On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty

John COLLINS†

ABSTRACT
It has been speculated, by Chomsky and others, that our capacity for scientific understanding
is not only enabled but also limited by a biologically endowed science forming faculty (SFF).
I look at two sorts of consideration for the SFF thesis and find both wanting. Firstly, it has been
claimed that a problem-mystery distinction militates for the SFF thesis. I suggest that the dis-
tinction can be coherently drawn for cases, but that the purported ‘evidence’ for even a fairly
lose general demarcation of problems and mysteries is not best explained by a SFF. Secondly,
I consider in detail a range of cognitive considerations for the SFF thesis and contend that it is
at best moot whether science can be so construed as to make it feasible that it is a faculty com-
petence.

I feel most deeply that the whole subject

is too profound for the human intellect.
A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.
From a letter of Charles Darwin to Asa Gray

Noam Chomsky (e.g., 1975b, 1980, 1988, 2000a) conjectures that our capac-
ity for science is due to a biologically endowed science forming faculty (SFF):
what lies within the principles of the faculty are problems, what lies beyond
them are mysteries. The brief of the sequel is to question the very idea of a
SFF. It must be said that Chomsky’s conjecture is speculative. Even so, he
takes the idea very seriously, and I shall pay the due respect by doing likewise.
Moreover, the notion is employed, by McGinn (1991, 1993) in particular, to
argue for the substantive claim that consciousness is mysterious (McGinn, in
fact, appears to think that more or less everything philosophers think about is
mysterious.) If my contentions are anywhere near correct, while conscious-
ness (or free-will, or personal identity, or meaning, etc.) might well be mys-
terious, it will not be because there is a human SFF that fails to accommodate
it.

† 26 Newick Road, London, E5 ORR, United Kingdom, JCollins42@compuserve.com

Dialectica Vol. 56, No 2 (2002), pp. 125-151

126 John Collins

Problems and Mysteries: A Preliminary Characterisation

Chomsky’s notion of a SFF is tied to that of a problem-mystery distinction. I
shall describe a strong distinction; there is a weak one, relativised to the here
and now, but it is one that no-one should want to deny.
In a strong sense, ‘problems’ cover questions we could answer, events we
could explain or otherwise understand, properties whose constitution we could
discern, and so on. It will be noted that problem has a modal aspect: problems
are not necessarily things we shall solve, they are things we could solve. For
example, Fermat’s last theorem remained a problem for over 300 years until
Andrew Wiles’s positive proof. Now consider the closest possible world W
just like the actual world save that Wiles (or a counterpart thereof) gives up
on his proof with no-one continuing his research, and that W-humanity meets
its end without ever knowing whether or not ‘xn + yn = zn’ has integral solu-
tions for n > 2. Is Fermat’s last theorem only a problem in W, i.e., could W-
humanity find a proof? Yes; for, on our assumption that all else is equal, the
mathematics is available in W for Wiles’s proof, even though no-one gets
around to employing it. The point is this: problems are demarcated relative to
our cognitive capacity or reach, where such a capacity is abstracted from the
contingency of what we happen to do or are interested in; it is, though, con-
strained by the myriad of contingent factors that have contributed to the devel-
opment of our brains and will, presumably, continue to do so. This last point
bears emphasis: it is not that some domains are so simple, while others are so
damned complex; the issue is to do with what our minds are constitutively able
to represent and explain, independently of whether a given domain is simple
or complex in an objective sense – whatever such a sense might be.
Mysteries also have a modal aspect: they are insoluble, inexplicable in prin-
ciple. Unlike problems, which may contingently evade resolution, mysteries
lie beyond our understanding. Before the discovery of DNA there was no
known mechanism to instantiate the heritable traits upon which selection
works. Even so, heritable traits were not mysterious before 1953, as the dis-
covery and subsequent theory demonstrated, they were merely problematic.
Dark matter might be mysterious; then again, it might smoothly be accom-
modated within current particle physics. It might be that no reformation of set
ℵ
theory we could formulate will tell us whether or not 2 0 = ℵ1, in which case
the continuum hypothesis would constitute a mystery (here I forego any intu-
itionistic scruples.) Alternatively, the negation, say, of the hypothesis might be
unsatisfiable in a any model for some theory which supersedes ZF(+C). At the
moment, as with dark matter, there is no way of knowing. Such is the way with
mysteries: at least at the present state of play, we cannot tell if we are dealing
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 127

