic reality. This is

what linguists do regardless of what they say or think. So, Devitt is not proposing a

rejection of all the achievements of linguistic theory – just a reconception of the

subject matter of those achievements.

All of this is captured in three numbered distinctions that Devitt explicitly states:

                                                                                                               3 Devitt means psychological properties that are not to do with the state of the language faculty as

conceived by Chomsky, for example, properties relating to speakers’ propositional attitudes.

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1 Distinguish the theory of competence from the theory of its

outputs/products or inputs. (2006a, 17)

2 Distinguish the structure rules governing the outputs of competence from

the processing rules governing the exercise of the competence. (2006a, 18)

3 Distinguish the respecting of structure rules by processing rules from the

inclusion of structure rules among processing rules. (2006a, 22)

To motivate this picture of linguistics and language Devitt produces several

analogies including those of horse-shoe manufacture, logic machines, chess and the

bee dance. I shall restrict my discussion to the third and fourth of these as I think they

are the most significant and illuminating. The case of the bee dance is Devitt’s

favourite analogy and the one that he places the most emphasis upon. He places less

emphasis on chess. Here his primary concern is not to argue that language resembles

chess to the extent that figures such as Saussure have argued but, rather, to motivate

the idea that there is a distinction between structure and processing rules.

Nevertheless, for reasons that will become clear, there is much to be gained from

examining the relationship between chess and language as it will enable us to

determine the plausibility of the claim that the structure-processing rule distinction

applies to the latter.

Consider chess. Chess moves are the output of the chess player. They are physical

and are governed by a network of rules in virtue of which they have the chess

properties that they have. The rules of chess are structure rules and in order to be

competent in chess one must make moves that respect these rules. Answering the

question of how the chess player is able to make moves that respect the structure rules

is to produce a theory of competence. It may well be that rules are involved here,

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rules that are represented or embodied in the chess player’s mind so as to play a

causal role in the production of outputs that constitute exercises of the competence.

Any such rules are processing rules and need not be the same as the structure rules. So

the study of chess is the study of physical moves and the structure rules governing

those moves and the study of the competence of the chess player, of how they are able

to play chess, is a separate psychological enterprise.

Now consider the bee dance. Bees engage in a waggle dance to communicate the

direction and distance of a food source from their hive and so have a particular

competence. Exercises of this competence are physical events that are governed by

certain structure rules. According to Devitt these structure rules were uncovered by

Karl von Frisch and he provides the following quote in order to describe one such

rule:

To convey the direction of a food source, the bee varies the angle the waggling

run makes with an imaginary line running straight up and down . . . If you draw a

line connecting the beehive and the food source, and another line connecting the

hive and the spot on the horizon just beneath the sun, the angle formed by the two

lines is the same as the angle of the waggling run to the imaginary vertical line.

(Frank 1997, 82. Quoted in Devitt 2006a, 20)

The question arises as to how the bees do what they do, of how they are able to

behave in a way that respects the structure rules. This, Devitt argues, is a different

question entirely from that of the identity of the structure rules and is a matter of some

mystery.

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3. Devitt’s Chomskyan critics

Devitt’s critique of the psychological conception of linguistics has provoked a flurry

of criticism from philosophers sympathetic to Chomsky’s work. My general view of

that body of criticism is that it reflects a deep-seated commitment to a Chomskyan I-

Language view of language,4 a commitment that is so deeply entrenched as to prevent

a full engagement with Devitt’s arguments. To be more successful the Chomskyan

must engage in a non-dismissive way with an alternative view of language which

animates the views held by many theorists operating in a wide range of disciplines.

The alternative view of language that I have in mind represents language as a social

entity. What I aim to establish in this section is that the social conception cannot be

dismissed out of hand and can be utilised to deflect many of the criticisms directed at

Devitt.

One prominent line of objection to Devitt is that he has misrepresented the

Chomskyan position and that once this is corrected for it turns out that he is saying

nothing that conflicts with Chomsky. For example, in claiming that Chomsky fails to

appreciate the difference between structure and processing rules Devitt overlooks the

competence-performance distinction and the fact that Chomsky is explicitly

concerned with competence rather than performance. The upshot of this, argues Peter

Slezack (2009), is that Devitt has missed his target altogether and all he has done is

restate the competence-performance distinction in different terms. John Collins

(2007), (2008a) makes a similar point when he argues that the linguistic processing

executed by performance systems respects the rules of an individual’s language but

                                                                                                               4 Where the ‘I’ in ‘I-Language’ stands for ‘internal’, ‘individualistic’ and ‘intensional’. Chomsky

(1986) contrasts I-Language approaches with E-language approaches where the ‘E’ stands for

‘external’ and ‘extensional’.

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that that respect relationship is internal to the mind. The concern of the linguist is not

with performance but with the internal rules that performance respects. To question

the psychological nature of this enterprise is to operate with an unduly restrictive

notion of psychology and to question whether that enterprise is correctly

characterised as linguistics is to do little more than raise a verbal quibble.

