摘要
Chomsky坚持认为:语言和心智是自然世界的组成部分,对此不能有任何形而上学的认识和理解。当代认识论和形而上学的自然主义和各种二元论的理论观点妨碍了人们对语言和心智本质问题的研究和探索。Chomsky所主张的自然主义是古典理性论哲学和现、当代科学思想的结合;对语言获得机制即普遍语法的自然主义研究在创建理论的同时,期盼着与主体自然科学的最终统一。
In the paper Naturalism and Dualism in the Study of Language and Mind, Chomsky (1994) has stated the kind of naturalism which he holds and argued against some other kinds of naturalism and dualism in the study of language and mind.
Chomsky maintains that language and mind should simply be regarded as the linguistic and mental aspects of the natural world, and no metaphysical import of any kind should be given to such terms. By studying the Language Acquisition Device or Universal Grammar and constructing intelligible theories, we inquire into the nature of mind and ultimately the brain. This is the methodological naturalism. He points out that the metaphysical and epistemic naturalism and dualism of various kinds held by a number of contemporary philosophers have greatly hampered the efforts for a real understanding of the nature of language and mind. Ever since the decline of the Cartesian dualism, we no longer have the definition of the physical, and no real mind-body problem exists today. What we have is the mental aspect of the natural world, and it can be studied by the naturalistic approach. The mental aspect of the natural world should not be regarded as different from any other aspects of the world. No dualism of any kind should be tolerated in the naturalistic inquiry. Although no one knows how to begin to relate the theories about the brain, its states and properties yielded by the naturalistic inquiry into the mind to properties of atoms, cells, neurons or other known structures of the brain, we should not be disheartened by such a disparity. The mental cannot be simply reduced to the physical and neurophysiology alone cannot account for mental events and phenomenon such as emotions, thoughts and theory construction. Chomsky argues that we face a typical problem of unification in the sciences, which may, as often in the past, require that the more 'basic' science be fundamentally recast if it is to be integrated with successful explanatory theory at other levels.
We see in Chomsky t
出处
《现代外语》
CSSCI
北大核心
2000年第3期305-316,共12页
Modern Foreign Languages
