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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.
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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.
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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.
22
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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