In a similar vein Guy Longworth (2009) argues that the differences between

Chomsky and Devitt are not as substantial as they first seem as both of them are

right on a key point: Devitt with respect to the claim that linguistics is concerned

with language and Chomsky with respect to the claim that linguistics is concerned

with competence. That both can be right on these points is due to the fact that there

is a relationship of mutual determination between competence and language (where

this is a relationship of supervenience with neither of the relata being privileged

over the other). That there is this relationship of mutual determination is something

that Devitt is himself committed to in virtue of his invocation of the respect

constraint. But the upshot of this is not all that favourable to Devitt as it implies that

the dispute is a terminological one and he is being ‘pedantic’ in insisting that the

subject matter of linguistics is language.

As I have already indicated, there is a prominent view about language according

to which a language is a social entity constituted by a battery of social conventions.

Although that social entity at least partly inherits its nature from the minds of

individuals who speak the language, it is something over and above the mind of any

one individual. In learning a language an individual is inducted into a network of

social conventions that exist independently of her and the success of that induction

process is not an all or nothing affair so that knowing or mastering a language comes

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in degrees.5 When developed in a naturalistic manner this view portrays language as

being open to a rigorous, systematic study within the framework of the social

sciences.

Contrary to the suggestion of Collins (2008c) the kind of social view that I have

in mind does not completely sever the connection between the linguistic and the

psychological and it certainly doesn’t conceive of linguistic properties as being

intrinsic properties of utterances. The point is that the linguistic properties of any

individual’s language and/or utterances do not exhaustively supervene on her

psychological state. In other words, an individual is carried along by the community

to which she belongs. This doesn’t render the psychological linguistically irrelevant;

one only has social facts where one has a group of minded individual’s appropriately

interacting with one another. The key point is that on this model facts about an

individual’s language go beyond facts about her mind considered in isolation from the

community to which she belongs. Thus, Collins is mistaken when he writes as if the

choice is between thinking in I-Language terms and thinking that the psychological

plays no role in grounding the linguistic.

Devitt explicitly commits himself to this social view of language in Ignorance of

Language and in an earlier work (Devitt and Sterelny, 1987) where he describes

linguistics as a social science. The prominent way in which the social view manifests

itself in Devitt’s work is in his claim that social conventions have an important role in

language. For example, he writes:

                                                                                                               5 So described, this view would be amenable to a wide range of philosophers including Dummett

(1993), McDowell (1998), Lewis (1969), (1975), Sellars (1956), Brandom (1994) and Millikan (2003).

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Wherever some outputs of a community of organisms form a representational

system it is appropriate to ask in virtue of what those outputs have their

representational properties. . . . And with human languages, although the appeal

may be partly to what is innate, the oft-noted arbitrariness of language shows that

the appeal must be to largely what is conventional in a community. So it would

be bad news for my linguistic realism if there were not the conventions this

requires. (2008a, 216-7)

As one might expect from this, Devitt does draw on the social view of language in

responding to some of his critics (for example, Smith (2006), Rattan (2006),

Longworth (2009) and Collins (2008b)). However, I think that a more robust and

systematic response to the criticisms described above might be made utilizing the

social view. For example, the endorsement of the social view of language would

enable Devitt to assert, against Slezack (2009) and Collins (2007), (2008a), that the

structure rules of an individual’s language reside within the social domain and are

therefore independent of any state of the language faculty that constitutes her

linguistic competence. Moreover, it would enable Devitt to respond to Longworth’s

(2009) objection by denying the existence of the mutual determination relationship

that he describes. For, if language is a social phenomenon constituted by a network of

social conventions then it won’t be the case that the structure rules of an

individual’s language supervene on the state of her language faculty or adjacent

performance systems, the respect relationship notwithstanding. Rather, a given

battery of processing rules and/or a particular state of the language faculty could

reside in the mind-brain of distinct individuals who spoke different languages.

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An endorsement of the social view of language would also provide ammunition

for dealing with some further Chomskyan objections. Longworth (2009) criticises a

non-psychological approach to the study of language as it could not be directly

incorporated into the rest of psychology/cognitive science and could only be

incorporated via a dog-leg move. The idea seems to be that linguistics would be an

isolated ‘science’. Collins (2008a) presents a related objection.6 In this context he is

prepared to follow Devitt in viewing linguistic expressions as external to the mind in

the form of noises and marks on paper and to accept that such entities have many

relational properties. However, he argues, such properties are without interest to the

scientific study of language as they do not explain anything. Consequently, without a

concern with psychology the study of language could only group together and

distinguish between phenomena in an arbitrary or unprincipled way.

Armed with the social view of language Devitt could respond to Longworth

(2009) by questioning the need for linguistics to be directly incorporated into

cognitive science. The absence of such a direct incorporation wouldn’t leave

linguistics isolated but would open up the prospects of its being incorporated into the

social sciences. With respect to Collins (2008a), Devitt could argue that the relevant

external properties are far from being arbitrary, uninteresting and bereft of

explanatory power. On the contrary, they have exactly the same status, interest and

explanatory power as properties recognised within the social sciences in general.