with a deep problem or a mystery. Furthermore, mysteries outstrip problems

in the sense that, while any problem is formulatable qua soluble, mysteries are
not so minimally accessible: the notion carries no implication that we can so
much as frame the appropriate questions. After all, if the answers are consti-
tutively beyond our ken, we should not expect, in every case, to be able to
pose the right questions in the first place.
My aim will not be to refute this strong distinction; I have no argument that
there are only problems, and no mysteries. Indeed, I think it far from implau-
sible that there are domains, perhaps as yet not thought of, which are such that
our brains are ill-equipped to deal with them. Yet this thought does not pro-
vide us with the kind of distinction to which Chomsky and others appeal. In
particular, while the thought allows us to hypothesise coherently cases of mys-
tery, it does not allow us a demarcation of them. Chomsky (2000a, p. 83), for
sure, does not think that the distinction can be drawn sharply, but nor is the
distinction meant to be so lose that it does not reflect a real feature of our cog-
nition. That is, Chomsky’s point is not merely that we are epistemically
bounded; it is, rather, that such a boundary is endogenously determined to
some specifiable degree. This thought is crucial. Pinker (1997, p. 558-65), who
otherwise commends epistemic boundedness, thinks that the thesis is “almost
perversely unprovable” (op cit, p. 562). I would go further: if the mysterious-
ness of mysteries is itself mysterious, then we shall never be in a position
rationally to conclude that such and such is a mystery. By drawing an endoge-
nous boundary, Chomsky may be understood as attempting to remove mys-
tery from mysteries and so explain our epistemic boundedness. The deter-
mining endogenous factor is a human science forming faculty (SFF).

The Limits of Thought

Chomsky conjectures that the broad shape of human scientific accomplish-
ment is a function of an innate SSF. As an initial characterisation, we can think
of our putative SFF as analogous to the language faculty. Here is Chomsky
(1975b, pp. 155-6; cf. Chomsky, 1968/72, pp. 90-3; 1971, p.49; 1988, pp. 156-
9), making use of Pierce1:
The fact that “admissible hypotheses” are available to [the SFF] accounts for its ability
to construct rich and complex explanatory theories. But the same properties of mind that
provide admissible hypotheses may well exclude other successful theories as unintelli-
gible to humans... though these theories might be accessible to a differently organised
intelligence.

1 Chomsky (e.g., 1988, p. 158) has since dropped the appeal to Peircean abduction (see
below).
128 John Collins

Thus, where the language faculty realizes a universal grammar (UG) which
allows for the generation of the various grammars that humans may acquire,
so the SFF realizes a set of concepts and principles that allow for the forma-
tion of all the possible theories humans may understand. UG empirically
defines the notion of a possible human language (a grammar or I-language),
but it does not follow that UG determines every possible ‘language’. Aliens,
if such there are, will, we may presume, possess a quite distinct UG (or some-
thing else entirely) that determines languages inaccessible to us. Our UG is
not a general purpose device to construct languages, it is severely constrained
by principles which allow only a finite amount of variation: a human language
is one which can in principle be deduced from UG principles given the setting
of a finite number of parametric values. Thus, some ‘languages’ are mysteries
for us, i.e., those not determined by our UG.2 The same thought applies to SFF.
SFF is not a general purpose device which can construct a true theory for any
domain. The set of theories it determines is drawn from a fixed conceptual
resource with a finite number of principles defined over it. Now consider the
set of true theories of the universe and its furniture, and the set of theories
determined by SFF. The intersection of the two sets is the set of (true) theo-
ries accessible to humanity; what falls outside the intersection is inherently
mysterious. The intersection there is, is a “chance product of human nature”
(Chomsky, 2000a, p. 83). There are a number of quite slippery issues to do
with how close we should understand this analogy to which I shall return at
length in §4; for the moment the sketch above suffices.
In this section I shall look at some considerations that are understood to
militate for a problem-mystery distinction independently of the notion of a
SFF, but which may be taken to buttress the SFF thesis in that a SFF would
provide a natural explanation of them. That is, the SFF thesis is supported to
the extent that it provides the best explanation of an independently coherent
problem-mystery distinction. In the following sections I shall look at consid-
erations specific to the SFF thesis.
Chomsky (e.g., 1993, 2000a,) is fond of reminding us that we are organ-
isms, put together by evolution (not necessarily by natural selection), we are
not angels. We are not designed, by God or anything else, to know all there is
to know. Independent of the SFF hypothesis, then, to claim jointly that the
truth about reality is unconstrained by our cogitations and that every truth falls
within our understanding is to attribute to ourselves strange powers unprece-

