“Inglés y Su Enseñanza II”

On Bickerton: Answers to Key questions

On Bickerton :Answers to Key Questions

Chapter 3: “ Language as Representation: The Itineraries”

1. Predictability: What is the human benefit of this constraint applied to the binary
combination of words?
The benefit is to come to an ‘implicit agreement with the other members of the species’ on
the possible combinations between entities and qualities. If this had not been possible ,
communication would have never come up.
The mind is genetically predetermined to cluster the impressions from the world into twos –
binary system- . This is the reason why giraffe matches with run and mismatches with fly; the
predication assigned to giraffe is to run. This mental mechanism is unconscious.

2. What evidence is there to tell that this binary organization has been created by
human species (HS) “to construct” reality?
The fact that the HS tend unconsciously to predicate / express some quality of entities in a
binary fashion was ‘created’ by the HS and it is not of a natural kind was proved through an
experiment carried out with children. It was then that children could break up the categories
within the binary system but not alter the structure of organisation. Children could come up
with this expression: “ dreams are tall”, which takes evidence that children regarded dreams
as objects on getting dreams to match tall. This evidence was proved via language use and
made it a fact that language worked as a classificatory mechanism.
Language, then, helps the HS classify the impressions coming from the environment. The HS
set constraints upon these impressions unconsciously ; conceptual analysis one of the most
salient rules. The HS is genetically endowed to do so, that is why this rule-governed faculty is
species- specific. This will lead to the ‘natural’ categorisation of objects being tall. Yet, we
should understand that this organisation is what will condition how we perceive reality.
Reality / Nature is the result of the way in which both our neurological system and our culture
have divided what is being perceived. As a matter of fact, the categories into which we have
been dividing nature do not exist in the real world but in our minds.
When a child comes up with the fact that dreams can be tall, what this tells is that the child has
created that in his mind. He has received some input from culture; this input has activated the
mapping operations in his mind; his mind has matched this pair : dreams / tall . What the mind
has done is to apply the constraint : any entity matches with one quality at a time. Thus, a
dream HAS TO MATCH with whatever. This ‘whatever’ has been filled in with ‘tall’ as a
probable result of cultural factors. This category , then, of dreams being tall has emerged out
of an interaction between nature and ourselves. Naturally, we organise nature in twos, this is a
fixed itinerary, yet what it is that we match depends on culture. This will explain why
metaphors exist.

3. Grammaticization: What do the grammatical items express?

This is another mental constraint by means of which the ‘linguistic map – lexicon -’ is
coordinated. Thanks to this rule , the lexical words are organised. The grammatical items
emerge to put out the way in which the lexical elements have been related. The relation
among the elements within the lexicon – entities , behaviour and attributes – are relative since
they are subjected to our perceptions of the world.
Every relation set in the real world can be grammaticised: location , time, number, direction,
familiarity , possibility, possession, agency , purpose, etc.

4. What is the adaptive function of grammaticization?

Language, being an adaptive tool created by the HS , tends to grammaticise a few of the
relations quite consistently but it will never do so with the vast majority of them. Things
proved to be the most useful are the ones that get to be grammaticised. Language forces us to
express automatically a restricted subset of possible qualities and relations in the world.
Examples:
Location The tiger is up the tree.
Time The sun sets at a certain time of day.
Agency The man hunts.
Purpose This sharp branch is to catch fish
Obligation You must cross the river.

5. To which extent does this constraint affect our representation of the world?
The fact that language enables us to organise information from the environment in a fixed
number of possible ways conditions the way in which reality is to be mentally represented.
Lexical words can be invented but grammatical words cannot. The latter is a closed set ,
whereas the former is an open set.
Nature has provided us with a ‘black box’ – a module / a map – that enables us to orient
ourselves in a sort of semi-simulacrum –based world that language , as a representational
tool, creates.

6. Syntax: how is the language structure organised?

Syntax will come to organise the structures of language in a hierarchy: the phrase structure.
There is always a nucleus and the complements that revolve around it.

7. What relation does it exist between arguments and sentences in the mapping
process?
A sentence depends on the number of arguments a verb has. An argument is a phrase
referring to any participant involved in or directly related to an action ; a state or an event.
The participant is an obligatory argument in the verb pattern, whereas time, place and
instrument are optional.
The mapping process activated to arrive correctly at the meaning of a sentence depends on
the thematic roles of an argument. The arguments, at the same time, are to be determined by
the structural position they take up in a sentence. This process proceeds by putting the
highest available thematic role is the highest position. This processing and interpreting helps
us have a back up system which enables us to focus on what is said rather on how it is being
said.