Thus, if Collins were to push his point he would be in danger of adopting a dismissive

attitude to the social sciences in general. Collins (2007), (2008a) also argues that it is

a matter of choice that linguists study what he calls linguistic cognition. But an upshot

of the social view is that whatever the results of pursuing that choice are they

                                                                                                               6 Antony (2008) also gestures towards this objection.

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inevitably fall short of delivering a full account of the workings of language. To say

this is not merely to say that linguistics pursued in the Chomskyan framework is

limited with respect to what it can tell us about language. Rather, the point is that in

focusing one’s attention on linguistic cognition one turns away from the phenomena

that constitute the rules and principles that lie at the heart of language.

Of course Devitt’s Chomskyan critics would have no truck with the social view of

language and so would be unmoved by my attempts to defend Devitt against their

objections.7 Collins would no doubt dismiss the social view as an expression of a folk

view of language or philosophical prejudice and argue that science should, and

generally does, leave behind both the folk and philosophers. The problem with this is

that the social view of language is hardly restricted to the folk and the philosophers.

Whatever the successes of Chomskyan linguistics the fact is that is has become

somewhat marginalised within the cognitive scientific study of language and its

acquisition8 where a wide range of approaches sit quite happily with a more social

view as to the nature of language.9

                                                                                                               7 Perhaps Longworth is an exception here as – despite what I have said about the potential to utilise the

social view of language in responding to his criticisms of Devitt – in his (2007) he commits himself to

linguistics having a subject matter external to the mind.

8 In a recent survey of contemporary approaches to language acquisition James Russell (2004, vii)

writes ‘developmental psychologists . . . seem to regard the Chomskyan approach as something to be

shunned; a kind of scholasticism with implausible, untestable, and inappropriate scientific pretensions.’

It should be noted that Russell himself does not share this hostility to the Chomskyan approach.

9 Consider, for example, connectionist (Elman et al, 1996), contextualist (Clark, 2009), pragmatist

(Tomasello, 2003) and theory-theory (Gopnik, 2003) approaches.

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Here it might be objected10 that Devitt’s concern is with generative linguistics

rather than with the study of language per se and that approaches to the study of

language that do not follow Chomsky’s lead neither aim nor succeed to fulfill the

goals of the generative approach. Hence, the marginalization of Chomskyan work is

besides the point and merely reflects a concern with alternative issues relating to

language. I’m not convinced by this objection. Most of the cognitive scientists that I

have referred to would regard themselves as offering a genuine alternative to

Chomskyan work and as being just as concerned with core questions as to the nature

of language and language acquisition. That is not to say that they offer a superior

answer to such questions. Rather, my point is that the existence and prominence of

such work undermines the accusation that only those in thrall to commonsense or ill-

informed philosophical prejudice could question the Chomskyan view of language.

Chomskyans have engaged with the social conception of language. A standard

objection is that when the social conception of language is adopted a wide range of

social, political and normative factors come into play with the consequence that the

study of language becomes an unworkable study of everything (Chomsky, 2000;

Collins, 2008c; McGilvray, 1999). My reply is that the success of the social sciences

threatens to undermine this objection. Social scientists do make progress in a

discipline that talks of social groups, societies, social institutions, social practices and

customs where the phenomena involved are very much intertwined and where distinct

groups, institutions, practices and customs overlap with one another. Moreover, such

social phenomena are recognised by developmental psychologists who seek to

understand how the developing child orientates herself to such social phenomena so

as to become a fully-fledged member of the social domain. Collins (2008c) accuses

                                                                                                               10 As it was by an anonymous reviewer for this journal.

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Devitt of having a difficulty in explaining how an individual orientates herself to an

external language as if there being such a question is a problem in itself. It’s not clear

why Devitt can’t answer that this position is typical in developmental psychology

and constitutes a research agenda rather than a mystery which sinks the social view of

language.

I would also add that one cannot reasonably deny that there are social phenomena

and that one of the key elements of an individual’s psychological development

involves a process of socialisation, one of coming to grasp the norms of various social

groups to which one is being inducted. Many developmental psychologists would

think of language and its acquisition in similar terms. To adopt such a view isn’t to

trivialise language and its acquisition, contrary to what Antony (2008) suggests when

she admonishes those who treat language like rules of etiquette. Her point seems to be

that the study of etiquette is a trivial study so that it would trivialise language to think

of it in analogous terms. But I don’t agree that endorsing the analogy would trivialise

linguistics. This is because the triviality of any study of etiquette is a product of the

triviality of rules of etiquette, a triviality that hardly extends to all socially grounded

rules.

