Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Plato and the SMT


On communicating with others about the SMT post (here) I have come to believe that it can be used to illustrate what I find unfortunate about a Platonist conception of linguistics. So with the sincere desire of afflicting the platonistically comfortable, I would like to outline how the version of the SMT I discussed earlier makes relatively little sense from a Platonist perspective. Moreover, given the demonstrated empirical fecundity of this kind of SMT research, so much the worse for a Platonist conception. In other words, any conception of linguistics that insulates itself from these kinds of considerations is one to be shunned, dumped, dispensed with, thrown onto the garbage heap of very bad ideas. Strong words, eh? Good, that was my intent. Let me elaborate.

The previous post suggested that an excellent way of understanding the SMT is in terms of the degree of transparency holding between linguistic representations and those exploited by the interfaces to do whatever they do.  Pietroski, Lidz, Halberda and Hunter (PLHH) argue that the right linguistic representation for the meaning of most concerns quite a bit more than getting the truth conditions right.  It also includes getting a decent account of how these representations are deployed to “count.” The argument proceeds as follows: They observe that there are many distinct ways of presenting the truth conditions and that some are more congenial to the ANS+visual system than others in in being favored by ANS+visual interface when it evaluates sentences like Most of the dots are blue when presented with various dot arrays. Specifically, they demonstrate that subjects evaluate the truth of such sentences in such scenes by applying the operations and predicates explicitly represented in (1c), not those in the truth functionally equivalent (1a,b). Indeed, they show that representations like (1a,b) are shunned even when they could have been effectively used.[1] 

            (1)       a. OneToOnePlus*: [{x: D (x)}, [x: Y (x)}] iff some some set s, s Ì {X: D
    (x)} and OneToOne [s, {x: Y (x)}]
                        b. |{x: D (x) & Y (x)}| > {x: D (x) & - Y (x)}|
                        c. |{x: D (x) & Y (x)}| > |{ x: D (x)}| - |{x: D(x) & Y (x)}|

What’s this mean? Well, given that these three representations are truth functionally identical they must support all the same inferences.  So looking at standard linguistic data (e.g. what inferences each supports) fails to choose between them. However as they get to these same truth conditions in different ways (i.e. using different predicates and operations) then if you assume that the interfaces use the representations provided by L to do what they do (i.e. the SMT), then not all truth functionally equivalent representations of most need be empirically equal. Why not? Because some (e.g. (1c)) might explain how humans judge visual displays while the others (e.g. (1a,b)) do not. In other words, as the ANS+visual system evaluates sentences like most of the dots are blue by comparing the size of the set of blue dots and the size of the set of all the dots minus the blue dots (i.e. by using the information as depicted in (1c)) this argues for (1c) being the correct representation of the meaning of most.  More interesting still, PLHH show that if we assume that it is a design feature of linguistic representations that they perfectly cater to the needs of the interfaces (viz. the SMT understood in terms of transparency) we can explain why (1c) has some of the properties it does (hint: because the interfaces are capable of doing some things well and not others).[2] 

Now, I really like this argument form. It provides a way of unpacking the SMT in terms of the Transparency Thesis. It is able to generate rich non-trivial hypotheses about linguistic representations that are susceptible to empirical testing (as PLHH demonstrate).  However, and here is the punchline, none of this makes much sense from a Platonist perspective. Why? Because it presupposes that linguistic representations can be investigated by considering how they fit with other features of human cognition. More specifically, it assumes that we can learn something about linguistic structures by investigating how they are used by other human mental organs (here, the ANS+visual system).  Or to put this another way, entailment relations and judgments of truth conditions do not exhaust the evidence relevant to discovering the  properties of linguistic representations. As PLHH demonstrate, how humans verify these truth conditions (i.e. how the products of FL interact with performance-interface systems) is relevant as well. But this only makes sense if these representations are psychologically active, i.e. they don’t live in some disembodied platonic heaven. Put crudely, though competence is not the same as performance, on my view of linguistics (and PLHH’s and Berwick and Weinberg’s and Colin Phillips’ and Poeppel’s and (I believe) Chomsky’s, in fact in all those with a reasonable view of scientific practice) it is possible to learn about the structure of competence grammars (i.e. about how sentences are represented mentally) by looking at how they are put to use.  Some (e.g. the later Katz[3]) seem to have concluded from the fact that this is hard to do and that many peaks at the interface fail to reveal anything interesting that this is in principle impossible.  This is a very counter-productive view to take. And, talking methodology, this is the strongest kind of criticism one can level against a proposed conception. Bluntly, Platonism is a bad position to adopt for it blinkers your investigative options by precluding certain questions from consideration.

