Yes, neither Berwick nor Chomsky are philosophers, so don't expect conceptual
analysis! To boot, the subtitle of their "Why only us" -- as someone may
repartee: "Us -- you mean you two?" -- is "Language and Evolution" and was
published by an institute of technology, not a varsity, as Grice call varsities.
There seems to be a wrong implicature with
i. Why only us.
notably anthropocentrism.
On the other hand
ii. Why only Grice.
carries the right implicatures.
Popper would possibly find Berwick's and Chomsky's 'slim' essay irrefutable --
Popper's ideas on evolution theory evolved over the years -- "nay, days," as
Geary corrects me -- But I repartee: years are made of days.
E.g. how to refute a thesis about what Berwick (who teaches computation) and
Chomsky (a Cartesian linguist) internal 'thingies' (to use a word Geary hates).
In a way it was like when two other people developed a maxim by Grice into a
whole system.
(ii), Why only Grice.
touches on a point in (i) Why only us, the Berwick-Chomsky 'slim' essay, when
they speak that lingo is made for 'thought' or expression, not communication,
and they give the example of reasoning. After all, reason was Grice's basic
concept as the title of his festschrift testifies:
P. G. R. I. C. E. (his first name was Paul):
To wit:
Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends.
The point by Skinner was taken up by Grice early enough. In his "Meaning"
(1948) Grice is fascinated to be able to quote from a book just fresh from Yale
U. P.: Stevenson's Language and Ethics. Stevenson and Skinner, like Peirce and
Locke, and Grice, and William James, all belong to a tradition: empiricist,
intentionalist, or what have you. Chomsky attempted to refute this paradigm
(can a paradigm be refuted?) by imposing his "Cartesian linguistics" framework.
The point about an endless number of utterances (the open-endness of lingo, in
the merge Chomsky talks about) was hotly debated by Davidson and Grice. Grice
concludes that signalling in primitive critters is very adaptable (J. F.
Bennett furthers Grice's point in his "Linguistic Behaviour", Cambridge). In
the end, we arrive at a system that we can call language (for which Grice
provides a conceptual analysis) in which, with a finite set of means, we get an
infinite set of utterances. Nothing SO PECULIAR about this, to invite the
implicature, the wrong one, attached to "why only us".
"Why only us" also invites a response. For that matter, "Why only Grice", does
too. The best answer is given by Geary: "Because".
Berwick's and Chomsky's point is that songbird's 'thingies' are not
hierarchical in structure, while
iii. Instinctively, eagles that fly swim.
is hierarchical, and no songbird can ever understand -- never mind an eagle --
it. Incidentally, one of the unpublications by Grice was written on a cigarette
package and now deposited at the Bancroft (no, not after Anne) at Berkeley. It
reads:
----- S
--- NP ------ VP
etc.
I.e. Grice was aware of Chomsky's revolution, as it was called -- one of
Chomsky's students at this institute of technology was in part responsible for
distributing Grice's "Logic and Conversation" lectures among 'folks', as Geary
would have it.
In fact, Grice was slightly tired with Chomsky. Why? Well, because the last
essay that J. L. Austin (Grice's leader in Grice's Play Group) chose for exact
examination on those Saturday morning meetings was "Syntactic Structures"! --
whereas Grice would rather read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason all over again,
and in German, too!
On top, when Chomsky published in "Aspects of the theory of syntax" (1966) he
managed to quote Grice. He got the "P. Grice" fine, but if you look at the
index, it goes, "Grice, A. P." -- whereas of course it's Herbert Paul (Grice
got the Herbert from his father, Herbert Grice). Chomsky quotes A. P. Grice re:
"and", as in:
iv. He died and took a pill.
v. He took a pill and die.
Can "and" co-relate with logical conjunction? Yes, if we follow "A. P. Grice"
that pragmatic factors are involved, and that you narrate things as they happen
("He died, and took a pill" is slightly confusing, as is "Socrates died, and
drank the hemlock.").
Later in his John Locke lectures, Chomsky cares to quote only from Grice's
reprint in Searle, "The philosophy of language". Patrick Suppes, in PGRICE, got
so irritated that in his "The primacy of utterer's meaning" has a whole section
on how Chomsky misread Grice. Surely Grice is no behaviourist, like Chomsky's
nemesis, Skinner. There's empiricism and there's empiricism. It's best, Suppes
wisely notes, to treat Grice as an 'intentionalist'. The essay by Grice Chomsky
spends some 10 minutes of his John Locke Lectures (at Oxford, surely) is all
about 'inclination to utter', 'tendency to interpret', and 'procedures' that
Chomsky reads behaviouristically when he shouldn't. This is sad because in 1975
Grice had gone into some effort to explain that while RYLE may be deemed an
'analytic' "behaviourist", his approach (Grice's) to psychological attitudes is
more of the 'functionalist' type.
But don't expect philosophical conceptual analysis to the response to 'why only
Berwick and Chomsky'!
Cheers,
Speranza
