The Not Not Necessary Language Processor

INTRODUCTION

In this paper I will defend Stephen Laurence’s Language Processor Thesis from the Not Necessary Objection. To accomplish this I will first explicate Laurence’s divergence from strong conventionalist views of language that consequently prompted his Chomskian view and presentation of the Language Processor Thesis. Then I will present the Not Necessary Objection as given by its proponents with my rebuttal following suit.

BACKGROUND

Though one was never articulated in detail, a combination of the works by strong conventionalist theorists such as Lewis amidst others and essays of Grice was widely accepted as correct during Laurence’s 1996, writing of “A Chomskian Alternative to Convention-Based Semantics.” It was Lewis who laid out a working six part conjunction theory of convention that would generalize both the existence of conventions in linguistic communities and that it was by this existence of conventions that certain communities used a language. These components were essential to answering the underlying question of what do utterances mean what they do. Lewis’s convention theory is (roughly as accuracy of this theory is not essential to my thesis) that an arbitrary action or belief A is a convention in a community if most of its population: (1) conform to A, (2) believe others conform to A, (3) by believing (2) are warranted in conforming to A, (4) want the majority to conform to A, and (5) are aware that each and every condition are mutual knowledge and are aware that others are aware that they are mutual knowledge and so forth. (As listed the 6th condition is hidden in the antecedent- namely that the action or belief A be arbitrary- that equal alternatives were/are available). Lewis claims that it is through a convention of truthfulness and trust that populations use the language they do. To illustrate I use a language when I utter the sentence ‘Snow is white’ because I believe snow is white and that it is a convention within my population to utter that sentence if I am trying to express the proposition that snow is white and so on as it is applied to all other conditions accordingly. It is this work Laurence chooses to focus on that he labeled L-conventionality to distinguish from his P-conventionality.

Laurence also pursues the question of what do utterances mean what they do. His answer begins by endorsing an intuitive sense in which language is conventional- that it relies on regularities in action or belief that formed arbitrarily and these conventions persist by a common goal to communicate. It is this platitudinal (the “P” in P-conventionality) sense that explains the apparent contingency of a sentence’s linguistic properties; that we could have written the symbol ‘cat’ instead as ‘dog,’ or that sound types relating to the letter B could have been pronounced as sound types of R, or that we spoke a different language entirely. However no matter how haphazard the origin of our linguistic properties Laurence is unwilling to infer the much stronger L-conventionality from P-conventionality. Laurence is wary to accept (though does not outright deny) L-conventionality as he thinks it entails too much mental processes in its attempt to explain linguistic properties of utterances. It is for this worry that Laurence offers his view of language that incorporates the P-conventionality and introduces the Language Processor Thesis.

Opposed to L-conventionality it is far simpler and more elegant a theory that humans are programmed to understand language (at least as much as Laurence believes). This is further evidence for him to promote the Language Processor Thesis that runs as follows: “Every normal adult human has a language processor: a special purpose cognitive mechanism (i) that is devoted to the task of encoding and decoding sentences in the individual’s native language (or idiolect), and (ii) whose operations are insulated from other aspects of psychology (including general reasoning abilities)” (Kierland, PHIL308, 1–22–15). The language processor acts like a function receiving either utterances (tokens of language) or mental representations of propositions as inputs and producing the other as output. The process has further been attributed with features as automatic, quick, mandatory, and unconscious. It is in virtue of this relation between mental representations and utterances of sentences that such utterances have their given linguistic properties. Thereby, “sentence S means that P for individual X if and only if X’s language processor is such that: (1) when decoding inputs of S it produces mental representations that P as outputs, and (2) when encoding inputs of mental representations that P it produces utterances of S as outputs” (Kierland, PHIL308, 1–22–15). Upon hearing “Snow is white” my processor automatically decodes this utterance to give me the mental representation of snow’s whiteness by which I understand that sentence to mean. The relation between utterances and mental representations (though vague in explicit definitions even as presented by Laurence) are the underlying cause of sentence meaning. Analogous claims may be presented to show sentence meaning in a population and even how a population uses a language. This is the essence of Laurence’s view in coordination with his Language Processor Thesis.

It can be imagined that there (even if in only a possible world) is a community that was born without Language Processors or maybe that they were born with ones but they are not intact and functioning. Further we can imagine this population is still able to communicate with utterances we would deem as pertaining to a language and do so by brute force general intelligence. If communication of language in the absence of a language processor is possible then it is not necessary, so the Not Necessary Objection goes.

