by Noam Chomsky
it is quite remarkable that there are no men so dull-witted or stupid – and this includes even madmen – that they are incapable of arranging various words together and forming an utterance from them in order to make their thoughts understood; whereas there is no other animal, however perfect and well endowed it may be, that can do the same.
(CSM I, 39–40)
Nor can this distinction between man and animal be based on peripheral physiological differences. Thus Descartes goes on to point out that
this does not happen because they lack the necessary organs, for we see that magpies and parrots can utter words as we do, and yet they cannot speak as we do: that is, they cannot show that they are thinking what they are saying. On the other hand, men born deaf and dumb, and thus deprived of speech-organs as much as the beasts, or even more so, normally invent their own signs to make themselves understood by those who, being regularly in their company, have the time to learn their language.
In short, then, man has a species-specific capacity, a unique type of intellectual organization which cannot be attributed to peripheral organs or related to general intelligence7 and which manifests itself in what we may refer to as the “creative aspect” of ordinary language use – its property being both unbounded in scope and stimulus-free. Thus Descartes maintains that language is available for the free expression of thought or for appropriate response in any new context and is undetermined by any fixed association of utterances to external stimuli or physiological states (identifiable in any noncircular fashion).8
Arguing from the presumed impossibility of a mechanistic explanation for the creative aspect of normal use of language, Descartes concludes that in addition to body it is necessary to attribute mind – a substance whose essence is thought – to other humans. From the arguments that he offers for the association of mind to bodies that “bear a resemblance” to his, it seems clear that the postulated substance plays the role of a “creative principle” alongside the “mechanical principle” that accounts for bodily function. Human reason, in fact, “is a universal instrument which can serve for all contingencies,” whereas the organs of an animal or machine “have need of some special adaptation for any particular action.”9
The crucial role of language in Descartes’s argument is brought out still more clearly in his subsequent correspondence. In his letter to the Marquis of Newcastle (1646), he asserts that “none of our external actions can show anyone who examines them that our body is not just a self-moving machine, but contains a soul with thoughts – with the exception of spoken words or other signs having reference to particular topics without expressing any passion.”10 The final condition is added to exclude “cries of joy or sadness and the like” as well as “whatever can be taught by training to animals.” (CSMK, 303)11 He goes on, then, to repeat the arguments in the Discourse on the Method, emphasizing once again that there is no man so imperfect as not to use language for the expression of his thoughts and no “animal so perfect as to use a sign to make other animals understand something which bore no relation to its passions”; and, once again, pointing to the very perfection of animal instinct as an indication of lack of thought and as a proof that animals are mere automata. In a letter of 1649 to Henry More, he expresses himself in the following terms:
But in my opinion the main reason for holding that animals lack thought is the following. Within a single species some of them are more perfect than others, as humans are too. This can be seen in horses and dogs, some of which learn what they are taught much better than others; and all animals easily communicate to us, by voice or bodily movement, their natural impulses of anger, fear, hunger and so on. Yet in spite of all these facts, it has never been observed that any brute animal has attained the perfection of using real speech, that is to say, of indicating by word or sign something relating to thought alone and not to natural impulse. Such speech is the only certain sign of thought hidden in a body. All human beings use it, however stupid and insane they may be, even though they may have no tongue and organs of voice; but no animals do. Consequently this can be taken as a real specific difference between humans and animals.
(CSMK, 366)12,13
In summary, it is the diversity of human behavior, its appropriateness to new situations, and man’s capacity to innovate – the creative aspect of language use providing the principal indication of this – that leads Descartes to attribute possession of mind to other humans, since he regards this capacity as beyond the limitations of any imaginable mechanism. Thus a fully adequate psychology requires the postulation of a “creative principle” alongside of the “mechanical principle” that suffices to account for all other aspects of the inanimate and animate world and for a significant range of human actions and “passions” as well.
Descartes’s observations on language in relation to the problem of mechanistic explanation were elaborated in an interesting study by Cordemoy.14 His problem in this study is to determine whether it is necessary to assume the existence of other minds.15 A great deal of the complexity of human behavior is irrelevant to demonstrating that other persons are not mere automata, since it can be explained on hypothetical physiological terms, in terms of reflex and tropism. Limitations of such explanations are suggested by the fact that “they confidently approach something that will destroy them, and abandon what could save them” (p. 7). This suggests that their actions are governed by a will, like his own. But the best evidence is provided by speech, by
the connection I find among the words I constantly hear them utter . . .
For although I readily conceive that a mere machine could utter some words, I know at the same time that if there was a particular order among the springs that distribute the wind or open the pipes from which the sounds came then they could never change it; so that as soon as the first sound is heard, those which usually follow it will also necessarily be heard, provided that the machine does not lack wind – whereas the words I hear uttered by bodies constructed like mine almost never follow the same sequence.
I observe moreover that these words are the same as those I would use to explain my thoughts to other subjects capable of conceiving them. Finally, the more I attend to the effect produced by my words when I utter them before these bodies, the more it seems they are understood, and the words they utter correspond so perfectly to the sense of my words that there is no reason to doubt that a soul produces in them what my soul produces in me.
