Commentary

Steven Pinker - "Language Instinct" (1996)

=  a critique in three parts  =
(circa 1996)

In the autumn of 1996, online conversations prompted me to reading Steven Pinker's "Language Instinct".  At the time, I wrote an off the cuff critique .. using Integrity Paradigm notions as criteria.  To be blunt, I wasn't terribly impressed .. and wrote accordingly.   Between then and now I've had the privelege to hear him in person, read several of his interviews, catch snippets of his more recent writings, and generally, watch his star rise.

I suppose I tread on thin ice doing so, but I've wanted to post the critique ever since I wrote it, even in the face of his current acclaim.   With no apologies, and not minding whether I'm 'politico-academically correct' or not, I present an impression of Pinker's ideas, as seen through ceptual eyes.

=   =   =   =   =   =

Part, the First

Dear N.,

Checked "Language Instinct" out of my library this morning. Thanks for asking me to read it. I haven't laughed so much in ages!    Forgive me in advance if I accidentally tread on any of your opinions .. you can just write me off as an eccentric if you need to. That said....

Critiquing Pinker will be easy.  Though in deference to his propriety, he does thank his parents in the preamble.  That's a point in his favor.  

[ Maroon text indicates quotes directly from the book.]
[internet note:   Capitalized sections of quotes are my emphasis for reference sake.]

Opening chapter, second sentence (I do admire how the man steps right up to the plate in the batter's box):

"For you and I belong to a species with a remarkable ability: WE CAN SHAPE EVENTS IN EACH OTHER'S BRAINS WITH EXQUISITE PRECISION."                                              [p.19]

Excuuuuuusssssseeeee mmmmeeeeeee? What did he say? That his *language* can influence my *brain* .... my *thinking*!!!!! ?????   With 'precision'?!?!   I understand the intent he has making that kind of statement, but the beauty of language rests in the fact that we share generalities and flexible comprehensions.  Each person flavors concepts in local unique individual ways.  I don't appreciate the machiavellian tone of his words there.

Sounds like a "whorf-in-sheep's" clothing to me, N.! Even while he has the temerity to run a tirade against Benjamin Whorf (in other passages)?    That is unbelievable audacity.

p.17;last pgh:
"they know that it is man's most important cultural invention, the quintessential example of his capacity to use symbols, and a biologically UNPRECEDENTED event irrevocably separating him from other animals."

Ultra-restricted stance about life/language :    no animals except humans recognize symbols (events, conditions, enacted behaviors of peers) nor have a neural recollection capacity that enables an effected response. {Jane Goodall, would you care to comment?}

p.18:
"Language is not a cultural artifact...." That's right, Steve, I created English all on my own, and glory be to God, it just happens to be the same language *you* use, halleluyah!    ... but wait, then why did you thank your parents for "giving you" language?

"But I prefer the admittedly quaint term 'instinct'. It conveys the idea that people *know* how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders know how to spin webs." Another Creationist "emergent" capacity again, folks.

Sh*t! Our particular capacity *for* noise-making communication was encouraged because it helped us survive and was fortuitously chosen for during co-evolution with other capacities. ENVIRON- MENT *molds* potentials and allows them to be expressed in whatever way physiology allows. Take away the environmment...raise a human in a world without other humans and the tabula raza will produce blanko-slato. Let me talk to your fish, N.  I want to find out how well its "instinct" for getting oxygen into its bloodstream functions, if I hold it in my hand in my oxygen-richer gaseous atmosphere instead of its fishbowl?

"Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture."

...and God created cars, and it was rushhour morning and it was rushhour evening - another day; and on the weekends he rested in the Hamptons.

p.19:

"Though language is a magnificent ability *unique* to Homo Sapiens among living species {JNR: apparently some dead antecendents of other species had the capacity}, it does *not* call for sequestering the study of humans from the domain of biology, ....* for a magnificent ability unique to a particular living species is far from unique in the animal kingdom.*" {now you see it now you don't}

"Once you begin to look at language not as the ineffible essence of human uniqueness but as a biological adaptation to communicate information, it is no longer tempting to see language as an insidious shaper of thought, and we shall see, it is not."

