What Makes Language Possible? Ethological Foundationalism In Reid and Wittgenstein

Thomas Reid in the eighteenth century and Ludwig Wittgenstein in the twentieth made strong cases for the existence of communication that must be in place if is to be the acquisition of any language; language in the full sense of a system of words, displaying distinctions into word classes and ordered by a grammar that is sensitive to those word classes. Although their pre-languages have something of the character of language proper, Reid and Wittgenstein offer a very different conception of the necessary conditions for the existence of language from that proposed by Chomsky, much criticized for its implausible cognitivism. (For a recent and devastating criticism see Malcolm.(1)) In this paper we compare and contrast Reidian and Wittgensteinian conceptions of what must be for language to be possible, and draw some morals for the vexed, but in our view, empty question of the demarcation of language from all other intentional and normative systems in use amongst people and animals. I Reid on Natural Language. There is a long philosophical tradition, beginning with the Stoics, which sets humanity apart from the balance of the animal economy on the basis of linguistic prowess.(2) It is centrally featured in the works of Descartes. In part 5 of his Discourse on the Method, for example, he offers two tests that would be failed by any machine, no matter how complex, designed to match or simulate genuinely human life. First, would be unable to use language creatively, even if could utter words connected with its actions. Second, would not be able to adapt itself to the welter of changing conditions which rational beings easily accommodate. From this he concludes, Now in just these two ways we can also know the difference between man and beast.... This shows not merely that the beasts have less reason than men, but that they have no reason at all.(3) On this account language is innate and restricted to human beings, an ability that is unnatural and thus outside the order of nature. John Locke's philosophy of mind explicitly eschews such nativistic explanations--or nonexplanations--by emphasizing the experiential sources and social purposes of language. On Locke's account language becomes the means by which the in consciousness are given public expression. Communication being necessary to the comfort and advantage of society, he says, it was necessary that man should find out some external sensible signs, whereof those invisible ideas, which his thoughts are made up of, might be made known to others. Thus, must be by local conventions that words come to serve as the signs of thoughts; or else, says Locke, there would be but one language amongst all men.(4) Superficial evidence to the contrary, however, neither Descartes nor Locke closely examined the basis upon which linguistic signs come to function within patterns of shared meaning. The Cartesian account offers an essentially nativistic theory of linguistic and rational powers, citing the fact, in Chomskian fashion, as if were an explanation. No argument is developed to establish the nonexperiential sources of language. The Lockean account, which does locate sources of meaning in the domain of experience, remains reliant on invisible ideas while passing over the difficulty of explaining how others might come to share them. Thomas Reid, in An Inquiry into the Human Mind (1764), attempted to reconcile both of these positions, supplying at once something of a formal proof of a version of the nativistic thesis and, at the same time, an essentially ethological theory of meaning. His thesis is expressed with commendable efficiency: I think is demonstrable that, if mankind had not a natural language, they could never have invented an artificial one by their reason and ingenuity. For all artificial language supposes some compact or agreement to affix a certain meaning to certain signs, therefore must be compacts or agreements before the use of artificial signs; but can be no compact or agreement without signs, nor without language; and therefore must be a natural language before any artificial language can be invented: Which was to be demonstrated. …