It’s hard to be both vapid and vacuous (V&V), but some
papers succeed. Here
is an example. It is, of course, a paper on the evolution of language (evolang)
and it is, of course, critical of the Chomsky-Berwick (and many others)
approach to the problem. But the latter is not what makes it V&V. No, the
combination of banality and emptiness starts from the main failing of many
(most? all?) these evolang papers. It fails to specify the capacity the
evolution of which it aims to explain. And this necessarily leads to a bad end.
Fail to specify the question and nothing you say can be an answer. Or, if you
have no idea what properties of what capacity you aim to explain, it should be
no surprise that you fail to add anything of cognitive (vs phatic) content to
the ongoing conversation.
This point is not a new one, even for me (see, for example, here). Nor
should it be a controversial one. Nor, to repeat, does it require that you
endorse Chomsky’s claims. It simply observes the bare minimum required to offer
an evo account of anything. If you want to explain how X evolved then you need
to specify X. And if X is “complex” then you need to specify each property
whose evolution you are interested in. For example, if you are interested in
the evolution of language, and by this I mean the capacity for language in humans, then you need to specify some properties
of the capacity. And a good place to start is
to look at what linguists have been doing for about 60 years.
Why? Because we know a non trivial thing or two about human
natural language. We know many things about the Gs (rules) that humans can acquire
and something about the properties required to acquire such Gs (UG). We have
discovered a large number of non-trivial “laws” of grammar. And given this, we can ask how a system with
these laws, generating these Gs (might have) evolved. So, we can ask, as
Chomsky does, how a capacity to acquire recursive Gs of the kind characteristic
of natural language Gs (might have) evolved. Or we can ask how a G with these
properties hooked up to articulation systems (which we can also describe in
some detail) might have evolved. Or we can ask how the categorization system we
find in natural language Gs (might have) evolved. We can ask these question in
a non trivial, non vacuous non vapid way because we can specify (some of) the
properties whose evolution we are interested in. We might not give satisfactory
answers mind you. By and large the answers are less interesting than the
questions right now. But we can at least frame a question. Absent a
specification of the capacity of interest there is no question, only the
appearance of one.
Given this, the first thing one does in reading an evolang
paper is to looks for a specification of the capacity of interest. Note saying
that one is interested in explaining the evolution of “language” without
further specification of what “language” is and what capacities are implicated
is not to give a specification.
Unfortunately this is what generally happens in the evolang world. As evidence,
witness the recent paper by Michael Corballis linked to above.
It fails to specify a single property of language (more
exactly the capacity for language for
it is this, not language, whose evolution everyone is interested in) yet spends
four pages talking about how it must
have evolved gradually. What’s the it that has so evolved? Who knows! The paper
is mum. We are told that whatever it is is communicatively efficacious (without
saying what this means or might mean). We are told that language structure is a
reflection of thought and not something with its own distinctive properties but
we are not given a single example of what this might mean in concrete terms. We
are told that “language derives” from mental properties like the “generative
capacities to travel mentally in space and time and into the minds of others”
without having a specification of the either the relevant generative procedures
of these two purported cognitive faculties nor a discussion of how linguistic
structures, whose properties we know a fair bit about, are simple reflections
of these more general capacities. In other words, we are given nothing at all
but windy assertions with nary a dollop of content.
Let me fess up: I for one would love to see how theory of
mind generates the structure of polar questions or island effects or structure
dependency or c-command or anything at all of linguistic specificity. Ditto for
the capacity for mental time travel. Actually, I’d love to see a specification
of what these two capacities consists in. We know that people can think
counterfactually (which is what this seems to amount to more or less) but we
have no idea how this is done. It is a mystery how it is that people entertain
counterfactual thoughts (i.e. what cognitive powers undergird this capacity)
though it cannot be doubted that humans (and maybe other animals) do this. Of
course unless we can specify what this capacity consists in (at least in part)
we cannot ask if linguistic properties are simple reflections of these. So, virtually
all of the claims to the effect that theory of mind (not much of a theory by
the way as we have no idea how people travel into other minds either!) and time
travel suffice to get us linguistic structures is empty verbiage. Let me repeat
this: the claims are not false, they are EMPTY, VACUOUS, CONTENTLESS.
And sadly, this is quite characteristic of the genre. Say
what you will about Chomsky’s proposal it does have the virtue of specifying
the capacity of interest. What he is interested in is how the generative
capacity that give rise to certain kinds of structured arose and argues that
given its formal properties it could not have arisen gradually. Recursion is an
all or nothing property. You either got it or you don’t. So whenever it arose it did not do so in
small steps, first 2-item structures, then 3, then 4, then unboundedly many.
That’s not sensible, as I’ve mentioned more than a few times before (see, e.g. here
and here).
So Chomsky may be wrong about many things, but at least he can be wrong for he
has a hypothesis which starts with a specified capacity. This is a very rare
thing in the evolang world, it appears.
Actually, it’s worse than this. So rare is it that journals
do not realize that absent such specifications papers purportedly dealing with
the topic are empty. The Corballis paper appears in TiCS. Do the editors know
that it is contentless? I doubt it. They think there is a raging “debate” and
they want to be the venue where those interested in the “debate” go to be
titillated (and maybe informed). But these is no debate because at least the
majority of the discussants don’t say anything. The most that one can say of
many contributions (the Corballis paper being one) is that they strongly
express the opinion that Chomsky is wrong. That there is nothing behind this
opinion, that it is merely phatic expression, is not something the editors have
likely noticed.
The Corballis paper is worth looking at as an object lesson.
For those that want more handholding through the vices, there is also a joint
reply (here)
by a gang of seven (overkill IMO) showing how there is no there there, and pointing
out that, in addition, the paper seems unaware of much of modern evolutionary
biology. I cannot comment on the last
point competently.[1]
I can say that the reply is right in noting the Corballis paper “leave[s] the
problem [regarding evolang, NH] exactly where it was, adding nothing” precisely
because it fails to specify “the mechanisms of recursvie thought” in time
travel or theory of mind and “how might lead to the feat that has to be
explained” [i.e. how language with its distinctive properties might have arisen
NH].
So can a paper be both vapid and vacuous? It appears that it
can. For those interested in writing one, the Corballis paper provides a
perfect model. If only it were an outlier!
[1]
Though I can believe it. The paper cites Evans and Levinson, Tomasello and
Everett as providing solid critiques of modern GG. This is sufficient evidence
that the Corballis paper is not serious. As I’ve beaten all of these horses
upside the head repeatedly, I will refrain from doing so again here. Suffice it
to say, that approving citations of this work suffice by themselves to cast
doubt on the seriousness of the paper citing it.
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