(soft music)
- Almost exactly 35 years ago,
I had the opportunity to
give several lectures here,
same auditorium I think
on the topic language and mind.
And quite a lot has been
learned in the intervening years
about language and the brain,
hence the mind in the sense
in which I used the term then,
the term mind, and mental and such terms.
And those lectures,
(audience member speaking off mic)
Pardon.
Aw, thank you.
(all laughing)
And we'll continue to use them now,
always nice to have a
friend in the audience.
(audience laughing)
I'm using these terms as
just descriptive terms
for certain aspects of the world,
pretty much on a par with
such descriptive terms
as a chemical or optical
electrical, and so on.
These are terms used to focus attention
on particular aspects of the world
that seem to have a rather
integrated character,
and to be worth considering
for a special investigation
but without any illusions
that they cut nature at the joints.
In those earlier lectures,
I took for granted that human language
can reasonably be studied
as part of the world,
specifically is a property
of the human organism
mostly the brain and for
convenience, I'll keep to that.
Both then and now, I'm
adopting what Lyle Jenkins
in a recent book calls the
biolinguistic perspective,
that's the framework within which
the approach to language that
I'm considering developed
about 50 years ago.
Also for convenience,
I'll use the term language
to refer to human language,
that's a specific biological system
there is no meaningful question
as to whether the
communication system of bees
or what might be taught the Apes,
or mathematics or music,
there's no question as to
whether these are languages
or whether airplanes really fly
or submarines really swim,
or whether computers think
or translate languages,
or other comparably meaningless questions
many of them based on a misinterpretation
of a important paper by Alan Turing
little over 50 years ago in 1950,
which has spawned a large and to my mind
mostly misguided literature,
explicitly, despite Turing's
very explicit warning
not to pursue that direction
which has apparently been overlooked.
From the bio linguistic perspective,
language is a component of human biology
more or less on a par
with mammalian vision
or insect navigation, and other systems
for which the best theories
that have been devised,
attribute, computational
capacities of some kind,
what's in informal usage
sometimes called rule-following.
So for example,
contemporary texts on vision
describes the so called
rigidity principle,
it's formulated about
50 years ago as follows.
That says if possible,
and other rules permit,
interpret image motions as projections
of rigid motion in three dimensions.
In this case later work
provided substantial insight
into the mental computations,
that seemed to be involved
and when the visual system
follows these rules in
informal terminology.
But even for very simple organisms
that's no slight test.
A great many issues remain
unresolved in these areas
which are quite obscure even for insects.
The decision to study
languages part of the world,
in this sense should be
in my view uncontroversial
but it has not been, on the contrary,
the assumption that this
is a legitimate enterprise
was rejected pretty
forcefully 50 years ago
and continues to be rejected.
Virtually all of contemporary philosophy
of language and mind is based
on rejection of the assumption.
The same is true of what's called
the computer model of mind
that underlies a good deal of
theoretical cognitive science
denied in this case not only for language
but for mental faculties generally.
It's explicitly denied,
and the technical linguistic literature
and what are called plate
mystic, accounts of language
and also in a different way
denied by the conceptualism
that was devised by the same authors
inaccurately attributed to
many linguists including me.
It's also apparently denied
by many sociolinguists,
it's incompatible with structural,
behavioral approaches to language.
It's a little to my surprise rejected
by current studies of language
by leading neuroscientists
most notably Terrence
Deacon and recent work
which has been favorably received
by eminent biologists,
again little to my surprise.
The approach therefore
seems to be controversial,
but I think the
appearances are misleading.
A more careful look will show
I think that the basic
assumptions are tacitly adopted
even by those who strenuously reject them,
and indeed have to be
adopted even for coherence.
I'm gonna put aside this interesting topic
of contemporary intellectual history,
and I'll simply assume that language
can be studied as part of the world,
continue in other words to pursue
the biolinguistic approach that took shape
about half a century ago,
heavily influenced by ethology,
comparative psychology
and intensively pursued then along
quite a few different paths,
including much of the work
that claims to reject the approach.
Well, assuming that turn to some things
that ought to be obvious.
It can scarcely be denied
that some internal state
is responsible for the fact, that I speak
and understand some variety
of what's loosely called English,
but not say Hindi or Swahili at the borrow
and in fact adapt a traditional term,
we can call this the state whatever it is,
it's internal to me,
a state of the human faculty of language
primarily a state of the brain.
We can call each such state
an internalized language
in the technical literature
often called an I language for
simplicity I'll call it that.
It should also be uncontroversial,
that the Faculty of language
has an initial state
part of our biological endowment
which permits a certain range of options,
the attainable I languages.
The Faculty of language
then is a special property
that enables my granddaughter,
but not her pet kitten
or chimpanzee to attain
a specific I language
on exposure to appropriate data,
data which her mind in some obscure way
is able to extract from the booming,
buzzing, confusion and to interpret
as linguistic experience,
that's no slight task
nobody knows how it's done
but it obviously is.
More accurately every infant acquires
a complex of such states,
that's a complication
that I'll put aside.
The expectation that language
is like everything else
in the organic world,
and therefore is based on
a genetically determined initial state,
that it distinguishes say my
granddaughter from her pets
that assumption has been called
the innateness hypothesis.
And there's a substantial literature
debating the validity of
the innateness hypothesis.
The literature has a curious character
there are lots of condemnations
of the hypothesis,
but it's never formulated
and nobody defends.
It's alleged advocates
of, of whom I'm one,
I have no idea what the hypothesis is.
Everyone has some innateness
hypothesis concerning language
at least, everyone who's interested
in the difference between
an infant and say her pets.
Furthermore, the invented term
innateness hypothesis is
completely meaningless,
there is no specific innateness hypothesis
rather there are various hypotheses,
about what might be the initial
genetically determined state
these hypotheses are of
course constantly changing
as more is learned, that
all should be obvious.
Confusion about these matters
has reached such extreme levels,
that it's becoming hard even to unravel
but I'll put all that aside.
The bio linguistic approach
takes mental faculties
to be states of the organism.
In particular, internal
languages, I languages
that are states of the
Faculty of language.
I'll focus on language,
but most of what follows
that should hold as well for
other cognitive faculties
and in fact for far simpler organisms,
say a bee communication
or navigation for example.
Well, when we adopt this approach,
several questions arise at once.
The central one is to determine
the nature of the initial
and attained States.
And though the matter again
appears to be controversial
I know of no serious alternative
to the thesis that these are
in substantial measure
computational states,
whether we have in mind insect navigation
or what you and I are doing right now.
Again, that's held to be controversial
but since there's no alternative ideas
I don't understand why.
It's held to be controversial for humans
it's not held to be controversial for say,
insect navigation but the
questions about the same.