Um, wait a second .. opening paragraph, second sentence, said just the opposite. (!)

He should have quit while he was ahead..."...information." Now his true fear rises to the top: he wants to be totaly free and uncontrolled by his life companions. "Insidious"?????  If companions and social regularity "created him", why, his soul is in jeopardy. He no longer has any free-will, he's been programmed from day one.  Another Dennet zombi/zimbo/bo-bo. Who the hell told him he could interject a value-judgement. I mean, sure, he dedicated the book to his folks, Harry & Roz, "who gave me language", but does he really mean that they (dare I say it) "brain-washed" their little Stevie?  yes or no?!?

It is true ... human discoursive language biologically evolved, as did other capacities for other animals, but its enactment is a product of social interaction AND the exact form the language becomes for any individual, depending upon the linguistic environment the person is exposed to and has the chance to interact with.

p.22:

"Chomsky...argued, children must innately be equipped with a plan common to the grammers of all languages, a Universal Grammar,..."

{covered below p.41}

Chompsky quoted: "No one would take seriously the proposal that the human organism learns through experience to have arms rather than wings, or that the basic structure of particular organs results from accidental experience."

Did the man really say that? How could he?!?!  What the hell is evolution, but the "learning" to have arms based upon environmental needs/pressures? Sure there is a corresponding force at work: certain molecular organizations will accomplish certain functions, but even these are selected for based upon survival and procreation in concert with day to day environmental conditions. Didn't I read somewhere that Japanese crabbers in a local bay tossed back some crabs because one day a random crab's shell resembled the face of a samurai. And now a hundred years later the saved crabs were artificially selected for and now there's a strain of subspecies of crab which all have a carapice formed like a human image! The shell had the capacity to grow in many different inconsequential ways. Something in the environment (crabbers) selected for one pattern (a face image) and so the potential to be shaped like a human face survived where other potentials didn't.

Humans ... over millions of years ... "learned" to have arms!!!

p.23:

"Chomsky attacks what is still one of the foundations of 20th century intellectual life - the 'Standard Social Science Model,' according to which the human psyche is molded by the surrounding culture."

...I will, I say, *I will*, break these bonds of mind control!!!!

p.28

"Among other clever gadgets I have glimpsed in the grammars of so-called primitive groups, the complex Cherokee pronoun system seems especially handy"

Well here he takes a culture chosen environmental interaction tool - the development of a specialized syntax to deal with relationships that that culture felt necessary to have - and then confortable to retain and use, and flip- pantly calls it a "gadget". BS; it developed out of some experiences which required the cognizant distinction be communicated with community peers. THE LANGUAGE, LANGUAGE FORM, AND MENTAL CONNECTIONS *SURVIVE* BY BEING RE-CREATED AND REINFORCED. JUST THE SAME AS ANY BIOLOGICAL DYNAMIC OR ORGANIC LIFE FORM SURVIVES.

" ...(in humans there) are dozens of subroutines that arrange the word s to express the meaning. Despite decades of effort, no artificially engineered language system comes close to duplicating the person in the street"

That's because those efforts have gone into recreating decision gates and mimicking the final input or output. The reality is that there is no Universal Grammar. {Let's send Chomsky home once and for all}. ANY GRAMMAR WORKS AS LONG AS IT IS USEFUL TO THE INDIVIDUAL AND ITS SOCIAL STRUCTURE VIS A VIS SURVIVAL IN ENVIRONMENT.

{see p.41, below}

p.32

{god save us from ...."           "}

"The crux of the argument {promoting Pinker's "innate language instinct"} is that complex language is universal because CHILDREN ACTUALLY REINVENT  IT generation after generation - not because they are taught, not because they are generally smart, not because it is useful to them {I think I'm going to go throw-up now, I'll be right back}, but because they just can't help it."

