Part 22 (1/2)
Chapter 7.
throughout, the theory must postulate some device to that eect. A similar demand seems to arise for much larger (and later) structures if the interpretive role of musical devices such as recapitulation, coda, and cadence (Katz and Pesetsky 2009) is to be explained by a theory. Let us a.s.sume that these demands are met when internal Merge generates (covert) copies as a last resort at the relevant positions.
Be that as it may, in an optimal design, the copies created by internal Merge to meet FMI conditions will also be used by the rhythmic system when required. Much of the rhythmic structure of music seems to act as guide to memory-''reminders''-of past events; in Indian music, the return to the first beat (som) of a beat cycle typically coincides with a return to the tonic (or, its neighbourhood) after meeting (some of ) the conditions of the raaga during the earlier cycle. In that sense, the requirements of the raaga coincide with the rhythmic structure. Beyond this very general intuition, however, currently it is unclear if the computational requirement met with operations of internal Merge coincides with the simultaneous satisfaction of external requirements of rhythm and interpretation.
a.s.suming internal Merge to be in place, we will expect some economy conditions to govern computations in music as well. In the language case, as we saw, a small cla.s.s of principles of ecient computation (PCE) not only enforce optimal computation, (ideally) they so constrain the operations of Merge that only interpretable structures meet the interface conditions; the rest is filtered out. We also saw that PCEs are linguistically nonspecific, that is, PCEs are purely computational principles, in the sense outlined. If FM is optimally designed with Merge in place, the system will require some economy principles that enable Merge-generated structures to meet legibility conditions optimally. Could PCEs (of language) be those principles?
I have already used least eort and last resort considerations in a general way while speculating on the organization of music. Some version of the least eort principle MLC seems to be operative in the fact that an unstable pitch tends to anchor on a proximate, more stable, and immediately subsequent pitch, as noted. The other least eort principle FI is observed in facts such as a pitch ''in the cracks'' between two legitimate pitches Da and E will be heard as out of tune (Jackendo and Lerdahl 2006, 47). In general, the phenomena of ''dissonance'' and intonation seem to require FI since no note by itself is either dissonant or out of tune. If these speculations make sense, then, as with Merge, we will expect these economy conditions to be available in an abstract manner A Joint of Nature 229.
across FL and FM. Specific resources internal to a domain will then be used to implement them: in FL, PCEs constrain feature movement; in FM, they control tonal motion. Is this view valid?
7.3.
''Laws of Nature''
In a way, the answer is trivially in the positive. According to Chomsky, PCEs are ''laws of nature'' in that they are general properties of organisms, perhaps on par with physical principles such as least-energy requirement or minimal ''wire length,'' as noted. PCEs thus apply to, say, music because they apply everywhere. Therefore, a.s.suming that Merge applies to music, CHL satisfies SMH at once! Apparently, then, the Minimalist Program makes it rather easy for SMH to obtain.
The sweeping generality enforced by PCEs could be viewed as a ground for casting doubt on-hence, an objection to-the substantive character of SMH. SMH is supposed to be a substantive proposal in that it attempts to capture ( just) the computational convergence between language and music. Under Chomsky's proposal, the cherished restricted character of SMH collapses. Let C be any cognitive system of any organism. If PCEs cover all organisms, and if C contains Merge, then a strong C-language hypothesis (SCH) holds. Since we have not specified the scope of Merge so far, there is no reason why Merge can not obtain widely. Insofar as it does, SCH also holds widely. SMH, then, is just an instance of SCH; there is nothing specifically ''languagelike'' about music that SMH promised to cover.
Unlike the issue of Merge, the issue is no longer whether some component of CHL-that is, PCEs-applies to music. That is apparently already granted under Chomsky's generalization. The issue is rather whether PCEs can be prevented from applying to systems outside the hominid set.
The discussion, therefore, will be concerned more with the general organization of cognitive systems of organisms than with (human) music and language.
7.3.1.
Forms of Explanation In his recent writings, Chomsky has drawn attention to two competing perspectives in biology: the ''standard view'' that biological systems are ''messy,'' and an alternative view that biological systems are optimally designed. It seems that, currently, Chomsky's views on this topic are moving away from the standard view and towards the alternative. For example, in Chomsky 2006b, he actually criticized British geneticist Gabriel 230
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Dover who held that ''biology is a strange and messy business, and 'perfection' is the last word one would use to describe how organisms work.''