Investigation of the brain in these terms
is sometimes called psychological,
and it's contrasted with
investigation of term
in terms of cells chemical processes,
electrical activity and so on
that's called physiological.
These are again terms of convenience,
they don't have any sharp boundaries,
chemistry and physics were distinguished
in pretty much similar
way, not very long ago.
So, the formulas involving
complex molecules
that we now study in school.
These were pretty
recently considered to be,
I'm quoting merely
classific story symbols,
that summarize the observed
course of a reaction.
The ultimate nature of
the molecular groupings
was held to be unsolvable,
and the actual arrangement
of atoms within a molecule
if that even means anything,
was never to be read into the formulas.
I'm quoting from a standard
history of chemistry.
Keiko Leong whose structural
chemistry paved the way
to eventual unification of
the chemistry and physics,
he doubted that absolute
constitution of organic molecules
could ever be given,
his own models his analysis of valency
and so on were to have
only an instrumental interpretation
as calculating devices.
The actually large parts of physics
were understood in the same
way, by prominent scientists
including the molecular theory of gases
even Bohr's model of the atom.
In fact, only a few years before physics
and chemistry were
united in Linus Pauling's
account of the chemical bond,
America's first Nobel
prize-winning chemist,
dismissed talk about the
real nature of chemical bonds
as in his terms metaphysical twaddle,
this was nothing more
than a very crude method
of representing certain known
facts about chemical reactions
a mode of representation only,
just a calculating device.
The rejection of this skepticism
by a few leading scientists
whose views were incidentally condemned
as a conceptual absurdity,
that paved the way to
the eventual unification.
These are fairly recent debates,
this is talking about the 1920s.
These fairly recent debates
in the hard sciences,
I think have considerable relevance
for today's controversies
concerning computational theories
of cognitive capacity, that's
from insects to humans.
Important topic, one that
discussed a little bit elsewhere
and I think deserves a good deal
more attention than its received.
Well, with the biolinguistic
approach in place,
this framework in place,
we wanna discover the relationship
between psychological states and the world
as described in other terms.
We want to know how computational states
are related to neuro physiological states,
states of the brain were represented
in them and one terminology.
We also want to find out
how these mental states
relate to the organism
external world, as for example
when the motions and noises
produced by a forager
be direct others to a distant flower,
or when I talk about
a recent trip to India
or when I say that I recently read
Darwin's Dissent of Man,
referring to a book,
all of this is called intentionality
and philosophical jargon.
The broad issues were raised prominently
at the end of the decade of the brain,
which brought the last
millennium to a close.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences
and at the end of the millennium year 2000
published the volume to mark the occasion,
that summarized the current state
of understanding in these areas.
The guiding theme of the
volume was formulated
by a distinguished
neuroscientist Vernon MountCastle
in his introduction to the collection.
It is in his words, the
thesis that things mental
indeed minds are emergent
properties of brains,
though these emergences are
not regarded as irreducible
but are produced by principles
that control the interactions
between lower-level events,
principles we do not yet understand.
That same thesis has been
put forth in recent years
as quoting as an astonishing hypothesis
of the new biology, a radically new idea
in the philosophy of mind,
the bold assertion that mental phenomena
are entirely natural and caused
by neuro physiological
activities of the brain,
opening the door to new and
promising inquiries and so on.
Contributors to the
American Academy volume,
were for the most part quite optimistic
about the prospects for
overcoming the remaining gaps
between psychological and
physiological accounts.
Mountcastle's phrase, "We
do not yet understand."
Reflects that optimism suggests
we will soon understand.
Wilson wrote that, "Researchers
now speak confidently
"of a coming solution to
the brain mind problem."
Similar confidence has been
expressed for half a century
including announcements
by prominent scientists,
Nobel Prize winner in one case
that the brain, mind problem
has already been solved.
We may recall usefully similar optimism
shortly before the unification
of chemistry and physics.
So in 1929, Bertrand Russell
who knew the sciences well,
he wrote that chemical
laws cannot at present
be reduced to physical laws.
In his phrase at present,
like Mountcastle's word
yet expresses the expectation,
that the reduction should take place
in the course of scientific
progress, perhaps soon.
Now, in the case of physics and chemistry
it never did take place,
and what happened was something different
and totally unexpected.
Namely, unification of a
virtually unchanged chemistry
with a radically revised physics.
And it's hardly necessary
to stress the fact
that the state of understanding
and achievement in these areas,
50, 80 years ago was far beyond
anything that can be claimed
for the brain and
cognitive sciences today,
which oughta give us pause.
The American Academy volume
reviews many important discoveries,
but the leading thesis
should arouse our skepticism.
And not only for the reason
that I just mentioned,
another reason is that the
thesis is by no means new.
In fact, it was formulated
and virtually the same words
two centuries ago, late 18th century,
by the eminent chemist Joseph Priestley.
He wrote that properties of mind
arise from the organization
of the nervous system itself,
and those properties termed mental
are the results of the organical
structure of the brain,
just as matter is possessed
of powers of attraction and
repulsion that act at a distance
contrary to the founding principles
of modern scientific revolution
from Galileo to Newton and Beyond.
Half a century before Priestley,
David Hume had casually described thought
as a little agitation of the brain,
and shortly after the French
philosopher, physician
Gabonese wrote that the
brain must be considered
a special organ designed
to produce thought
as the stomach and the intestines
are designed to operate
the digestion, the liver,
to filter bile and various glands
to prepare salivary juices.
Lemetri, he had similar proposals,
they were suppressed at the time
but they're well known today.
A century later, Darwin
asked rhetorically,
why thought being a secretion of the brain
should be considered more
wonderful than gravity
which is a property of matter.
Actually, these and many other conceptions
developed from an inquiry,
into what was called thinking matter
in part developed from
what's sometimes called
by historians of philosophy
Locke's suggestion,
John Locke's suggestion.
That is, his observation in his words
that God might have chosen
to super add to matter
a Faculty of thinking, just as
he annexed effects to motion
which we can in no way
conceive motion able to produce
the theological apparatus,
may well have been for self-defense.
So Locke's correspondent suggests.
By the late 18th century,
the thesis was widely
regarded as inescapable.
Newton had demonstrated
to his considerable dismay
that matter does not exist,
in the sense of the Galilean revolution
and of the scientists of his
own day and his own sense.
That being the case, the mind-body problem
could no longer even be formulated,
at least in anything
resembling the classical form.
Current formulation, as
seem at best to restate
the problem of unification
of psychological
and physiological approaches, and to do so
in highly misleading terminology.
There was no mind-body problem,
any more than there was a
chemistry physics problem
in the 1920s.