I mentioned a while ago (here) that one thing that I don’t like about the Platonic Attitude is that it serves to confine linguistic investigation to its own little empirical ghetto. Roughly “grammaticality” judgments count, entailments ok, ditto, synonymy and paraphrase. However, no psycho evidence please: what kids do in acquiring their grammar, or how people parse sentences or how dot displays are evaluated are not relevant to linguistics proper. This latter kind of data is in principle incapable of probing linguistic representations. Sure, once linguists have done their work, we can ask how their constructs might be used. But, only linguistic evidence is relevant in evaluating linguistic structure, psycho, bio and neuro evidence is in principle besides the point. What the work on most (and the other stuff discussed in the previous post) shows is that this attitude cuts research off from a bevy of interesting questions and investigations. Of course, one can take a cramped view of linguistic research, but, really, why do it?  Why cleave to a view that imposes blinders on research? Why draw metaphysical lines in the sand that hinder investigation?  My conclusion: not only are there no good arguments against the mentalist conception of grammar and the cog-bio conception of linguistics but there are good methodological reasons to reject Platonism in this domain. One cannot stop people from choosing a cramped scientific aesthetic if this is where they are determined to go, but there are good reasons of scientific hygiene to shun this step. Consider yourself duly warned!



[1] Recall, here could have been means that the interface has the power to apply the relevant information in (1a,b) (i.e. they present evidence that in other contexts it does so) and it would be a very good (viz. optimal)  strategy to do so in some of the arrays presented.  So, logically speaking, all three of the alternatives could have been on an equal footing, circumstances choosing between them This, however, turned out to be false, and that is very very interesting.
[2] I confess that I am not sure that I believe that this is a reasonable metaphysical assumption, though it is an excellent methodological principle. Thus, it works well as a directive for exploring the properties of linguistic representations. However, I find it harder to see how the interfaces could cause FL to have the properties it has. Darwin and his buddies could in principle be useful here, were it not for the fact that the time apparently available seems pretty short, hence not leaving much room for natural selection to work its magic. For now, I am putting these sophistications aside. Maybe I’ll post more on this later. Be warned!
[3] In fact, the early Katz (he of Katz and Fodor 1963 (“The structure of semantic theory” in Language)) had the more expansive conception outlined here. Someone who might know (p.c.) speculates that the “failure” to empirically ground the derivational theory of complexity is what led Katz to throw in the towel and retreat to Platonism. Too bad. But unlike some later epigones, at least Katz had it right the first time.

18 comments:

  1. I feel it my duty as a patriot, linguist and friend to point out that the work by Pietroski, Lidz, Halberda and Hunter discussed here is building on (while disagreeing with some interpretations of) earlier pioneering work by my own MIT colleague Martin Hackl. See his paper from the journal "Natural Language Semantics" here. The earlier reports and conference posters leading up to this paper are on his website. A beautiful summary of this research can be found in an MIT interview here. None of which undermines Norbert's general point about the significance and ramifications of research like this for broader questions.

