[Wittrs] Re: Pateman On Wittgenstein Chomsky, Behaviorists & Cognitivists
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:27:22 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "jrstern" <jrstern@...> wrote:
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@> wrote:
> >
> >Wittgensteinians and Chomskyans:In Defence of Mentalism
> >Trevor Pateman
> > http://www.selectedworks.co.uk/wittgensteinianschomskyans.html
>
> Very interesting paper. I've just scanned it and read the first
> sections, and of course (!?) I of course take the Chomskian side in
> almost everything - only I suggest there are not really *sides* to
> *be* taken. Chomsky and Wittgenstein are focusing on two separate
> things, two different parts of the elephant. There is a middle ground
> common to both - but on that, they agree - there is no such thing
> as a formal grammar for English that explains in any rule-based way
> what a sentence means, so there is no way such a language
> could ever be private!
>
I, too, have only dipped into it. I stopped at this point because it struck me
that there may be an important misunderstanding here worth clearing up:
". . . the deaf children of hearing parents develop idiosyncratic signing
systems of their own, which are clearly linguistic though in a different medium
from the normal one. (See Endnote 4). These signs are used consistently and
rationally in pursuit of the child's goals, but though they are passively
understood by the child's parents, they were not learnt from them nor, in
general, are they subsequently produced by the parents (Feldman, Goldin -
Meadow, and Gleitman 1978; Goldin - Meadow and Mylander 1983). These signs are
public, checkable for consistent use and potentially shareable; but they are
not social, if by that is meant that they pre-exist the child's use of them, or
are used by convention, or are shared with others. There are other cases of
linguistic systems which are the properties of single individuals, for example,
jargons which represent individual attempts at cross - linguistic communication
(Muhlhausler 1985, p. 62), although these cut less philosophical ice in so far
as they are properties of individuals who already have another language."
Here is an interesting point from the article, no? If language were entirely
public as Wittgenstein puts it, then how to explain the development of such
isolated linguistic practices as described here other than by positing some
interior grammar (Chomsky's old concept of "deep" vs. "surface" grammar?) which
kicks in at some point in human development? Here we have a real life example
of a "private" language being developed between two or more speakers from
scratch and in isolation from a pre-existing linguistic community to set the
rules for them.
Of course, at some point we must presume that early human language speakers
started in this way, too, or, at least, built contemporary languages up based
on carry-over primate communication practices from predecessor species such
that, as humans became humans and then more advanced (closer to what we are
today), more and more complexity in the practices accreted, to the point where
we might say a full blown language had emerged.
The idea that this was driven by internal brain changes or that it somehow
drove such changes is not inconsistent with this and seems to accord with the
idea that language is inherent in humans. Surely most normal humans find a way
to develop language at some point in their progression to adulthood no matter
what their circumstances as the above suggests.
But perhaps the problem here comes from misconstruing Wittgenstein's point
about the impossibility of a "private language"? Surely he didn't mean we
couldn't continue to speak our native language to ourselves if we were suddenly
to find ourselves the last man or woman on Earth. Nor does his comment
necessarily suggest that two deaf children born to and raised by normal hearing
parents could not or would not develop a language distinct to them.
Notice, here, that their "private language" is not a language in each child's
own head. It is only private to them in a relevant sense, i.e., they represent
a tiny public domain of operation within a much larger public one. This is
certainly a different sense of "private" than Wittgenstein appeared to have in
mind when he asked how, in the absence of public correctives to our usages, we
could hope to develop and maintain a language at all?
A "private language" in this sense, the kind Wittgenstein was referring to, is
a language for which no public criteria of usage exist at all. It's not a
shared jargon or other system of linguistic communication maintained by and
between a small number of users.
There is no way, in the sense of "private language" used by Wittgenstein, to
determine if our following a rule now is the same as the last time we did so
(or thought we were doing so). If we are relying on our memories, memories
might be wrong. Indeed, in time and without ongoing practice, it does seem that
our capabilities to speak languages we know fade. Sometimes we just don't
recall a meaning but other times we may not be sure if X meant this or
something else.
Either the rule might have changed or our application of it might have and if
our only means of determining if it had or not was ourselves, our own
recollections, then how could we be sure we were following a rule at all?
Wittgenstein's point was to note that, to follow a rule, we need to have
something outside ourselves to provide sign posts, standards for use. This is
why he emphasizes the fact that language is public and that having language
alone implies a public domain and thus undermines claims of solipsism in any
meaningful sense -- i.e., solipsism could still be true but we couldn't know
whether it was or not in any meaningful sense given our dependence for thinking
about it on language and the public realm language implies. Thus, on such a
view it makes no sense to consider solipsism either true or false because such
categorizations apply only when we can, in fact, make such distinctions.
So as far as I can see, Wittgenstein's notion of the impossibility of "private
language" is not an argument against some empirical claim that we must have
some kind of internal brain facility for language in some form or other to have
language. Nor is it an argument against a claim that we don't need that. It is
aimed, rather, at the idea that we can sustain a belief in solipsism when that
depends on the ability to use language to make the claim in the first place.
SWM
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