(pp. 8–10)
In short, Cordemoy is arguing that there can be no mechanistic explanation for the novelty, coherence, and relevance of normal speech. He emphasizes, however, that care must be exercised in using ability to speak as evidence for the inadequacy of mechanistic explanation. The fact that articulate sounds are produced or that utterances can be imitated in itself proves nothing, as this can be explained in mechanical terms. Nor is it of any relevance that “natural signs” may be produced that express internal states or that specific signs may be produced that are contingent on the presence of external stimuli. It is only the ability to innovate, and to do so in a way which is appropriate to novel situations and which yields coherent discourse, that provides crucial evidence. “To speak is not to repeat the same words that one has heard, but. . . to utter different words in response to those” (p. 19). To show that other persons are not automata, one must provide evidence that their speech manifests this creative aspect, that it is appropriate to whatever may be said by the “experimenter”; “. . . if I find, by all the observations I can make, that they use language [La Parole] as I do, then I will have an infallible reason to believe that they have a soul as I do” (p. 21). Possible types of experiment are then outlined. For example, one can construct new “conventional signs” [signes d’institution]:
I see that I can agree with others that what ordinarily signifies one thing will signify another, and that this has the result that only those with whom I make this agreement seem to understand what I am thinking.
(pp. 22–23)
Similarly, evidence is provided
when I see that these bodies produce signs that bear no relation to their present state or to their preservation; when I see that these signs match those which I would produce to express my thoughts; when I see that they give me ideas which I did not have previously and which refer to things that I already had in mind; and finally when I see a close correlation between their signs and mine;
(pp. 28–29)
or by behavior that indicates “that they intended to deceive me” (pp. 30–31). Under such circumstances, when many experiments of this sort have succeeded, “it will not be reasonable for me to believe that they are not like me” (p. 29).
Throughout, what is stressed is the innovative aspect of intelligent performance. Thus,
. . . the new thoughts that come through our conversations with other men are a sure sign to all of us that they have a mind like ours;
(p. 185)
. . . our whole reason for believing that there are minds united with the bodies of men who speak to us is that they often give us new thoughts that we did not have, or they oblige us to change the thoughts that we did have. . .
(p. 187)
Cordemoy consistently maintains that the “experiments” that reveal the limitations of mechanical explanation are those which involve the use of language – in particular, what we have called its creative aspect. In this, as in his discussion of the acoustic and articulatory basis for language use and the methods of conditioning, association, and reinforcement that may facilitate acquisition of true language by humans and nonlinguistic functional communication systems by animals, Cordemoy is working completely within the framework of Cartesian assumptions.
For our purposes what is important in this is the emphasis on the creative aspect of language use and on the fundamental distinction between human language and the purely functional and stimulus-bound animal communication systems, rather than the Cartesian attempts to account for human abilities.
It is noteworthy that subsequent discussion rarely attempts to meet the Cartesian arguments regarding the limitations of mechanical explanation. Descartes argued that a “thinking substance” must be postulated to account for the facts that he cites. This proposal is generally countered by the claim that a more complex organization of the body is sufficient to account for human abilities, but no serious attempt is made to show how this might be possible (as Descartes, Cordemoy, and others tried to show how animal behavior and human bodily functions of many kinds can be explained on the basis of assumptions about physical organization). La Mettrie, for example, holds that man is simply the most complex of machines. “He is to the ape and the cleverest of animals what the Huyghen’s planetary clock is to one of Julien Leroy’s watches” (p. 34; MaM, p. 140).16 There is, in his opinion, no difficulty in accounting for thought on mechanical principles. “I believe thought to be so little incompatible with organised matter, that it seems to be one of its properties, like electricity, motive power, impenetrability, extension, etc.” (p. 35; MaM, pp. 143–144). There should, furthermore, be no obstacle in principle to teaching an ape to speak. It is only “a defect in the speech organs” that stands in the way, and this can be overcome by proper training (p. 11; MaM, p. 100). “I hardly doubt at all that if this animal were perfectly trained, we would succeed in teaching him he might at last be taught to utter sounds and consequently to learn a language. Then he would no longer be a wild man, nor an imperfect man, but a perfect man, a little man of the town” (p. 12; MaM, p. 103). Similarly, a talking machine is not beyond imagination. “If it took Vaucanson more artistry to make his flautist than his duck, he would have needed even more to make a speaking machine, which can no longer be considered impossible . . .” (p. 34; MaM, pp. 140–141).