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    1. There are some important differences between the program of PLHH and that of Hackl, at least as these are originally presented. When Halberda and I started thinking about the acquisition of "most" in 2004, it was with the express goal of evaluating the interface between linguistic semantics and extralinguistic cognition. As I read Hackl, his interest derives mainly in the linguistics. We were not merely interested in gathering experimental data in order to illuminate alternative linguistic hypotheses, which is pretty much standard fare in experimental semantics/pragmatics, but in trying to use what was known about the interfaces to see whether it would be easier to draw inferences from experimental data to linguistic representations. As has been known since the earliest days of psycholinguistics, data from experiments are informative about the linguistic representations only to the degree that the linking hypotheses about how those representations are used by the relevant interfacing cognitive systems are well understood. As the great trace debates of the late 1980s and early 1990s illustrate, it is very hard to make inferences from experimental results to linguistic representations. What we were trying to do was to capitalize on our fixed understanding of the extralinguistic cognition so that we could be confident that any effects we observed could be attributed only to the linguistic representations.

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  2. What surprising change of heart in just 3 weeks. On March 20 Norbert wrote: “Jeff Watumull … argues (convincingly in my view) that Platonism and the biolinguistic program are perfectly compatible… The good news: if you find Platonism appealing you can still be a good biolinguist.”

    This sounds very different from “a Platonist conception…is one to be shunned, dumped, dispensed with, thrown onto the garbage heap of very bad ideas”. What happened? Have I possibly convinced Norbert that Watumull achieves “perfect compatibility” only by eliminating biolinguistics and adopting full blown Platonism [for details see: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001765] ? I hope not because it would be a shame if potential funding agencies for Watumull’s very ambitious Turing Program for Linguistic Theory (TPLT) concluded the same ought to be thrown onto the garbage heap of very bad ideas.

    Further I am surprised that philosopher Norbert would fail to understand Katz’ motivation for turning to Platonism. The speculation of the mysterious someone “who might know (p.c.)” “that the “failure” to empirically ground the derivational theory of complexity is what led Katz to throw in the towel and retreat to Platonism” has less grounding in reality than Chomsky’s Single Mutation Merge Miracle. In Katz’ extensive publications one finds the true reason. Here is the reader’s digest version: Katz’s development of a platonic view was based on his realization that NL sentences had a necessary property as far as analytic sentences were concerned. Take

    (1) Some Platonist linguist is a Platonist linguist.

    In any possible world where there are Pklatonist linguists, (1) cannot be false, as a function of the nature of sentences. In all relevant p-worlds, (1) is not true because of properties of Platonists or linguists, any substitution of relevant nouns preserves the necessity. Therefore, if sentences determine necessary properties like this, they cannot be natural objects whose only necessary properties are trivial ones like self-identity. There is no way to derive a necessity property like this from any contingent human faculty.

    In Platonist publication one also finds the debunking of the ‘conceptually cramped’ allegation. “Realists acknowledge the legitimacy of questions about competence, … But the study of competence is assigned to the empirical field of psycholinguistics rather than to the formal discipline of linguistics” [K&P, 1991, p. 522], available at: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001607. So Platonists say: if you want to study psychology, fine, go ahead. Taking such an attitude is no more conceptually cramped than admitting as practicing biolinguist that one is unfamiliar with the mechanisms that encode into the genome what one claims to study: “…Does anyone really know how things like learning biases get coded in the genome? Does anyone know how the bee dance or the dead reckoning behavior of ants gets coded in the genome? But, seriously, I don't know, or, right now, care. That question is way above my pay grade” [Norbert, 28.11.].

    Finally, I am astounded that a Platonist like Paul Postal is inter alia accused of “impos[ing] blinders on research [and drawing] metaphysical lines in the sand that hinder investigation” has produced over decades publications like: Arc Pair Grammar, (with D. E. Johnson), The Vastness of Natural Languages, (with D. T. Langendoen), Studies of Passive Clauses, Masked Inversion in French, Three Investigations of Extraction, Parasitic Gaps (ed. with Peter W. Culicover), Edge-Based Clausal Syntax, Imposters (with Chris Collins) – just to name a few. Where are comparable works in the areas that are allegedly so fecund like competence studies by defenders of SMT? Is it not the case, that the work actually completed by the latter has virtually nothing to do with human biology?