Unification of Newton's discoveries
led to, they really left
no coherent alternative
to the conclusion that was
drawn by Hume Priestley, others
and rediscovered today in
pretty much the same terms.
But with the problem of emergence,
as unresolved as it was two centuries ago
and that includes the
question whether this notion,
with its reductionist connotations
is even the right notion,
maybe it's the wrong notion,
as proved to be the case
for chemistry and physics.
The traditional mind-body problem
is often ridiculed as a problem
of the ghost in the machine
but that's misconception.
Newton exorcized the machine,
he left the ghost completely intact.
A similar observation
is made very recently
by two physicists Paul
Davies and John Griffin
concluding a book of theirs,
called the Matter Myth.
They write that during the triumphal phase
of materialism and mechanism in the 1930s,
that Gilbert Ryle
derided, mind-body dualism
in a pithy reference to the mind part,
as the ghost in the machine.
But already when he coined
that pithy expression
in the 1930s, the new physics was at work
undermining the materialist worldview
on which Ryle's philosophy was based.
By the end of the 20th
century they continue,
we can see that Ryle was
right to dismiss the notion
of the ghost in the machine,
not because there is no ghost
but because there is no machine.
Their point is correct,
but the timing is off
by at least two centuries, actually three.
Although, it did take some time
for Newton's demolition of what was called
at the time, the mechanical
philosophy, the belief
that the world is a machine,
it took a little time for that to enter
scientific common sense.
Newton himself was well
aware of the conclusion
and far from pleased by it.
He regarded his own
conclusion as an absurdity
that no serious person could entertain,
and he sawed away around
it to the end of his life
as did prominent scientists of his day,
and much later always in vain.
Over time, it just came to be recognized
that Newton had not only
effectively destroyed
the entire materialist,
physicalist conception of the universe,
but he had also undermined the
standards of intelligibility
on which the early Scientific
Revolution was based.
The outcome is familiar at
least in history of science,
it was described very well in the classic
19th century history of
materialism by Friedrich Longa.
He pointed out that scientists
have accustomed theirselves
to the abstract notion of forces,
or rather a notion hovering
in a mystic obscurity
between abstraction and
concrete comprehension.
A turning point in the
history of materialism
that removes the surviving
remnants of the doctrine
far from the ideas and concerns
of the genuine materialists
of the 17th century,
and deprives them of any significance.
That too is now a virtual truism,
at least among historians of science.
One of the founders of
the modern discipline
Alexandre Corre he wrote 40 years ago
that a purely materialistic
or mechanistic physics
is impossible, and we
simply have to accept
that the world is constituted of entities
and processes that we
cannot intuitively grasp.
The problems of emergence and unification
take on an entirely new form,
in the post-newtonian era.
A form that's furthermore
unstable, changing
as science comes to
accommodate new absurdities
as they would have been
regarded by the founding figures
of the Scientific
Revolution including Newton.
And I know of no reason to suppose
that the process has come to an end.
It's worth pointing out that
the only part of our knowledge
or what we take to be knowledge,
for which we can claim much confidence
is our mental world, that is
the world of our experience.
As reflective beings,
humans try in various ways
to make sense out of this experience.
One part of this effort is
sometimes called folk science
when it's conducted in a more systematic,
careful, controlled way we
nowadays call it science.
One standard conclusion
of contemporary science,
is that each organism,
humans in particular
reflexively develop what
ecologists call and unveiled
the particular mode of constructing
an interpreting experience
given the data of sense,
it's quite different for us
and for bees for example.
Furthermore, there is
no great chain of being
in fundamental respects,
insects have richer experience
and more sophisticated ways
of dealing with it for action,
using it for action than humans do.
Among other standard
conclusions of modern science,
are those that Priestley and many others
drew the conclusions
they drew centuries ago,
about thinking matter reiterated
at the end of the decade of
the brain, just two years ago,
that without notable change
or maybe surprisingly
without much awareness that
its revival, not innovation
and that its revival of something
that was taken to be
an unavoidable truism,
two centuries ago for quite good reasons.
Given the lack of a
positive determinant account
of the non mental part of the world
of the world, what sometimes
called the physical world.
Talk of the hard part of
the mind-body problem,
recent years that's been taken
to be consciousness conventionally.
That talk of that kind
is misleading at best,
if it's even meaningful.
It may not be, sometimes the problem
is not very clearly
posed, that is it's posed
in terms of questions to which
we can't even of wrong answers.
So for example, there's no sensible answer
to the question, what is it like to be me?
Or, what is it like to be a bat,
and quoting Thomas Nagle's famous paper.
There are no bad answers to that,
they're no good answers, none at all.
Formal semantics inquiries,
often take the meaning of a question
to be the set of propositions
that are answers to it.
And if that is at least
a condition on meaning,
then it follows that if there
are no sensible answers,
the question has no meaning.
Even when legitimate questions are posed,
we don't have any good
reason as far as I can see,
but to suppose that they
are intrinsically harder
than lots of other problems,
say the problems posed
for our understanding by quantum mechanics
or cosmological theories of
an infinity of universes.
Or for that matter by
the properties of motion.
We don't have any reason that I know of,
to question the opinions
of Newton, David Hume,
and other not inconsiderable figures
who in various ways
reached Locke's conclusion
that motion has effects
which we can in no way
conceive motion able to produce.
Even before Newton puzzlement
about motion was profound
his precursors or William Petting
described springing or elastic motion
as the hard rock in philosophy,
philosophy means what we call science.
The obscurity was so
great, Robert Boyle felt
as to prove the existence
of an intelligent author
or disposer of things.
Even the skeptical Newtonian Voltaire
felt that the impenetrable
mysteries of motion
proved that there must be a God,
who gave movement to matter
rather like Locke suggestion.
One cannot say that the
hard problem was solved,
it was just abandoned in the course
of a significant revision of
the enterprise of science,
that is the recognition that
in some fundamental sense
the world is just unintelligible to us,
and that we have to reduce
our sights to the search
for intelligible theories,
that's something quite different.
And even that goal has
been strongly contested
by prominent physicists.
For example, in the critique
a century ago of atomic theory
or even of the idea that physics
should go beyond establishing
quantitative relations
between observable phenomena.
The significance of that shift,
should not be underestimated,
it was recognized soon enough
for example by David Hume
who wrote that in his words,
"Newton's discoveries reveal the obscurity
"in which nature's ultimate
secrets ever will remain."
These mysteries of nature
as Hume called them,
referring to the phenomena of motion.
Will remain beyond our cognitive reach,
perhaps we might speculate,
he didn't for reasons
that are rooted in the
biological endowment
of the curious creature,
that alone is able
even to contemplate these questions.
