Biological Determinism and Epistemology in Linguistics: Some Considerations

on the "Chomskyan Revolution" [1]

Peter Jones

"Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust

therefrom".[2]

0. INTRODUCTION

0.1 The aim of this paper is to take a critical look, from a broadly Marxist
perspective, at the epistemological basis of Noam Chomsky's theory of
grammar and the implications of his work in linguistics for the human sciences
in general.[3] At the very least this critique might help to explain the reasons
why Chomsky's views should be regarded as incompatible with Marxism,
despite some recent claims (eg Newmeyer, 1986a,b). More importantly, I hope
the discussion may show that Chomsky's outlook on language poses a
challenge not only to Marxism but to any discipline in which the social and
historical are essential and irreducible categories in the understanding and
explanation of human behaviour, institutions, and thought. For Chomsky uses
his theoretical linguistic work, which has already had a profound influence on
other disciplines, particularly philosophy and psychology (cf Salkie, 1990) as
the ground on which to construct a rigid biological determinist ideology applied
to all aspects of human behaviour and mental activity. The main thrust of my
argument is that Chomsky's biological determinism, like biological determinism
in general, rests on an incoherent and self-contradictory epistemology and is an
inadequate foundation for the human sciences, including linguistics. In view of
these intended aims, I would like to think that what follows might be
considered as a further contribution to the critique of biological determinism
developed in Rose (ed) (1982) and Rose, Lewontin and Kamin (1990).

0.2 I do not claim any originality for philosophical opposition to Chomsky's work
and specifically Marxist criticism can be found elsewhere (eg Thompson, 1969;
Luria, 1975; llyenkov, 1977c; Panfilov, 1979; and cf the discussion in
Newmeyer, 1986a). What I hope to offer is a rather more fine-grained
philosophical analysis of aspects of Chomsky's approach along with a sketch of
an alternative perspective which I will refer to as the Vygotskian tradition of

Marxist research in psychology and linguistics.[4] While detailed scrutiny of the

technical linguistic facts and arguments used to support Chomsky's case would
be out of place here, I will make one or two observations on the status and
validity of such "evidence".

Since Chomsky has at the same time acquired an international reputation as a

courageous, outspoken, and radical political thinker and commentator (cf
Salkie, op.cit; Chomsky 1979, 1987b, 1989), the question inevitably arises of
the connection between his linguistics and politics. Some writers consider both
areas of his thought to be equally radical and progressive, eg Salkie (op.cit). I
share the view that his scientific and political views have certain philosophical
and ethical principles in common and, accordingly, I have raised some general
questions on his attitude towards social and political theory. However, I shall
not examine Chomksy's political contribution in any detail, nor do I wish to
denigrate that contribution in any way.

I should stress that not all linguists outside the Marxist tradition share
Chomsky's conception of language and mind. Some would challenge or reject
outright the innatist framework of Chomskyan generativism (eg Sampson,
1975; Moore and Carling, 1982; Halliday, 1978; Harris, 1980) and there are
many other linguists who, while working with Chomsky's grammatical theory,
would distance themselves from his biological determinism. Yet, there are few,
if any, modern approaches to language which remain uninfluenced by
Chomsky's work and ideas. Whether or not Chomsky's theoretical
achievements amount to a revolution will not, however, be of concern here,
although the question has generated some heat over the years (cf Koerner,
1983; Newmeyer, 1986b).

My plan of attack, then, is as follows: 1) an exposition of the key tenets of the

Chomskyan doctrine on grammar, 2) an analysis of the epistemological
foundations of this doctrine, 3) a critical appraisal of these foundations, and 4)
a brief exposition of the Vygotskian alternative.

1. LINGUISTICS AS BIOLOGY

1.1 Over the years, Chomsky has employed a rather effective expository and
rhetorical device which consists in imagining how a super-intelligent extra-

terrestrial being would go about the study of human language and its
grammatical structure. Chomsky's Martian gets to the bottom of things very
quickly, unencumbered by the parochial earthbound attitudes, ideological
distortions and downright stupidity that humans are prone to. The
superorganism attacks language - this "curious biological phenomenon"
(Chomsky, 1988: 41) - with natural scientific methods ("the methods of rational
inquiry", ibid), quickly discovering beneath the apparent chaos of surface
forms, highly abstract principles of syntactic organization, principles which are
inviolable and yet have no functional motivation in the exigencies of social
communication. Accordingly, the Martian attributes the human capacity for
language to our biological make-up, to the workings of an innate language
faculty. This faculty contains a "Universal Grammar, a "mental organ" which
provides a grammatical blueprint for the "growth" of the grammars of
particular languages in interaction with the linguistic (and general social)
surroundings. Here we have, in a nutshell, the general framework of
assumptions and the methodology within which Chomskyan theoretical syntax,
often referred to as "autonomous syntax" (Newmeyer, 1986a; 1991) has taken
shape.

Facts aside, this is, on first encounter, a persuasive and plausible picture of the
nature of language and its structure. It appears to have the merit, not least, of
reconciling the study of language with already established and respectable
sciences, thereby helping to promote a thorough-going scientific and
philosophical realism, a materialistic monism (or "scientific monism", Salkie,
1990). On the other hand, one may have doubts. Of course, one can hardly
object to rational methods of enquiry, or to the demand for the same standards
of rationality in linguistics as in the "hard" sciences. And yet, to assume in
advance that linguistic facts are biological facts is hardly in keeping with the
finest standards of terrestrial thought, something that might lead us to temper
our enthusiasm for contact with other worlds. Why does our Martian
superorganism not entertain the possibility that language is, say, a cultural
form? I will return to the argument below.[5]