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    1. Christina quotes: "Realists acknowledge the legitimacy of questions about competence, ... But the study of competence is assigned to the empirical field of psycholinguistics rather than to the formal discipline of linguistics" [K&P, 1991, p. 522], available at: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001607

      Does this mean that the disagreement is mainly just about terminology? Would your (and perhaps K&P's) worries be dispelled if we all just agreed that the field that Norbert is interested in is called "psycholinguistics"?

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    2. @Christina. Two ideas/theories can be logically compatible without fitting together well as part of a fruitful research program.

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    3. @ Tim: There is certainly disagreement about terminology. For K&P psychologists do psychology and linguists - well linguistics. Obviously there is some overlap: if a linguist claims a necessary property of language L is that every lexical item has a minimum of 4,444,444,444,444,444,444,444,444 phonemes a psychologist better reminds her that humans could not use such a language. And psycholinguists better know at least some basics of linguistics [or they become subject to ridicule as in Norbert's charming '3 psychologists walk into a bar' blog].

      The tale about Platonists 'insulating themselves from other fields' or 'dismissing evidence that is clearly relevant' goes all the way back to Jerry Fodor's *arguments* in the 1970/80s. It has been dispelled so many times that it amazes me that anyone would still take this slander seriously. Obviously, exactly how much evidence from neighbouring fields you need for a specific research project varies. For some work in syntax you may not need any 'psychological evidence' at all. But that is not different from a field worker who studies say Piraha not looking at evidence from Hungarian - you hardly would accuse him of 'insulating himself' or 'having a conceptually cramped view'.

      Now there is a second problem and that concerns what psychological work [like the one David has provided links to] tells us about the nature of language vs. about the nature of human cognition. As an analogy take the so-called Modus Ponens-Modus Tollens asymmetry. In reasoning experiments, participants almost invariably ‘do well’ with MP, but the rate for MT success drops considerably (from almost 100% for MP to around 70% for MT – Schroyens and Schaeken 2003). This is an interesting fact about human psychology, no doubt. But it tells us nothing about the nature of MP/MT; both are equally valid.

      Similarly, in the dot-experiment people have different reaction times to 'more than half' vs. 'most' - kool finding for psychology. But why does this tell us anything about the nature of language? Norbert claims it does but the question is WHY. Saying 'because language is part of human biology/psychology' begs the question against the Platonist.

      You have followed this discussion long enough to know that each time I ask about the BIOLOGY of language the biolinguists fall strangely silent and tell me that's above their pay grade. [see also here: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001765 ] So the second part of K&P's criticism is that biolinguists say they do biology/psychology but in fact they [mostly] do linguistics. I am not familiar with all of Norbert's publications but the ones I have looked at had virtually 100% linguistics and 0% neurobiology content...

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    4. @Alex: you say: Two ideas/theories can be logically compatible without fitting together well as part of a fruitful research program.

      Of course they can. But in that case it still would be odd to first ENDORSE Watamull [who claims the two ARE part of the same research program [I argue they are not here: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001765 ]] and say to all of us:
      "The good news: if you find Platonism appealing you can still be a good biolinguist.”

      and then:

      “a Platonist conception…is one to be shunned, dumped, dispensed with, thrown onto the garbage heap of very bad ideas”.

      If Platonism is so horrible why endorse someone like Watamull who IS [very openly and proudly] a mathematical Platonist?

      Since apparently this was not clear: I am not objecting to stating biolinguistics and Platonism do not fit nicely in the same research program. I point out the internal inconsistency of Norbert's statements.

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    5. This is just a pun on "Platonism", isn't it? Postal and Watamull both think of themselves as Platonists in some sense, but the whole focus of Watamull's article was to argue against Postal's position. If you look at paragraph four of the article, you can see that in contrast to Postal, Watamull takes (relevant aspects of) biology, neuroscience etc. to be part of a biolinguistic program. I don't really care personally whether Norbert's blog posts are 100% consistent with each other (why should they be?), but I took it that this one was directed more against Postal-style Platonism.