2 Chomsky (1965, p. 56) does contend that grammars which are not generated from UG

may still be acquirable through our more general problem solving capacity. Even so, there is
no guarantee that any, still less all, ‘alien’ languages will so succumb.
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 129

dented in the biota. It would seem, therefore, that once even a modest realism
is accepted, mystery follows, lest we think ourselves angelic (cf. Fodor, 1983,
§V).3
If we look at the rest of the animal kingdom, we find cognitive closure. A
favoured example is that of the maze-solving abilities of rats (e.g., Chomsky,
1991b, p. 41; 1993, p. 45). Over a large range of mazes (e.g., radial ones) rats
perform at levels equal to or greater than humans, but some mazes prove
intractable. For instance, a prime maze is one whose solution depends on the
subject making a certain decision (left or right) at each prime choice. Rats’
poor performance with such mazes is naturally explained by their lack of num-
ber theory. Of course, it does not follow that the average person would per-
form much better than a rat, yet the average person has the concepts which
would enable him or her to easily solve the maze. Even if one lacked the
explicit notion of a prime, one could still work-out the maze by ‘discovering’
the concept. This a rat cannot do.
The point of the analogy is that just as a rat will scurry around the prime
maze, fated by its cognitive short-comings never to find the solution, so
humans scurry around with their problems, fated in some instances to remain
in ignorance, constitutively lacking the concepts which would provide the cor-
rect solution. We do not, for sure, appear to ourselves to be rat-like, but we
well might from the perspective of “a differently organised intelligence”. To
think otherwise would effectively be to hold that humans have no cognitive
closure. This appears to be a supernatural property, but to accept cognitive clo-
sure, it seems, is to accept a form of the SFF thesis: only a certain range of
concepts are “admissible” to us; we lack the capacity to frame other concepts
necessary for the understanding of certain domains.
The rat analogy is certainly striking; it has the desired humbling effect. Nei-
ther the analogy nor the surrounding argument, however, oblige us to seek a
SFF explanation of our apparent cognitive closure.
Notwithstanding the potentially significant differences between rats and
ourselves (e.g., language, culture, technology, etc.), the analogy certainly
lends force to the thought that, for any species, there will be insoluble ‘prob-
lems’. So much, however, does not lead us to the SFF thesis as the natural

3 Ironically, while Chomsky understands our biological nature virtually to guarantee our

epistemic boundedness, he also speculates that UG is a perfect solution to the engineering prob-
lem of fitting language to the legibility conditions imposed by the other systems of the mind;
but perfection is not a property found elsewhere in nature. The moral should perhaps be: Don’t
infer properties of particular organisms from general claims about the biota; one always has to
look at the particular. I shall not, though, press the moral, for the difference between the two
cases is what is important. See Chomsky (1995) for the perfection speculation at work; for
more informal discussions, see Chomsky (2000a, chp.1; 2000b).
130 John Collins

explanation, and nor, therefore, to a definite sense of mystery for humans. Of

course, we are just another species, but such modesty obliges us to concede
no more than our lack of omniscience. The analogy may well convince us that
there will be some problems or other that we are just not fit to solve, but this
gives no support to an endogenous demarcation between problems and mys-
teries. Simply put: the rat analogy militates for our epistemic boundedness, but
it does not tell in favour of the SFF thesis. Chomsky and McGinn appear to
conflate the two ideas, but they are quite distinct. The SFF thesis would cer-
tainly count as an explanation of our cognitive limits, but we can be cogni-
tively limited without a SFF; more to the point, a SFF appears to be the ‘best
explanation’ simply because it is read into the supposedly independent
explanandum.
The source of this illicit conflation, I think, is the contrast between cogni-
tive closure and supernaturalism. Chomsky assumes that if there is no cogni-
tive closure that allows for a demarcation (to some degree of precision) of
problems and mysteries, an identification of mysteries as mysteries, then
humanity is potentially omniscient (especially see Chomsky, 1988, pp. 158-
9). By modus tollens, he arrives at the desired result. This inference is never
questioned, perhaps because there are those, after Pierce, who have thought
that evolution has equipped us with a sure way to the truth (cf., Dennett, 1995,
chp.13.) Also, Chomsky does at times appear to identify the two notions: the
SFF thesis is a mere tag which dignifies our ignorance of the biological basis
of our epistemic boundedness. But if this is all that is intended, then it is unduly
presumptive to speak of a faculty, still more so, a faculty for science. How-
ever Chomsky intends to gloss ‘SFF’, which will be investigated below, to
reject epistemic immodesty is not to commend an endogenous demarcation.
Chomsky’s inference harbours an exhaustive disjunction – endogenously
determined closure or omniscience – that we should not accept. Lack of such
closure does not entail omniscience or anything remotely supernatural.
For the purpose of questioning the entailment, let us assume that we do not
have fixed conceptual resources. There is no SFF; instead, it is genuinely inde-
terminate what we may understand. This may be so if a completed neuro-
science and cognitive psychology would not provide us with a list, as it were,
of domains we may understand; rather, we find that, cognitively speaking, the
brain contains some relatively autonomous components that follow an onto-
genetic pattern as default, while others are much more inter-modal and dif-
ferentiated. Our completed theories do not tell us if we can know what dark
matter really is or whether the continuum hypothesis is true or false. Indeed,
we cannot even tell what range of concepts, bound or unbound, the brain can
support: each brain, it turns out, is different in significant respects. For my
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 131