Well, I did talk a little bit
about these topics 35 years ago,
and what's happened since
including incidentally
my own belated self-education
inclines me to believe
that what I said then,
should be reiterated
much more forcefully,
and in much greater depth
and with much more explicit connections
drawn to contemporary discussions
about problems of language and mind.
Well, let's return to
the narrower question
of emergence of mental
aspects of the world,
or perhaps the development of an account
of the non mental world that
can be unified with them
if the physics, chemistry
model turns out to be accurate.
The scale of the gap that remains
and the very dubious grounds
for the general optimism
about overcoming it, are
revealed very clearly
in the American Academy symposium
that reviewed the state of understanding
at the end of the millennium.
One leading specialist on vision
who was toward the optimistic
end of the spectrum,
and nevertheless reminded the reader
that how the brain combines the responses
of specialized cells to indicate
a continuous vertical line, is a mystery
that neurology has not yet solved.
Or even for that matter how one line
is differentiated from others
or from the visual surround.
Sameera Nzeki,
the AAAs journal American Association
for advancement of
science, journal science.
A year ago they devoted an issue to
neuroscience.
The summary article was
co-authored by Eric Kandel,
Nobel laureate, it was subtitled
Breaking Down Scientific Barriers
to the study of brain and mind.
The article covers a lot
of interesting ground
but it ends up with the conclusion
that the neuroscience of
higher cognitive processes
is only beginning, it's surely beginning
from a higher plane than was constructed
by Descartes who was in many ways,
the founder of modern neuroscience
but nonetheless, it's still beginning.
Fundamental questions remain
beyond even dreams of resolution.
That includes those
that were traditionally
considered at the heart
of the theory of mind,
such as for example at
choosing some action
or even thinking about doing so.
There's been very valuable work
about the narrower questions.
For example, how an
organism executes a plan
for integrated motor action,
say how a cockroach walks
or how a person reaches
for a cup on the table.
Well, let's return to
the narrower question
of emergence of mental
aspects of the world
or perhaps the development, of an account
of the non mental world that
can be unified with them,
if the physics chemistry model
turns out to be accurate.
The scale of the gap that remains,
and the very dubious grounds
for the general optimism
about overcoming it, are
revealed very clearly
in the American Academy symposium
that reviewed the state of understanding
at the end of the millennium.
One leading specialists on vision
who was toward the optimistic
end of the spectrum,
and nevertheless reminded the reader
that how the brain combines the responses
of specialized cells to indicate
a continuous vertical line
is a mystery that neurology
has not yet solved,
or even for that matter how one line
is differentiated from others
or from the visual surround,
Sameera Nzeki the AAAs
Journal American Association
for advancement of
science, journal science,
a year ago they devoted
an issue to neuroscience.
The summary article was co-authored
by Eric Kandel Nobel laureate,
it was subtitled Breaking
down Scientific Barriers
to the Study of Brain and Mind.
The article covers a lot
of interesting ground
but it ends up with the conclusion
that the neuroscience of
higher cognitive processes
is only beginning, it's surely beginning
from a higher plane than
was constructed by Descartes
who was in many ways the
founder of modern neuroscience,
but nonetheless it's still beginning.
Fundamental questions will remain
beyond even dreams of resolution,
that includes those
that were traditionally
considered at the heart
of the theory of mind.
Such as for example choosing some action
or even thinking about doing so.
There's been very valuable work
about the narrower questions.
For example, how an
organism executes a plan
for integrated motor action.
Say how a cockroach walks,
or how a person reaches
for a cup on the table.
But no one even raises the question
of why the person or the
cockroach executes one plan
rather than some other one,
that question is raised only
for the very simplest organisms
single-cell organisms.
In fact, the same is true
even of a visual perception
which is often considered
a passive process.
A couple of years ago, a few,
two cognitive neuroscientists
one a colleague of mine,
published the review of research
on a problem that was posed in
1850 by Helmholtz, his words.
"Even without moving our eyes
we can focus our attention
"on different objects at will,
"resulting in very different
perceptual experiences
"of the same visual field."
There's been interesting work on that
but the phrase at will points to an area
that's beyond serious empirical inquiry,
it remains as much of a mystery
as it was for Newton
at the end of his life
when he was still seeking
what he called a subtle spirit
that lies hidden in all bodies,
and that might without absurdity
account for their properties
of attraction and repulsion,
the nature and effects of light sensation
and the way members of animal bodies
move at the command of the will.
These are all comparable
mysteries for Newton
that perhaps even beyond our understanding
he thought like the principles of motion,
and the classical problems
of the theory of mind
at least since Descartes,
who incidentally also regarded them
as possibly beyond human understanding.
Even if we restrict ourselves
to the study of mechanisms,
the gaps are quite substantial.
One of the leading
cognitive neuroscientists
Randy Gallistel pointed out recently,
that we clearly do not understand
how the nervous system computes,
or even the foundations
of its ability to compute
even for the small set of
arithmetic and logical operations
that are fundamental to any computation.
He happens to be talking about insects
but obviously extends beyond.
In another domain, one of the founders
of contemporary cognitive
neuroscience Hans-Lukas Teuber.
He introduced an important
review of perception
and neurophysiology, by writing that,
it may seem strange to
begin with the claim
that there is no adequate
definition of perception,
and to end with the admission that we lack
the neurophysiological theory.
Though this was the
most that could be said.
Now, it's true that that was 40 years ago
and there were dramatic discoveries,
right at the time that
he was writing and since.
But I suspect that Tueber who's since died
would have expressed much
the same judgment today.
Tueber also outlined a standard way
to move towards addressing
the problem of unification.
He explained that his purpose in reviewing
the perceptual phenomena and offering
a speculative psychological
account of them
was because this may suggest directions
in which the search for
neural basis of perception
should proceed, namely by
clarifying the assumptions
that those neural basis must satisfy.
Now, that's a classic approach,
along with the restriction
of the scientific enterprise
to more modest goals, namely
intelligibility of theories
rather than of the world.
Another consequence of Newton's demolition
of the hopes of the Galilean revolution,
for a mechanical conception of the world.
Another one was recognition
that scientific inquiry
is gonna have to be local
in its expectations.
Overarching unification, may take place
but perhaps over a long term,
and in ways that can't be anticipated.
The 18th century English
chemist Joseph Black
set the tone for
subsequent scientific work
by recommending that chemical affinity
be received as a first principle,
which we cannot explain any more
than Newton could explain gravitation,
but let us defer accounting
for the laws of affinity
till we have established
such a body of doctrine
as Newton has established
concerning the laws of gravitation.
And chemistry in fact
proceeded along that course,
separating itself
increasingly from physics.