      But why does this tell us anything about the nature of language? Norbert claims it does but the question is WHY. Saying 'because language is part of human biology/psychology' begs the question against the Platonist.

      I don't think it's helpful to construe this as a metaphysical argument over whether facts about how people process and interpret sentences are facts about "the nature of language". You can define all such facts to be outside the purview of linguistics if you wish, but everyone else in the field is free to operate under the more interesting and fruitful assumption that they are not. Platonic linguistics takes a number of apparently fruitful research programs off the table and adds nothing new to compensate. It's just syntax as usual, minus the possibility of any interesting interchange with other disciplines.

      In my view, it really matters very little whether the arguments in favor of Platonic linguistics are good or bad since they're essentially metaphysical. There may be some value in trying to provide a sound metaphysical foundation for a scientific discipline, but its practitioners aren't required to wait for this foundation to be constructed before proceeding with their work. In science you get points for results, not for metaphysical hygiene. So, even supposing for the sake of argument that Postal's negative case against the foundational assumptions of biolinguistics were entirely correct, it would in no way incumbent on biolinguists to respond to Postal's arguments before going ahead with their research.

      By way of analogy, there is (I believe) a fairly voluminous philosophical literature on the question of what exactly it means for a physical object (a computer) to “execute” an abstract object (a program). This raises some genuinely difficult metaphysical puzzles. However, no-one sane thinks that computer scientists have to wait for the metaphysicians to make up their minds before the discipline can proceed further. If computer science turns out to be metaphysically incoherent, then the generally agreed division of labor is for the metaphysicians to lose sleep over it while the computer scientists proceed as normal.

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    6. Just a few points of clarification. There is no Postal style Platonism vs. Watumull style of Platonism. As far as they are Platonists they agree. The disagreement is about the biology Watumull claims to tag on to Platonism. I say 'claims to' because there is NO biology in his paper. What is doing all the interesting 'work' is the abstract Turing machine.

      Now you say: "Platonic linguistics takes a number of apparently fruitful research programs off the table and adds nothing new to compensate. It's just syntax as usual, minus the possibility of any interesting interchange with other disciplines."

      Please enlighten me: what ARE the fruitful research programs you work on that are taken off the table by the Platonist? How do those differ from what psychologists do? Name one biological property of language you have discovered that can account for syntax better than Postal's work.

      If 'for arguments sake' you assume Postal's foundational criticism is correct, then doing biolinguistics is as sensible as trying to built a perpetual motion machine. If Postal's criticism is correct you can not hope someone in the future will discover a solution. IF he's right biolinguistics is as impossible as squaring the circle - something someone as opposed to Postal as Shanti Ulfsbjorninn acknowledged in his LingBuzz paper [which you can find here: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001572 - and my reply: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001573 ].

      Why do you think Chomsky has NEVER responded to Postal's criticism in writing? It is fairly obvious that he knows there is no reply and silence is the only way he can avoid admitting this. Given how brilliant Chomsky is and how eager he is to disprove anyone who disagrees with him, I find his silence actually more convincing than Postal's arguments.


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    7. As far as they are Platonists they agree.

      But do they agree on which abstract objects exist, and which of these are objects of study in linguistics? As far as I understood his post, Watamull is basically giving a Platonic gloss on a functionalist philosophy of mind, so the relevant abstract objects are things like programs, machine states, etc. Postal seems to have a somewhat different take on this. They don't seem to agree on much more than the metaphysical position that there exist abstract objects.

      Please enlighten me: what ARE the fruitful research programs you work on that are taken off the table by the Platonist?

      Well, you answer this in you next sentence, don't you? “If 'for arguments sake' you assume Postal's foundational criticism is correct, then doing biolinguistics is as sensible as trying to built a perpetual motion machine.” I suppose you don't think biolinguistics is going to be fruitful, but there's really no point in arguing about that. We'll just have to wait and see.