Yes my friends, we are God's chosen animal. Spontaneous omniscient creativity in an adorable protoplasmic package. Every man a king, everyone a genius. Pop us out of the womb, a little food, some shelter, ... and voila, we teach ourselves to linguate!    Whoops, I'm sorry, did you step in something? I forgot to tell you that I never genetically inherited an "instinct" to control my groin excretions. Oh, but "language", now that *was* genetically selected for ...   (before social decency).

p.37 (top)

..."were exposed to.." "...introduce...grammatical devices that were absent" {rest of pgh}

There is nothing "innate" described here. It is all retained and utilized environmentally derived information and experiences. The new ISN language merely put together past learnings - linguistic AND plain observational - into some form that was more EFFICIENT. It wasn't created out of thin air or novelty. Does he think that just because we have language as one of our transmitted tools and capacities that we forsake all other sources of information or refuse to apply them *with* language and integrate them all together in whatever way is (or we deem to evaluate as being) appropriate?

p.38
{1st pgh discussing 'Simon'; and Chomsky's evaluative theory which said that ASL and UG were "violated"}

Nothing got "mangled". No language is eternally written in stone!  The only thing that got "violated" was some temporary "convention" of grammar. Interpretation and variability are healthy because they infuse new potential and new conceptual connections. Any random system is not the end all be all of communcating. The only thing the story on this page represents is EXACTLY HOW STRONG EXTANT SOCIAL PRESSURES ARE ON NEW MEMBERS TO THE GROUP OR SOCIAL ORDER.  Exactly what Whorf talks about!!!

p.39 {top paragraph}

'Simon' (the subject) wasn't raised in a total stimulus-void. His brain, as ours, is constantly taking in information from a variety of sources. And always ongoing are comparations, evaluations, assessments... of the information, of external evevnts and processes, of reactions of self and others, subtles re-inforcements and preferences, etc etc.

We are information *jugglers*, integrating at all times. If what comes out is different than what "obviously" comes in, maybe not everything is so "obvious" to outside evaluators.

Language confines and language establishes opportunities, in the same breath!

p.41 {finally got here, huh!?}

Chomsky's search for an underlying grammatical syntax is a sad waste of time. Language is communicated conventions ... relating to relationships and things, and to convenient shorthand references (called "symbols") which relate to relationships and things. Any form is acceptible. Any combination, extent or lack of it, will suffice. Case in point, three "words":    I, who, am.

I present you with some grammatically syntactic sentences ( I wrote this up in 1992) :

I am who
I who am
am I who
who I am
who am I
am who I

Depending upon any added inflections, pauses, intensions, stresses, etc., these possibly distinct syntaxes can all be read and given the "meaning" of statements, or of questions, or observations, or conditional evaluation, or ..... . Any of them, equally! They have the enviornmental potential to be used in any way and understood in any way, or even not at all (say if I present them to someone who only knows ideographic Cantonese).

The only "Universal" aspect of language is the capacity to transduce one form of information/energy into other forms and repeat them as conditionally appropriate and useful and incorporate as efficacious parts of daily and evolutionary survival. The more we know about our world and can interact with it successfully, the freer we are and the more dynamically stable is our condition, and possibly secure the future of our species and whatever new species our decendents will evolve into.

p.42

"Chomsky's claim...."

There is a bad bias here. The experiment was cited with the implication that all factors were "controlled". In fact the experiment was bogus. There was no possible way to know every child's historical linguistic exposure and experience There was no way to evaluate "creativity" or spontaneous innovation or responses which were selected *against* during past social and language educating experiences. Lack of an ungrammatical string only means it wasn't produced *then*, not that it never occurred in prior situations and was socially rejected so that the children avoided now what was learned as being unacceptible before.

{bottom} "Now how do children cope with this meaningless placeholder?" (the word 'it')

God, doesn't the man understand "language"? "It" is a *strongly utilized* place-holder which references a condition or event.

p43. {Pinker: discusses english grammar of  the word "rain"}

JNR: In Russian, there is no word "raining" - a single word/verb. The words are "Dohshd ee-dyot", meaning "the rain goes". English integrates thing/action, so that vernacular phrases like "raining cats and dogs" arises. It would never occur to a Russian to construct that phrase.