Physics followed Newton's admonition
that nature will be comfortable to herself
and very simple, observing
a few general principles
of attraction and repulsion
that relate the elementary particles
of which all matter is constituted
more or less in the way
that different buildings
could be constructed from the same bricks.
The goal was therefore to
understand to quantify,
to reduce the whole of
nature to simple laws
as Newton did for say astronomy.
I happen to be quoting Arnold Thackeray
in his history of Newtonian matter theory,
and the development of chemistry.
He goes on to say "This
was the compelling,
"the enticing, indeed the
almost bewitching goal
"of much work pursuing
the thoroughly Newtonian
"and reductionist task of uncovering
"the general mathematical laws
"which governed all chemical behavior."
There was a distinct chemical tradition,
followed the path that was
outlined by Joseph Black
Lavoisier Wallace
founded modern chemistry,
that tried to keep neutral
probably to avoid controversy.
But his own work helped to found
the separate chemical track
Dalton abandoned and entirely the Boyle,
Newton corpuscular theories of matter.
He adopted the radically different view
that matter could exist
in heterogeneous forms
with varied principles.
His approach, Thackeray writes
was chemically successful
and therefore enjoyed the
homage of the history,
unlike the philosophically more
coherent if less successful
reductionist schemes of the Newtonians.
By the end of the 19th century,
the fields of interest of
chemists and physicists
had become quite distinct,
including a standard history of chemistry.
Chemistry dealt with a world consisting
of some 90 material elements,
with many and varied
principles and properties,
while physicists handled a more
nebulous mathematical world
of energy and electromagnetic waves
that were perceived in light radiant heat,
electricity, magnetism,
later radio waves and x-rays
the chemists matter was
discrete and discontinuous,
the physicists energy was continuous
and the gap appeared unbridgeable.
Meanwhile, chemists developed
a rich body of doctrine
achieving chemistry's
triumphs in isolation
from the newly emerging science
of physics, Thackeray again.
As I mentioned the isolation,
ended only recently
in a completely unanticipated
way, not by reduction,
but by unifying a
radically revised physics
with the bodies of doctrine
that chemistry had accumulated
which had in fact provided
important guidelines
for the reconstruction of physics,
basically towards this
point about perception,
and that's happened often
in the history of science
and we cannot know
whether something similar
might be required for unification
of the study of brain and mind,
if assuming that to be a task
that is within our cognitive reach,
and that we don't know either.
Well, I've already
suggested and will repeat
that there are interesting
and important parallels
between the debates concerning
the reality of chemistry
up to the unification which
was just 65 years ago.
And current debates in
the philosophy of mind
about the reality of the constructions
of psychological approaches.
The former debates, chemistry physics
they are now understood to
have been totally pointless,
based on serious misunderstanding.
We simply have no grasp of reality
other than what our best
explanatory theories can provide.
If they happen to be
computational theories,
okay that's reality.
My own view, I've discussed it elsewhere,
is that current debates
very much alive right now,
are also largely pointless
and for essentially the same reasons,
this includes central
topics of philosophy of mind
and theoretical cognitive science,
which those of you in the
disciplines will recognize
or even in the general literature.
Well considerations of the
kind that I've been reviewing
these were in the background
of the so called cognitive
revolution of the 1950s,
at least for some of the participants.
Although it was unknown at the time,
in many ways the shift of perspective
brought about by the cognitive revolution
actually recapitulated the
first cognitive revolution
of the 17th century,
that includes the focus
on vision and language
in the latter case adopting
the bio linguistic approach
that is shifting the focus of attention
from phenomena like behavior
and its products, say texts.
Shifting from that to inner mechanisms
that enter into producing the phenomenon.
Now, that's a shift but
it's actually a shift
that was taken in the 17th century.
Notice again then there was
regression for a long time.
Notice again that that
shift still leaves us
a long way from the problems of action,
that's a vastly different matter.
I've myself often quoted
though Hume from Humboldt's aphorism,
that the core problem
of the study of language
is the infinite use of finite means,
so it was a leading concern
of Cartesian philosophy before him,
and a problem that
really couldn't be posed
very clearly at least
until the mid 20th century
that when the concepts of
recursive generative procedures
that was fully clarified.
These procedures
constitute the finite means
that are put to infinite use,
but it's important to be aware
I don't think I've stressed this enough.
It's important to be aware
that despite quite a lot of progress
in understanding the means,
the means that are
employed for infinite use
the question of how they are used,
is scarcely even addressed
and it was that question
that was the fundamental
one for Descartes Humboldt
and other early modern figures,
and again those questions
aren't even addressed
for say insects, let alone humans.
It's reasonably clear that the
human capacity for language
is what's called a species property,
that is biologically isolated
in essential respects
and close to uniform across the species.
That actually seems less surprising today
than it did not long ago,
in the light of very recent discoveries
about the very limited genetic variation
among humans as compared
with other primates,
suggests that we've all descended
from a very small breeding group,
maybe 100,000 years ago.
So, humans are basically identical
from the point of view have say,
an outside biologist looking at us.
The bio linguistic approach
adopted from the start,
what has been called quote,
the recently published encyclopedia
of cognitive neuroscience,
what's called the norm
these days in neuroscience,
the modular view of learning,
that is the conclusion that in all animals
learning is based on
specialized mechanisms
instincts to learn in specific ways
happen to be quoting
Randy Gallistel again,
"These organs within the
brain," as he calls them,
"Perform specific kinds of computation
"in accordance with specific design.
"Apart from extremely hostile environments
"the organs change state
under the triggering
"and shaping effect of external factors,
"they do so more or less reflexively
"and in accordance with internal design."
That's the process of learning,
although growth might be
a more appropriate term
avoiding misleading connotations
of the term learning.
The language organ the Faculty of language
fits that pattern, the normal pattern.
according to the best theories we have
each attainable state of the system
each I language, is a computational system
that determines, generates
in the technical sense.
Infinitely many expressions
each of these expressions
is a store of information,
about sound and meaning which is accessed
by performance systems.
The properties of the I language,
result from the interplay
of several factors,
one factor is individual experience
which selects among the options
that are permitted by the initial state.
A second factor is the
initial state itself,
which is a product of evolution.
And a third factor is general properties
of organic systems, in this
case computational systems
incorporating it's reasonable to expect
principles of efficient computation.
The general picture involving
crucially the third factor,
is familiar in the study of
organic systems generally
this classic work of Darcy
Thompson and Alan Turing
on organic form and morphogenesis
is an illustration the topic currently
and contemporary biology.
One example, current example
that might be suggestive
in the present connection, present context
is recent work by Christopher Juniac
mathematical biologists at Maryland
who's been exploring the idea that
minimization of what he calls wire length,
as in microchip design
should produce what he calls
the best of all possible brains.
