Is the ontology of biolinguistics coherent?  

Oleh:

Behme, Christina

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language Sciences (Full Text) vol. 47 no. Part A (2015), page 32-42.
Topik: Biolinguistics Linguistic Platonism Ontology Abstract objects Neurobiology Multiple realizability
Fulltext: 47-Part-A_Behme.pdf (273.62KB)

Isi artikel

For decades Chomskyan biolinguistics have failed to respond to arguments showing that their research program rests on an internally incoherent ontology. Recently, Jeffrey Watumull claimed that his putative novel and nontrivial unification reconciles the ontologies of biolinguistics and Platonism. I argue that Watumull offers no defense of Chomskyan biolinguistics because he misunderstands and misrepresents the arguments against it and defends a view that has been rejected by Chomsky. Unlike Chomsky,Watumull accepts the reality of abstract objects. But he offers no novel proposal for how the recursive algorithms could be implemented in a human brain. Nor does he pay any attention to cerebral neurophysiological properties. Finally, his speculations fail to show that a physical object could have abstract properties or vice versa. I conclude that six decades after the Chomskyan revolution, the foundations of biolinguistics remain internally incoherent.

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