Another recurring Chomskyan objection to any view of language as being

external to the individual is that language so conceived lacks explanatory power and

so is an unjustified postulation (Collins, 2008c). The obvious response to this charge –

one that Devitt (2008a) makes – is that the postulation of an external language

explains communication, something that is otherwise mysterious. Neither Collins

(2008c) or Ludlow (2006) are impressed by such a claim. They both argue that

language is often used for non-communicative purposes, that people who speak the

same language (viewed from an external perspective) often fail to communicate and

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that communication often takes place between people who speak different languages

using non-linguistic means. However, what Collins and Ludlow say here strikes me as

a gross exaggeration. It is hardly credible to deny that a shared language is central to

much of our communicative activity and enables the easy communication of complex

and precise messages that would otherwise be extremely difficult if not impossible to

communicate.

Pietroski (2008) also appeals to the explanatory superiority of the Chomskyan

approach. For example, he says it can explain why we see ambiguity where we do and

can’t see it where we don’t. Consider the sentence ‘The doctor called the lawyer

from Texas’. We can understand this as saying that the lawyer is from Texas or,

alternatively, that the call was made from Texas. But we can’t understand it as saying

that the doctor was from Texas. This is to be explained in psychological terms and not

by reference to any external entity. Once again, I’m not convinced. What is to stop

Devitt from saying that it’s a fact about English (conceived as a social entity) that

such sentences are ambiguous in the way that they are and that the rules of English

explain this just as the rules of chess explain why certain moves are legal and others

not? Thus, if an individual understands English then she will respect those rules so

making the corresponding judgements relating to potential meaning. If, performance

issues aside, she didn’t make such judgements then she wouldn’t be competent in

English. And, as Devitt (2008c) suggests, this doesn’t rule out psychological

explanations appealing to learning constraints as to why certain mistakes are made

and others are not made in the course of language development. I suggest that a

parallel defence could be made in response to any charge that the social view was

explanatorily inert: either socially grounded rules could be invoked to explain the

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target fact or the fact could be regarded as involving an individual’s developing

psychologically so as to orientate herself to a social phenomenon.

What I have been arguing in the this section is that the prominent Chomskyan

objections to Devitt are not decisive as they stand as there is a ready response to them

if one utilises the view of language as a social phenomenon, a view that Devitt

himself endorses. However, this is not to say that I agree with Devitt in rejecting the

psychologistic conception of language. For when we consider the details of Devitt’s

actual argument it becomes difficult to sustain the social view of language in relation

to syntax, at least if one is enthusiastic about the syntactic apparatus developed by

Chomsky and his followers. Hence, my charge against Devitt’s critics is that by

adopting a dismissive attitude towards non-Chomskyan conceptions of language they

have failed to block a route of escape from their objections, one that would appear

attractive to the majority of philosophers and many cognitive scientists. In the

remainder of this paper I will attempt to block this route of escape.

4. Evaluating Devitt’s arguments

I think that Devitt is broadly right about chess. There is a distinction between

structure rules (conceived as external to the individual chess player’s psychology) and

processing rules and the processing rules that underlie the competence of chess

players need not coincide with the structure rules of chess.11 That this is the case

                                                                                                               11 For ease of exposition I will understand the term ‘processing rules’ in this context to cover both the

rules directly involved in the psychological processing that takes place when an individual engages in a

game of chess and any internally represented rules lying behind those processing rules. These latter

rules would be the analogue of the rules that Chomskyans identify with linguistic competence. My

point is that in the chess case both these collections of rules are independent of the rules of chess which

are external to the mind of the individual chess player.

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presupposes that there is a fact of the matter as to the identity of the structure rules

that has sufficient independence from the psychological state of individual chess

players. It is a familiar point that the rules that govern a system or which it respects

(to use Devitt’s terminology) are underdetermined by its actual and potential physical

output. For, if a particular body of rules fits a system’s output then there will be a

whole battery of non-equivalent bodies of rules that equally fit its output (Quine,

1972). The consequence of this is that chess players must somehow be connected to

the rules of chess in a way that they are not connected to all distinct yet

extensionally equivalent bodies of rules. But if there is such a connection that

privileges the rules of chess then that connection must have a supervenience base.

In short then, Devitt’s claims about chess presuppose that the following two

conditions are satisfied:

1 That chess has determinate rules that are independent of the psychology of a

typical individual player of the game.

2 That the individuals that we ordinarily regard as competent chess players are

appropriately related to the rules mentioned in condition 1 so that what they

do counts as respecting the rules of chess rather than any extensionally

equivalent body of rules.

In virtue of what are these two conditions satisfied? Here is a sketch of an answer.

