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Internalist Explorations Of Meaning

Noam Chomsky (MIT)
"On Referring" Revisited

In this talk, delivered at Harvard University on October 30th 2007, the most eminent linguist of modern times argues for a strictly internalist treatment of questions of natural-language meaning. Chomsky discusses externalist approaches of Putnam, Kripke and others who hold that crucial aspects of meaning rely on the nature of an independently given external world. This cherished tenet of philosophy of language, Chomsky argues, has things backwards: dropping unwarranted metaphysical assumptions, we find that the internal language system is purely syntactic and hence "in the head", as a part of the "cognoscitive powers" that construct the organism's Umwelt.

The talk was part of the interdisciplinary reading group Internalist Explorations Of Meaning. For more information, visit the group's website.

Organizer:
Dennis Ott (dott@fas.harvard.edu)
Department of Linguistics, Harvard University