present purposes I need not suggest that this scenario is true. My argument
only requires that it is consistent with what we presently know about the
brain.4 The scenario certainly deserves such modest credit, especially given
that our concern is with fine grained notions of individual concepts and
hypotheses.
Now the above view is not one of cognitive closure in the relevant sense;
equally, it patently does not imply omniscience or any other supernatural prop-
erty. One’s possessing a SFF is not a necessary condition for one not being a
god. There may simply be no answer to what we may or may not understand,
at least none from a complete science of the mind/brain. Human nature may
leave undetermined the limit of our cognitive reach. A corollary is that if we
still want to ask, ‘In principle, what can humans understand?’, then we should
acknowledge that the question is no longer to be construed as straightfor-
wardly empirical. Rather, we are asking something like, ‘If humans with their
current cognitive make-up were to carry on indefinitely, what domains would
resist explanation?’ With the secure foundation of fixed conceptual resources
removed, it is very difficult to begin to assess this question, for any answer
will be sensitive to a myriad of factors: not only our cognitive structure, but
also many exogenous factors: the kind of traditions that develop, the kind of
stuff there in fact is in the universe, the technology we develop, the kind of
assistance, if any, we receive from alien life-forms, and maybe just sheer luck.
This is not to say that there are no mysteries, and only problems; the appro-
priate conclusion is that the distinction between the two cannot be empirically
grounded; rather than being an issue in cognitive science, the question is a
piece of futurology, interesting enough to speculate on, but not something to
be greatly exercised about. The dialectical moral is this: a rejection of strong
closure is not conceptually or empirically concomitant with our deification;
far from the problem-mystery distinction being an independent notion that the
SFF thesis naturally explains, it is the thesis that motivates the supposed cog-
nitive division. This conclusion should not be surprising: one can hardly
expect to arrive at specific theses about human cognition from broad inchoate
observations.
I shall shortly look at some arguments which seek to support the SFF the-
sis directly; before doing so, I shall look at another consideration – failure –
of a more general nature.
4 Such a view is perhaps close to that of Dennett (1995), Churchland (1989), and Clark

(1996). More generally, an empiricist theory of cognition would tend towards indeterminacy
about what can be known, whereas a rationalist or Kantian one would tend towards determi-
nacy. My point, though, is orthogonal to this traditional divide. Cognitive design space is vast
and we know very little about the area humans occupy; therefore, any inference from non-
omniscience to architecturally specifiable epistemic limits is quite unsafe.
132 John Collins

Unlike McGinn (1991) on consciousness, Chomsky does not affect to

know whether this or that domain is mysterious, even so he appeals to poten-
tial mysteries such as linguistic creativity.5 No-one is yet in a position to say
that consciousness or linguistic creativity are definitely not mysteries; that
would require coherent theories of the phenomena, something none of us pos-
sess. I do not think, though, that our historical failure to explain these phe-
nomena or any others intimates that there is a SFF that lacks the appropriate
conceptual resources. I shall argue for this negative thesis by suggesting that
a history of failure may be properly explained in more modest terms.
Chomsky, of course, does not take the failure of previous accounts of cre-
ativity to demonstrate mystery; ditto for McGinn (1991) and Nagel (1986,
1995) vis-à-vis consciousness. Nevertheless, an inductive comfort is felt in
past failings; they are taken to be “suggestive” or indicative that the time has
come to give up.6 We should, however, not be moved to pass from failure to
mystery.
Patently, no amount of failure allows us to infer mystery. But in what way,
then, is failure suggestive? Charitably, the history of science is one of equal
proportion of failure and success; and where there is success, failure always
threatens as research programs wax and wane and data accumulate. If we are
to be moved by simple failure, we might as well declare the universe and all
that’s in it a complete mystery. After all, science is not in the proof business.
For failure to intimate mystery, the lack of success must be peculiar.
A mark of potential mystery to which some have appealed is that we, as it
were, ‘stare blankly’ at a problem, nothing is forthcoming. This characterisa-
tion, however, is hardly descriptive, it is a judgement on the efforts made, or
worse, an assessment of the authors’ own efforts. No problem induces blank
stares, whether literally or metaphorically, in everyone. Consciousness cer-
tainly does not as the groaning book shelves and increasing number of ‘cen-
tres’ and conferences testify. Of course, one is free to think that such output

