1. Language Origin
Perfect circles, God and language
You say the world is not flat. How do you know that this is true? You say you know what a perfect circle is. Did someone tell you? How do you know that what they told you is true? Can your measurement be perfect? You say God exists or does not exist. How do you know this? Do ideas exist? Do we have minds and are there ideas in our minds? We have knowledge but what is it and where did it come from?
The study of the nature and origin of knowledge is a branch of philo- sophy called ‘epistemology’. In psycholinguistics, we too are interested in epistemology since we are concerned with how a certain kind of knowledge, language knowledge, is acquired. Back in Chapter 1, we discussed how children learn language, but what we did not discuss is how the human infant got started in analyzing and learning a language. Does the human infant use intelligence or innate language ideas, or both? If it is the use of intelligence, are infants then born with this intelligence or do they have to develop it? And if it is the use of innate language ideas, what are those ideas and how are they activated so as to enable the infant to learn lan- guage? Or, is it the case that neither are relevant and a study of behaviour conditioning or functions can provide the explanation?
The various philosophical isms that we shall be concerned with in this chapter, Empiricism, Rationalism, Behaviourism, and to a lesser extent Philo- sophical Functionalism (to be distinguished from Linguistic Functionalism), are types of explanations that have been given in response to the question of how it is possible for language to develop in the child and to be used by mature speakers. We shall be assessing the different explanations offered
by these ‘isms’; at the same time we hope to be able to provide you with a critical framework from which you may draw your own conclusions.
10.2 Mentalism vs. Materialism
10.2.1 The essence of Materialism
The psychologist John B. Watson, the founder of Behaviourism, regarded mind and consciousness as religious superstitions that were irrelevant to the study of psychology. For him, there was only one kind of stuff in the universe, the material or matter and the study of physiology is the study of psychology.
Such a philosophy has its origins in the ancient Greeks (Epicurus, the Stoics) and with La Mettrie in eighteenth-century France. Some recent philosophical Functionalists follow in this tradition but take this view a step further and grant mental characteristics, including consciousness, to any inanimate device so long as there is identity of function with that of humans (Chalmers, 1996).
Other Behaviourists, like Skinner (1971) and Osgood (1971), might allow that mind exists but they would give it no power and certainly would not study it. The philosophical Behaviourist theories of Ryle (1949, p. 199) and Quine (1960, pp. 34 –5) take a similar view, i.e. that the object of psychological study should not be mind but bodily dispositions for behaving: mind and mental processes can be reduced to the physiological functioning of the body. Despite the diversity of these anti-Mentalist theorists, they hold one prin- ciple in common: they argue for the study of the physical body (including the brain) where they can relate bodily processes and functioning of the
body to situations and events in the physical environment.
The essence of Mentalism
In opposition to the materialistically inclined theorists noted above, the Mentalist holds that mind is of a different nature from matter. Thus, there are qualitatively two kinds of substances in the universe, the material and the mental. Such a doctrine goes back to the ancient Greeks, such as Aristotle, through Locke and Descartes, up to the present day, including such theorists as Chomsky and Searle and the authors of this book.
For the latter theorists, the understanding of mind and consciousness is essential to the understanding of the intellectuality of human beings, particularly language. Most modern-day psycholinguists and linguists are Mentalists, placing their emphasis as they do on the study of mind and the interaction of body and mind in order to understand the processes of lan- guage and its learning by children.
Two basic mind and body relationships with respect to environmental stimuli and behavioural responses in the world are: the Interactionist and the Idealist. We characterize these two views as follows.
10.2.2.1 Interactionism
Body and mind are seen as interacting with one another such that one may cause or control events in the other. An example of body affecting mind would be the activation of a pain receptor in the body after being stuck with a pin, resulting in a feeling of pain being experienced in the mind. An example of mind affecting body would be when a person doing trimming in the garden decides, in the mind, to cut down a certain plant, and then does so. According to this interactionist view, which is similar to the one proposed by Descartes (1641, Meditation VI), persons behave the way they do as the result of either the body acting alone (as in breathing, and the circulation of the blood) or the body interacting with mind (as when one intentionally holds one’s breath or lifts one’s hand).
Incidentally, the Interactionist would argue that it is because of the two basic types of ‘stuff’ in the universe, the material and the mental, that sentences such as ‘The idea of square is purple’ and ‘Happiness weighs 3 grams’ are meaningless if taken literally. For in these sentences physical attributes (weight and colour) of the material world are attributed to non- physical mental entities (idea and mental state) of the separate mental world.
10.2.2.2 Idealism
Certain Mentalists, such as Plato, Berkeley in the early eighteenth century, and Hegel in the nineteenth century, took the radical position that mind is the only stuff of the universe. According to this radical Mentalist view, Idealism, the body and the rest of the physical world are mere constructions of the mind. The world exists only in the mind of conscious individuals, with the only true substance being the mental. For Plato eternal ideas were the only reality. For Berkeley all minds were part of the mind of God. In a sense, subjective Idealism is at the other extreme from radical Materialism. While for the Materialist only matter exists, for the Idealist, only the mental exists.
Nowadays, there is little interest in Idealism. Rather, Interactionism is the principal notion of Mentalism being advocated (Searle, 1997). It is this notion of Mentalism that we are concerned with, especially as it is realized in the competing doctrines of Empiricism and Rationalism.
Why the Mentalist–Materialist controversy?
Why all the controversy and all the isms? Why can’t everyone agree on body and mind? The age-old dilemma, to paraphrase Crane (1995), is this:
l If we believe that the mental is qualitatively different from the physical, then how can the two interact? Here the Mentalist is stuck for an answer.
l If the mental is not qualitatively different from the physical, then how can we make sense of the phenomenon of consciousness? Here the Materialist is hard put for an answer.