And he's tried to explain in these terms,
the neuroanatomy of nematodes,
one of the simplest and
best studied organisms
and also various pervasive
properties of nervous systems
such as the fact that the brain
is as far forward as
possible on the body axis,
wants to try to show
that that's just property
of efficient computation based
on wire length minimization.
Well one can trace interest
in this third factor
general properties of organisms,
back to a Galilean intuition
namely Galileo's concept
that in his words, "Nature is perfect."
From the tides, to the flight of birds
and it's the task of the
scientist to discover
in just what sense this is true.
Newton's confidence that
nature must be very simple,
which I quoted, that
reflects the same intuition.
However obscure it may be that intuition
about what Ernest Pickle
called nature's drive
for the beautiful, has
been a guiding theme
of modern science since
its smart modern origins
and with a Galilean revolution,
perhaps even its defining characteristic.
It's hard to say exactly what it is
but that it's a guiding
intuition is not a doubt.
Biologists however have tended
to think rather differently
about the objects of their inquiry.
Very commonly, they adopt
what Francois Jacob,
the Nobel laureate his image of nature
as what he called a tinkerer,
which does the best it can
with the materials at hand
often a pretty rotten job,
as human intelligence seems
to be keen on demonstrating about itself.
One well-known contemporary biologist
Gabriel Dover British geneticist,
he concludes in a recent book that biology
is a strange and messy business
and perfection is the
last word one could use
to describe how organisms work,
particularly for anything
produced by natural selection.
Though of course produced only in part
by natural selection as he emphasizes,
and as every biologist
knows and to an extent
that can't be quantified
by available tools.
Well, we just don't know
which of these conflicting
intuitions is more accurate,
the Galilean intuition
or say Jacob's intuition.
And we will not know
until we know the answer,
and they seem very remote those answers.
The same author Gabriel Dover writes that
"We are nowhere near relieving
our deepest ignorance
"about the biological world around us."
Now, he goes on to
reserve his sharpest words
for those who seek to give
scientific respectability
to complex behavioral phenomena and humans
that we cannot even begin
to investigate seriously.
He calls that a sign of
intellectual laziness at best,
and shameless ignorance at worst
when confronting issues
of massive complexity
which far exceed the reach
of contemporary science.
He gives some examples but
for charity, I'll ignore them.
The long-term goal of
investigating the third factor
that is the role of general
properties of organisms
in determining the Faculty of language,
and the states that can
attain internal languages,
that goal was actually
formulated in the early days
of the bio linguistic turn,
but it was put aside as unfeasible
and attention focused
on the first two factors
experience and the initial state.
In technical terminology that's called
the problems of descriptive
and explanatory adequacy,
and the latter is the question
of how the initial state
enters into determining the transition
to the final state, the state attained.
The earliest attempts 50 years ago,
to replace traditional or
structuralist accounts of language
by generative rule systems,
revealed very quickly,
that very little was known
about the sound and meaning
and structure of language
and that huge problems
had been unwittingly
swept under the rug,
rather as in the days when it was assumed
that bodies fall to their natural place.
As has often been the case,
one of the hardest steps in
the development of the sciences
is the first one namely to be puzzled
by what seems so natural and obvious.
To gain some realistic sense
of what had been overlooked
was an enormous task
in itself, even more so
in the light of the recognition
that the apparent complexity
and diversity of languages
that was very soon discovered,
just had to be an illusion.
The reason for that conclusion
is a standard one in biology
namely as in the case of
other organs of the body.
Experience can play
only a very limited role
in determining the state that's obtained
in this case the attained I language.
So, even a young child has mastered a rich
and highly articulated system of sound
and meaning and structural properties.
that goes far beyond
any evidence available,
and that's shared with
others who have different
but also highly restricted experience.
So, it has to be the case,
that the initial state
plays an overwhelming role,
in determining the language
that the child attains
in all of its aspects.
Experience surely has a role of triggering
and shaping role, as in
the case of other organs,
but it has to be a limited one.
So, there's no reason
to suppose that language
and other higher mental
faculties depart radically
from everything known
in the biological world.
The task was to show that
the apparent richness
and complexity and diversity
is in fact an illusion,
that all languages are
test to the same mold
and that experience
serves only to set options
within a fixed system of principles,
all determined by the initial state.
Much as in the case of
other biological systems.
Well, a great deal of the
research the last 40 years
in these areas has been
driven by a kind of tension
between descriptive and
explanatory adequacy,
that is the tension between the search
for true theories of I
languages the attained state
on the one hand, and a true theory
of the invariant initial state
of the language or again on the other.
The invariant initial state is the topic
of what's come to be
called Universal grammar,
it's adapting a traditional
notion to a quite a new context.
The search for a descriptive adequacy
like a true theory of Hungarian,
that leads to complex intricate theories
of particular constructions
and particular languages
differing from one another.
In contrast, the search
for explanatory adequacy
seeks to find the common ground
from which the existing
languages and all possible others
arise given the data that are
structured is experienced,
by the operations of the initial States,
again in some unknown manner.
The first proposals from the 1950s
suggested that the initial state,
the topic of universal grammar.
That the initial state
provides a kind of a format
for rural systems in their organization,
and a procedure for
selecting one instantiation
of the format over another,
in terms of its success in capturing
authentic linguistic generalizations
and empirical notion that incorporates
also a kind of a theory internal version
of standard best theory considerations.
The rules themselves at the beginning
were adaptations of informal
traditional notions,
which had proven to be utterly inadequate
when they were subjected
to close examination.
So that meant for
example rules for forming
relative clauses in Hungarian or passives,
or in Japanese or positives
and the Romance languages and so on.
The general approach did
offer a kind of solution
to the core problem of
the study of language,
sometimes called in the literature,
the logical problem of
language acquisition
that is how does the initial state map
constructed experience,
to the final state.
But as was emphasized, that
solution holds only in principle
because in practice the
conception was unfeasible
because of the astronomical
computational demands.
Well, from about 40 years ago
attempts were made to reduce
the scale of the problem
by seeking valid general principles
that can be abstracted
from particular grammars
and attributed the
universe grammar meaning
to the initial state of the
language faculty leaving residue
that might be more manageable.
Actually some of those
proposals were kind of proposals
that were then being explored.
I reviewed in the lectures
here 35 years ago,
after that time, by then already
there was some progress after that time
then considerable progress,
but it still left the tension unresolved.
That as the general picture
was somehow fundamentally defective,
there was no true
solution, feasible solution
to the logical problem
of language acquisition.