5 Chomsky (1986, 1991a) dubs the question of creativity Descartes’s problem: How are

we able to use language for the free expression of our thoughts? Ironically, precisely because
we have some very good ideas about the structure of language, a better case can be made, I
think, for the mystery of language use than can be for consciousness. Thanks to the great
advances made in linguistics, we have a quite precise working notion of linguistic competence,
and much corroborating data. Against such a background we might reasonably hope for at least
a working explanation of creativity. But this we do not have.
6 McGinn (1991, p. 7): “longstanding historical failure is suggestive, but scarcely con-

clusive”. Nagel (1995, p. 97): “The various attempts to carry out this apparently impossible
task [i.e., explaining consciousness] and the arguments to show that they have failed, make up
the history of the philosophy of mind during the past fifty years”. Pinker (1997, p. 562): “the
species’ best minds have flung themselves at the puzzles for millennia but have made no
progress”.
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 133

does not amount to much more than a blank stare, but one would thereby be
offering a slanted evaluation, not a neutral criterion of mystery. Alternatively,
failure might take the form of an absence of science: a domain is identified,
but neither a methodology nor predictive/explanatory theories are produced.
Failure on such a scale would certainly intimate that something is grievously
amiss, but, again, we are far from a suggestion of mystery.
Prior to Darwin, it is fair to say that while there were theories of evolution
(witness Lamarck and Geoffrey), they did not provide sound mechanical
explanations of the origins and inheritance of traits which lead to species
diversity and similarity. Indeed, the very idea of species evolution was ten-
dentious; perhaps the then dominant view in biology was the neoclassical one
that dismissed the very idea that one species may ‘change’ into another.7 A rea-
sonable person might well have declared, and many did, that life was a mys-
tery, the province of divine ordinance. With the re-discovery of genes and the
discovery of DNA, Darwin’s theory is now the background for modern biol-
ogy. Such has been this success that the very idea of an élan vital is now as
egregious as that of a res cogitans. This transformation, from not even a recog-
nition of evolution to advances favourably comparable to those of post-Galileo
physics, took just over a hundred years. Thus, there is a precedent for ‘blank
stares’ to metamorphose quickly into paradigmatic science. It is always too
soon, it seems, to gainsay intellectual advance.
More tendentiously, the human sciences, in contrast to the physical sci-
ences, exhibit a failure to progress and in many cases predictive or explana-
tory hypotheses are not even sought. An assessment of the human sciences by
the present criterion might lead one to think mystery endemic in the human
domain. Would this be a reasonable conclusion?
Well, is homo more complex, mysterious even, than DNA, quantum
mechanics, analysis, relativity theory, etc.? We are encouraged to think so
merely on the basis of the lack of scientific success. We have, however, no
clear, neutral sense of what conceptual complexity amounts to, still less a
domain-independent metric of it. The relevant variables for any interesting
social problem might be too astronomical to control for, but this would not
constitute a mystery in the present sense. Friendly aliens might lend us their
super computers. Consider: a four-colour-like theorem might be unprovable

7 The now standard view is that, before Darwin, a dogmatic and degenerating

Aristotelian essentialism prevailed (see, e.g., Mayr, 1982; for a dissenting voice, see Depew
and Weber, 1995). What is certainly true is that after Darwin (ultimately, the New Synthesis)
evolution is not a phenomenon to be seriously disputed and, furthermore, natural selection is
recognised as the principal mechanism of change, if not the whole story.
134 John Collins

in the absence of computer assistance, but it would not therefore be mysteri-

ous. Perhaps the problem with homo is more mundane.
Chomsky (1979, p. 57) himself has likened the methodology of sociology
to butterfly collection: lots of interesting data, if one likes that kind of thing,
but nothing approaching explanation. Chomsky (1968/72, pp. 24-6) also sug-
gests that a deep problem with the scientific investigation of that we are most
familiar with is that we think we already know the facts, and so waste our
efforts trying to systematise and explain what are in reality chimera. Chom-
sky’s assault on behaviourism is a paradigm of the required process of defa-
miliarisation. Perhaps we are awaiting a similar development vis-à-vis con-
sciousness. In short, a more modest judgement is that there is nothing
inherently mysterious about homo, the problem is that we continuously adopt
the wrong approach. It is an interesting historical question why this should be
so, but there need be no portent of mystery. Indeed, what is probably most
inimical to the progress of the human sciences is the unfortunate, though per-
haps unavoidable, usurpation of method by political agendas, both left and
right. Again, this is something Chomsky has taught us.
I should not suggest that the retrieval of a criterion of mystery from a his-
tory of failure is impossible, but I fail to see how it could be reasonably made
in the face of historical precedent and more modest explanations. Let us, how-
ever, move to Chomsky’s particular considerations for the existence of a
human SFF rather than mysteries in general.