Chomsky's rational methods entail drastic consequences for the human

sciences as a whole, for every sphere of human mental activity, subjected to
such enquiry, turns out to require a mental organ of its own. To each domain
Chomsky allots a dedicated biological substratum allowing species- specific
mental activity to flourish over a certain highly restricted field "accessible" to
the innate faculty while denying access to areas which "lie beyond the reach of
our minds, structured and organised as they are" (1979: 230). Syntax is the
province of one such organ, word meaning is another, to the surprise, perhaps,

of those who think that Chomsky's innatism is restricted to the form of

language - as if form and content could so easily be dissociated. Thus,
Chomsky believes that the speed and precision with which children pick up new
words "leaves no real alternative to the conclusion that the child somehow has
the concepts available before experience with language and is basically
learning labels for concepts that are already part of his or her conceptual
apparatus" (1988: 28). The same applies, he claims, "even for the technical
concepts of the natural sciences" (ibid: 32). The very method of scientific
thought is also fixed a priori in a "science-forming capacity" (1980: 250) which
permits, again, only "accessible" theories, ie those which conform to
biologically determined specifications. As regards activity in the literary or
musical spheres, Chomsky is similarly convinced that "a certain range of
possibilities has been explored to create structures of marvellous intricacy,
while others are never considered or if explored, lead to the production of work
that does not conform to normal human capacities" (ibid: 252). He also
believes that "the moral and ethical system acquired by the child owes much to
some innate human faculty" (1988: 153).

The outcome of this grandiose reductionism is the marginalisation of the

effective domain of the historical, the social and the cultural in human affairs.
Indeed, the very concept of "society" as a coherent systemic organism
becomes problematic, and in fact Chomsky makes no secret of his scepticism
about the possibility of a genuine social science (1979: 56). On occasion,
Chomsky has considered extending his innatist approach to the sphere of social
interaction itself, speculating that we might have "a sort of 'universal grammar'
of possible forms of social interaction, and it is this system which helps us to
organize intuitively our imperfect perceptions of social reality" while adding
that "it does not follow necessarily that we are capable of developing conscious
theories in this domain through the exercise of our 'science-forming faculties'"
(ibid: 69-70).

1.2 Returning to the methodology of our Martian investigator, one might

legitimately ask: why study language as if it were a physical organ of the body?
To which Chomsky replies: why not? Why should we think that it should be
studied differently? Chomsky's supporting arguments once more appeal to
analogies between physical and mental structures:

"A consistent materialist would consider it as self-evident that the mind has
very important innate structures, physically realized in some manner ... if we
assume that human beings belong to the biological world, then we must expect

them to resemble the rest of the biological world. Their physical constitution,
their organs, and the principles of maturation are genetically determined.
There is no reason for supposing the mental world to be an exception" (1979:
94).

The very idea that mental and physical development should be treated
separately he attributes to "the grip of empiricist doctrine" (1976: 12) which,
like religious dogma, stands in the way of rational scientific enquiry:

"The background myth [ie accepted by "empiricism", PEJ] is that the human
brain is radically different from any other object in the physical world: namely,
it's diffuse and unstructured. There's nothing else in the physical world like
that. Everything we know in the physical world, certainly in the biological world,
is highly specific and structured and has components and intricate
arrangements, etc ... Well, a standard picture is - and it's the same as the
picture of human malleability - that the brain is different. Even though it is (or
maybe because it is) the most complicated object that we know of in the
universe, somehow it's unstructured .... Well, that just cannot be true ...
Everything we know points to the fact that it's like other physical objects that
develop in the natural world. And if it is, we're not going to find that one
system has the same structural properties as other systems" (Edgley et al,
1989: 32-33).

Putting aside such prejudice, it is "quite natural and plausible" to regard "the
growth of language as analogous to the development of a bodily organ" (ibid:
11); the study of language thus "falls naturally within human biology" (ibid:
123). Chomsky uses this argument in an explicit attack on the Marxist tradition,
which he regards as a variant of empiricist ideology:

"The Marxist tradition too has characteristically held that humans are products
of history and society, not determined by their biological nature; of course this
is not true of physical properties, such as the possession of arms rather than
wings ... but it is held to be true of intellectual, social, and general cultural life"
(1988: 162).

This skillful rhetorical maneouvre puts the ball firmly back into his "empiricist"
opponents' court and allows Chomsky to cast himself as an open-minded
seeker after truth in contrast to the Marxist dogmatists.

2. THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM

2.1 The analogies Chomsky draws between mental and physical organs and
their growth have a definite philosophical significance which he is keen to
develop explicitly. Thus, Chomsky contrasts the "deep and abstract" nature of
the grammatical knowledge acquired by the child with the "degenerate quality
and narrowly limited extent of the available data" on which the child bases
his/her grammar construction (1965: 58). He notes the "striking uniformity of
the resulting grammars, and their independence of intelligence, motivation,
and emotional state" (ibid), all of which leaves little hope that much of the
structure of the language can be learned by an organism initially uninformed as
to its general character" (ibid). It is this argument from the "poverty of the
stimulus" (Chomsky, 1986), contrasting the knowledge acquired with its
evidential base, which is the central epistemological pillar of his biological
determinist edifice. This contrast is held to justify the postulation of highly
specific and finely tuned innate principles which "permit the organism to
transcend experience, reaching a high level of complexity that does not reflect
the limited and degenerate environment" (Chomsky, 1980: 340). In more
traditional philosophical language, the argument has to do with the problem of
induction (sometimes referred to by Chomsky as "Plato's problem", ibid, and cf
Hacker, 1990). The same argument in relation to children's learning of words is
used to support a belief in the innateness of all concepts.

