tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post5233886841396781655..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Fodor on Concepts AgainNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-69491560591694860452013-11-23T04:39:31.495-08:002013-11-23T04:39:31.495-08:00Thanks for the introduction to volcano logy. Light...Thanks for the introduction to volcano logy. <a href="http://www.perfectpicturelighting.com/chrome-lights-for-artwork.php" rel="nofollow">Lighting For Artwork</a>Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13115941918048786551noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-40328143075410176842013-03-05T01:51:38.054-08:002013-03-05T01:51:38.054-08:00I agree with Alex and Avery that the infinity assu...I agree with Alex and Avery that the infinity assumption is innocent and cannot be held against biolinguistics, no matter what Postal says in this regard. A finite cut-off point for sentence generation just doesn't make sense. Infinity assumptions about finite physical systems are not unusual. According to classical mechanics, for instance, unimpaired rectilinear movement goes on forever. Finiteness is caused by other, intervening factors. Similarly, there is no highest number that your pocket calculator can compute, at least not in principle. In practice, there are limitations of time, memory, etc. Perhaps it is useful, as in intuitionist mathematics, to make a distinction between virtual infinity (as in certain algorithms, accepted by intuitionists) and actual infinity (as in more standard Platonistic interpretations of set theory, like Cantor's). What is implemented in finite physical devices is virtual infinity, not actual infinity.<br /><br />I have other reasons to be skeptical about biolinguistics. I agree, for instance, more with Christina about the difference between linguistics and vulcanology. Unlike vulcanoes, words and sentences are human tools after all, and it seems impossible to characterize human tools in terms of physics or biology. Such objects have what philosophers call "derived intentionality". So far, the source of the intentionality in question has been entirely elusive.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13780460212414690121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-41726153618903978272013-03-05T00:00:02.656-08:002013-03-05T00:00:02.656-08:00@Christina ( the flat commenting is not ideal for ...@Christina ( the flat commenting is not ideal for this sort of discussion), I more or less agree with Avery on why infinity is a good idealisation.<br />Take another example -- say you have a statistical model of the height of tigers. You might well choose a model that is a Gaussian distribution with mean 1.5m and s.d. 20cm. (I just made that up). This would be pretty standard -- but it does give a nonzero probability to tigers that are 10km high as well as to tigers that are -1m high. But this doesn't mean that the model is incoherent -- it just means that it doesn't work well outside a certain range.<br /><br />I also don't think that I have to show that the infiniteness assumption is a good idealisation (though I could, along the lines of how Avery is arguing). If I get the argument right, then Postal is claiming that this assumption leads to incoherence. To refute this claim it is enough just to show that it is an idealisation of a standard type, even if it is not a good idealisation. Take vulcanology again -- if we assume that lava is frictionless, it may lead to incorrect conclusions and bad predictions, but it doesn't make the theory incoherent. <br /><br />I think it is a fair criticism to say that insufficient attention has been paid to performance models in the generative program, and I find the neglect of the computational models, as I was arguing with Norbert about, incomprehensible and unjustifiable. <br /><br />As to why it is a good idealisation -- with the mathematical tools that we deploy standardly (e.g. phrase structure grammars) -- where we have a binary grammaticality decision, it is hard, as Avery says, to draw a principled line around a finite set. <br />So it is expedient because it makes the maths and the models easier. <br />There are other tools (.e.g Pullums/Rogers style model-theoretic syntax where it might be easier).Alex Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04634767958690153584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-45726496517415895852013-03-04T21:50:57.533-08:002013-03-04T21:50:57.533-08:00@Christina, thanks for the hint on March 3, 2013 a...@Christina, thanks for the hint on March 3, 2013 at 5:00 PM related to my name. I didn't think about it Now I have persuaded my account to display my name. <br /><br />When I said “Maybe we do have sets in our heads after all”, I meant it in this sense: If it’s true, as Fodor claims, that our concepts are innate – and they have to be *in some sense* so and they can’t be otherwise - then what our everyday concepts are based on has to be more general and more abstract then them. As a consequence, if sets are somewhere at all, they are in our heads.