Patricia Smith Churchland

Fodor on language learning

At least since Wittgenstein aired the matter in the Philosophical Investigations, the Augustinian theory of language learning has generally been regarded as a quaint old relic, as naive and uncontroversially wrong. It has been virtually a commonplace in contemporary discussions of language that however a language is learned by the aspiring child, it is evidently not through the auspices of an unlearned language over which he innately has command and by means of which he conducts his cognitive ruminations. Surprising it is then, that this very theory has been rescued from the curio shop by Fodor in his latest book, The Language o f Thought (1975). Surprising also is the strength of the defense Fodor discovers can be marshalled on behalf o f the Augustinian view. He argues that its status as a mere curio is undeserved, and that not the least of its virtues is that it is the only decent theory of tanguage learning in contention. The book will be widely read, indeed it should be widely read, by philosophers and psychologists alike, and it contains the potential to influence greatly the direction and development of psycholinguistic research. I hope that its potential to so influence will not be realized however, for, as I shall argue anon, it is thoroughly misconceived. The undoing of the theory, at least in the form Fodor presents it, is not so much that innate wherewithal is posited; it is rather the consummate richness and fixity attributed to the innate wherewithal. According to Fodor, the innate structure needed for learning a language is an innate language, and this endowed accoutrement is no pale prototype of the language vocalis that the child will acquire, nor indeed is it a mere germ which grows and develops to reflect the sort of Weltanschauung embodied in the particular language of the childs milieu. Mentalese, Fodor argues, is as rich and powerful, as complex and complete, as any language, be it English or Urdu, the child comes to learn. Fodor is forthright in putting the point:

How Quine Perceives Perceptual Similarity

Now for those determined to cleave to behaviourist canons, the problem is to use perceptual similarity in explaining the subjects discriminating responses in a way which does not imply the existence of mental states and entities. What this really means is that the behaviourist must reconstruct the notion of perceptual similarity, purifying it of its mentalistic dimension. So long as physicalism is a reasonable position, and while we are awaiting and abetting the neurophysiological millennium, the behaviourists project is of significant moment. Now in Word and Object Quine does not seriously attempt to provide behavioural criteria for a subjects perceiving similarities, and he provisionally permits himself the mentalistic idiom he avows finally to eschew. However, in The Roots of Reference Quine undertakes to smooth out that wrinkle in his behaviourist theory of language acquisition by trying to fashion (albeit incompletely) a concept of perceptual similarity which satisfies behaviourist strictures, and which is to assume the explanatory duty of perceptual similarity ordinaire. Should Quine succeed in the attempt,