Ignorance of Language

by Michael Devitt

Overview

The Chomskian revolution in linguistics gave rise to a new orthodoxy about mind and language. Michael Devitt throws down a provocative challenge to that orthodoxy. What is linguistics about? What role should linguistic intuitions play in constructing grammars? What is innate about language? Is there a "language faculty?" These questions are crucial to our developing understanding of ourselves; Michael Devitt offers refreshingly original answers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199250967
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/06/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Michael Devitt is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He taught at the University of Sydney from 1971 until 1987 and the University of Maryland from 1988 to 1999. His main research interests are in the philosophy of language and mind, and in issues of realism. He is the author of Designation (Columbia, 1981), Realism and Truth (2nd ed with Afterword, Princeton, 1997), Coming to Our Senses: A Naturalistic Program for Semantic Localism (Cambridge, 1996), and Language and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language (with Kim Sterelny, 2nd edn, MIT, 1999).

Table of Contents

I. Linguistics is not Psychology1. Introduction2. A grammar as a theory of linguistic realityII. Positions on Psychological Reality3. Some possible positions on psychological reality4. Some actual postions on psychological realityIII. 'Philosophical' Arguments for the Representational Thesis5. The Rejection of Behaviourism6. Folk Psychology7. IntuitionsIV. The Relation of Language to Thought8. Thought before language9. A case for the psychological reality of language10. Thought and the language facultyV. Language Use and Acquisition11. Language use12. Language acquisition

Editorial Reviews

"A wealth of careful distinctions and detailed arguments...an example of how serious philosophy of a very technical area may be conducted with thoroughness, lucidity, and elegance."—John Collins, Mind Journal

From the Publisher