With respect to condition 1 the salient point is that chess is a human invention. The

invention of chess involved an individual or group of individuals setting out to create

a game governed by a determinate collection of rules. They decided that their game

was to be governed by a particular body of rules and so pinned down the rules of the

game. In this way the inventors acted as legislators determining what moves future

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players could and could not make when playing the game. These decisions were

recorded in a written form so cementing their significance and providing a resource

to settle future disputes and aid the teaching and learning of the game.12

Now consider condition 2. Individuals outside of the legislative body could

become connected to the rules of chess by a number of distinct means. One such

means can be described as follows. An individual sees some of her fellows playing

chess and forms a desire or intention to master and play that game, that is, the game

that she can see being played. She asks what the rules of the game are and as the

players have conscious knowledge of them she is reliably informed as to their

identity. Thus, she acquires a collection of true beliefs as to the identity of the rules

of chess, beliefs that enable her to form specific intentions when she attempts to play

chess. These intentions are specific in that their content corresponds directly to the

rules of chess. For example, she intends to move bishops only diagonally when

playing chess. Moreover, she acts upon these intentions so that they play a casual role

in determining how she behaves when attempting to play chess. But if she has such

intentions how does she honour them? It is here that processing rules come in. Just as

Devitt says, these rules need not be identical to the rules of chess. But what is

distinctive about them is that they are put to the service of the chess player’s

intentions to honour the rules of chess.

Just as a chess player’s actual and potential physical behaviour does not in itself

serve to connect her to the rules of chess neither do whatever processing rules she

utilises in playing the game. This is because those very processing rules could be

developed and used to serve intentions to honour the rules of another game that is

                                                                                                               12 I am grateful to Gabriel Segal for bringing this point to my attention in connection with an earlier

draft of this paper.

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extensionally equivalent to chess. For example, if the processing rules diverge from

the rules of chess then, in principle, they could be employed in playing a game whose

structure rules are identical to those processing rules.

There are alternative ways in which an individual could be connected to the

rules of chess – and so satisfy condition 2 – that do not involve having true beliefs

about those rules or any associated intentions. For example, an individual could

develop a chess playing mastery in the following manner. Watching a game of chess

she appreciates that a rule governed game is being played but is not explicitly

instructed as to the identity of the rules and never forms a collection of true beliefs

about those rules. Rather, she attempts to play the game in what is initially a

haphazard fashion. Her mistakes are corrected bringing about changes at an

unconscious and subpersonal level until she plays as if she had mastered the rules.13

It would seem wrong to say that such a player had not mastered the game or that she

had not become connected to the rules of chess. However, although she doesn’t have

true beliefs and intentions directly relating to the rules of chess she has a history of

causally interacting with people who do (or else she belongs to a causal chain leading

back to such people). In other words, what serves to connect her to the rules of chess

is her history of causal interactions with other people who have relevant beliefs

and intentions concerning the rules of chess.

In sum then, we have the following. There is a distinction between structure rules

and processing rules in the case of chess. The structure rules of chess are those rules

that were pinned down by the legislative acts of those who invented the game and,

perhaps, by those given the authority to subsequently modify the rules so pinned

down. Processing rules are rules that are causally implicated in the chess playing

                                                                                                               13 This might be how a connectionist network would come to master chess.

19  

behaviour of chess players. Such rules enable individuals to honour or respect the

structure rules. However, in order for the processing rules to play that role they

must be suitably embedded. Being so embedded involves belonging to a causal

chain containing individuals who have true beliefs about the rules of chess and

corresponding intentions that they act on whenever playing chess, a chain that

ultimately leads back to the legislative acts of the inventors of the game. In this way

conditions 1 and 2 are satisfied and a supervenience base is provided for the

connection between any individual chess player and the rules of chess.

Before turning to the question of whether there is a substantial analogy between

chess and language I want to consider an objection to what I have said about chess. It

is an element of my picture that two distinct chess players could draw upon divergent

processing rules when playing chess despite both being connected in an appropriate

way to one and the same collection of structure rules. The objection is the anti-

individualistic one that if the structure rules of an individual’s game are determined

by the nature of the external environment and her relations to it then those very

factors will determine the content of the processing rules she utilizes in playing the

game. Therefore, two distinct players of the same game couldn’t utilize different

processing rules. My response to this objection is that it relies on a version of anti-

individualism that is so strong as to be untenable. For, it is inconsistent with the

untendentious claim that different chess playing computers could run different

programmes for playing chess. Moreover, it overlooks a whole range of factors that

might be appealed to in order to justify the attribution of distinct processing rules to

two distinct individuals, such as differences in internal physical structure,

development trajectories, patterns of breakdown and error, and such like.

20  

In effect, what I have argued for is a social conception of chess. In other words,

chess is a social phenomenon in broadly the same way that language is according to

many opponents of Chomsky, including Devitt. This is why I think it is particularly

important to examine the case of chess and to investigate how much of an analogy it

actually bears to language. For, if there are reasons to conclude that the analogy

breaks down on closer inspection then the social view of language – along with the

kinds of response to Devitt’s Chomskyan critics that I discussed in section 3 – is in

danger of crumbling. So with this issue in mind, I now turn to language.

Could the analogues of conditions 1 and 2 be satisfied in a manner that echoes the

chess case? Call these conditions 1* and 2*. They can be stated in the following

manner:

1* That a given language has determinate rules that are independent of

the psychology of a typical individual speaker of the language.

2* That the individuals that we ordinarily regard as speaking the given

language are appropriately related to the rules mentioned in condition

1* so that what they do counts as respecting the rules of that language

rather than any extensionally equivalent body of rules.