Examples:
- The lion sleeps.
This is a sentence with one argument since the verb to sleep carries one participant: an agent.
The mapping process will pick up the verb and will retrieve the agent that ‘is expected’ from
the meaning of sleeping.

- The hunter dropped the riffle.

This is a sentence with two arguments: to drop takes up an agent and a patient – the riffle is an
object being affected by the action of being dropped- . The mapping procedure starts by
picking up the highest argument this verb subcategorises for : the agent. The mind gets 1) to
drop; 2) sb drops and finally, retrieves the patient : the rifle.

- The hunter pomised us he would not come back.

This is a sentence with three arguments: to promise takes up : an agent , a patient , and a
theme. The mapping process picks up the verb and retrieves the thematic roles in this order: 1)
agent, 2) patient and 3 ) theme.

The thematic roles are: agent, patient/ theme , goal, source, instrument , beneficiary, time
and place.
The hierarchical order of thematic roles is:
1. Agent
2. Goal / patient / theme
3. Beneficiary
4. Instrument
5. Source
6. Time
7. location

It is often the case that verbs cannot govern the arguments directly , it is then that preposition
claim relevance. Prepositions , being mere grammatical particles , are necessary to both assign
meaning and a structure to these arguments.
Examples:
- The hunter shot at the lion .
The argument is governed by ‘at’. It links to shoot with the target : the lion. The mapping
operation will pick up the verb to shoot , then the agent , and then the scope of the effect of
the verb: at, probably indicating aggressive direction followed by a target.

- The noise comes from the sea.

From here governs the argument . It links to come with origin: the sea. The mapping operation
will pick up the verb to come , then the agent , and then the scope of the effect of the verb:
from , probably indicating direction followed by an origin / source.
Chapter 4 : “The Origins of Representational Systems”

1. What is a fixed knowledge system?

Language is a fixed knowledge system since it represents a bulk of information gathered from
the environment. Representations of reality are materialised in and through language. A
representation is the result of responding or having a permanent propensity to respond to X,
an entity or event in the external world, in terms of Y , a particular pattern of neural activity.

If we exemplify this formula with the answer to question 7 above , we might say that the X
stands for the events or states the senses have perceived: a man shooting at an animal. The Y
stands for the mapping operations set in motion by our neurological frame. The mind will
organise the info from the senses into arguments applying a thematic role -grounded
hierarchy.

2. What is understood by Primary Representational System (PRS)?

What is to be represented by the species is not reality but a species- specific view of reality; it
consist of what is useful for each species to know.
For example, a simple representation is to maximise chances of survival to any species. The
information from the environment is passed to the creature. The creature has to be able to
gather the necessary information , which means it has mechanisms capable of representing
the data through some particular neurological patterns.
For example, if a sundew –carnivorous plant – is confronted with a fly , it will react quite
differently from the way a human being (HB) will in the same situation. The sundew will
develop an unconscious response and will close the leaves on the fly. The HB with a highly
detailed vision of the fly may reach for a fly-swatter; write a poem or ignore it. Therefore,
there is nothing between the way in which the sundew has represented the fly and the way it
has reacted, conversely, there is a lot between the way in which the HB has represented the fly
and the possible outcomes he can have.
In sum, there is an ultimate link between information and behaviour. If the sense does not
enhance the creature’s fitness, that sense will not develop or will not develop past a certain
point. The HB has developed the sight over the smell, for example.
A Primary Representational System (PRS) arouses from the conjunction of : 1) cells that could
discriminate between two states: sensory and motor ; and 2) the existence of two types of
cells: sensory and motor. Sensory cells gather information and motor cells act on information.

3. What is the link between ‘reality’ and a ‘species-specific’ view of reality?

Each PRS is determined by a species-specific equipment determined by biology plus what has
proven useful to the species on the course of evolution. Thus, there is no real world but what
constitutes any creature’s view of the world. This view is built upon a system of categories
each species develops.
For a sea anemone the world is divided into ‘prey’ and ‘non-prey’, for example.
The more complex the creature, the larger number of categories it will develop.