<br /><br />What’s the alternative? We can go and say Fodor’s view is crazy because it’s impossible that we have an innate concept of carburetor. But it’d be a vulgar, tabloidish interpretation.VilemKodytekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13161547663393188912noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-17158444790478547462013-03-04T17:26:05.008-08:002013-03-04T17:26:05.008-08:00Which means, finishing the thought, that eventuall...Which means, finishing the thought, that eventually one should show up in a natural text (and not in one clearly imitating AG syntax, where there are at least 2 examples of complex embedded possessors that show up in the traditional grammar handbooks). The Veil of Ignorance exists, but it is not absolute, and is thinner in some places than in others.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-67046292888790601642013-03-04T16:55:16.705-08:002013-03-04T16:55:16.705-08:00I'd oppose Rens Bod-style 'flatness' o...I'd oppose Rens Bod-style 'flatness' on similar grounds, from what I've seen so far. The Greeks for example sometimes embed genitive possessors inside NPs 'the secret the(G) sea(G) passages' (the secret passages of the sea), but these are almost always no more complex than a definite article followed by a noun (in about 800pp of poems, I haven't noticed any that are more complex than that). This looks good for flat structure, but when you produce a parodic elaboration of the above such as 'the secret the(G) Australian(G) immigration(G) passages', it seems to be OK. Recursive PSG predicts that this option exists, even if it is hardly ever used in practice, and this prediction appears to be correct.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-43307992940086962042013-03-04T16:47:44.387-08:002013-03-04T16:47:44.387-08:00I think the argument against finite cutoff-ism is ...I think the argument against finite cutoff-ism is that the facts appear to be statistical in nature. We don't really know that some bizarre cult won't merge wherein it is seen as useful to have somebody intone "God created a proton, and then another one, and then another one, ...", nor that there won't be life extension technologies that let this go on for a very long time, & we can't predict how long this bizarre civilization might survive into the heat-death of the universe, etc. etc. So the choice of finite cutoff is arbitrary, even tho the probability of the ulta-long sentences ever being produced or consumed is extremely low.<br /><br />One area where K&P and me are perhaps singing the same song is the idea that linguistics ought to pay more attention to e-language, on the basis that there can be properties of the performances that are independent of the implementation. In phonetics for example it appears to be the case that certain kinds of phonetic effects can be produced by multiple means, which tend to all get used. But this doesn't mean that linguistics doesn't have anything to say about implementation.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-55027017460300256432013-03-04T16:01:56.863-08:002013-03-04T16:01:56.863-08:00You misunderstood my motivation for citing Chomsky...You misunderstood my motivation for citing Chomsky here. I believe the attack on connectionism is not justified. But, nevertheless, I think the general point he was making; that we should not be "abstracting radically from the physical reality, [especially if we don't know] if the abstractions are going in the right direction" is valid.<br /><br />Further, if your research concerns only utterances themselves, the complex event or sequence of events which consists among other things of certain neural phenomena in brains of speakers or listeners, certain physical phenomena in their articulatory apparatus, and certain acoustic phenomena etc etc., then Platonism is not relevant to it [nor has any Platonist i know claimed it would be]. <br /><br />It is also not at issue whether the the assumption that the set of possible sentences is infinite, is a "methodologically expedient counterfactual idealisation" but if it is a GOOD idealization. Take the vulcanologist. If he abstracts away from all friction, air resistance and a bunch of other physical factors, when calculating how large an area should be evacuated in case of an eruption, his model might predict the entire earth because nothing will stop the flow of the lava. A model that takes the relevant physical factors in account on the other hand will give at least a pretty good estimate for the 'general case' and will be helpful for actually occuring individual cases. So it does matter what is abstracted away and what isn't: in linguistics just as in vulcanology. And because it matters it matters what kinds of things sentences are. If it's tokens all the way, then a model that is based on an infinite set of possible sentences seems like a very bad model. Why not use a model of a finite collection of sentences? You may have good reasons for preferring the infinite set model but you have not revealed what they are.