Chomsky's philosophical stance has much to do with his approval of the

refutation of induction by the 18th century Scottish sceptical philosopher David
Hume, entailing the rejection of the empiricist principle that experience is the
source of human knowledge. Hume showed that the framing of general
scientific laws cannot be justified logically, rationally from experience alone,
which led him to "the disastrous conclusion that from experience and
observation nothing is to be learnt" (Russell, 1991: 645) and from there to a
denial of the possibility of rational belief tout court. The logical outcome, in
fact, was solipsism. Chomsky, however, sees a solution to the Humean problem
in a version of the doctrine of innate ideas: if knowledge cannot derive from
experience then it must belong to the mind itself; what we call "knowledge" is
produced in-house, so to speak, caused by the internal structure and working
of the mind - the physical constitution of the brain itself determines what is and

what is not thinkable and knowable. Here the influence of the Cartesian and
Kantian traditions makes itself felt although the logic of Chomsky's position
forces him to sharply distance himself from the Cartesian picture of the mind as
a "universal instrument" (1988: 149), able to know anything and everything,
since, if it is the structure of the brain itself which determines the content and
possibilities of human knowledge, there must necessarily be "sharp limits on
attainable knowledge" (1979: 64).

2.2 And so to the main epistemological conundrum at the heart of the

Chomskyan doctrine: if knowledge is some kind of physical substance grown in
the brain, what, then, of truth? In Chomskyan parlance, what of "the relation
between the class of humanly accessible theories and the class of true
theories" (1980: 251)? On Chomsky's premisses, truth can only arise via a
coincidence or intersection of mental (ie brain) properties with properties of
reality: "Where such an intersection exists, a human being can attain real
knowledge. And, conversely, he cannot attain real knowledge beyond that
intersection" (1979: 66). However, Chomsky has already argued that "we're not
going to find that one system has the same structural properties as other
systems" (Edgley et al, 1989, see above) from which it follows that "there is no
particular biological reason why such an intersection should exist" (1979: 66).
He is forced to conclude that there "is no particular reason to suppose that the
science-forming capacities of humans or their mathematical abilities permit
them to conceive of theories approximating the truth in every (or any) domain,
or to gain insight into the laws of nature" (1980: 251). In other words, there is
no reason for believing that any "knowledge" we have is true knowledge, and
good reasons for believing that none of it is - a radical scepticism foreign to
Descartes but acceptable to Kant who believed that the world of real things
outside the mind ("Things-in-themselves") was in principle unknowable.

But now the twist. Instead of denying, with Kant, the possibility of real
knowledge of things, Chomsky gives the epistemological screw an extra turn,
professing a Cartesian faith in the power of human knowledge. For Descartes,
the worlds of thought and matter, despite having diametrically opposed
properties, nevertheless corresponded exactly, because God made them
coincide. Chomksy, too, believes that true knowledge exists, with physics being
the prime example (1979: 66). But God, apparently, is not responsible; it is,
instead, "just blind luck if the human science-forming capacity, a particular
component of the human biological endowment, happens to yield a result that
conforms more or less to the truth about the world" (1988: 156-157). Physics,
then, may indeed be such an instance of a "lucky accident" (1980: 251), of "a
remarkable historical accident resulting from chance convergence of biological

properties of the human mind with some aspect of the real world" (ibid). Truth
depends, then, on a "kind of biological miracle" (1979: 66).

3. A CRITIQUE OF CHOMSKYAN EPISTEMOLOGY

3.1 How should one characterize Chomsky's position on language and human
mental capacities in the most general philosophical terms? The biological
determinist idiom in which his ideas are couched is suggestive of what would
be called "mechanical" or "vulgar" materialism within the Marxist tradition (eg
Engels, Dialectics). Its materialism lies in the acceptance of the existence of a
mind-independent material reality, its vulgarity in the simple reduction of the
mental to the material (the biological). However, I believe it would be more
accurate to see Chomskyan innatism, in common, I would argue, with all forms
of biological reductionisrn, as essentially idealist, a rather curious and simplistic
hotch-potch of Kantian scepticism and Cartesian dualism.

The credibility of Chomsky's epistemology depends crucially on the plausibility

of the appeal to a chance convergence of mind (brain) and matter (external
world) as an explanation of the possibility of true knowledge. But in fact it is
very easy to see that this leap of faith from accessible theories to true theories
is quite irrational and illegitimate. If one accepts that all concepts - including
those of "brain", "mind", "reality", "person", "world", etc - are forced on our
thinking by the brain, whatever the world itself is actually like, then there are
quite simply no grounds for claiming either that one's ideas about the world
and the world itself actually correspond, or indeed that there is a real world
outside the brain at all. Kant's theory contained similar inconsistencies and
ultimately proved to be untenable. One of the difficulties lies with its assertion
of a causal link - a "triggering" perhaps in Chomskyan terms - between the
"Things-in-themselves" and the workings of the mind. If we believe, as Kant
did, and as Chomsky must, that the category of causality is an inherent mental
phenomenon in principle inapplicable to the "Things", then we contradict
ourselves in simultaneously asserting both that "Things" are unknowable and
that they have causal powers. One cannot frame a coherent philosophical
outlook around the claim to have knowledge of that which one declares to be
unknowable! In any case, as Russell argues, despite what the Kantians might
have thought, their philosophy was not an answer to Hume's but "represent[ed]
a pre-Humian type of rationalism, and can be refuted by Humian arguments"
(ibid: 646), as can Chomsky's theory. In the light of these points it seems
slightly perverse to paint Chomsky as a realist, as in, for example Keat and Urry
(1975). By his own arguments, the concepts and technical terms of his

linguistic theory must be considered the product of an innate conceptual

scheme and, therefore, whether such "things" really exist cannot be known.
The very theory of mind which Chomsky accepts precludes the claim that the
mind is real.