At this point it is important to appreciate that Devitt has no complaint against the

concepts invoked and the rules postulated by generative grammarians working in the

Chomskyan tradition. Although he doesn’t provide many concrete examples of

structure rules of English, this means he should by happy with the idea that it is a

structure rule of English that an anaphor must be bound in its minimal clause, that

there are rules that require the insertion of phonologically null pronoun like

21  

elements in non-finite clauses, the movement of noun phrases from the specifier

position of verb phrases to satisfy case requirements, and so on.14 But if such rules are

the structure rules of English, then it is difficult to see how conditions 1* and 2* could

be satisfied with respect to them. For it is highly implausible to claim that English

has a history that reaches back to individuals who legislated for rules that have the

abstract and precise nature of those that generative grammarians postulate. Similarly,

a typical speaker of English has little by way of beliefs about the syntactic rules of

English independent of whatever processing rules she relies upon (or the underlying

state of her language faculty) and so cannot form specific intentions to honour the

distinct syntactic rules of English.15 Hence, she has no specific intentions to the

service of which she can develop and employ the processing rules embodied in her

mind-brain. Neither is it true of a typical speaker of English that the processing

rules embodied in her mind-brain have developed in response to causal interactions

                                                                                                               14 I would recommend readers wanting a clear account of these rules to consult Carnie (2007). With

respect to the rule about anaphors, this is postulated to explain why, for example, in ‘the dog that Bill

saw bit himself’, ‘himself’ must be co-referential with ‘the dog’ and not ‘Bill’ despite the fact that

‘Bill’ and ‘himself’ must be co-referential in ‘Bill bit himself’.

15 It might be objected that that this assertion is in conflict with the standard Chomskyan view that we

have unconscious knowledge and, hence, beliefs about the syntactic rules of the language that we

speak. My response is twofold. First, as Collins (2004) points out, the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’

are typically used by Chomsky in informal contexts to give readers lacking a technical background a

general flavour of his outlook. Thus, they are not to be taken literally. In particular, they are not to be

understood as referring to mental states that represent things external to them. Second, the states that

Chomsky refers to as ‘beliefs’ and ‘knowledge’ are states of the language faculty and so are not

available to be processed in the wide range of ways that beliefs ordinarily so-called are. Hence, they

are to be contrasted with beliefs as to the rules of chess.

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with individuals who belong to a causal chain that ultimately leads to individuals

who have specific beliefs and intentions about the syntactic rules of English.

In short then, there is a strong disanalogy between chess and language. The kinds

of factors that serve to fix the rules of chess and connect chess players to those rules

do not hold in the case of language. This raises the sceptical worry that there is

nothing that serves to fix determinate rules for a language or connect speakers of the

language to those rules where the rules are conceived of as being independent of

linguistic processing or the state of the language faculty. But without such factors

conditions 1* and 2* fail to be satisfied with the upshot that the structure-processing

rule distinction breaks down.

It might be objected that conditions 1* and 2* could be satisfied by alternative

means in the case of language. The problem is that I find it difficult to see what those

alternative means could be. Devitt (2006a) develops a view of the relationship

between language and thought that gestures towards an alternative account. He argues

that thought is independent and ontologically prior to language and that language

serves to express thought. Thus, in expressing our thoughts we translate thoughts

into sentences and in understanding the sentences of others we translate those

sentences into thoughts. Devitt tentatively endorses the Language of Thought

Hypothesis made famous by Jerry Fodor.16 Thus, our thoughts have syntactic

properties and so are governed by syntactic rules. These rules are structure rules.

Devitt argues that the structure rules of language are similar to, and inherited from,

those of thought. This is enshrined in his thesis T: “the structure rules of a person’s

language are similar to the structure rules of her thought” (2006a, 142). He says that

in virtue of this relationship between thought and language, language is

                                                                                                               16 See Fodor (1975) (1987) and Cain (2002) for discussion.

23  

psychologically real. This suggests that on his view the structure rules of language

supervene on the structure rules of thought. But this immediately raises the question

as to the supervenience base of the latter rules for it is no easier to see where that base

could lie outside of thought processing than it was in the case of language. Devitt says

little to help here apart from the following:

In virtue of what does a mental sentence have its syntax? Presumably, in

virtue of the way in which its meaning depends on the meanings of its parts

and in virtue of the structure’s role in determining a sentence’s possible

inferential interactions with other sentences. (156)

The problem here is that he runs the risk of inadvertently committing himself to the

view he should be opposed to, namely, that the structure rules of thought are

determined by features of thought processing. Moreover, as an account of the

supervenience base of the syntactic properties of mental sentences this appears to be

somewhat wanting as all it seems to do is describe the target syntactic properties

rather than postulate any lower level properties that might generate them.