Well, a possible resolution
of the tension was reached
after a good deal of
effort about 20 years ago,
with the crystallization
of a picture of language
that marked a very sharp break
from a long and rich tradition
of tracing back to
classical Indian and Greece,
is sometimes called the
principles and parameters approach
that dispenses entirely
with the core notions
of traditional grammar notions,
like grammatical construction
or grammatical rule.
From this point of view,
categories such as a relative
clause or passive construction
are understood to be real enough,
but only as taxonomic artifacts.
So for example, aquatic organisms
which would include say
dolphins, trout, eels
and some bacteria it's a category
but not a biological category.
The phenomena, the phenomenal
properties of these artifacts
result from the interaction
of invariant principles
of the initial State, Faculty of language
with parameters that are
finite number of parameters
fixed in one or another way.
It would incidentally follow
that there are only finitely
many possible human languages
apart from idiosyncrasies
and choice of lexical items,
and even these are sharply constrained.
That means that the problem
of unfeasible search
is eliminated it's a major
conclusion if correct.
The conception has now been applied
to typologically different languages
of just about every known kind,
it's led to many discoveries
a host of new questions
that were never before contemplated
sometimes suggestive answers.
This principles and parameters approach
is an approach, it's not a theory.
Within the general approach,
there are many diverse theories
there is actually a very good introduction
to the topic just published by Mark Baker,
called Atoms of Language
he himself has made
major contributions to the approach,
that he's been working
primarily on languages
that appear to be at opposite ends
of the spectrum of
typological possibilities,
picking that on purpose of course.
Mohawk and English that's the pair
that he studied most intensively,
trying to show that
although they are about
as different phenomenally
as two languages can be,
there in reality virtually identical
apart from very small
changes in a few parameters,
so that's a Martian observer
who views humans as we
view other organisms,
would conclude that they're
essentially identical
dialectal variants of the same language.
There's been extensive
work of a similar character
carried out worldwide with
quite revealing results.
One major program funded
by the European Union
is studying the vast number
of languages in Europe,
huge number in fact misleadingly called,
things like German and Italian and so on
though they're totally
different languages.
Included by those in
those characterizations
and it's happening being
done elsewhere as well.
I don't wanna suggest that the
approach has been established
that's very far from true,
but it has been very successful
as a research program
as a stimulus to empirical
and theoretical inquiry
that progress towards
the goals of descriptive
and explanatory adequacy,
has far surpassed anything
that precedes, that not
only in depth of analysis
of particular languages,
but also in the range of
typologically different languages
that have been investigated.
And also a new areas
of linguistic structure
that had barely been explored before.
Related fields such as the
study of language acquisition
have also been completely revitalized
within a similar framework, they now look
totally unlike anything that
was around 20 or 30 years ago.
There are some important
steps towards convergence
although it's certainly gonna
be a long and difficult course
even if the approach turns out
to be more or less on the right track,
we're far from having a clear idea
of what the principles and
parameters actually are.
But I think it's fair to say
that the study of language
in the last 20 years, has
moved to an entirely new plane.
Well, I wanna pick up
these topics tomorrow
and then move on to the issues,
particularly the role of the third fact
there are general properties of organisms
and say something about that.
And then to move on to the work called
the questions of intentionality,
now that is the question of
how language now understood
within the by linguistic framework
relates to the rest of the world.
(audience applauding)
- Professor Chomsky has agreed
to take a couple of questions
that were submitted by the audience.
Since these questions were submitted
at the beginning of the lecture,
they may not have been part
of what's covered today,
it might be a sneak preview of tomorrow.
"Do you still believe that
the human language faculty
"evolved all at once in a
sudden evolutionary leap?
"Doesn't this conflict
with the general finding
"that evolution is gradual?"
- This idea sometimes
called the monster mutation
was invented as far as I'm
aware by Elizabeth Bates,
and has been repeated
by many other people,
that's been attributed
to me for some reason
I haven't got the slightest idea why,
I've never said a word about it.
And I have no idea whether it's true
nor does anyone know anything
about these topics in general.
Why it was invented,
why it was attributed to me
you can try to figure out.
The fact of the matter is no one knows
anything about these things,
even for much simpler questions.
So for example there, one well-known fact
about biological organisms
is they all you know
above the level bacteria,
they all seem to have essentially
the same body type, same body forms.
And it's now kind of
understood how that works
certain regulatory genes
have been master genes
have been discovered
that create the forums
and it just runs through the
whole organic world of animals.
Well very recent work, actually
a couple of papers in nature
just a few weeks ago, show
laboratory experimental work
that shows how this might have happened
in one monster mutation.
Well, okay maybe maybe not.
There's recent work about the
evolution of the human brain
articles in science a couple of weeks ago,
suggesting in fact that one
small mutation took place
which suddenly led to
explosion of brain cells.
Maybe, maybe not these are you know,
I don't have anything to
say about these matters,
I just repeat what's in
the technical literature.
But why this conception
was attributed to me
is a total mystery as far as I know.
- I hope this is not at
the same you like it,
so do you still question again.
"Do you still view language
as self-contained module
"that is independent of
other cognitive systems?
"Wouldn't it be simple to
assume that language ability
"is grounded in the same
cognitive mechanisms
"as other forms of human cognition?"
- Well, I take for granted
that the human language,
I mean it's kind of like asking
whether the visual system is distinct
from other systems of the body.
Of course it isn't or
say the immune system.
Of course, it's not distinct
from the rest of the body
like you can't cut the immune system out
and leave the rest of the
body, I mean it's impossible.
Every subsystem of the body
that's isolated for a particular inquiry
is isolated because it has a kind
of an integrated character,
and you think you can
learn something about it.
It doesn't mean that it's in a little box
that you can pull out, right?
So the immune systems in every cell,
but it's still a system.
And presumably the same is
true of the language faculty.
I mean, it's brings together,
many different components
which come from all over the place,
for example the language faculty
what you and I are now doing,
makes essential use of
the delicate architecture
of the bones in the middle year, okay.
They're terrific for wonderfully designed
for understanding language.
Of course they evolved for reasons
having absolutely nothing
to do with language,
they evolved from the
fact that they apparently
that the skulls of early mammals
about 160 million years ago
were getting bigger,
and as they got bigger
blowing in the reptilian
jaw started migrate
and for mechanical reasons apparently,
it ended up in the middle of the ear
which turns out to be great for language.
And the same is true of, it could,
I mean the computational principles
that are at the core of language,
and we might discover that those
are the same computational principles
that are used by insects for navigation,
if we did that the fascinating discovery,
would mean that it's one of the things
that was recruited to
form the language faculty.
The idea that the language
faculty is isolated
from other cognitive systems
just makes no sense at all, can't be.