Chomsky's invocation of biological miracles indicates the acuteness of his

epistemological dilemma. Let us briefly explore some of the implications of the
ploy. While the possibility of true knowledge, he asserts, depends on chance
homologies between the brain and other physical systems in the universe, the
chances of such coincidences are reduced to zero if, as he supposes, the brain
is a unique physical system. Moreover, epistemological miracles will have to
multiply exponentially in order to cope with the convergence of human thought
with properties of reality in different spheres, or even within the same sphere.
For example, we are asked to believe that the success of modern physics is due
to a "chance convergence" between the properties of the brain and the
physical world (to what, then, should we attribute the "failure" of ancient
physics?). However, "modern physics" comprises many theories about many
different objects, states of matter and their interactions under different
conditions. Brain states will have to cause mental properties which converge
with all these objects and states simultaneously. We will then need to go on to
explain similar and simultaneous convergences of brain and biological,
chemical, geological, and linguistic, etc phenomena. Worse still, each science is
built from systems of concepts, each individual concept, by hypothesis, an
innate entity for which one must also be prepared to sanction a similar
biological miracle. There are also some tricky questions to answer concerning
the processes of historical development of theoretical, scientific and conceptual
systems.

3.2 Deserting for a moment the realm of philosophical abstraction, it is

interesting that empirical studies of children's language learning have not, in
general, borne out Chomsky's claims, insofar as they are meaningful (on this
Hacker, 1990), particularly in relation to his early allegations about the
meagreness and degeneracy of the environmental input and about the speed
of language acquisition. While Chomsky paints a picture of the individual child
growing a grammar through a purely intellectual process of analysis and sifting
of poor quality data, a great volume of work shows language developing in
contexts of social interaction around joint practical activity, contexts in which
the child's carers tailor their language to the child's level of communicative
competence (Halliday, 1978; Bruner, 1981; Wells, 1985).

As for Chomsky's remarks on the innateness of concepts, a thousand objections

immediately spring to mind, some of them very ably put by Hacker (1990),
although, as distinct from the position defended here, Hacker admits the
possibility of innate ideas. In an attempt, perhaps, to disarm potential critics,
Chomsky himself is quick to concede that the possession by the child of all
concepts in advance of experience is "a condition that is so surprising as to
seem outrageous" (1988: 134) while the idea appears to be "essentially correct
nevertheless" (ibid), although no evidence is offered in support of the assertion.
Here again, the facts of children's learning of words would appear to contradict
Chomsky's assertion (Vygotsky, 1962; Luria, 1981; Wells, 1985). The whole
matter clearly requires detailed investigation and discussion, something which
is outside the scope of this paper.

3.3 One may wonder how Chomsky's radical politics could be squared with his
views on human mental capacities. The connections between Chomsky's
political and social views and his linguistic and philosophical views certainly
deserve more detailed examination. Chomsky himself, at least in public, plays
down such connections, describing them as "extremely tenuous" since "one
can't infer anything about politics from what you know about universal
grammar, or conversely" (Edgley et al, 1989: 31). On the other hand, he
acknowledges that "any attitude that one takes towards social issues or
towards human relations ... must be based on some conception of human
nature, some conception of how social arrangments or interpersonal relations
ought to be conducted in such a way as to be conducive to human needs"
(ibid). Chomsky refers to his own conception as a kind of libertarian socialism,
with its roots in the liberalism which he claims developed from certain, notably
Cartesian, trends of Enlightenment thinking. Cartesian rationalism, with its
belief in innate reason and in the creativity and freedom of human thinking is
counterposed to an "empiricist" picture of people as "completely malleable and
lacking in characteristics" which he claims is used to justify techniques of
manipulation and control of the masses by "ideological managers" (ibid).
Chomsky claims to find a "modest conceptual barrier against racism in his
approach (1979: 92-3).[6] He also claims to detect historical changes, even
advances, in moral consciousness in relation to attitudes towards slavery, or
the place of women in society, for example (1988: 154), changes he attributes
to "an advance towards understanding of our own nature and the moral and
ethical principles that derive from it" (ibid).

Nevertheless, one may still feel that the "rationalist" vocabulary of freedom
and creativity sits rather uncomfortably with a biological determinist view of
human nature. Indeed, the latter dogma is not typically associated with liberal,

let alone socialist views. These political implications have not been missed by
Chomsky's critics, some of whom who have, ludicrously, tried to paint him as a
racist, a fascist or an apologist for imperialist exploitation (eg Thompson, 1969,
and others discussed in Newmeyer, 1986a). Rose, Lewontin and Kamin (1990),
on the other hand, in their informed and well-researched critique of biological
determinism also draw rather different conclusions from Chomsky about its
political possibilities. Exploring the connection between "the rising tide of
biological determinist writing" (ibid: ix) since the early 70's and "the New Right
Ideology" (ibid: 5) epitomised by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, they
argue that biological determinism continues and feeds "a philosophical
tradition of individualism, with its emphasis on the priority of the individual
over the collective, a tradition appropriated by the 'New Right' eager to place
the causes of social inequality, crime, 'immorality' and poverty within the
individual and individual psychology and not in society which, perhaps, does
not have its own determining influence on human behaviour" (ibid, and cf the
notorious Thatcherite dictum: "there's no such thing as society"). Sadly, their
critique does not extend to linguistics and to Chomsky. Politically, of course,
Chomsky does not fit the equation since he is a fierce opponent of racism and
New Right ideology. Perhaps it is this fact that has helped to shield his linguistic
and philosophical speculations from attack from other liberal and left-wing
intellectuals. Thompson (1982), for instance, quite wrongly in my view, is keen
to exempt Chomskyan linguistic universals from her sustained and thorough
attack on biological determinist constructs. Nevertheless her arguments point
to the fundamental contradictions within biological determinist accounts of
moral and political structures. She notes that some sociobiologists accept that
"an adherence to social norms ... can modify or even contain the operation" of
the causal, biological mechanism (ibid: 34) and adds:

"But this admission is a dangerous one. For to the extent that consciouness is
able to alter the way a biological mechanism operates, the resulting behaviour
cannot be said to be caused directly by the mechanism" (ibid).