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-1454512384020905582013-03-04T15:07:29.371-08:002013-03-04T15:07:29.371-08:00Ooops, how did I get 'Alex' and 'Steph...Ooops, how did I get 'Alex' and 'Stephen' mixed up? Good thing this is a blog not an article. Returning to K&P, I should have said 'focussed on' or something like that, not 'involving', which would have made my claim be the banal platitude it was supposed to be.<br /><br />Taking one of the arguments against Conceptualism, the Veil of Ignorance (K&P 524-525), I find it highly unconvincing because I don't think that either my or even Chomsky's brand of psychologism commits us to claiming to be able to get complete and certain knowledge of postulated mental mechanisms by examining only grammatical behavior. All that is required from the grammatical behavior is useful hints. So if the grammatical behavior suggests an infinite number of sentences, but neurophysiological study reveals a vast list, that's just the way it is, tho we will want a theory of why the behavior was so misleading.<br /><br />Chomsky however seems to think he can extract far more in the way of conclusion from the hints than I think is warranted, but that's a different issue. Some kind of rather flakey pushdown store is probably about as much as I would want to commit to.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-10844375250601149412013-03-04T14:34:28.801-08:002013-03-04T14:34:28.801-08:00Chomsky says some ridiculous and indefensible thin...Chomsky says some ridiculous and indefensible things, and I have no intention of supporting his attacks on connectionism, or his attempts to define what are or are not appropriate generalisations or methodological assumptions. I think however that the assumption that the set of possible sentences is infinite, is a perfectly reasonable "methodologically expedient counterfactual idealisation", to be augmented by some suitable performance model that will limit the class of sentences that will actually be uttered by a human to some very large but finite set.<br /><br /><br />I don't understand your point about abstract tokens. On one view we have sentences (types) like "It is snowing", and particular utterances (tokens) like me saying it is snowing at 7:am on Christmas eve. The utterance itself is a complex event or sequence of events which consists among other things of certain neural phenomena (in my brain and in the brains of the persons I was talking to), certain physical phenomena in my articulatory apparatus, and certain acoustic phenomena etc etc.<br /><br />I don't see where the Platonism comes in here: if there are any platonistic objects then they are by definition not causally involved in the events that we are talking about. Alex Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04634767958690153584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-51751785231066090692013-03-04T14:13:01.085-08:002013-03-04T14:13:01.085-08:00Thanks for the introduction to volcanology. It see...Thanks for the introduction to volcanology. It seems though, you use the term 'abstract' here in 2 meanings that are better kept separate:<br /><br />1. abstract [= platonic] objects, not existing in time and space and independent of any concrete objects and <br />2. abstract concepts based on salient properties of concrete objects and used as 'stand in' or 'representation of said objects in say theory construction.<br /><br />People who study volcanoes are interested in both: [i] properties of individual volcanoes and [ii] a maximally general account of the properties of all volcanoes. Now any laws or principles which result from [ii] will hold of the physical volcanoes. So we can abstract way from certain properties of particular volcanoes, e.g. the fact that one is in Italy and another in Hawaii. But in so abstracting one will not turn volcanoes into abstract objects which are indestructible, not located in time <br />and space, etc. The physical volcanoes are not affected by such abstractions and obediently remain sitting in Italy or Hawaii in all their glory.<br /> <br />Now if sentences are of the same kind as volcanoes [e.g. physical objects, here biological things], doing some abstracting when theorizing about sentences will not turn them into abstract objects, and if they are abstract objects, nothing can turn them into biological things. <br /> <br />The type token distinction in linguistics is between abstract objects and performances of them, the latter having of course space-time coordinates. Tokens will be in the standard case noises, lasting a few seconds, occurring in places on <br />earth. Abstracting from them won't get one anywhere near abstract objects [types or sentences]. Saying that the sentence 'Chomsky is a famous linguist' is literally located in your brain appears very odd. Saying Monte Vesuvio is located in Italy on the other hand is not odd at all. <br /><br />Whether the finiteness/infiniteness is an innocent idealization seems rather questionable. Vulcanologists probably would object to a model that predicts infinite lava output? And Chomsky objects to idealizations that stay much closer to known physical properties of brains when he criticizes connectionists for "abstracting radically from the physical reality, and who knows if the abstractions are going in the right direction? (Chomsky, 2012, p. 67). But compared to a jump from finitude to infinity connectionist models stay extremely close to the physical reality...