Faculties and Science

Let us assume that cognition is not served by a general purpose device; instead,
the mind is divided into a number of dedicated devices that support a range of
competencies and capacities. Think of the nomenclature ‘faculty’ as (inten-
tionally) picking out such devices in terms of the domain-specific principles
and concepts particular to them. This somewhat fuzzy characterisation is for
a reason.
Fodor (1983, 2000) reads Chomsky’s notion of a faculty epistemologically
rather than functionally, i.e., a Chomskyan faculty is a body of information a
subject knows, not an architectural component. I think Fodor is right in as
much as Chomsky’s theories are not processing stories, as many assume. One
could, therefore, accept that Θ−theory, binding theory, et al. are innate while
holding that the mind is a general purpose device. Fodor, however, is not quite
right. Chomsky uses ‘faculty’ (and ‘organ’ and ‘module’) ambiguously (some-
what like his use of ‘grammar’): it sometimes denotes a body of information,
that which we cognize, at other times it denotes the cognitive mechanism that
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 135

supports that information and interfaces with performance systems (informa-

tion cannot interface with anything.) This is not sloppiness: for Chomsky, there
is no question about the ‘psychological reality’ of a grammar apart from its
explanatory worth; if it proves so worthy, then the grammar is an accurate,
albeit abstract, intentional description of a yet unknown physical mechanism.
Chomsky is assuming (contra the generalist) that there are dedicated devices
(brain areas) without speculating upon their operational specification; and so
the devices do not individuate the faculties (see Chomsky, 1988, pp. 7-8). Con-
sequently, a ‘Chomskyan’ faculty is a loser notion (qua intentional) than
Fodor’s (1983) modules (effectively, input systems). In particular, faculties
need not be automatic, inaccessible, or encapsulated. They do, though, follow
a biologically fixed maturation process: given a uniform initial state and expe-
riential input, they determine a final state that supports a mature competence.
This final state may also be uniform, as it appears to be with, say, the theory
of mind faculty; or it might be non-uniform, as it clearly is with the language
faculty, i.e., different input determines different I-languages. As indicated, the
bare idea of modules or faculties admits great variation (more of which below),
though let us stay with the sketch at hand.
Now, if we conjecture that the human mind has a faculty architecture, some
diagnostics have to be in play so that we may identify the faculty based com-
petencies, for not all competencies are so supported. For example, line danc-
ing, car repair, origami, chicken sexing, etc. are all competencies, but we are
not moved to posit, say, a line dancing faculty. But we do posit faculties for
language, theory of mind et al. This difference provides an angle on the diag-
nostics appropriate for a faculty competence.
Faculties are fixed as part of our biological endowment; the principles
therein specified are thus innate, unlearnt. This gives us some ready diagnos-
tics. First, a candidate faculty based competence must be uniform across the
species within intelligible bounds of difference; it cannot be a culturally spe-
cific capacity. In short, the competence must be a trait of the species. Second,
the competence must follow a fairly strict ontogenic course; for since the blue-
print of the development of the competence is genetically coded for, the com-
petence should be invariant across a wide variety of experiences. Explicit
teaching, for example, should not make a significant difference to the speed
of the development or the final competence arrived at. Third, the competence
and its development should, to some degree, be invariant over various patholo-
gies, injuries and differences in intelligence. A faculty F is a device dedicated
to a specific domain; disturbance to another faculty, therefore, should not nec-
essarily lead to disturbance to F. Pace Fodor (1983, 2000) and his modules, it
is perfectly coherent to view some faculties as enjoying proprietary interfaces
136 John Collins