Chomsky has the same problem: if it is the case that our behaviour and beliefs,
including our basic moral judgements, are biologically fixed, then we could
hardly rid ourselves of oppressive social and political institutions by mere
political debate or action, and the idea that our present attitudes and
behaviour are at odds with our biologically determined nature surely
contradicts the basic premisses on which the whole argument is built. The
result of such attempts to marry biological causation with conscious
modification of behaviour is an implausible dualism typical of biological
determinism both in modern form (cf Rose, Lewontin and Kamin, 1990) and in

earlier, 18th and 19th century versions (cf Plekhanov, The Monist View). From
the Marxist point of view, of course, the main issue is not the particular
ideological form in which those in power seek to justify their exploitation and
manipulation of others (one can surely find "rationaiist" as well as "empiricist"
dictatorships). The issue is: how do social formations arise? How can we explain
the origin, development and supersession of social structures? If there are
chains of cause and effect at the societal level, at the level of relations and
interactions between people, which are irreducible to individual mental or
behavioural properties, and which are responsible for the shaping and
structuring of societies, then the determining forces in socio-historical evolution
are these social processes and not "human nature" in the sense of inborn
qualities.

4. LANGUAGE AND THE MARXIST TRADITION

4.1 The discussion so far demonstrates that the problem of giving a scientific
account of language and its structure is inextricably wedded to other scientific,
methodological and philosophical problems, notably the problem of induction,
the relationship of the socio-cultural to the biological, of the individual to the
social, and of the material to the mental. Chomsky's approach to these issues
lies squarely within the Western, neo-Kantian tradition of subjective,
introspective philosophising whose starting point is the inner mental
phenomena of the individual subject. Indeed, this philosophical stance transfers
directly into a particular methodology employed by generative linguists and
others in which introspection and intuition concerning, typically, idealised
artificial and decontextualised sentences, are used, often as the sole
investigative tool (cf Sampson, 1975).

It has frequently been claimed within the Marxist tradition (eg llyenkov, 1982)
that this subjective, individualist approach in its various guises creates more
epistemological difficulties than it purports to resolve. Indeed, the approach
itself is part of the problem and underlies the various forms of idealist
rationalism or scepticism of the Cartesian, Humean, Kantian, and Chomskyan
varieties. It is impossible, as Hume himself recognised, to make out of
scepticism a philosophy that one can live by. But life has to go on: "Man has to
act, think and believe in the existence of the external world, as Hume said"
(Plekhanov, op.cit: 521), making this separation of thinking and being into two
mutually unintelligible realms an evident absurdity. The Marxist tradition
accordingly approaches the whole problem of human knowledge from the
opposite end to subjectivist philosophy. With Marx, the character of human

thinking is to be investigated in its connections with the social practices in

which it is embedded, in its role in transforming the world and in creating an
environment adequate for human needs. The content of thought, if not inborn,
must, then, be taken from life and must reflect the reality of human relations
with the real world and the real relations between people themselves. Without
such a coincidence of the mental (or "ideal") and the real, human existence
would not be possible for two minutes, let alone two thousand years or two
hundred thousand. In addition, as activity and the thinking it generates are
social in essence - existing only in and through the concerted effort of the
many individuals who make up the collective - neither human activity nor
thinking can be a property of an individual considered naturalistically, ie apart
from the social nexus. Thus, all ideal forms including language, are seen
primarily as a property and product of the life-process of the whole community,
and the essence of humanity located not in the individual person, still less the
physical constitution of that person, but in "the ensemble of the social
relations" (Marx, Theses: 14)

From the Marxist point of view, by cutting the relations between the mind and
social activity, Chomsky makes it impossible to account for the content and
origins of mental processes. Of course, to stake everything on induction is no
solution either, and in fact the Marxist tradition has always recognised the
shortcomings of empiricist epistemology, Engels referring to it as "the whole
swindle of induction" deriving "from the Englishmen" (Dialectics: 227). Engels
accepts that the "empiricism of observation alone can never adequately prove
necessity" (Engels, ibid: 229), but emphasises that this is because human
knowledge does not derive solely or mainly from observation or contemplation
of the natural world. Rather, it is "precisely the alteration of nature by men, not
solely nature as such, which is the most essential and immediate basis of
human thought, and it is in the measure that man has learned to change
nature that his intelligence has increased" (ibid: 231). Observation of the
regularities in experience "affords no proof ... But the activity of human beings
forms the test of causality" and "the proof of necessity lies in human activity, in
experiment, in work" (ibid: 229-230). In these passages, Engels is by no means
denying a role to induction in the development of thought but proposing that it
must be considered as only one side of the many-sided socio-historical process
of generation of knowledge in practice and generation of practice from
knowledge. In any case, as he shows, induction is inseparable from deduction,
and is itself a form of deduction (ibid: 226-229).[7]

4.2 Vygotsky's achievement (1962, 1978) was to help create a perspective on

human language, mentality and personality on the epistemological and

methodological ground of historical materialism, basing himself on the primacy

of social practical activity in relation to individual thinking and on the
interpenetration of the natural and the cultural-historical in the development of
language and all mental processes. Vygotsky stressed the centrality of the
study of language and its development to the explanation of the unique
properties of the human psyche, and to a scientific understanding of human
society as a specific form of material organisation. Shaped in the whole life
history of the community as an instrument of communicative mediation of
practical activity and a form of generalising thought -"the social means of
thought" (1962: 5 1) - language interpenetrates with the "natural"
psychological and biological processes present in the new-born child leading to
the formation of "verbal thought" which "is not an innate, natural form of
behaviour but is determined by a historical-cultural process" (ibid).

