In this compelling volume, ten distinguished thinkers - William G. Lycan, Jeffrey Poland, Galen Strawson, Frances Egan, Georges Rey, Peter Ludlow, Paul Horwich, Paul M. Pietroski, Alison Gopnik, and Ruth Garrett Millikan - address a variety of conceptual issues raised in Noam Chomsky's work on mind and language.
Topics covered include:
- the ontological commitments inherent in a Chomskian approach to linguistic competence
- the possibility of systematic referential semantics for natural language
- whether we can learn anything about the foundations of language by adopting an evolutionary perspective
- whether the 'theory theory' in developmental psychology counters Chomsky's arguments for nativism
- the relevance and urgency of the mind-body problem in the post-Newtonian world.
These analyses are followed by substantial responses from Chomsky himself. The result is a provocative and engaging discussion of Chomsky's work on questions of central importance to theories of mind and language.