<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /><br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-84710291655454931352013-03-04T13:11:00.546-08:002013-03-04T13:11:00.546-08:00I think you are making unnecessary difficulties on...I think you are making unnecessary difficulties on this type/token distinction. Scientists are generally interested in the repeated properties of events which are abstracted into various types. So we have volcanoes of various types. Vulcanologists study volcanoes in the abstract, and particular individual volcanoes. Is the subject matter of the discipline of vulcanology the study of volcano tokens or volcano types? <br /><br />One could claim that vulcanology is clearly incoherent because it fails to make this crucial ontological distinction -- but I doubt that the annual vulcanology congress does (or should) spend any time discussing this vexed question. <br /><br />The finiteness/infiniteness thing seems an innocent idealisation on a line with frictionless surfaces, perfect vacuums, incompressible fluids etc., Gaussian distributions and the rest of it.<br /><br />Alex Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04634767958690153584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-16331768394299493842013-03-04T12:52:33.704-08:002013-03-04T12:52:33.704-08:00Thanks for this. Note i did not claim knowledge ab...Thanks for this. Note i did not claim knowledge about your view [though i think there should be a law banning any more people with the name 'Clark' entering cogsci/linguistics :)<br /><br />Now about your comment. What is really at issue after all the analogies and models are left at the gate is: what is the ontology of natural language sentences? You say grammars specify infinite sets of strings, so these are abstract things.Then you talk about something physical, 'a configuration of the memory of the computer'. Now on your view, are natural language sentences like [i] the physical things, aspects of memory of a computer, or [ii] are they like the abstract things? <br /><br />If sentences are [i], then they are finite in number, no matter what any model says. If this is your view it is not subject to IC but it is also very different from Chomsky's [B]. If your view requires sentences to be [ii], then you reject biolinguistics in addition to the 'plenty of things' also for ontological reasons. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-38889001358616732902013-03-04T08:48:49.871-08:002013-03-04T08:48:49.871-08:00Don't confuse me with Stephen Clark at Cambrid...Don't confuse me with Stephen Clark at Cambridge! He is the one that has done some stuff with the distributional semantics/category theory/pregroup grammars. <br /><br />I don't see any problem with using abstract or infinite objects in a model for a concrete finite system. So if you have a real physical finite pocket calculator it is reasonable to say that it adds numbers; and one might want to add the caveat (but only up to 10^69 and within certain accuracies). So in my own work, I say that we have grammars where the nonterminals are, say, infinite sets of strings. Now of course when I implement this in a computer program and run it, the nonterminal in the grammar is a very real thing -- a physical configuration of the memory of the computer. But I would describe it, in my paper using some abstract mathematical description. I don't think this is problematic. <br /><br />There are plenty of things I object to in biolinguistics, but this isn't one of them.Alex Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04634767958690153584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-80760525819583529132013-03-04T02:50:05.416-08:002013-03-04T02:50:05.416-08:00A couple of points. I am not sure if you meant you...A couple of points. I am not sure if you meant your first comment [that Platonism can't be an issue involving Merge because Platonism goes back to the 80s] seriously. I hope not but if you [or anyone reading your reply] did, picture this: X moved 1990 into an apartment and signed a rental contract that specified 'no pets allowed'. X claims that does not apply to the new puppy he got his kids 2012 for x-mas because the puppy didn't even exist in 1990. Maybe in some goofy sitcom that is considered <br />funny but.... The relevant part of the K&P critique applies to Merge because Merge is the kind of thing that specifies a biological organ generates an infinite output. [K&P deal with the common rejoinder 'capacity to generate' and 'potentially infinite' and show why these don't work]. So because Merge is the kind of thing K&P deal with the criticism applies even though Merge had not been invented [conceptualized?] in the 80s. And if this still does not convince you, have a look at Postal 2009 [ http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001608 ] or Postal 2012 [ http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001569 ]. There Merge is specifically mentioned as target of the incoherence criticism. As i said i hope you were joking..