From this perspective, to acquire the mental wealth so central to the

Chomskyan view involves entering this historically determined and developing
world of human activity. A child must be part of a human community, engaging
in common practices with the community first and foremost, and only as a
result thinking and speaking as a community member. In this process, the child
is an active participant in the recreation of the material and mental practices
already existing outside and around him/her, recreating them at first in forms
of interaction with things and other people and then internally, within
him/herself in the form of inner speech and consciousness itself. Therefore, on
one question Chornksy is undoubtedly correct: the richness of thought which an
individual comes to possess is indeed underdetermined by experience,
understood simply as the raw data of sense perception immediately accessible
to that individual. One can even accept with Kant and Chomsky that the data of
experience are somehow organized prior to their representation to the subject"
(Bakhurst, 1991: 196), while yet rejecting the possibility of innate ideas or
Chomskyan biological programming. The work of llyenkov (eg 1977a,b), as
Bakhurst (op.cit) shows, provides an elegant materialist solution to the problem
in showing that "what lends the object of experience structure is not the mind
of the individual subjects, but the forms of the activity of the community" (ibid:
197).The Kantian categories and concepts, Chomskyan innate ideas, are not,
then, essentially properties of the subject, seen as the contemplating
individual, but are "the forms of self-consciousness of social beings (understood
as the historically developing 'ensembles of social relations')" which have to be
"assimilated by the individual from without (and confronting him from the very
beginning as 'external' schemas [patterns] of the movement of culture,
independent of his consciousness and will" (ibid: 197). Thus, the individual
human being comes to interpret the data of experience - one could even say to
"filter it" - through the framework of meanings, categories and norms of the
surrounding culture assimilated through joint action. This framework indeed

transcends experience because it represents a distillation and summation of

the historical experience of the community itself. But for that very reason,
because it is not some arbitrary mental scheme imposed adventitiously on the
data of sense, it allows the child to relate to the world and to others in a real,
tried and tested, meaningful and purposive way. It is this system of social life,
and not raw grey matter, which provides the basic socio-cultural and practical
"rules" within which the child's creative imagination can take shape and work.
Furthermore, the productive activity responsible for the human environment, if
we accept the premisses of historical materialism, determines the social
structure of the producing community itself. No biologically fixed conceptual
scheme could allow us to operate and survive in such an environment. Thus,
neither human thought, nor activity guided by thought, nor the social relations
through which activity is effected could have a biologically determined
character. In short, a human way of life would not be possible if the content and
categories of thinking were genetically inherited.

4.3 If the character of human mental activity is not inborn, what is its material
basis and what is the role of the brain? The problem of coherently theorizing
the interrelation of biological and mental properties, the "mind-body" problem,
is one of the trickiest of all and it is beyond the scope of this paper to tackle it
in detail. Leontiev, for example, poses the problem in the following way:

"From a scientific, materialist standpoint, it is impossible, of course to assume

the existence of capacities or functions that do not have their specialised
organs ... How then are we to reconcile the view of man's higher psychic
functions as having their morphological, physiological basis, with the assertion
that these functions are not morphologically fixed and are transmitted solely by
way of their social 'inheritance'?" (1981: 426).

He goes on to argue that the "acknowledgement of the socio-historical nature

of mental capacities leads to the acceptance, at first glance paradoxical, of
their relative independence of the brain's morphological features" (ibid: 315), a
position eloquently explored by llyenkov (1977a: 261):

"It is clear that the ideal, ie the active form of social man's activity, is
immediately embodied, or as it is now fashionable to say, is 'coded', in the form
of the neuro-cerebral structures of the cortex of the brain, ie quite materially.
But the material being of the ideal is not itself ideal but only the form of its

expression in the organic body of the individual. In itself the ideal is the socially
determined form of man's life activity corresponding to the form of its object
and product. To try and explain the ideal from the anatomical and physiological
properties of the body of the brain is the same unfruitful whim as to try and
explain the money form of the product of labour by the physico-chemical
features of gold".

The psychological and neuropsychological work of Leontiev and Luria (eg 1973)
has helped to put some flesh, so to speak, on the philosophical bones of the
argument in the form of the key concept of a "functional organ" (Leontiev,
op.cit: 427), a system of connections within the brain which is not pre-formed
in the child, but forms "simultaneously with the forming of higher, specifically
human psychic processes in a child" (ibid: 427). Such systems, when formed,
"then function as a single organ" (ibid). From this point of view, the
internalisation of language and its conversion into a phenomenon of individual
mental life happens through the formation of such a functional organ, the result
of the integration and organisation of neuro-physiological structures and
processes into a unique system of connections involving the whole brain. The
significance of this is that the brain can no longer be considered as a biological
given to which cultural phenomena must conform. Rather, the brain, in order to
become the vehicle of thought for a human individual, must itself adapt to the
cultural environment. In a sense, culture and history write themselves
organically into the brain, creating a biological base adequate to them. In the
process the brain becomes a kind of "socio-natural" or "socio-biological" organ.

4.4 Finally, let us turn to some allegedly "Marxist" arguments put forward by
Newmeyer (1977,1986a) in support of the Chomskyan view of language and
mind. Despite a minimalist engagement with the Marxist philosophical and
linguistic traditions, Newmeyer feels able to assert that "a Marxist theory of
language IN NO WAY precludes the existence of competence models and
biologically-linked linguistic universals" (1977: 256) and, indeed, that "it is as
senseless to speak of a Marxist theory of language structure as it would be to
speak of a Marxist theory of genetic or atomic structure" (ibid). His reasons for
claiming this are not explicitly stated but presumably involve the assumption
that language structure, unlike economics, is a biological phenomenon and
consequently, like biology, is outside the province of historical materialism.
Newmeyer is prepared to concede that there is one aspect of "a language's
grammatical system that ... depends on the objective conditions of life",
namely vocabulary (1986: 136), but argues that the syntactic rules governing
the combination of words into sentences belongs to an autonomous mental
domain. The central plank, then, of what Newmeyer calls "autonomous

linguistics" is the view that "the form of language exists independently of its
content" (ibid: 143). It is this thesis that Newmeyer is so concerned to protect
against the hostile hordes of Marxist critics, while professing to be a Marxist
himself. The significance of the argument appears to be that it allows one to be
a Marxist in relation to the content of ideas, words, etc while remaining a
Chomskyan in relation to the linguistic form such content assumes.