4. What is the opening of the gates to consciousness ?

This dimension is connected to the set of intermediate cells between the sensory cells and the
motor cells. The nervous system has new information to process: internal states. For example,
a predator, on seeing an object, has to ,first, decide if that is a prey or not , but then, it has to
decide if it is hungry or not. It is then that the nervous system has to translate two types of
states: external and internal. For the sake of saving up energy, the predator can activate an
‘evaluation’ process before doing anything. This may be a sort of ‘conscious’ state. This neural
process is autonomous, which means the decisions are no longer made between the creature
and its environment but what rests within the brain of the creature concerned. This is the
opening of the gates to consciousness ; it is a progressive distancing of creature from actual
world.
Higher invertebrates are the ones that can represent the world in terms of activating
processing mechanisms that intervene between the sensory cells and the motor cells :
evaluation processes. This implies evaluation the input from both sets of cells.

Language will constitute yet another level of representation, further distancing the creature
from its environment.

5. What role does emotion play in the process of representation?

When creatures make some distinction between external objects, this distinction can only be
made on the basis of experience. Experience must be learned.
For example, if a wildebeest sees a lion, this perception may not trigger an immediate
response as it might in a less complex creature. Yet, it does trigger a state of awareness whose
quality changes as the lion approaches. On the other hand, if the wildebeest had our human
faculties, that alarm would have turned into fear.
Emotions can build a bridge between representations and responses. Emotions are essential
as learning increasingly replaces fixed action patterns. They play an essential role in the
development of consciousness. They emerge from learned representations , thus emotions
are not innate.

6. How does it compare the way in which human bowels behave with the way human
beings do?
The human bowels belong to a closed system that adjusts automatically to most factors
affecting it. Unlikely, our behaviour requires constant feedback to be properly adjusted. Input
from different sources should be evaluated for an optimal adjustment.
Three things are needed to form categories ( representations)
1) An object from the world;
2) Patterns of cell activity which can be directly or indirectly triggered by the
world object;
3) Reponse: internal and external to these cell activity.

7. What is the relationship between the representation of society and the path to
consciousness?
When neurons are fired by actions performed by members of own species , a new dimension
comes up. Certain kinds of representations are unlikely to arise outside of social species.
Creatures that depend on complex adaptations involving learning cannot be left to chance.
Also, the ones that need some active nurturance from their mother – communal foraging –
have to live socially before they can learn what it means to be an individual.
Each individual learns the strengths and weaknesses of each of the others ( what pleases
them, what makes them angry..) and in doing so, they become aware of others as unique
individuals. This is a necessary prerequisite to the discovery that one is oneself as individual.
 8. When do Second Levels of Representation (SLR) emerge?
When the levels of PRS reach certain degree of sophistication , this makes it possible the
creation of a second level of representation. A second level upon which the ouput of the first
level will undergo greater refinement. This is the information coming from the basic mapping
operations in the mind will pass onto a secondary processing set of mapping operations. It is
then that the mind will process both data coming from the environment as well as data coming
from the mind itself. The mind has become a source of information itself.

Chapter 8 ( Part A) : “ Mind, Consciousness and Knowledge?

1. What could have given origin to the SRP?
The communicative system developed among hominids; these interactions enable elements
coming from the PSR to be represented rather than the elements coming from the outside
world.

2. What is the relations between linguistic input and the SRP?

Our species can initiate thought when activation comes from both the sense impressions and
the linguistic input. The work of the lexicon along with the set of operations fired to construct
formal sentences makes up what is known as linguistic input. This linguistic information flows
within the mental realm so more sophisticated operations are instantiated. This input will
open up new entries in the SRP. This is possible because constructional learning will take place
among the members of the species, which will bring about a rapid behavioural change.

3. Why is it that the HS possess language ?

To give impressions an order. A linguistic-driven thought process activates the creation of
some imagery in the mind , but then, this will have to get organised and materialised through
words. We may say ,then, primarily the mind gets the information from the senses; these
images get some organisation due to the features of our linguistic thought. This interplay
between images and linguistic input takes place within the mind at a secondary level, which
finally will result in the uttering of sentences.

4. What is the mind?

The mind comes from coupling the growing representational capacities and the growing
creature’s autonomy. This is a definitional issue rather than a substantive issue.
Our species have a ‘conscious purpose’: to maximise chances of survival. This autonomy is
what determines Human Beings have a mind. The mind will be able , then, to integrate
information from the outside world – facts – with information coming from the inside world –
emotions – and make decisions related to the ‘purposes’ of the species.