Could an appeal to social conventions help to explain how conditions 1* and 2*

can be met in the case of language thus defeating my skepticism? Indeed, in a

discussion with Collins (2008b), Devitt (2008a, 2008b) claims that there are

conventions governing the use of PRO, an unvoiced pronoun-like element that

features in subordinate non-finite clauses, and that a speaker of English must learn

this convention. He admits that he doesn’t have a detailed account of the nature of

conventions nor of how we could come to learn such a convention. But this doesn’t

worry him for a couple of reasons. First, there clearly are conventions relating to

24  

syntax as not all of our linguistic knowledge is innate as Chomskyans admit in

appealing to parameter setting. If a child is to acquire a language that enables her to

communicate with her fellows then there must be conventions operating in the wider

community so that her parameters will be set in line with that that is the norm in that

community. Second, it is perfectly acceptable to utilise a notion that one hasn’t fully

explained. As Devitt puts it, “[s]cience is replete with notions that have not yet been

fully explained” (2008b, 252).

My thoughts on these issues are similar to those of Collins (2008b) and can be

expressed in the following manner. I accept Devitt’s second point but question its

application in the case of conventions relating to syntax. The most prominent account

of convention is that developed by Lewis (1969), (1975). This account is such that if

speakers of English are party to syntactic conventions that correspond to the rules

postulated by Chomsky and his followers then they must have higher order

propositional attitudes featuring the syntactic concepts that figure in the statement of

those rules. But it is highly implausible that ordinary speakers of English have such

propositional attitudes. This point has been convincingly made by Laurence (1996)

who argues that there are competent speakers of English who, due to cognitive

deficits such as autism, find it difficult to form higher order propositional attitudes.

One might also point out that children under the age of four routinely have a solid

grasp of the syntax of their local language despite the fact that their performance in

false belief tests indicates that they couldn’t form the higher order propositional

attitudes required for them to follow syntactic conventions as understood on Lewis’s

model.

Indeed, Lewis (1975) himself makes a point that highlights the tension between

his account of convention and the attribution of determinate syntactic rules to

25  

speakers of a language. Lewis discusses an objection that he should focus not so

much on the meanings of whole sentences but on subsentential expressions and so

invoke grammars when explaining how a particular language can be the language of a

particular population. In response to this objection he says that any convention of

truthfulness and trust in a particular grammar will be a convention of truthfulness and

trust in any other grammar that generates the same language. In effect, he is pointing

out the existence of grammatical indeterminacy. This recalls my complaint that it is

difficult to see what the required supervenience base for the connection between an

individual and the syntactic rules of her language could be if those rules lay outside

of the domain of linguistic processing and/or the language faculty. Lewis is

effectively making the point that there is no such supervenience base lying in the

social and conventional domain.

The upshot of all this is that Devitt needs to commit himself to a viable account

of the nature of convention that is less intellectualized than that of Lewis. Devitt

would agree with this point as he writes “I sympathize with Laurence’s criticisms of

Lewis’ highly intellectualized account of these conventions” (2006, 180). But it is far

from obvious that such an account is available. Devitt’s comments on parameter

setting would seem to suggest that he thinks that a property’s being conventional in a

community is a matter of its being widespread within the community and passed onto

each member as a result of causal interaction with those of her fellows who already

have the property. I think that such a view of convention is deeply problematic and

subject to counterexamples. Consider food preferences. Psychological research

suggests that an individual’s food preferences are fixed in a limited period of early

childhood.17 Up until the end of this period a child will normally be prepared to eat

                                                                                                               17 See Bloom (2004) for a helpful overview of this research.

26  

pretty much anything she encounters. But from that point onwards a child will find

disgusting, and so will avoid eating, anything that that does not resemble what she

ate in the crucial period. The food items a child encounters in the crucial period are

likely to reflect the food preferences of her carers and members of her home

community as they will tend to give her food that they themselves prefer.

Consequently, a child’s food preferences will come to match those widespread within

her community and will have been passed on to her as the result of causal interaction

with the more senior members of her community. Such a manner of setting food

preferences is biologically advantageous as it enables humans to be flexible with

respect to what they eat so that they can prosper in a wide range of environments

whilst avoiding the associated risks of eating unfamiliar items that are harmful. In

short then, the setting of food preferences fits Devitt’s account of convention.

However, it strikes me that food preferences are not a matter of convention. For

example, in preferring the key elements of a Mediterranean diet to those of a

traditional British stodgy diet, a typical Italian is not following or expressing her

grasp of a convention. This is because the fixing of food preferences is automatic and

does not involve the agency and propositional attitudes of the ‘learner’ in contrast to

what goes on in clear-cut cases of learning a convention.18

Not only does the example of food preferences undermine Devitt’s view of

convention but it also suggests that parameter setting is not a case of learning a

convention as that process bears more of a resemblance to that of the fixing of food

preferences than it does to clear-cut cases of learning conventions. Thus, one might

                                                                                                               18 An example of a clear-cut case of learning a convention would be the process that results in

travellers on the London underground adopting the practice of standing on the right-hand side of

subterranean escalators.