Is Marxism necessarily incompatible with this view of a biologically determined

language faculty? I believe it is, not least because Marxism requires, as a
general methodological or philosophical assumption, a relationship and
dependency between the categories of form and content at odds with
Newmeyer's conception. From the Marxist point of view Newmeyer assumes
metaphysical dualism of form and content on a par with the Cartesian dualism
of mind and body: on the one hand pure forms, entirely free of any meaning or
content, and, on the other, meaning so pure that it is entirely devoid of any
hint of form or structure. How would such substances meet and interact? How
and why could the brain, let us say, recognise such empty formal structures as
having anything to do with language at all? What, indeed, makes them forms of
language? The alleged autonomy of grammar, therefore, is based on a
distinctly dubious methodology and ontology. Furthermore, in the grammatical
theory defended by Newmeyer there is actually no such clear-cut separation of
formal and semantic dimensions. Principles of Universal Grammar are invoked
in relation to such semantic relations as "agency" and to the referential
properties of names and pronouns (cf Radford, 1981). In practice, the
dialectical relationship of form and content is not so easy to ignore. Finally, as
we have seen, the "poverty of the stimulus" arguments used by Chomsky in
support of formal universals are also applied to support the position that the
conceptual content of language, too, is innate. If we wish to avoid this latter
outcome then we must also contest the case in relation to form.

5. CONCLUSION

In this paper I have tried to outline the basic philosophical and methodological
assumptions behind Chomsky's theory of Universal Grammar and the main
objections to the theory from within the Marxist tradition. I have argued that
the biological determinist framework of Chomsky's theory is an unsound
philosophical and methodological foundation for the scientific investigation of
human affairs in general and language in particular. There is an alternative in
the tradition of materialist investigation of language and mental phenomena
associated with the name of Vygotsky and others, which allows us to give full

due to our material, biological natures without at the same time preventing us
from appreciating the essentially socio-cultural determination of our activity
and thinking.

Since these issues have been discussed without consideration of the linguistic
facts, the case I have made will undoubtedly be insufficient to impress those
who find Chomsky's technical arguments more persuasive. One could counter
by saying that the theory of innate linguistic universals is far from forcing itself
on the impartial scientific investigator through the sheer weight of empirical
evidence (as implied by, eg Salkie, 1991). On the contrary, like Chomsky's
Martian, one must already have made some powerful assumptions about the
nature of humanity and of human mental activity to be willing to accept the
formalist methodology as well as the innatist conclusions of Chomskyan
linguistics. As we have seen, the assumptions Chomsky makes, on which his
whole research programme rests, are biological determinist, which in
philosophy means idealist. If we judge this ideological framework to be
untenable, then the viability of the linguistic theory is called into question. And
if we cannot find at once all the answers to the structural puzzles Chomsky's
theory purports to solve, we would do better to be cautiously sceptical about
the data than to be bounced into embracing a set of assumptions which have
devastating consequences for the human sciences.

Marxism & Psychology Index

Bibilography

Dialectics - F Engels (1941) Dialectics of Nature, London: Lawrence and Wishart

The Monist View - G Plekhanov (1961) "The Development of the Monist View of
History", in Selected Philosophical Works, Vol 1, London: Lawrence & Wishart,
pp 542-782
Theses - K Marx (1969) "Theses on Feuerbach", in K Marx and F Engels Selected
Works, Vol 1, Moscow: Progress, pp13-15
Bakhurst, D (1986) 'Thought, Speech and the Genesis of Meaning: On the 50th
Anniversary of Vygotsky's "Myshienie i rech"', Studies in Soviet Thought, 31:
103-29

Bakhurst, D (1990) 'Social Memory in Soviet Thought' in D Middleton and D

Edwards (eds) Collective Remembering, London: Sage Publications
Bakhurst, D (1991) Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy: From
the Bolsheviks to Evald llyenkov, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Bruner,J (1981) 'The Social Context of Language Acquisition', Language and
Communication, 1, 155-178
Chomsky, N (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, Mass: MIT
Press
Chomsky, N (1972) Language and Mind, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich
Chomsky, N (1976) Reflections on Language, London: Temple Smith
Chomksy, N (1979) Language and Responsibility, Hassocks: Harvester Press
Chomsky, N (1980) Rules and Representations, Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Chomsky, N (1986) Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use, New
York: Praeger
Chomsky, N (1987a) 'LANGUAGE: CHOMSKY'S THEORV' in R L Gregory (ed),
419-421
Chomsky, N (1987b) On Power and Ideology, Boston: South End Press
Chomsky, N (1988) Language and Problems of Knowledge, Cambridge, Mass:
MIT Press
Chomsky, N (1989) Necessary Illusions, London: Pluto Press
Desmond, A & Moore, J (1991) Darwin, London: Michael Joseph
Edgley, R et al (1989) 'Interview with Chomsky', Radical Philosophy, 53: 31-40
Gregory, R L (ed) (1987) The Oxford Companion to the Mind, Oxford: Oxford
University Press
Hacker, P M S (1990)'Chomsky's Problems', Language and Communication 10,
No. 2:127-148
Halliday, M A K (1978) Language as Social Semiotic, London: Edward Arnold
Harris, R (1980) The Language Makers, Ithaca: Cornell University Press
Ilvenkov, E V (1977a) Dialectical Logic, Moscow: Progress