<br /><br />Now in the remainder of your reply you seem to say 2 different things: there are some approaches to linguistics that are not susceptible to K&P criticisms and there are some specifics of K&P and L&P that may not apply even to biolinguistics. Lets look at these in turn<br /><br />1. Currently we only talk about the incoherence charge [IC] and only about Chomsky's Biolonguistics [B] [not entirely irrelevant here note that Postal 2012 is very clear that IC is independent of Platonism being right]. K&P do not claim EVERY linguistic theory is target of IC, only B and those that are in the relevant sense like B. So you have to look at THIS claim. Saying that IC does not refute a linguistic theory T [say Tomasello's] is irrelevant here. K&P never claimed it does. So if you can find a theory that is not targeted by IC that much the better for you but it does not rescue Chomsky's B.<br /><br />2, K&P and L&P make several independent arguments. IC is one of them. If one of these argument is fatal for biolinguistics it does not matter if the others fail. Picture a hunter who has 3 bullets in his gun and aims at a lion. If the first bullet kills the lion it does not matter if the other two miss or if the gun jams after the first shot was fired. No one would say the hunter did a bad job killing the lion because it took him only 1 bullet. Postal [2009, 2012] claims IC is the kind of argument that 'kills' the biolinguistic lion. If you want to refute this claim it is pointless to focus on the other 'bullets' in the K&P and L&P guns. You need to show that it is literally possible to have sets in our heads. <br /><br />Regarding your last paragraph: I am not familiar enough with Alex C's theory to evaluate whether it is in the relevant sense like B or not - maybe he can speak to thatAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-70439258712901894562013-03-03T18:34:35.625-08:002013-03-03T18:34:35.625-08:00@Christina: I suspect we are, but am so far findin...@Christina: I suspect we are, but am so far finding it interesting to try to figure out where. The Platonist line goes back at least to the early eighties, so can't be an issue involving Merge, but was, iirc, intended as a general approach to all kinds of grammatical theorizing (I do recall spending a fair amount of time thinking about Katz's 1981 book, Postal and Langendoen's _The Vastness of Natural Language_, etc. without being persuaded, also some of Kim Sterelny's writings). I thought at the time that I thought of my (LFG) grammars as defining abstract objects, but suspected that it would be a mistake to call what they defined 'English' (or 'Icelandic'), & didn't think I needed a rigorous theory of what these labels ought to be applied to, as long as people seemed to agree at least roughly about what attempted sentences seemed like 'grammatical' or 'ungrammatical' examples in each language, relative to meanings. 'Roughly' here implies, among other things, that the status of trillion-word sentences or massive center embeddings would be irrelevant.<br /><br />I'm also not committed to there being any 'faculty of language' with a different basis than any other human abilities, Everett's idea of a 'platform' that supports language as well as other stuff (visual art? planning a route through the supermarket (vaguely inspired by Penni Sibuns 1990s'-era ideas about language generation)? tying your shoes? whatever the most satisfactory theory of all this stuff and more seems to suggest). There is presumably some kind of biological endowment there, but not necessarily one specific to language, and calling linguistics a branch of biology makes about much sense to me as calling herpetology a branch of physics (possibly even less, due to less knowledge of useful intermediary disciplines).<br /><br />Merge & sets bring up another collection of problems, since, although set theory is useful for formalizing things, it's not the only way, there is, for example, category theory. I'm too ignorant and bad enough at math to formalize Merge with category theory, but Alex Clarke has written papers with people who might be able to do it (Bob Coecke's theoretical physics+linguistics group at Oxford, working with Lambek's pregroup grammars the last time I looked). The advantage of category theory is that the results of merge could have exactly the properties you want them to have, and without any extraneous ones due to the fact of being set-theoretical objects.