This chapter considers a set of questions at the interface of the study of intuitive theories, causal knowledge, and problems of inductive inference. By an intuitive theory, we mean a cognitive structure that in some important ways is analogous to a scientific theory. It is becoming broadly recognized that intuitive theories play essential roles in organizing

Abstract. Formal syntax has hitherto worked mostly with theoretical frameworks that take grammars to be generative, in Emil Post’s sense: they provide recursive enumerations of sets. This work has its origins in Post’s formalization of proof theory. There is an alternative, with roots in the semantic side of logic: model-theoretic syntax (MTS). MTS takes grammars to be sets of statements of which (algebraically idealized) well-formed expressions are models. We clarify the difference between the two kinds of framework and review their separate histories, and then argue that the generative perspective has misled linguists concerning the properties of natural languages. We select two elementary facts about natural language phenomena for discussion: the gradient character of the property of being ungrammatical and the open nature of natural language lexicons. We claim that the MTS perspective on syntactic structure does much better on representing the facts in these two domains. We also examine the arguments linguists give for the infinitude of the class of all expressions in a natural language. These arguments turn out on examination to be either unsound or lacking in empirical content. We claim that infinitude is an unsupportable claim that is also unimportant. What is actually needed is a way of representing the structure of expressions in a natural language without assigning any importance to the notion of a unique set with definite cardinality that contains all and only the expressions in the language. MTS provides that.

Bradford/MIT, p. 1] has characterized the vexed problem of mental representation as “the topic in the philosophy of mind for some time now. ” This remark is something of an understatement. The same topic was central to the famous controversy between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld in the 17th century and remained central to the entire philosophical tradition of “ideas ” in the writings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid and Kant. However, the scholarly, exegetical literature has almost no overlap with that of contemporary cognitive science. I show that the recurrence of certain deep perplexities about the mind is a systematic and pervasive pattern arising not only throughout history, but also in a number of independent domains today such as debates over visual imagery, symbolic systems and others. Such historical and contemporary convergences suggest that the fundamental issues cannot arise essentially from the theoretical guise they take in any particular case. … if men had been born blind philosophy would be more perfect, because it would lack many false assumptions that have been taken from the sense of sight. (Galileo Galilei, 1610) Mental representation: “the topic for some time now” Robert Cummins (1996, p. 1) has recently characterized the vexed problem of

Devitt (2006) makes a sustained critique of Chomskyan linguistics, articulating persistent complaints about the “psychological reality ” of generative grammars. I suggest these complaints are merely terminological and that Devitt fails to appreciate the status of Chomsky’s computational formalisms found elsewhere in cognitive science. Devitt ascribes an intentional conception of representations that Chomsky repudiates and that is independently implausible. I argue that Devitt’s proposed alternative “linguistic reality ” constituted by physical symbol tokens neglects the problems of tokens as opposed to types and he misses the force of Chomsky’s case against Behaviourism and nominalism. I suggest that Devitt’s case against intuitions as data misunderstands their standard role throughout perceptual psychology. I argue that Devitt’s position exemplifies pervasive errors concerning mental representation seen throughout cognitive science.

Methodological questions concerning Chomsky’s generative approach to linguistics have been debated without consensus. The status of linguistics as psychology, the psychological reality of grammars, the character of tacit knowledge and the role of intuitions as data remain heatedly disputed today. I argue that the recalcitrance of these disputes is symptomatic of deep misunderstandings. I focus attention on Michael Devitt’s recent extended critique of Chomskyan linguistics and I suggest that his complaints are based on a failure to appreciate the special status of Chomsky’s computational formalisms found elsewhere in cognitive science. Devitt ascribes an intentional conception of representations that Chomsky repudiates and that is independently implausible. I argue that Devitt’s proposed “linguistic reality” as the proper subject matter of linguistics neglects the problems of tokens as opposed to types and he misses the force of Chomsky’s arguments against Behaviourism and nominalism. I suggest that Devitt’s case against intuitions as data misunderstands their standard role throughout perceptual psychology. Finally, of more general interest, I argue that Devitt’s position exemplifies compelling errors concerning mental representation seen throughout cognitive science and philosophy of mind.

It is remarkable if any relationship at all persists between computational linguists (CL) and that part of general linguistics comprising the mainstream of MIT transformational-generative (TG) theoretical syntax. If the lines are still open, it represents something of a tribute to CL practitioners’ tolerance — a triumph of hope and goodwill over the experience of abuse — because the TG community has shown considerable hostility toward CL and everything it stands for over the past fifty years. I offer some brief historical notes, and hint at prospects for a better basis for collaboration in the future. 1

There are around 5.000 spoken languages of the world today, and they are all different. Thus, natural languages are very diverse. However, most linguists share the view that the languages of the world, and the way they are used in different communities, have a lot in common. The properties that all languages have in common are called language universals. Linguists have claimed of many different (kinds of) things that they are language universals. For a simple example of a syntactic universal, it has been claimed that all languages spoken by humans have, and make a distinction between, nouns, verbs, and modifiers. Simple phonological universals have it that all languages have oral vowels, and that no langauge has the three vowel system /i/-/e/-/u/. Some simple semantic universals are that all languages have color words for what we call ‘black ’ and ‘white’, and that we don’t have color words for interrupted spaces in the color vector space. Another one says that all languages have simple lexical items to express, for instance, negation, conjunction, and disjunction, mood, universal quantification, simple past, deontic necessity, and the comparative

The mean lean grammar machine meets the human mind: Empirical investigations of the mental status of linguistic rules