with one another, while others may work in isolation (Collins, 2000).8 Fourthly,
the competence should reach normal maturity in the face of a poverty of stimu-
lus. This diagnostic is essentially just another way of saying that the competence
acquired is underdetermined by the data available to the child. After all, if a com-
petence were determined by some learning regime or a certain set of stimuli (no
matter how complex), it would be redundant to claim that it is supported by a
faculty, for the competence could apparently be acquired independent of any
prior principles or concepts specific to the competence’s domain (here I exclude
general principles of, say, association, if such there are).
It should be transparent that the diagnostics delineated do not fit line danc-
ing, etc. The diagnostics do fit linguistic competence and face recognition, and
a good although still highly controversial case can be made for them fitting
theory of mind.9 Let us hypothesize, then, that these diagnostics are indeed cri-
terial of a faculty competence. Do the diagnostics identify our scientific
endeavours as faculty based? This is a difficult question because Chomsky is,
I think, somewhat unclear on how the notion of a SFF is to be understood.
The problem is this: we can give ‘science’ a strict construal under which it
primarily covers our paradigms of successful scientific theories. Under this
reading, a SFF is a kind of theory selector, determining those domains in which
we can achieve some success. Alternatively, we may construe science in a lib-
eral way as covering any thinking (practise) that is guided by certain meta-
principles (supra-empirical virtues). So read, a SFF is simply the seat, as it
were, of the set of principles which enter into our construction and evaluation
of theories. Now while a case can be made, I think, for the view that some
such principles are innate and uniform throughout the species, it also seems
obvious that such principles are domain general, not specific, and that they
support neither the problem-mystery distinction, nor the associated model
favoured by Chomsky whereby our SFF is supposed to determine a subset of
the set of true theories. If, faced with such difficulties, we revert to the first,
strict construal of science, so that the putative SFF meets these demands, then
we lose the positive readings on the diagnostics. Either way, therefore, the SFF
thesis appears to be in some disrepair.
Let us first look at the strict construal, which is, I think, highly implausi-
ble; it does, though, have its interest. Science, we might say, is paradigmati-
cally represented by the theories found in text books of say Newtonian

8 Fodor (2000, p. 62-3) does entertain what might be called distributional encapsulation,

where modules enjoy (architecturally constrained) access to other modules’ databases, but such
organisation is clearly exceptional for Fodor.
9 See Segal (1996) for, to my mind, a sound defence of the modularity of theory of mind.
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 137

mechanics, statistical thermodynamics, general relativity, Bohr’s atom theory,

etc., where generalisations are sought that are explanatory and predictive of
future cases on the basis of postulated unobservables that unify otherwise dis-
parate phenomena. Under this construal, a SFF may be understood as a device
that gives us access to those concepts and principles required for fecund gen-
eralisations over the domains in question (e.g., atoms or the structure of space),
while other domains remain closed to us, for our SFF simply lacks the appro-
priate conceptual resources. When Chomsky and McGinn claim that our SFF
determines but a subset of the set of possible scientific theories, and that we
may determine what domains are mysterious to us, it is difficult not to have
such a construal in mind. My initial analogy between the SFF and the language
faculty (and the attendant quotation from Chomsky) followed such a line, for
it is one that makes perfect sense of the problem-mystery distinction. This con-
ception, however, appears to tell us that the kind of science typical of the West
for the past 400 or so years is as cognitively determined as language is. If this
is the conception, then it is surely mistaken.
Science, as exemplified by, say, general relativity theory, is a fairly recent
product of Western culture and there is no evidence whatsoever for its being a
species trait. Nor, of course, does it have an ontogeny: normal human matura-
tion does not produce scientists; it requires a great amount of explicit instruc-
tion for one to grasp the theories characteristic of the last few centuries. Equally,
being a scientist, so to speak, is not invariant under differences or changes of
intelligence or cognitive capacity: no-one expects scientific competence to be
selectively spared or impaired and there is, of course, no evidence for any such
pathological profile. The reason for this is that grasping and working with a the-
ory appears to require a battery of competencies and capacities: distinct kinds
of reasoning (e.g., deductive and analogical), good long- and short-term mem-
ory, mathematical and linguistic knowledge, experimental design, etc. So much
I take to be indisputable. Finally, the poverty of stimulus diagnostic does not
apply either (I shall look at this diagnostic separately in § 5 with reference to
the more plausible liberal construal.) We learn scientific theories, we do not
acquire them from partial and degraded data. Indeed, to acquire a theory, we
typically need to be inundated with stimulus (lectures, text books, conversations,
experiments, etc.), and even then we consistently make all kinds of errors. Per-
haps, then, Chomsky has something different in mind.

Consider:
“The basic elements of rational inquiry may have some of the properties of such cognitive
systems as the language faculty, though the ways they are employed are surely quite differ-
ent: scientific knowledge does not grow in the mind of someone placed in an environment”
(Chomsky, 1980, p. 140).
138 John Collins