Interestingly, Chomsky himself held this view just a few years ago: ''Bio-logical systems usually are . . . bad solutions to certain design problems that are posed by nature-the best solution that evolution could achieve under existing circ.u.mstances, but perhaps a clumsy and messy solution''
(Chomsky 2000a; also see 1995b, 2002).
From what I can follow, the s.h.i.+ft in perspective was essentially motivated by an extremely plausible methodological idea which emerged when it became reasonably established that large parts of grammatical computation can be explained by PCEs alone; capturing the rest of the parts, such as c-command and cla.s.sical island constraints on extraction, then become research problems (Chomsky 2006d). UG specifies the initial state of FL with linguistically specific items-that is, elements of UG belong to the faculty of language proper. Suppose now we want to attach an explanation of how FL evolved. Clearly, the more things UG contains, the more dicult it is to explain why things are specifically that way. It follows that ''the less attributed to genetic information (in our case, the topic of UG) for determining the development of an organism, the more feasible the study of its evolution'' (Chomsky 2006a). If so, then there is a need to reduce UG to the narrowest conception. What can we take away from the things just listed and a.s.sign it elsewhere plausibly?
As we saw, what we cannot take away from UG, according to Chomsky, includes at least (some prominent parts of ) the human lexicon and Merge. That leaves PCEs, the principles of ecient computation. If PCEs also belong to UG, principled explanation has to be found as to why they are so specifically located. The explanation will not be needed if it can be suggested that they are available to the faculty of language in any case as part of the general endowment of organisms. From what I can follow, this suggestion has been advanced along the following steps.
The first step is methodological: the ''Galilean style'' of explanation in science begins by a.s.suming that nature-or, at least, the aspects of nature we can fruitfully study-is perfect. The second step consists in showing that general principles such as least energy requirement (least-eort principles) have played a major role in formulation of scientific theories, including reflections on biological phenomena. A variety of natural phenomena seems to require essentially the same form of explanation to the eect that nature functions under optimal conditions. This include phenomena such as the structure of snowflakes, icosahedral form of polio-virus sh.e.l.ls, dynamics of lattice in superconductors, minimal search A Joint of Nature 231.
operations in insect navigation, stripes on a zebra, location of brains at the front of the body axis, and so on. The third step shows that PCEs are optimal conditions of nature, given that language is a natural object.
Although almost everything just listed is under vigorous discussion, I will simply a.s.sume that each of these steps has been successfully advanced.11 There is no doubt that the range of discoveries listed above has played a major role in drawing attention to the alternative view of biological forms. On the basis of this evidence, I will a.s.sume that nature, including the biological part of nature, is perfect; therefore, human language, also a part of nature, has a perfect design. I can aord to a.s.sume all this because it still will not follow that PCEs are general properties of organic systems such as insects, not to mention inorganic systems such as snowflakes. For that ultimate step, we need to s.h.i.+ft from historical parallels and a.n.a.logies, however plausible, to theory.
Basically, s.h.i.+fting of PCEs to the third factor conflates the distinction between a (general) form of explanation and an explanation of a specific (range of ) phenomena. Suppose the preferred form of explanation is the ''Galilean style''-mathematico-deductive theories exploiting symmetries, least-eort conditions, and so on. We may a.s.sume that physics since Galileo has adopted the Galilean style. But that did not prevent two of the most sophisticated and recent theories, namely, relativity theory and quantum theory, to dier sharply about the principles operating in dierent parts of nature. The separation between these two theories is pretty fundamental such that it divides nature into two parts, obeying dierent principles. As noted in section 1.3.2, this divide can only be bridged by unification, perhaps in a ''new'' physics, as Roger Penrose suggests. Until that happens, the two general theories of nature are best viewed as two separate bodies of doctrines, while both adopt the (same) Galilean style.
Faced with the overwhelming complexity and variety in the organic world, a Galilean form of explanation is harder to achieve in biology, explaining the wide prevalence of the standard view sketched above. Application of Galilean style to this part of nature thus requires at least two broad steps. First we show that the apparent diversity of forms in a given range of phenomena can in fact be given a generative account of from some simple basis: the condition of explanatory adequacy. Next, we go beyond explanatory adequacy to show that the generative account can be formulated in terms of symmetry and least-eort considerations already noted in the nonorganic part of nature. The distinction between form of explanation and specific explanation seems to apply to each of these steps.
