Biological Rationalism

I argue that contemporary philosophy of language in the analytic tradition rests on two fundamentally wrong assumptions: empiricism and externalism. After I show why these two assumptions are incorrect, I turn my attention to biological rationalism. Biological rationalism—a research program inspired by the work of Noam Chomsky—is committed to nativism and internalism. I believe biological rationalism provides the best framework to achieve a genuine understanding of language. I try to show this by considering the biological rationalist answers to major problems in philosophy of language. Abrégé Je soutiens que la philosophie du langage telle qu’élaborée dans la tradition analytique contemporaine repose sur deux hypothèses erronées: l’empirisme et l’externalisme. Après avoir démontré que ces deux hypothèses sont incorrectes, j’examine le rationalisme biologique. Le rationalisme biologique—un programme de recherches inspiré par les travaux de Noam Chomsky—repose sur deux idées directrices: l’innéisme et l’internalisme. Je crois que le rationalisme biologique offre le meilleur cadre afin d’obtenir une compréhension réelle du langage. Je cherche le démontrer en examinant les réponses qu’apporte le rationalisme biologique à certains problèmes majeurs en philosophie du langage. Acknowledgments ............................................................................................... 5 Typographical Conventions ................................................................................. 7 Introduction......................................................................................................... 8 Part 1................................................................................................................. 12 Empiricism and Language Acquisition .............................................................. 12 1 Philosophy and language acquisition........................................................... 12 2 The goals of a theory of language acquisition.............................................. 15 3 Empiricism and language acquisition .......................................................... 25 3.1 Classical empiricism ............................................................................ 26 3.2 Contemporary empiricism.................................................................... 30 3.3 Bootstrapping into language: the contemporary empiricist account of language acquisition................................................................................... 32 3.4 The scientific foundation of the empiricist model ................................. 45 4 Assessment of the empiricist hypothesis...................................................... 59 4.1 Evidence and language acquisition ....................................................... 60 4.1.1 Poverty of evidence........................................................................... 62 4.2 The limits of inductive learning.......................................................... 123 4.2.1 Trial and error learning.................................................................... 123 4.2.2 Systematicity................................................................................... 132 4.2.3 Creativity ........................................................................................ 137 4.2.4 Connectionism and the brain ........................................................... 150 4.2.5 Domain-general learning mechanism hypothesis ............................. 153 Part 2............................................................................................................... 167 Externalism and Language............................................................................... 167 1 Defining externalism................................................................................. 167 2 Functional externalism.............................................................................. 169 2.1 The design argument .......................................................................... 179 2.2 The adaptationist argument ................................................................ 183 2.3 The conceptual argument ................................................................... 188 2.4 The problems of functional externalism.............................................. 192 3 Ontological externalism ............................................................................ 231 3.1 Arguments for ontological externalism............................................... 237 3.1.1 Linguistic diversity and diachronic development ............................. 237 3.1.2 Ontological and methodological considerations ............................... 241 3.2 The problems of ontological externalism............................................ 244 4 Epistemic externalism............................................................................... 255 4.1 Arguments for epistemic externalism ................................................. 261 4.2 The problems of epistemic externalism............................................... 265 5 Semantic externalism................................................................................ 269 5.1 Varieties of semantic externalism....................................................... 270 5.1.1 Direct reference semantics............................................................... 270 5.1.2 Assertibility condition semantics ..................................................... 273 5.1.3 Truth-conditional semantics ............................................................ 274 5.2 Arguments for semantic externalism .................................................. 275 5.3 The problems of semantic externalism................................................ 280 5.3.1 Meaning individuation..................................................................... 280 5.3.2 Twin Earth ...................................................................................... 289 5.3.3 Meaning and publicity..................................................................... 295 Part 3............................................................................................................... 297 Biological Rationalism .................................................................................... 297 1 Language acquisition: biological nativism................................................. 298 1.1 Defining Innateness............................................................................ 300 1.2 The Language Organ and Universal Grammar.................................... 307 1.3 Language organ and semantics ........................................................... 322 2 Internalism................................................................................................ 326 2.1 Ontological internalism ...................................................................... 329 2.2 Epistemic internalism......................................................................... 332 2.3 Functional internalism........................................................................ 340 2.4 Semantic internalism.......................................................................... 358 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 371 Bibliography.................................................................................................... 373