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-69654994278379524522013-03-03T17:00:22.970-08:002013-03-03T17:00:22.970-08:00@Avery: It seems we are talking past each other. I...@Avery: It seems we are talking past each other. I am not trying to say that models should account for everything. We know bones are the kinds of things that can break. So a model that has this knowledge built in as background assumption is fine, even if there is no bone-breaking modelled [because the purpose of the model is to focus on some other property of bones, like how they grow in a child]. So that is not the point. The point is that a model that presupposes that bones have a property they could not possibly have [say being tie-able into a knot] would be a useless model of bones. [but it may be a fun model for some rubber kids toy of octopusman].<br /><br />I am also not denying that there are many properties of language that can be modelled by Chomsky's 'Merge model'. So your point about center embeddings etc. is not at issue. What is at issue is that such a model is not a model of a biological system, like a human brain. Chomsky compares the language organ to the visual system, or the digestive system, or the immune system. All these systems have some properties they share with other biological systems and some that are specific to them - that make the digestive system different from the immune system - a different organ. And biologists can tell you specifically what some of the differences are. <br /><br />Now take language. Can you name one biological property of the language faculty that makes it the language faculty [as opposed to the visual system]? The only candidate at offer at the moment is the operation Merge. So what ARE the biological properties of Merge? i am not aware of a single biological property of Merge that Chomsky [or anyone else] has ever specified. But vkodytek [apologies if this is not your name] is right: we would literally need to have sets in our heads because they are the output of Merge, which is also in our heads. Now it would follow that, given that for example the integers are routinely modeled as sets, we have actual integers---not mental constructs, not representations, not impressions, but numbers themselves in our heads. These are the kinds of absurd consequences biolinguistics has when taken seriously. Of course we can have knowledge of numbers in our heads [and knowledge of sets] but not the numbers themselves... Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-49077004636504157802013-03-03T14:46:53.181-08:002013-03-03T14:46:53.181-08:00@Jan Koster. You say: “People who agree with me at...@Jan Koster. You say: “People who agree with me at this point might think that nevertheless our culturally determined concepts are based on "deeper" primitives, properly called "concepts", that are innate (or in some Platonic heaven) after all. It seems to me that that is a metaphysical position that cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical means.”<br /><br />The logic and “lexicon” of cognitive processes has to be more general / more abstract than our everyday logic and lexicon, because it (or much of it) has had to work in very different environments, such as those of our apish ancestors, hunters-gatherers or IT experts (a good reason to stick to your *interpretations*). Maybe we do have sets in our heads after all ;).VilemKodytekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13161547663393188912noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-82838688032126247572013-03-03T13:43:33.473-08:002013-03-03T13:43:33.473-08:00Reading (or maybe rereading) K&P will take som...Reading (or maybe rereading) K&P will take some time, but I don't think the points you mentioned at the beginning invalidate what I'll call the 'model-based' view, especially for people who don't really care about whether or not to call the version of the model with or without length limitations, center-embedding limitations, breath-pause modelling, etc. 'English', or 'a possible language' or not. You always have to adjust what's in a model to suit the purpose.<br /><br />An intermediate case between language and car engines might be the skeleto-muscular system, where you can have useful models (for some purposes) that didn't account for when bones would break and muscles rip loose from their attachment points.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-2164856045264209472013-03-02T15:41:02.041-08:002013-03-02T15:41:02.041-08:00There are a few problems with you analogy. First, ...There are a few problems with you analogy. First, we know independently of the car model that real cars are subject to friction, wear, finiteness of fuel supply, etc. - so in some cases we can indeed abstract away from those properties. For language we are not in the position yet that we know all it's properties, [note that Chomsky makes the point repeatedly, i have cited it in here; http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001592] - so how can we possibly know if the idealizations of the model are justified?