Fafner88 wrote:Chomsky therefore concludes that languages cannot be defined or individuated extensionally or mind-externally, and hence the only scientifically interesting conception of a ‘language’ is the ‘I-language’ view . . . Chomsky says of E-languages that “all scientific approaches have simply abandoned these elements of what is called ‘language’ in common usage” (Chomsky 1988, 37); and “we can define E-language in one way or another or not at all, since the concept appears to play no role in the theory of language”
Chomsky favours the “internalist” perspective as the only scientific interesting conception of language because:
In symbolic systems of other animals, symbols appear to be linked directly to mind-independent events. The symbols of human language are sharply different. Even in the simplest cases, there is no word-object relation where words are mind-independent entities. There is no reference relation, in the technical sense familiar from Frege and Peirce to contemporary externalists.
Thus, much of Chomsky’s scepticism about externalist semantics is a scepticism about the possibility of making any scientific use of truth and reference in linguistic semantics. His scepticism about truth and reference stems from some deep metaphysical puzzles that he likes to raise about the existence of things in the world for words to refer to. In several places, Chomsky argues that names of cities, e.g., 'London' can refer both to something concrete and abstract, animate and inanimate. He provides a number of examples if you read his stuff; convincingly, in my opinion. To give a few examples:
Language can of course be used for communication, as can any aspect of what we do: style of dress, gesture, and so on. And it can be and commonly is used for much else. Statistically speaking, for whatever that is worth, the overwhelming use of language is internal – for thought. It takes an enormous act of will to keep from talking to oneself in every waking moment – and asleep as well, often a considerable annoyance. The distinguished neurologist Harry Jerison among others expressed a stronger view, holding that “language did not evolve as a communication system…. the initial evolution of language is more likely to have been…for the construction of a real world,” as a “tool for thought.” Not only in the functional dimension, but also in all other respects – semantic, syntactic, morphological and phonological – the core properties of human language appear to differ sharply from animal communication systems, and to be largely unique in the organic world...
The cognitive revolution of the 17th century also led to inquiry into the nature of concepts, with important contemporary implications, also insufficiently appreciated. Aristotle had recognized that the objects to which we refer in using language cannot be identified by their material substance. A house, he pointed out, is not merely a collection of bricks and wood, but is defined in part by its function and design: a place for people to live and store their possessions, and so on. In Aristotle’s terms, a house is a combination of matter and form. Notice that his account is metaphysical: he is defining what a house is, not the word or idea “house.” That approach led to hopeless conundrums. The ship of Theseus is a classic case that may be familiar from philosophy courses; Saul Kripke’s puzzle about belief is a modern variant. With the cognitive turn of the 17th century these questions were reframed in terms of operations of the mind: what does the word “house” mean, and how do we use it to refer. Pursuing that course we find that for natural language there is no word-object relation, where objects are mind-independent entities. That becomes very clear for Aristotle’s example, the word house, when we look into its meaning more closely. Its “form” in the Aristotelian sense is vastly more intricate than he assumed.
Furthermore, the conundrums based on the myth of a word object relation dissolve, when viewed from this perspective, which I believe has ample empirical support...In all such cases, there is no mind-independent object, which could in principle be identified by a physicist, related to the name. As we proceed, we find much more intricate properties, no matter how simple the terms of language we investigate. As Hume and others recognized, for natural language and thought there is no meaningful word-object relation because we do not think or talk about the world in terms of mind-independent objects; rather, we focus attention on intricate aspects of the world by resort to our cognoscitive powers. Accordingly, for natural language and thought there is no notion of reference in the sense of the modern philosophical tradition, developed in the work of Frege, Peirce, Russell, Tarski, Carnap, Quine, and others, or contemporary theorists of reference: “externalists,” in contemporary terminology. These technical concepts are fine for the purpose for which they were originally invented: formal systems where the symbols, objects, and relations are stipulated. Arguably they also provide a norm for science: its goal is to construct systems in which terms really do pick out an identifiable mind-independent element of the world, like “neutron,” or “noun phrase.” But human language and thought do not work that way.