"The universal constraints on grammatical rules also show that that basic form of languages cannot be explained away as the inevitable outcome of a drive for usefulness."

{God, won't he ever stop!!! note exasperation in my voice.}

What criteria for "usefulness" is he limiting himself to here?   Efficiency to get work done? Alliterative flow for a song or poem?   Instructional? Terseness for editing? Effulviance to captue all  possible nuances? Conveyance of emotional impact? Erudition? Peer pressure to "fit in"? One-ups-man-ship? Limitations or extent  of experience? ...which of these....what other possible criteria?

Singular usefulness? simultaneous usefulness (double entende?)

{middle & end of central pgh}

"Species wide CONVENTIONS" "commonality in the brains of speakers"      "Evidence corroborating the claim that the mind contains blueprints for grammatical rules..."

The only "blueprints" are the functional relationships of neural assemblies to operate in ways amenable to persistent successful interaction with the rest of existence. If that includes relating to sounds and writings etc so as to facilitate present and future interactions, so be it. Anything that works is acceptable. Nothing is "hardwired".

p.45
quote beginning "She must...."

No QED here. He sadly lacks the cognition that "interaction relationships" are the primal experiences of life ... learning is an "experience" whether it be energy or symbols.

ahhhh "MENTALESE"....

I don't want to cover the same ground (I've been pecking away here for 4 hours). Go to page 59. Pinker quotes Whorf (while belittling him for being some kind of pseudo-academic amateur). Go to the 6th line N. and circle the word "largely". Memorize this word. Whorf has been castigated since 1939 because the effite have defined this word as "exclusively" in context to Whorf.   The man never said that ONLY extant language molds on-going human thinking.  He made the point that it was a "dominant" factor, not the only one. Effectively, he was inferring that no playright in any language other that English would come up with a phrase like : "the rain in spain falls mainly on the plain".

In my book "Understanding the Integral Universe" I discuss the Japanese ideogram called shiinn-nyu. Its a squiggly L-shaped thing with a long leg to the right. It carries the root meaning of "motion". Yet it's used as the root in over 2 or 3 dozen "words" that link ideas such as "carry" "escape" "approach" "run" "drive" "aside" "slow" "fast" and so on. Any reader of Japanese "senses" the underlying concept of "motion" even as it's applied to an incredible diversity of situations and relationships.  How many English readers/speakers would associate "escape" and "approach" in any thesauric sense .. linked by an underscoring idea or mem they have in common .. eventhough on the face of it, the words seem to indicate unassociated if not opposite dynamics?  I know I wouldn't typically. But I do now!

Now, when I discuss the beginning event of the Universe, I don't call it Big-Bang any more. It is the Shiin-nyu Event ... when all time and motion and space for action unfolded, began.

p.60

{second half of page} Pinker evaluates an observed subject's language/values/concepts behaviors.

"Surely this walking catastrophe [person being described in Pinker's text] was fooled by his eyes, not by the English language." {Pinker *must* have had an elitist upbringing!}

...surely no reasonable thinking person would *ever* assume that "empty" could *ever* equate with "contains nothing dangerous", or the assumption (from *most* experiences) that typically, "dangerous" things are usually VISIBLE. Pinker would rather say that the person was a mental midget and incompetant rather than allow that linguistic conventions had permitted a false evaluation of security.     (can I contain my sarcasm here?!?)

Ahhhh, Pinker, the cream of New England's white-tower elitists. How about an honorary chairmanship, Steve. Nah, let's make you CEO of The Bell-Curve Society!

p.62

Sorry N. I'm fading....the bottom pgh totally ignores that languages have evolved and branched for millenia. Their "universal similarities" may be more a result of the survival of a family tree of languages than some pervasive built-in-the-brain humans-do-only-this kind of attitude. I think it was during the Devonian Period that 5 of the original 7 or 8 Phyla of original organisms were wiped out. The similarity of DNA structure in all current life forms may only be as a result of the few ancestors which survived, not because our general life forms are perfectly universal under all conditions. His BS about color "choices" or what ever may be due to greater ocular excitation at certain wavelengths. But just because he can show examples "counter" to the misinterpretation of Whorf, doesn't mean he's blown him off as wrong.   Whorf never said "only" language affects thought.