I mean we use the language
faculty to express our thoughts
to think to ourselves to communicate,
to have and communicate
attitudes, to perceive the world.
Of course, it's integrated
with the entire collection
of cognitive faculties
and other faculties.
Again, the interesting question
that should be asked about that question
is why it says do I still believe,
because nobody could
possibly believe this.
There's a huge mythology
about these things
which has been developed.
It's kind of characteristic of studies
of human higher mental faculties.
They are pursued at a
level of irrationality
that is just hard to deal with.
In fact centuries ago, the hard sciences
were dealt with in a similar way,
but we should be able to escape from that.
- [Moderator] Have your
views regarding poverty
of the stimulus change in
light of these studies?
- There are no such studies.
(audience laughing)
All studies show what
everybody knows in advance,
that the amount of data available
for language acquisition
is extremely small.
This notion of poverty of
stimulus is a little bit
like what I call the
innateness hypothesis.
Everyone believes in poverty of stimulus,
not only for language but for everything.
There was a certain
embryo once upon a time
that turned into my granddaughter okay.
Why didn't it turn into a worm let's say?
I mean is it because of
the nutritional input?
Like what a different nutritional input
to the cell have turned it into a worm?
Well you know, nobody even
takes questions seriously
they're so idiotic.
What is assumed automatically
by every scientist
is what's called poverty of the stimulus,
in the case of language.
It's considered controversial
in the case of human mental faculties,
but taken for granted
without even any discussion
throughout the rest of biology
because it's so obvious.
I mean it cannot possibly be that
what you and I are now
doing, is based on early
or for that matter late
input for the environment
because there isn't any, virtually none.
In fact, it's easy to demonstrate
that the things that even a young child do
have a statistical level that is barely
at the point of noise
in an actual discourse.
The point is kind of obvious,
there's nothing to discuss about it.
Everyone agrees that there
is poverty of the stimulus,
the only question is well
what is the initial state
that in fact, first of all
structures data as experience
which is no trivial task,
and then takes that experience
and almost instantaneously
and reflexively as Gallistel points out,
constructs an attained
state, that's the problem.
Somebody has some ideas
about it, be my guest
it's a great topic.
- [Moderator] You have
suggested that human beings
possess a language acquisition device,
is this device a real
entity or a metaphor?
- Well, kind of like asking
whether the genetic endowment
that leads to an immune system
is a real system or a metaphor.
I mean we end up doing
what you and I are...
Well, let's go back to my granddaughter
and her imagined pet chimpanzee.
Let's suppose that the two of them
are exposed to exactly the same data okay.
One of them ends up doing what you and I
are now doing, the other one does nothing.
Suppose that she also happens
to have a pet bee, okay.
Well, the pet bee and my granddaughter
exposed to the same visual data
in the case of the bee, it'll end up
with a complicated intricate
system of communication,
the humans can't possibly duplicate
it's way beyond their cognitive capacities
to communicate the distance and height
and quality of a flower,
humans simply can't do that
but the bee does it reflexively.
Well, observing facts like that,
every scientist just takes for granted,
there's something special
about my granddaughter,
or the bee and the chimpanzee
which uses the same data to end
up in very different states.
And unless it's miracles,
that has to do with
their genetic endowment.
So, therefore we can talk about
a language acquisition device
a chimpanzee call acquisition device,
a bee communication acquisition device
these aren't metaphors,
these are just descriptions
of sub components
of an organism which
you try to understand,
there's nothing metaphoric about them
and there really should be
nothing controversial about them.
I mean unless one thinks that the bee,
the chimpanzee and my granddaughter
should end up the same
way with the same data,
unless anybody thinks that,
then the answer should be obvious.
- [Moderator] Is there any
evidence of evolutionary change
in the historical record
of human language?
- No, that's why I mentioned
before the current,
at least current understanding is that
there's extremely little
genetic variation among humans
as compared with other primates.
Meaning which can only, is taken to mean
that we're basically all kind of cousins
coming from the same small
breeding group not very long ago
like a 100, 1,000 or 200,000 years
is essentially nothing
in evolutionary time.
There's been no time for any evolution
nobody knows exactly when
language got into the picture,
but probably about the same time
roughly plus or minus a 100,000 years.
And there's been just no time
for any evolutionary change to take place,
that's why say my granddaughter
and don't know why I'm focused on her.
But my granddaughter if she'd grown up
say in Tokyo, would be
talking perfect Japanese
because she's genetically identical
to the kids who grow up in Tokyo,
as far as this capacity
or probably just about
every capacity is concerned.
So then if that's true, there
can't have been evolutionary
any meaningful evolutionary change
in the history in the
brief history of language,
it's just way too short.
- [Moderator] Now this is the last,
and it's a very open-ended question
so feel free to ignore
it or do what you like.
"what details are results
of current neuroscience
"bear on your current biologically
based language theories."
- Well currently neuroscience is providing
some new ideas, not so much neuroscience
as new techniques, for example imaging,
brain imaging is providing
rather interesting suggestive results
you know FMRI and things like that.
You don't exactly what to make of them
because you know these are investigating
systems that are just not understood
on the basis of signals that
are detected from the outside.
Some of the results are
quite in a way startling,
so for example Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences,
just recently a couple of
months ago published a paper
by Laura Patito, an investigator
who's was in Montreal now and Dartmouth.
She apparently has seems to have shown
that sign language, the
deaf children who use sign,
the neural centres that are
involved in processing the sign
are close to identical,
as far as you can tell,
identical with those of hearing infants
who are processing auditory input.
That's a very surprising result.
I mean a little less surprising
than it would have been 20 years ago
because work has shown that these systems
are very similar in many
structural respects.
But that there neurally
represented in the same place
is quite interesting, if it's true
it would mean that whatever
our Faculty of language is
it's probably independent of modality,
sensory modality, some
analytic computing system
that could use one modality or another.
The fact that say vision and hearing
end up analyzed in the same place
is a little bit surprising,
because of what's known
about the projection
of sensory systems into the cortex.
But that kind of inquiry
is pretty interesting
and suggestive, and there is
work of that kind coming along.
As for neuroscience itself,
remember that very little is known.
I mean, I quoted the encyclopedia,
the current edition of
the MIT encyclopedia
of cognitive neuroscience is pointing out
that we do not understand
the neurophysiology
of even the most elementary computations,
that are used throughout the animal world,
say for insect navigation.
Even the simplest ones,
the neurophysiology
is completely obscure.
When you try to get to human language
you're off in some in
outer space somewhere.
It's an important problem maybe
someday it'll be understood,
but it's pretty remote.
- [Moderator] Well, thank you very much
for a most stimulating lecture.
(audience clapping)
(upbeat music)
