Chomsky also admits that a thread of rational thinking is woven
through his work: "I didn't begin writing about intellectual history
until the early '60s, not until Current Issues in Linguistic
Theory [written in 1962, while he was a resident fellow at the
Harvard Cognitive Studies Center], though you can see the beginnings
in my review of Skinner (written in 1957)" (13
Dec. 1994). Intellectual history had hooked Chomsky and drawn him in;
it was to have a lasting influence upon his work. He reflects:
I haven't convinced anyone, but I think there is an important and
detectable "thread" (to borrow your term) that runs from
Cartesian rationalism through the romantic period (the more
libertarian Rousseau, for example), parts of the enlightenment (some
of Kant, etc.), pre-capitalist classical liberalism (notably Humboldt,
but also Smith), and on to the partly spontaneous tradition of popular
revolt against industrial capitalism and the forms it took in the
left-libertarian movements, including the anti-Bolshevik parts of the
Marxist tradition. I also disagree with lots of things along the way,
and putting all of that material in a lump yields immense internal
inconsistencies (even within the writing of a single person, say
Humboldt or, notoriously, Rousseau, most of them pretty
unsystematic). But I'm speaking here of a thread that can be
extricated, and that may have only been dimly perceived (as is
standard, even in one's own scientific work, when one thinks it over
in retrospect). (8 Aug. 1994)
One way to trace the series of connections that Chomsky alludes to
here is simply to look at the material he quotes in Cartesian
Linguistics.
Here, in what amounts to a historical discussion, but which could
still be understood as a continuation of his diatribe against
Skinner's vision of behaviorism (particularly "the way it was being
used in Quinean empiricism and `naturalization of philosophy'" [31
Mar. 1995]), Chomsky also notes that Descartes, in the course of
studying the limits of mechanical explanation, "arrived at the
conclusion that man has unique abilities that cannot be accounted for
on purely mechanistic grounds, although, to a very large extent, a
mechanistic explanation can be provided for human bodily function and
behavior" (3). The difference between man and animals, in
Descartes's view, is most clearly exhibited in human language --
specifically in the phenomenon previously referred to as creativity.
To illustrate his point, Descartes cites the machine's limited ability
to speak in response to stimuli. Although he imagines that a machine
could be set up to make particular responses to particular actions
performed upon it, "it never happens that it arranges its speech in
various ways, in order to reply appropriately to everything that may
be said in its presence, as even the lowest type of man can do"
(qtd. in Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics 4). But, unlike a
machine, a human being is "incited" or "inclined" to act in certain
ways, and not compelled. It is due to this, Chomsky says, that
"prediction of behavior may be possible within a certain range, and a
theory of motivation might be within range, but all of these endeavors
miss the central point. The person could have chosen to act otherwise,
within the limits of physical capacity, even in ways that
areíharmful or suicidal" ("Creation"). So, he continues, even if
theories elaborated to predict human behavior or motivation are deemed
successful in their own terms, they "would not qualify as serious
theories ofíbehavior. Human action is coherent and appropriate, but
uncaused, apparently. . . . These considerations lie at the heart of
the dualist metaphysics of the Cartesians, which again accords rather
well with our common-sense understanding" ("Creation").
Despite its accordance with "our common-sense understanding,"
however, much of what was postulated by Cartesian dualist metaphysics
has subsequently been thrown into doubt. "[B]ut," Chomsky
asserts, "it is important to recall that what collapsed was the
Cartesian theory of matter; the theory of mind, such as it was, has
undergone no fundamental critique" ("Creation").
Chomsky remarks on the notion Descartes put forward that we can train
the smartest animals to perform various tasks and tricks, but no
matter how high their level of competence they will never equal even
the least skilled human in terms of linguistic ability. Descartes
wrote: "[I]t is a very remarkable fact that there are none so depraved
and stupid, without even excepting idiots, that they cannot arrange
different words together, forming of them a statement by which they
make known their thoughts; while, on the other hand, there is no
animal, however perfect and fortunately circumstanced it may be, which
can do the same" (Cartesian Linguistics 116
17). Nonhuman primates and other animal species do not all necessarily
lack the physiological characteristics and general intelligence needed
to use language creatively; they nonetheless lack this
human-specific capacity because of the particular organization of
their minds. This observation and others made by Cartesians were not
addressed by the Bloomfieldian linguistic framework.