27  

say that it is a key feature of the parameter setting model that it explains

commonality with respect to arbitrary features of syntax without an appeal to

convention. In sum then, Devitt needs to do much more work for his appeal to

convention to defeat my scepticism that conditions 1* and 2* are satisfied in the case

of syntactic rules.

This brings me to the conclusion that there is little reason to believe that there is a

relevant analogy between chess and language hence Devitt’s appeal to the former

fails to support his anti-psychologistic conception of linguistics. So much for chess;

does Devitt’s discussion of the bee dance fair any better? The bee dance is innate,

unlike chess. The bees’ ability to communicate by means of the dance involves the

existence of a number of causal relationships. First, the bee that finds the food source

must be sensitive to its location and must be able to express that location by means of

a specific dance. So there must be a systematic causal relationship between the

specifics of the location and the specifics of the dance. Second, the dance must

‘mean’ something to the on-looking bees and this requires that there be a second

systematic causal relationship, this time between the specifics of the dance and the

direction in which the bees fly from the hive in search of food.

The puzzle that von Frisch had was that of working out the details of these causal

relationships. Precisely what are the dancing bees responding to and what form does

their response take? Precisely what do the on-looking bees respond to and what form

does their response take? In effect, von Frisch’s answer runs as follows. The bee that

finds the food is sensitive to the angle formed by a line running from the hive to the

food source and a line running from the hive to a point on the horizon just below the

sun. Call this angle A. The bee then responds to angle A by orientating its body in

relation to an imaginary vertical line so as to make an angle (angle B) that is equal to

28  

angle A. The on-looking bees are sensitive to angle B and they respond by flying off

at an angle to the line between the hive and the point on the horizon that equals B. In

effect then, the dancing bee is sensitive to angle A and translates this into angle B and

the on-looking bees are sensitive to angle B and translate it into angle A.

To describe the causal sensitivities involving the bees in this manner involves

making substantial claims about bee psychology that go beyond saying that there are

certain objective features of the environment that the bees detect. This is because the

relevant lines and angles are not concrete features of the environment that can be

directly perceived. Rather, they are projected onto the world by the bees, something

that involves an active psychological event. In making this claim I am contrasting the

situation with one where the bees are sensitive to an angle that is physically present in

the environment in the way in which the angle made by, for example, a tree trunk and

a branch growing from it are physically present in the environment. Thus, in stating

the rules of the bee dance von Frisch is making substantial claims about bee

psychology.

Although von Frisch’s rule tells us a lot about the psychology of bees it leaves

many of the psychological details unclear. Precisely what mediates the dancing bee’s

sensitivity to angle A and its success in adjusting the orientation of its body so that

angle B agrees with angle A? What mediates the sensitivity of the on-looking bees to

angle B and ensures that they follow a trajectory that makes an angle to the line

between the hive and the point on the horizon that equals angle B? There are lots of

potential answers to these questions so making sense of the claim that we don’t know

how the bees do what they do. But this is consistent with the claim that von Frisch

tells us something about bee psychology for to tell us something about bee

psychology is not to tell us everything about bee psychology. Indeed, the situation can

29  

be characterised in terms of Marr’s (1982) hierarchy. With respect to the bee dance

von Frisch was operating at Marr level one (what Marr called the computational level)

and provided a substantial component of a computational theory of the dance. What

he does not attempt to do is descend to levels two or three by providing an account of

the algorithms employed within the bees or the details of the physical implementation

of those algorithms. But failing to do this hardly detracts from the psychological

nature of his enterprise as it would be bizarre to deny that to construct a

computational theory of a creature’s capacity was to engage in a psychological study

of that creature.

The upshot of all this is that von Frisch was engaged in the psychological project

of constructing a computational theory of bee dance. Thus, the distinction between

‘what the bees do’ and ‘how they do it’ as reported by bee researchers does not

coincide with the distinction that Devitt has in mind in distinguishing between the

study of structure rules independent of bee psychology and the study of competence.

Rather, it refers to a distinction between the study of different levels in a multi-

layered psychological project. Consequently, an appeal to bee dance fails to support

Devitt’s anti-psychologistic conception of linguistics. If language is like the bee dance

in the relevant respects then its study will belong to psychology.

5. Conclusion

In section 3 I argued that the prominent Chomskyan criticisms of Devitt’s anti-

psychologistic conception of linguistics are not decisive as they stand as they fail to

engage with the widely held view that language is a social phenomenon that exists

independently of any individual speaker of the language. However, on the basis of an

examination of Devitt’s discussion of chess and the bee dance I came to agree with

30  

the general conclusion of the Chomskyans. The differences between chess – which

does fit Devitt’s description – and language suggest that if one does think that a

language such as English has determinate syntactic rules that are appropriately

described in terms of the concepts and rules that figure in the Chomskyan generative

tradition, then it is difficult for one to avoid the psychologistic view of language and

linguistics. This result was reinforced by my discussion of the bee dance as that

discussion suggests that if one tries to retreat from an overtly social view of

language one can no longer maintain a distinction between structure rules and

competence.

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