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    8. Well, the point is that the square of the circle - thought having no exact solution in a Platonist sense - can be done to any precision (funnily enough, even to a precision exceding by an arbitrary order of magnitude the actual maximum precision attainable due to fluctuations inherent to our macroscopic world).

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    9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    10. @Alex: You will of course have to ask Watumull what his view entails. Based on what he wrote in the two papers I read I gather he holds mathematical Platonism - that is he accepts that numbers are abstract objects. If you do that there is really no good reason to deny that sentences are abstract objects. Note that recently Chomsky has argued that mathematics is a special case of language:

      “Now, there happen to be very simple ways to get arithmetic from Merge.,Take the concept Merge, which simply says, take two things, and construct a thing that is the set of the two things; that's its simplest form. Suppose you restrict it, and take only one thing, call it "zero," and you merge it; you get the set containing zero” (Chomsky, 2012, p.15).
      This would suggest that for Chomsky [and presumably for Watumull] the ontological status of numbers and sentences is the same, wouldn’t it?

      As for the research program: I have not asked you about the future but about the success that has been achieved so far. Chomsky says biolinguistics has been around since the 1950s. There have been obviously advances in linguistics, including in Chomsky-inspired linguistics. But again these seem to be of the kind that also has been achieved by the Platonist Postal. So because you said ‘in science you get points for results’ I am asking for something you have discovered that Postal could not have because he is a Platonist [vs. something he did not discover because he did not work on it].

      One more point about the metaphysical hygiene. Your analogy is misleading because in computer science you do something very different from bioloinguistics. Biolinguists want to explain the human mind – something that exists and has certain properties [regardless of us knowing about them]. Very crudely put, in computer science you develop programs that allow you to achieve certain goals. If you happen to write a program that requires your computer to literally ‘generate infinity’ before moving to the next step you’ll notice. So if got the metaphysics wrong you re-write the program and eliminate the problematic step

      But if your theory of the mind contains such a step [as Chomsky’s does], then there is no such 'causal effect'. Still I grant you that linguists should not constantly look over their metaphysical shoulder and that it is quite possible that one adopts unknowingly a position that is metaphysically incoherent. BUT once it has been pointed out that Chomsky’s ontology IS internally incoherent it does not seem prudent to just ignore the issue.

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  3. Based on what [Watamull] wrote in the two papers I read I gather he holds mathematical Platonism - that is he accepts that numbers are abstract objects. If you do that there is really no good reason to deny that sentences are abstract objects.

    This isn't entirely obvious. Some of the best-known arguments for mathematical Platonism, such as the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument, work for numbers but not (obviously) for sentences. It's not clear that someone who accepts the QP argument for the existence of numbers and sets is obliged also to acknowledge the existence of some Platonic object corresponding to “English”,

    I am asking for something you have discovered that Postal could not have because he is a Platonist [vs. something he did not discover because he did not work on it].

    Anyone could in principle discover anything, I suppose. I don't see much point in counting the hypothetical successes of a hypothetical research program.

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  4. "Anyone could in principle discover anything" - Why thank you for finally agreeing with me on this crucial point. So like me you reject then Norbert's unfounded accusations that Platonism:

    # is a bad position to adopt for it blinkers your investigative options by precluding certain questions from consideration.
    # confine[s] linguistic investigation to its own little empirical ghetto.
    # cuts research off from a bevy of interesting questions and investigations.
    # [is] a cramped view of linguistic research,
    # imposes blinders on research
    # draw[s] metaphysical lines in the sand that hinder investigation

    and you also now seem to reject what you said earlier:

    # Platonic linguistics takes a number of apparently fruitful research programs off the table and adds nothing new to compensate. It's just syntax as usual, minus the possibility of any interesting interchange with other disciplines.