MAIN THESIS

I think it will be most explanatorily beneficial to begin my case with an example. Let’s imagine young children learning the game soccer. At the field they are shown boundary lines and the two opposing goals at each end. They are told the objective of the game and what stipulations or rules are to be followed. “You must get the ball into the opponent’s goal without the use of your hands, mostly with the use of your feet or kicking the ball,” says the coach. Hearing this one child reasons that he has hands, and that it would be far easier for him to throw the ball into the goal. Play begins and the kid does just such- throws the ball into the goal. This will not count as a goal, at least not in the game of soccer. But it is not because the ball is not in the goal. Contrary it is in the goal and thereby has produced the same reality that would occur in the case of an allowed goal in soccer. It is because the kid has violated a stipulation of the game of soccer that this instance is not considered a goal, however, qualitatively it is similar to a goal that would count.

This example highlights the key issue with the Not Necessary Objection. The claim of brute force general intelligence appeals to psychological processes of a cognizer i.e., general reasoning abilities. A restatement of condition two of Laurence’s Language Processor Thesis- (ii) whose operations are insulated from other aspects of psychology (including general reasoning abilities)- shows at just which point the Not Necessary Objection failed to adhere. The objection hypothesized a community in which communicative intentions were being fulfilled. This fulfillment is qualitatively similar to the end result of Laurence’s view of sentence-meaning as applied to populations though nevertheless failed to attack the Language Processor Thesis for the same reason that the thrown goal exemplified above was not a goal in the game of soccer. It was by granting the community of the objection solely brute force general intelligence as their means to fulfill communicative intention that this objection does not obtain to the Language Processor Thesis regardless of similarities in fulfillments.

The aim of this objection was to show the language processors expendability in regards to communicative intention. Yet Laurence’s view never endorsed that fulfillment of communicative intention as the way by which sentences obtain meaning. Rather it is in virtue of the relation between mental representations and utterances of sentences that such utterances have their given linguistic properties ie., semantic property and thereby meaning. Perhaps the objection was sparked by observance of aspects of psychology other than the language processor that lead to the language processor’s activation, and that such aspects were thought to diminish condition two’s prevalence, or that eventually such aspects were considered strong enough to circumvent the language processor entirely. I will illustrate this point with an example concerning a language foreign to the cognizer.

Proponents of the Not Necessary Objection may have been intrigued by real life examples of sentence meaning acquired by more psychological aspects than just the language processor. Consider an English speaking native attempting to communicate in Spanish. When given utterances of Spanish sentences the individual must use reasoning and memory to pair words of Spanish with words of English which will undergo the function of the language processor before meaning of the Spanish utterance is obtained. The same can be said in reverse in which case the individual pairs his mental representation to an English sentence by way of his language processor and then uses general reasoning and memory to pair components of this English sentence to a now Spanish utterance. Laurence did grant that the language processor may produce multiple outputs, and that other aspects of psychology than the language processor may then be used to determine the proper output. I am arguing that multiple inputs may be presented as well and that it’s one’s general reasoning abilities that allows the proper input to be selected before undergoing the decoding of the language processor. It is then the case that understanding of a foreign language does not bypass use of the language processor with aspects supposedly isolated from the language processor, but that this form of reasoning is a stepping stone to one’s language processor and thereby understanding of the utterance. This is an example of the logically valid argument form of hypothetical syllogisms. In the process of decoding a foreign language the foreign utterance is paired by reason or memory to the native language which then acquires meaning through mental representation produced by the language processor. The same case can be made of encoding in a foreign language but in the reverse. The important feature is that at some stage particular inputs undergo the function of the language processor thereby producing particular outputs.

So long as the function of the language processor is maintained utterances of a language will have meaning. I have shown both how the Not Necessary Objection may have originated from misunderstanding and how the objection itself fails to attack the Language Processor Thesis on proper grounds.

PREEMPTIVE DEFENSE Perhaps an objection to my case may be made that it is unfair to confine conditions with stipulations- that the Language Processor Thesis has no more warrant for stipulating that its function is isolated from other aspects of psychology than the proponents of the Not Necessary Objection have warrant for stipulating that a population communicates by brute force general intelligence. I would say that the Language Processor Thesis uses its conditions to promote its reason by which sentences or utterances in a language are given meaning. Whereas the Not Necessary Objection is successful through its stipulation in end result production of similar communicative intention, though fails to explain in virtue of what do utterances mean what they do. It is this explanatory power to answer the underlying question of an utterance’s semantic value that warrants the stipulations of the Language Processor Thesis.

Maybe one would attack my objection on the distinction between the function of the language processor and other aspects of psychology (general reasoning) in so claiming that there is no distinction and that both are one in the same. For this objection would surely undermine my case that the Not Necessary Objection failed to attack the Language Processor Thesis on proper grounds. But further, it would attack the Language Processor Thesis as presented by Laurence. It would consider arguments consisting of the psychological components of the human brain and raise metaphysical inquiries of brain matter vs ideas- questions of the distinction between X as existing and the concept of X. The best I can offer is that Laurence claims to have presented a Chomskian thesis (the Language Processor Thesis) for which empirical evidence supports, and that idea is widely accepted among leading scholars.