I'm exhausted. It's 2:15AM. Catch you on the flip-side.

Part,  the Second

 

OK,
I'm a little refreshed now. I skimmed ahead through the rest of  Chapter 3, and noted that at least Pinker discusses some factors associated with how languages can be variable and open to interpretation, depending upon "context".  As far as I'm concerned, context equates with environment, and any changes anywhere in a considered-system is tantamount to the establishment of or impingement on potential "information pathways" and potential connections ... thus making some translations/transductions/and linkages possible, and some not. Like 'deixis'.

All his rambling discussions are rather boring ... neither insightful nor illuminating nor accurately supportive of his anti-Whorf  pro-Chomsky thesis.

Have your students read Boole's original 1854 work, "An Investigation of the Laws of Thought". They'll find it rather extraordinary.  If they take into consideration the 18th/19th century p and verbage, they'll see that Boole runs rings around Pinker.    Set theory, context, conditional impacts, ramifications, implications, ... you name it. Huntington pared it all down in 1905 and made Boole a scientific household name, but Boole analyzed *language* first, and the relationships and dynamics it symbolicly maps.

Pinker spends excruciatingly too much time ruminating on how we mentally distinguish yet unify object/the/a .

Turn to the bottom of page 68.

"The methodology has shown that babies as young as five days old are sensitive to "number"."

Total blithering, N.  Babies, as all sentient organisms, whether they have "language" or not, ARE SENSITIVE TO EXPERIENCES OF ENVIRONMENTAL VARIANCE, *not* "number". Number may be one of the
qualities that is variable, and *that* experience/cognition may get reinforced as we get educated to and about the world we exist in, but "number" is not there at the onset of potential human intelligence. Openness to variance, in whatever forms, is what those experimenters observed, not their bias-preferenced topic.

{comments about how babies are reactive and get 'bored'}

Babies don't get "bored" (another imposed interpretive condition and value-added judgement). They get what I would call, "sensately satiated".  Part of the behavior repertoire of sentient organisms is the seeking out of encounters with the world.  The activity accomplishes several things at once. "Self" gets reinforced/confirmed by continual interaction with the rest of existence. Energy ingestion needs sometimes get satisfied.  Information ingestion (depending upon the organisms' ability to retain/process/utilize what information is available) can go toward improved future-interactions and encounters.  Pent up energy reserves are not held static, but smoothly deplete through natural cascades, like random motion, and as sensory systems remain open to receiving impulses .. being up-and-running, so to speak. There are probably more, but I think that covers some of the basic ones, N.

Bottom line? As sentient living organisms .. we thrive on information acquisition.   We hunger to learn. Knowledge helps us live. If a situation stops providing enough information or satisfactory information that our biochemistry/neurology evaluates as being needed, well, we turn our heads.   Alternatively, the other extreme is information overload.  Both in quantity and rate. Systems can handle and process just so much depending on development and integration capacities. Too much and we also turn our heads, or close our eyes, or move away from the source, or turn it off, or ..... .

So, is "turning our heads" an avoidance action or an approach/seeking action?   It's *both*.    Because what it finally is is the breaking of old and the making of new and or different energy/information conditions and configurations. Establishing and closing potential information channels and states. Self-in-environment in a continual dance of "pas de deus" ... or should I write the french/english transliteration "pate' do" (head movement) :-).

Part, The Third

Hello N.!

Got to tell you right off that I am open to many new ideas, EXCEPT, those that challenge Whorf.  I think he was unfairly pidgeon-holed, mis-interpreted and then left by the wayside. So Pinker can take his version of things into the sunset for all I care. Now, having gotten *that* out of my system, let me see if I can make some headway with you.