Ilyenkov (1977b) 'The Concept of the Ideal' in Philosophy in the USSR: Problems
of Dialectical Materialism, Moscow: Progress
Ilyenkov, E V (1977c) 'Soobrazheniya po voprosu ob otnoshenii myshleniya i
yazyka (rechi)' [Considerations on the question of the relation of thought and
speech], Voprosy Filosofi No. 6: 92-96
Ilyenkov, E V (1982) The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's
'Capital', Moscow: Progress
Jones, P E (1982) 'Materialism and the Structure of Language', Unpublished PhD
dissertation, Cambridge University
Jones, P E (1991) Marxism, Materialism, and Language Structure, Part One:
General Principles, Sheffield: Pavic Publications
Keat, R & Urry, J (1975) Social Theory as Science, London: Routledge
Koerner, K (1983) 'The Chomskyan "revolution" and its historiography: A few
critical remarks', Language and Communication 3, No. 2: 147-169
Leontiev, A N (1977) 'Activity and Consciousness' in Philosophy in the USSR:
Problems of Dialectical Materialism, Moscow: Progress
Leontiev, A N (1978) Activity, Consciousness, and Personality, Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc
Leontiev, A N (1981) Problems in the Development of the Mind, Moscow:
Progress
Lightfoot, D (1989) 'The child's trigger experience: Degree-0 learnability' and
peer review, Behavioural and Brain Sciences 21: 321-375
Luria, A R (1973) The Working Brain, New York: Basic Books
Luria, A R (1975) 'Scientific perspectives and philosophical dead ends in
modern linguistics', Cognition 3: 377- 385
Luria, A R (1976) Basic Problems of Neurolinguistics, The Hague: Mouton
Luria, A R (1981) Language and Cognition, New York: Wiley & Sons
Mikhailov, F T (1980) The Riddle of the Self, Moscow: Progress
Moore, T & Carling, C (1982) Understanding Language: Towards a PostChomskyan Linguistics, London: Macmiflan
Newmeyer, FJ (1977) Review of F Rossi-Landi, Linguistics and Economics, The
Hague: Mouton, 1975, Language Vol 53, No 1: 254-256

Newmeyer, F J (1986a) The Politics of Linguistics, Chicago: University of

Chicago Press
Newmeyer, F J (1986b) 'Has there been a "Chomskyan Revolution" in
linguistics?', Language 62, No. 4: 1-18
Newmeyer, F J (1991) 'Functional Explanation in Linguistics and the Origin of
Language', Language and Communication 11, No. 1/2: 3-28
Panfilov, V Z (1979) 'Marksizm-leninizm kak filosofskaya osnova yazykoznaniya'
[Marxism-Leninism as the philosophical basis of linguistics], Voprosy
Yazykaznaniya No. 4: 3-18
Pateman, T (1987) Language in Mind and Language in Society, Oxford:
Clarendon Press
Plekhanov, G (1961) Selected Philosophical Works Vol 1, London: Lawrence &
Wishart
Radford, A (1981) Transformational Syntax: A student's guide to Chomsky's
Extended Standard Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Rose, S (ed) (1982) Against Biological Determinism, London: Allison and Busby
Rose, S, Lewontin, S C, & Kamin, L J (1990) Not in our Genes: Biology, Ideology
and Human Nature, London: Penguin (first published 1984, Pantheon Books)
Russell, B (1991) History of Western Philosophy, London: Routledge [Second
Edition, first published by Allen & Unwin]
Salkie, R (1990) The Chomsky Update: Linguistics and Politics, London: Unwin
Hyman
Sampson, G (1975) The Form of Language, London: Weidenfeld
Thompson, J L (1982) "Human Nature and Social Explanation", in Rose (ed)
Thompson, J S (1969) 'The Reactionary Idealistic Foundations of Noam
Chomsky's Linguistics', Literature and Ideology No. 4: 1-20
Vygotsky, L S (1962) Thought and Language, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press
Vygotsky, L S (1978) Mind in Society, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University
Press
Wells, G (1985) 'Language and Learning: An Interactional Perspective' in G
Wells and J Nicholls (eds) Language and Learning: An Interactional Perspective,
London: The Falmer Press

Wertsch, J V (ed) (1981a) The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology, New

York: ME Sharpe
Wertsch, J V (1981b) 'The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology: An
Introduction', in Wertsch (ed)
Wertsch, J V (1985a) Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind, Cambridge
Mass: Harvard University Press
Wertsch, J V (ed) (1985b) Culture, Communication and Cognition: Vygotskian
Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Peter Jones
5 January 1994

Footnotes

1 I would like to thank the following friends and colleagues for their critical
comments and/or encouragement: Terry Moore, Keith Green, Jill Le Bihan, and
Gill Musson. An early version of part of this paper was given in a workshop at
the "Realism and the Human Sciences" conference at Sussex University,
Summer 1991. Some of the key issues in this paper are discussed at greater
length in Jones (1982, 1991).

2 T H Huxley, in Desmond and Moore (1991).

3 See Chomsky (1987a) for a succinct and readable account of his approach to
language and mind.

4 I am referring here, firstly, to the work of L S Vygotsky (eg 1962, 1978) and
close associates (eg Leontiev, 1977, 1978, 1981; Luria, 1981) as well as to
more recent work broadly within that tradition within the former USSR and in
the West (eg llyenkov, 1977a,b; Mikhailov, 1980; Wertsch, 1981a,b, 1985a,b;
Bakhurst, 1986,1990,1991).

5 This view of language acquisition as biological growth produces some rather

interesting and provocative comparisons. Pateman (1987: 92), for example,
suggests that grammars as conceived in the Chomskyan paradigm are "about
as social and no more social than infectious diseases". Lightfoot (1989),
stressing that these comparisons are no mere analogies, likens the acquisition
of grammatical competence to the production of antibodies in the immune
system.

6 Chomsky seems to imply, however, that those people who have racist, sexist
or pro-slavery views are insane or suffering from some kind of mental
dysfunction (Chomsky,1988, 1979). Such attitudes are not, therefore,
considered as socially produced but as stemming from disordered individual
brains.

7 There is no time here to give a full account of the Marxist critique of

empiricism. The main texts to consult on this are, perhaps, Engels (Dialectics),
Plekanov (The Monist View) and llyenkov (1982), the latter developing at length
an account of the Marxist "method of cognition", known as the method of the
ascent from the abstract to the concrete (on this, cf Bakhurst, 1991).