<br /><br />Next, in some cases the abstracting away you mention is okay but if you want to model a fuel efficient car [say before building an expensive prototype] you would hardly leave friction out of your model or pretend to have unlimited fuel supply. Instead you'd try to calculate these factors as precisely as you possibly can. So if language is an organ, located in the brain, you want to model brain properties as closely as you can. We may not know too much at this point but one thing we know for sure: brains are finite and their output can only be finite. So why would you use a model that does not represent the one property we definitely know brains have; finiteness? Why would we not use a model with finite recursion, seeking out what the upper bound is?<br /><br />Finally, remember that Chomsky claims there is no difference between knowledge of language and language. Postal has collected a lot of quotes in which Chomsky is very clear about this: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001569 So to get back to your analogy: there is no difference between the model of the car and the car - the model IS the car. Chomsky has also insisted repeatedly that there is no 'longest expression' LE such that you cannot find an expression E that has at least one more element. If this is the case and if these expressions are the output of a biological organ you are not talking model but magic...<br /><br />There are more reasons to take Platonism at least seriously. I really recommend to read the K&P paper http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001607 but you have to read all of it, and maybe more than once and with a mind open enough to allows you to at least consider they could be right...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-69599289848496302013-03-02T14:13:36.616-08:002013-03-02T14:13:36.616-08:00I get stuck with K&P & Platonism almost im...I get stuck with K&P & Platonism almost immediately on the basis that I construe indefinite recursion etc as properties of a mathematical model, useful in the way that a mathematical model of a car engine might be useful for certain purposes even if it left out friction, wear, and the finiteness of the fuel supply, and so falsely predicted that the engine would run for ever. Nobody would get their knickers in a twist about this if they were thinking about car engines, so what's the big deal with grammar?AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-91035623820372857182013-03-02T12:36:31.712-08:002013-03-02T12:36:31.712-08:00I am a moderate Platonist (hence sympathetic to K ...I am a moderate Platonist (hence sympathetic to K & P's ideas) in that I am skeptical about naturalistic approaches to universals and intentional objects. "Platonic heaven" was used metaphorically here, actually meaning Platonism "without topos ouranos" in the sense of Hermann Lotze and Gottlob Frege in 19th-century Germany. Rational inquiry into "Platonic" fields is possible, with confirmation or disconfirmation of hypotheses, but without the same possibilities as to the ultimate reality of their objects of inquiry. By "freischwebend" concept I mean a concept existing without being the interpretation of a physically realized sign. In Saussurian terms: I don't believe there are *signifiés* without *signifiants*. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13780460212414690121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-72842010069324237072013-03-02T07:51:55.053-08:002013-03-02T07:51:55.053-08:00I agree with virtually everything you say except f...I agree with virtually everything you say except for a minor quibble and I have a clarification question:<br /><br />You say "People ... might think that nevertheless our culturally determined concepts are based on "deeper" primitives, properly called "concepts", that are innate (or in some Platonic heaven) after all. It seems to me that that is a metaphysical position that cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical means".<br /><br />I think reference to 'Platonic heaven' should be avoided because it implies some 'place' where these 'concepts' are - and this is exactly what linguistic Platonists like Postal or Katz deny - for good reason. As for confirmability: i am sure you're aware of Katz' comment that IF we take rational realism seriously at all, we cannot expect to confirm the existence of abstract objects with the same methods we use to confirm existence of concrete objects. But this does not imply there is no way to confirm/disconfirm. <br /><br />Lets start with disconfirmation: the reason K&P adopted Platonism is that they believe natural languages NL have some properties [P] that cannot be accounted for bei either nominalism or mentalism. Platonism is necessary to account for these P. Now if one can show either [i] that P are NOT [necessary] properties of NL or [ii] that pace K&P mentalism can account for all P, then Platonism is not necessary to account for all properties of NL [might still be the case abstract objects exist, but who would care?]