Language ... and in particular "literary" writing (as you point out) ... is very tight and terse, yet "opens out". To me that means that everybody is open to responding to those "memory stimulators" in multitudes of ways...no two exactly "exact". So, right off the bat, language is satisfying *two* needs: 1) to specify with some degree of rigor, AND, 2) to be open for making new connections and new possibilities (thus very *unrigorous*). Hey, Aristotle, are you listening? ... existence is not "either/or", its "both". Ooops, sorry for the emotional outburst, N.,:-)!

If anyone is in favor of an open-systems model of existence, I'm the first one in line with a juicy tomato for Godel's sour puss. The only reason his propoganda is so appealing for science/math is that it takes away the burden of having to continue to be creative... he urges humanity to rest easy and just enjoy its ignorance. What a crock!

Back to Whorf. It's *all* "experience", N.. Language isn't "not-experience", it's another real valid *form* of it. Experience "transduced", if you will. Noting their distinction is one thing, but saying they have nothing in common, AND, one signifies "consciousness" and the other doesn't, well, that's a pretty intense corner to bury yourself in. And Pinker does a rather consistent job of burying here.

Ask yourself this: where in the long process of species regeneration did a Sapien turn to his/her own flesh and blood Momma and grunt, "You is one dumb Simian! *I'm* conscious, and *you* are a pathetic stupid
unconscious *animal*."?

Can't quite bring myself to seeing that ever happening. One day you ain't conscious, next day you is!(?)

Believe me, I revel in our linguistic ability. That's why I always used to love reading Eric Hoffer. He was a self educated immigrant who spent his life as a longshoreman and union organizer. When I came across him he was writing eloquent nationally syndicated columns in the newspapers, discussing philosophy and such right up there with the best of them. And his vocabulary? Wow!   An 'iggorant' immigrant and tough-guy from the docks!

Hell, if you are right, N., and vocabulary is the guage of consciousness, then general humanity is in big trouble! The general population is being linguistically "downsized" for the sake of global democracy and commerce. I can only hope that it's a temporary situation as we get the global village organized, but for right now, per your view, humanity is being made more *un*conscious each and every day!

Ahhhh, but I digress! Aren't we better off having experience-in-itself AND experience-filtered-through-language? Don't the permutations of possibilites skyrocket off the scale for us? Think of it mathematically for a moment. The relationship is factorial! (exclamation mark "pun" intended, heh, heh :-))   Add any new factor to an already very-large assemblage, and that new one-umpteen billionth factor multiplies its presence against every factor that preceded it.

Possibilities upon possibilities that make any "real" number infinitessimal. Free will can literally run amok in such a fantastic playground. That's where we can explore all the open-endedness .. more stuff than we can ever experience in a life-time .. phenomena.

Self-identity is consciousness ... the acting out of somatic being ... enacting behaviors that our construction permits.

Seems to me that holds just as well for atoms as for people. The only difference is: capacities for interaction. Some systems are limited, some are not. Some can hold a lot of information that is useful for future (self-pertinent) interactions, some can't. But to exist and endure, there has to be a dynamic self-coherence of some sort, whether
for a quark or a creature.

Those Parkinson's patients who lost 30 and 40 years of their lives in comatose "slumber". Well, some very impressively coherent dynamic must reside in us somewhere neurologically, for personality to sustain against such isolation, degradation and metabolic insults.!!! We are tougher creatures than we realize, I'd say! Orch OR may be one form of "consciousness" but Stuart H. & Roger P. are going to have to go a long way before I'll agree that a local burst of controlled quantum flare-ups *is* my personality. A couple trillion of them synchronized permanently, now *that's* what *my* consciousness *is*! With relational holographic storage tossed in for good measure, and Fuzzy Logic (not Boolean) guiding the way. Then, not only does each new iota of information improve things factorially, but Fuzzy Logic weightings can change everything around in an instant! (That's where
we find morality...but I'll leave that for another time.)

A nod o'the head, an' a tip o' the hat to y', N.!

Jamie
August, 1996.

This critique/review is being web-published May, 2000 (c) Ceptual Institute, All Worldwide Rights Reserved

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