    I hope your inability to provide any evidence supporting these serious charges, culminating in the entirely correct statement: "I don't see much point in counting the hypothetical successes of a hypothetical research program" will motivate you to question those empty accusations when you hear them again. Ask yourself what justifies them. Obviously it is NOTHING in the work that has been completed to date [or you could have rattled off a list] - so it must be hypothetical work in the future. Personally I see no reason why a psychologist/psycholinguist would NOT look at Postal's results when attempting to come up with a model for say language acquisition. And even within in linguistics no 'Platonic ghetto' exists: Geoff Pullum is no Platonist but has collaborated very successfully with Postal, Chris Collins continues to co-publish with Postal, etc. ...

    As for Watumull's commitments I suggest you read his TPLT paper where he writes:

    "Of course, a universal — species-typical — I-language can be abstracted from particular I- languages for formal and empirical inquiry. And if Platonically inclined, we may abstract a universal I-language as a mathematical object for metaphysical analysis". [p. 224]

    If he can envision a universal I-language as mathematical object I see no reason to assume he will deny the existence of some Platonic object corresponding to “English”. Of course he could have a reason to do so - that's why I said I base my opinion on what he wrote.

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    1. You asked if there's anything that Postal “could not have” discovered because of his metaphysical views. I doubt it. But differing views on the nature of language and linguistics do in practice lead to different lines of research with different results, even if it's not logically necessary that they should do so. In the end you'll never convince people of the virtues of Platonist linguistics by shouting at them. You need to show that Platonist linguistics is more exciting, more fruitful and more fun than the alternatives. Otherwise, we are dealing with a purely metaphysical issue which working linguists are free to ignore (unless they happen to be interested in metaphysics).

      Here's a suggestion: link to one or more positive, non-critical pieces of work within Platonist linguistics that you think are exciting.

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    2. "In the end you'll never convince people of the virtues of Platonist linguistics by shouting at them."

      Why do you think this needs saying? Is it because, seemingly, it does not apply to the parallel case:

      "In the end you'll never convince people of the virtues of Biolinguistics by shouting at them".

      You seem to be fine with the things Norbert has been saying about 'Three psychologists walking into a bar', his misinterpretation of Norvig or Everett, the constant belittling of those who are not biolinguists, the fact that he thinks it is funny to call his blog a 'labour of hate' etc. etc. Possibly you do not even notice these things? Sadly, the 'outside world' does notice - and therefore David gets comments like 'For a generativist you're quite nice' [I cite from memory and apologize in advance if this was not exactly what was said]

      If you are sensitive to shouting I suggest you re-read many of Norbert's blogs and pretend you are in the shoes of the person[s] he ridicules. If you do not like the experience you can be assured people whose actual work is ridiculed do not like it either. Start by re-reading this blog. Norbert poured a bucket of acidy insults over Platonism. He still has not explained the falsehood he posted about Katz or apologized that he did such to someone who no longer can defend himself. Compare this to his reaction when Jan Koster pointed out he had overlooked a contribution by him: Norbert immediately apologized. Does Katz not deserve the same? If you perceive me raising questions about the legitimacy of some of the claims made here as shouting what IS the term for "The Platonist conception of linguistics ought to be thrown onto the garbage heap of very bad ideas"? - again: insert 'biolinguist' for 'Platonist' if an answer does not jump readily to mind...

      You say: "You need to show that Platonist linguistics is more exciting, more fruitful and more fun than the alternatives. " - I agree; go back in this blog: i have provided a small sample of publications by Postal that I find exciting. I have asked for equivalents of biologically motivated work by minimalists, the kind of work Norbert claims the Platonist would miss because of the alleged blinders. So far no one has volunteered any information...

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    3. Postal is a great syntactician and his work in syntactic theory is always interesting and worth reading. However, his specific proposals in this area are perfectly compatible with a broadly Chomskyan conception of linguistics. His work advocating Platonism doesn't interest me very much because it suggests no interesting new directions for research. If Postal's right, it seems that I can just keep doing the kind of research I already do (including any cross-disciplinary projects I might have in mind) but with a different background metaphysics.

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