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Consider the idea that the ''innate organizing principles [of UG] determine the cla.s.s of possible languages just as the Urform of Goethe's biological theories defines the cla.s.s of possible plants and animals''
(Chomsky, cited in Jenkins 2000, 147). If the parallel between UG and Urform of plants is intended to highlight the general scientific goal of looking for generative principles in each domain, it satisfies the first step.
It is totally implausible if the suggestion is that a given Urform applies across domains: UG does not determine the cla.s.s of plants just as Goethe's Urform fails to specify the cla.s.s of languages. Similarly, the very interesting discovery of homeotic transformations of floral organs into one another in the weed Arabidopsis thaliana (Jenkins 2000, 150) does not have any eect on wh-fronting. To play a role in theoretical explanation of phenomena, the general conceptions of Urform and transformation need to be specifically formulated in terms of principles operating in distinct domains, pending unification.
Turning to the issue of whether a particular least eort principle of language, say, the Minimal Link Condition might apply in other domains and organisms, consider Chomsky's (2000d, 27) general idea that ''some other organism might, in principle, have the same I-language ( brain state) as Peter, but embedded in performance systems that use it for loco-motion.'' The thought is dicult to comprehend if ''I-language'' has a full-blooded sense that includes lexical features, Merge, and PCEs (plus PLD, if the I-language is not at the initial state). To proceed, let us a.s.sume that by ''I-language'' Chomsky princ.i.p.ally had minimal search conditions in FL, that is PCEs, in mind. To pursue it, Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch 2002 suggest that ''comparative studies might look for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (e.g., number, navigation, social relations).'' Elaborating, the authors observe that ''elegant studies of insects, birds and primates reveal that individuals often search for food using an optimal strategy, one involving minimal distances, recall of locations searched and kinds of objects retrieved.''
Following the Galilean a.s.sumption that nature is perfect, optimal search could well be a general property of every process in nature, including the functioning of organisms. As such, principles of optimal search could be present from collision of particles and flow of water to formation of syntactic structures in humans. However, it requires a giant leap of faith to a.s.sume that the same principles of optimal search hold everywhere. Plainly, we do not wish to ascribe ''recall of locations searched'' to colliding particles or to the trajectory of a comet. In the reverse direction, A Joint of Nature 233.
(currently) there is no meaningful sense in which principles of optimal water flow are involved in insect navigation, not to speak of syntactic structures in humans.
To emphasize, I am not denying that, say, foraging bees execute optimal search, as do singing humans and colliding particles. The problem is to show that there is a fundamental unity in these mechanisms. There could be an underlying mechanism of optimal search in nature that has ''parametric'' implementation across particles, bees and humans. But the unearthing of this mechanism will require the solution of virtually all problems of unification.
Even in such a general theory of nature as Newtonian mechanics (''a theory of everything''), economy considerations are formulated in terms of principles specific to a domain. Newton's first law of motion has two parts: (i) ''Every body perseveres in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line,'' and (ii) ''except insofar as it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed on it.'' The first part states a least-eort principle, and the second a last resort one in terms of properties specific to a theoretically characterized domain. Clearly, this very general law of nature does not belong to CHL since, at the current state of knowledge, nothing in grammar moves in rectilinear or elliptical paths, and no forces act on SOs. From the perspective of physics, the language system is an abstract construct; laws of physics do not apply to it just as they do not apply to the vagaries of the soul.
Yet, to return to the theme of chapter 1, there is no doubt that biolinguistics is a profound body of doctrine that has unearthed some of the principles underlying an aspect of nature. As Reinhart (2006, 22) observes, Chomsky's definition of ''Attract'' also combines ideas of last resort and least eort: K attracts F if F is the closest feature that can enter into a checking relation with a sublabel of K. This time the combination is implemented specifically for the aspect of nature under investigation in a dierent scientific ''continuum'' obtaining since Panini (section 1.3.2). It .
is certainly a law of nature if valid, but it does not apply to particles or planetary motions.