. Given that K&P have specified a bunch of P it would make a lot of sense for someone like Chomsky or Fodor to show how they can be accounted for without Platonism [and thus disconfirm linguistic Platonism].<br /><br />Confirmation is similarly indirect: if it remains the case that some P cannot be accounted for by any non-Platonist framework, then we have good reasons to believe Platonism is true [at least provisionally until maybe someone comes along and shows otherwise]. This BTW is the same logic as David used when we talked about Tomasello: There are some properties language undoubtedly has, Tomasello cannot account for them, David can - hence David's framework is superior. Same logic would seem to require to adopt Platonism if Merge generates sets but sets cannot be accounted for in a biolinguistic framework, only in a Platonistc one. [I am not intimately familiar with Katz's account of semantics but seem to remember he claimed some P there as well [which would be a good target for disconfirmation].]<br /><br />Now to my question: You say: "Note that such primitives would not be attached to words or any kind of physical sign, but be *freischwebend* in some sense"<br />maybe just my German gets in the way here: by 'freischwebend' you do not mean an actual [physical] object floating unsupported in space but rather some 'object' that has no physical properties? Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-77158784143520625492013-03-02T04:49:25.818-08:002013-03-02T04:49:25.818-08:00The question whether to subsume "ice" un...The question whether to subsume "ice" under the concept "water" and the question whether to include H2O both illustrate the traditional idea of philologists (that I have adopted so far) that word meaning is contextual. "Context" does not only include the immediate context of use but also the background theories that are part of the interpretation process. Like in the "pork" case discussed above, it appears that background theories differ from person to person and from era to era (e.g., water pre- and post- its analysis as H2O). We can communicate not because we know THE meaning of a word but because our interpretations and background theories overlap. Given the flexibility of symbolization, it cannot be said once and for all what concept a word denotes (and/or labels). Given the fundamental fact that word meaning is in flux, depending on ever changing historical/cultural contingencies, it is a mystery to me how anybody can think that word meaning is a matter of innateness, individual psychology or biology.<br /><br />People who agree with me at this point might think that nevertheless our culturally determined concepts are based on "deeper" primitives, properly called "concepts", that are innate (or in some Platonic heaven) after all. It seems to me that that is a metaphysical position that cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical means.<br /><br />Note that such primitives would not be attached to words or any kind of physical sign, but be *freischwebend* in some sense. I tend to think that there are no physical or biological counterparts to such free concepts and that concepts only exist in the empirical world as context-bound interpretations of physically realized signs (in the Saussurian sense). I have always found it suspect that if you ask somebody to give an example of a concept you usually get a "visible" expression, often in the guise of an ordinary word spelled with capital letters.<br /><br />If this is true, externalization is not some kind of afterthought but part and parcel of the fabric of language (undermining the concept of I-language, at least for concepts). There are perhaps some exceptional situations in which concepts are relatively *freischwebend*, for instance in the often short period before a new word or expression is invented, but even then there seems to be some agentive focusing with supportive physical realization, for instance in the form of imagery in working memory that is functioning as a proto-sign.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13780460212414690121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-29112629227700686682013-03-02T00:34:23.247-08:002013-03-02T00:34:23.247-08:00@Avery I agree that Fodor's story is not that ...@Avery I agree that Fodor's story is not that different from anyone else's story for colors. However, that's to be expected, because as Fodor said in the thing I quoted a while back, he's basically extending the empiricist story about sensory concepts to concepts in general (slogan: Quine minus the empiricism).<br /><br />I also agree that if word meanings don't decompose, that leaves us with the thorny question of what lexical semantics is about. To state the obvious, a lot will hang on whether it's possible to construe the decompositions people have come up with as something other than definitions.Alex Drummondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04676457657606185543noreply@blogger.com