Several years before the publication of L’Homme Machine, in a slight and presumably only semi-serious work, Bougeant produced one of the very few attempts to refute explicitly the Cartesian argument that human and animal language differ in a fundamental way,17 but his supposed counterargument merely reaffirms the Cartesian position regarding human and animal language. He bases his claim that “animals speak and understand each other just as well as we do, and sometimes better” (p. 4) on the grounds that they can be trained to respond to signals, that they exhibit their “various feelings” by external signs, that they can work in cooperation (for example, beavers, to whom he ascribes a language that has much in common with those “language games” that Wittgenstein regards as “primitive forms” of human language). However, he recognizes that “the language of animals is entirely limited to expressing feelings of their passions, which may all be reduced to a small number” (p. 152). “It is necessary that they always repeat the same expression, and that this repetition last as long as the object occupies their attention” (p. 123). They have no “abstract or metaphysical ideas”:
They have only direct cognitions that are completely limited to the material objects that strike their senses. Man is infinitely superior in his language, as in his ideas, being incapable of expressing himself without composing his speech of proper names and relative terms, which determine its sense and application.
(p. 154)
Animals, in effect, have only names for various “passions that they feel” (p. 155). They cannot produce “a phrase which is personalized and composite [personifiée et composée] as we do” (p. 156):
Why has nature given animals the faculty of speech? Solely so they can express to each other their desires and feelings, and thereby satisfy their needs and whatever may be necessary for their preservation. I know that language in general has quite a different objective, which is to express ideas, cognitions, reflections, reasonings. But whatever theory one holds regarding the knowledge of animals . . . it is certain that nature has endowed them with knowledge only of what is useful to them or necessary for the survival of the species and of individuals – consequently, with no abstract ideas, no metaphysical reasoning, no enquiry or curiosity about the objects surrounding them, no knowledge except how to conduct themselves, keep well, avoid whatever may harm them, and acquire goods. Nor has one ever seen them engaged in public discussion, or argument about causes and effects. They know only the life of an animal.
(pp. 99–100)
In short, animal “language” remains completely within the bounds of mechanical explanation as this was conceived by Descartes and Cordemoy.
Evidently, neither La Mettrie nor Bougeant comes to grips with the problem raised by Descartes – the problem posed by the creative aspect of language use, by the fact that human language, being free from control by identifiable external stimuli or internal physiological states, can serve as a general instrument of thought and self-expression rather than merely as a communicative device of report, request, or command.18 Modern attempts to deal with the problem of intelligent behavior are hardly more satisfactory. Ryle, for example, in his critique of “Descartes’s myth”19 simply avoids the issue entirely. He claims that the Cartesians should have been “asking by what criteria intelligent behavior is actually distinguished from non-intelligent behavior” (p. 21) rather than seeking an explanation for the former. Properly understood, these are not mutually exclusive alternatives. The criteria that Ryle discusses differ little, in principle, from Cordemoy’s proposed “experiments”; but whereas Ryle is content simply to cite the fact that “intelligent behavior” has certain properties,20 the Cartesians were concerned with the problem of accounting for such behavior in the face of their inability to provide an explanation in mechanical terms. It can hardly be claimed that we have advanced significantly beyond the seventeenth century in determining the characteristics of intelligent behavior, the means by which it is acquired, the principles that govern it, or the nature of the structures that underlie it. One may choose to ignore these problems, but no coherent argument has been offered that suggests that they are either unreal or beyond investigation.
Modern linguistics has also failed to deal with the Cartesian observation
s regarding human language in any serious way. Bloomfield, for example, observes that in a natural language “the possibilities of combination are practically infinite,” so that there is no hope of accounting for language use on the basis of repetition or listing, but he has nothing further to say about the problem beyond the remark that the speaker utters new forms “on the analogy of similar forms which he has heard.”21 Similarly, Hockett attributes innovation completely to “analogy.”22 Similar remarks can be found in Paul, Saussure, Jespersen, and many others. To attribute the creative aspect of language use to “analogy” or “grammatical patterns” is to use these terms in a completely metaphorical way, with no clear sense and with no relation to the technical usage of linguistic theory. It is no less empty than Ryle’s description of intelligent behavior as an exercise of “powers” and “dispositions” of some mysterious sort, or the attempt to account for the normal, creative use of language in terms of “generalization” or “habit” or “conditioning.” A description in these terms is incorrect if the terms have anything like their technical meanings, and highly misleading otherwise, in so far as it suggests that the capacities in question can somehow be accounted for as just a “more complicated case” of something reasonably well understood.
We have seen that the Cartesian view, as expressed by Descartes and Cordemoy as well as by such professed anti-Cartesians as Bougeant, is that in its normal use, human language is free from stimulus control and does not serve a merely communicative function, but is rather an instrument for the free expression of thought and for appropriate response to new situations.23 These observations concerning what we have been calling the creative aspect of language use are elaborated in several ways in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as we shall see directly. At the same time, Descartes’s second test for determining whether automata are “real men” is also reinterpreted, within the context of the “great chain of being.” Descartes makes a sharp distinction between man and animal, arguing that animal behavior is a matter of instinct and that the perfection and specificity of animal instinct make it subject to mechanical explanation. A characteristic subsequent view is that there is a gradation of intelligence and that perfection of instinct varies inversely with intellectual ability. To La Mettrie, for example, it seems to be a universal law of nature “that the more one gains in intelligence [du côté de l’esprit], the more one loses in instinct” (p. 99). (Cf. notes 7, 29.)
