don't see how one can make a useful distinction . . .
JM: There's a very considerable mismatch, in any case, between whatever featureshuman concepts have and whatever types of things and properties in the world that might or might not be ‘out there’ – even though we might use some of these concepts to apply to those things . . .
NC: Yes, in fact the relation seems to me to be in some respects similar to the sound side of language[, as I mentioned before]. There's an internal representation, æ , but there's no human-independent physical event that æ is associated with. It can come out in all sorts of ways . . .
JM: So for concepts it follows, I take it, that only a creature with a similar kind of mind can in fact comprehend what a human being is saying when he or she says something and expresses the concepts that that person has . . .
NC: So when you teach a dog commands, it's reacting to something, but not your concepts . . .
JM: OK, good. I'd like to question you then in a bit more detail about what might be thought of as relevant types of theories that one might explore with regard to concepts. Does it make sense to say that there are such things as atomic concepts? I'm not suggesting that they have to be atomic in the way thatJerry Fodor thinks they must be – because of course for him they're semantically defined over a class of identical properties . . .
NC: External . . .
JM: External properties, yes .
NC: I just don't see how that is going to work, because I don't see any way to individuate them mind-independently. But I don't see any alternative to assuming that there are atomic ones. Either they're all atomic, in which case there are atomic ones, or there is some way of combining them. I don't really have any idea of what an alternative would be. If they exist, there are atomic ones. It seems a point of logic.
JM: I wonder if the view that there must be atomic concepts doesn't have about the same status as something like Newton's assumption that there have to be corpuscles because that's just the way we think . . .
NC: That's correct . . . there have to be corpuscles. It's just that Newton had the wrong ones. Every form of physics assumes that there are some things that are elementary, even if it's strings. The things that the world is made up of, including our internal natures, our minds – either those things are composite, or they're not. If they're not composite, they're atomic. So there are corpuscles.
JM: Is there work in linguistics now being done that's at least getting closer to becoming clearer about what the nature of those atomic entities is?
NC: Yes, but the work that is being done – and it's interesting work – is almost entirely on relationalconcepts. There's a huge literature on telic verbs, etc. – on things that are related to syntax. How do events play a role, how about agents, states . . .? Davidsonian kind of stuff. But it's relational.
The concerns of philosophers working on philosophy of language and of linguists working on semantics are almost complementary.Nobody in linguistics works on the meaning of WATER, TREE, HOUSE, and so on; they work on LOAD, FILL, and BEGIN – mostly verbal concepts.
JM: The contributions of some philosophers working in formal semantics can be seen – as you've pointed out in other places – as a contribution to syntax .
NC: For example, Davidsonian-type work . . .
JM: Exactly . . .
NC: whatever one thinks of it, it is a contribution to the syntax of the meaning side of language. But contrary to the view of some Davidsonians and others, it's completelyinternal, so far as I can see. You can tie it to truth conditions, or rather truth-indications, of some kind; it enters into deciding whether statements are true. But so do a million otherthings.[C]
5 Reflections on the study of language
JM: You used to draw a distinction between the language faculty narrowly conceived and the language faculty more broadly
JM: There's a very considerable mismatch, in any case, between whatever featureshuman concepts have and whatever types of things and properties in the world that might or might not be ‘out there’ – even though we might use some of these concepts to apply to those things . . .
NC: Yes, in fact the relation seems to me to be in some respects similar to the sound side of language[, as I mentioned before]. There's an internal representation, æ , but there's no human-independent physical event that æ is associated with. It can come out in all sorts of ways . . .
JM: So for concepts it follows, I take it, that only a creature with a similar kind of mind can in fact comprehend what a human being is saying when he or she says something and expresses the concepts that that person has . . .
NC: So when you teach a dog commands, it's reacting to something, but not your concepts . . .
JM: OK, good. I'd like to question you then in a bit more detail about what might be thought of as relevant types of theories that one might explore with regard to concepts. Does it make sense to say that there are such things as atomic concepts? I'm not suggesting that they have to be atomic in the way thatJerry Fodor thinks they must be – because of course for him they're semantically defined over a class of identical properties . . .
NC: External . . .
JM: External properties, yes .
NC: I just don't see how that is going to work, because I don't see any way to individuate them mind-independently. But I don't see any alternative to assuming that there are atomic ones. Either they're all atomic, in which case there are atomic ones, or there is some way of combining them. I don't really have any idea of what an alternative would be. If they exist, there are atomic ones. It seems a point of logic.
JM: I wonder if the view that there must be atomic concepts doesn't have about the same status as something like Newton's assumption that there have to be corpuscles because that's just the way we think . . .
NC: That's correct . . . there have to be corpuscles. It's just that Newton had the wrong ones. Every form of physics assumes that there are some things that are elementary, even if it's strings. The things that the world is made up of, including our internal natures, our minds – either those things are composite, or they're not. If they're not composite, they're atomic. So there are corpuscles.
JM: Is there work in linguistics now being done that's at least getting closer to becoming clearer about what the nature of those atomic entities is?
NC: Yes, but the work that is being done – and it's interesting work – is almost entirely on relationalconcepts. There's a huge literature on telic verbs, etc. – on things that are related to syntax. How do events play a role, how about agents, states . . .? Davidsonian kind of stuff. But it's relational.
The concerns of philosophers working on philosophy of language and of linguists working on semantics are almost complementary.Nobody in linguistics works on the meaning of WATER, TREE, HOUSE, and so on; they work on LOAD, FILL, and BEGIN – mostly verbal concepts.
JM: The contributions of some philosophers working in formal semantics can be seen – as you've pointed out in other places – as a contribution to syntax .
NC: For example, Davidsonian-type work . . .
JM: Exactly . . .
NC: whatever one thinks of it, it is a contribution to the syntax of the meaning side of language. But contrary to the view of some Davidsonians and others, it's completelyinternal, so far as I can see. You can tie it to truth conditions, or rather truth-indications, of some kind; it enters into deciding whether statements are true. But so do a million otherthings.[C]
5 Reflections on the study of language
JM: You used to draw a distinction between the language faculty narrowly conceived and the language faculty more broadly
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