Quite! Notwithstanding the apparent support the strict construal receives from
Chomsky, here he seems to be advancing what I earlier called the liberal con-
strual under which science is simply a kind of thinking marked by our pre-
disposition to judge according to certain principles. By this reading, our SFF,
in some sense, leads us one way rather than another through the space of the-
ories, but it does not code for any such route, we cannot, as it were, read off
the theory of natural selection, say, from the neonatal brain. Where we are at
a given period will be a function of a background of past theories, especially
the successful ones, but this history and future progress is shaped or canaled
by the kind of answers our SFF permits according to its principles. This is the
model Chomsky appears to present in his 1988, chp. 5. Chomsky (2000a, pp.
82-3; also 1980, p. 140) offers empirical test, elegance, and criteria of intelli-
gibility, as potential candidates for such principles; we may add simplicity,
exhibition of causal structure (‘Mill’s methods’, perhaps) and other such meta-
empirical notions.
As I indicated above, while this latter construal does not suffer from the
same impairments as its restrictive counterpart, it does have its own problems.
The first thing to note about the proposed principles is that they are not domain
specific: simplicity, elegance, testability, etc. are applicable to any field. Thus,
if a SFF has no domain specificity, then it really makes no difference whether
one says that the history of science has been shaped by our SFF or, vacuously,
by our thought. Put only slightly otherwise, a SFF would simply be for think-
ing as such. Indeed, Fodor (1983, 2000) takes cognition which is governed by
such global principles to be precisely that kind of thinking which is not domain
specific, in contrast to the cognition that is served by modules with their pro-
prietary databases. Of course, the operative notion of a domain is somewhat
vague; still, one reason why language and face recognition, say, appear to be
faculty competencies is that their domains are so idiosyncratic: our proficiency
in the domains calls for specific information about verb structure, vertical sym-
metry of eyes, mouth, et al. In contrast, the principles under consideration
appear to have no idiosyncratic domain. From finding one’s way home or find-
ing a lost sock to arranging a wedding or building a kennel for the dog, each
requires principles of reason and testing, even if, perhaps, only in the imagi-
nation. Any rational belief fixation requires some constraining, otherwise, we
would be afflicted with the frame problem, which, in point of fact, we never
are. Consider, specifically, the notion of causal structure, which appears to
have a strong innate basis (Sperber, et al., 1995): we like theories to give us
causal mechanisms; such is why, inter alia, Einstein gives us a better theory
of gravitation than Newton and why no-one but cranks take morphic reso-
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 139

nance to be a serious hypothesis. Equally, however, we impose causal struc-

ture on everything we come across: if we cannot discern a causal pattern, we
tend to retire in bemusement, but not always. Sometimes we forego causal
structure (see below).
It might be that we can delineate science-specific notions of simplicity, ele-
gance, etc., but we cannot assume that there are such principles without beg-
ging the question at issue, for such an assumption amounts to a presumptive
specification of a SFF. Moreover, we have no independent good reason to
think that there are any science-specific abductive principles. As it stands,
therefore, ‘SFF’ is a misnomer; for why speak of a faculty for science when
precious little is excluded? The whole point of faculty-theorising is to divide
and conquer, to isolate specific competencies and attempt to see what kinds of
peculiar information and principles best explain the observed proficiency.
There is no theoretical gain in hypothesising a faculty which appears to serve
(more or less) the whole of thought.
How, then, are we to understand the faculty-ness of the SFF? Perhaps we
are employing ‘faculty’ too precisely; Chomsky (1975b, pp.155-6; 1988, pp.
156-9) does explicitly draw the analogy between language and science, but it
is clearly not meant to be a tight one. The issue here is the extent to which a
SFF can be domain neutral (unlike language) without becoming indistin-
guishable from a vacuous notion of general intelligence or rationality. Let us
look at some potentially pertinent proposals.
On Fodor’s (1983, 2000) view, the mind/brain broadly divides into some
components that are domain-specific (for Fodor, these are modules that serve
input cognition: vision, olfaction, parsing, etc.) and others that are domain
general (or perhaps just one), these serving central cognition, i.e., rational
belief fixation. Although it is rarely, if ever, noted, the theory theory view (e.g.,
Gopnik and Wellman, 1994, and Gopnik and Meltzoff, 1997) is close to
Fodor’s position to the extent that both resist the view that central, rational
thought is modular, i.e., rational belief fixation is not served by an ensemble
of dedicated, domain specific, encapsulated components; still less do Fodor
and the theory theorists commend a module dedicated to science.10 Instead,
both posit innate domain general principles of theory formation and confir-
mation which, we may presume, have shaped the history of science. So, is this

10 The closeness is not even noted by Gopnik and Meltzoff (1997), who run Fodor togeth-

er with the central module crowd in evolutionary psychology (Ibid, p. 58), while also suggest-
ing the theory theory view can tell a story about Fodor’s central system! They also
fallaciously conflate Fodor’s parser module with Chomsky’s language faculty (Ibid, Chp. 2,
passim) (see below, especially n.15).
140 John Collins

not a tale of a SFF?11 Fodor himself is non-committal as to the organisation of

central cognition: organisation there surely is, but without new concepts, we
haven’t a clue how to account for it (for Fodor, 1983, p. 107, “the more global
[i.e., less modular] a cognitive process is, the less anybody understands it.”.)
Even so, the principles of belief fixation captured by our putative principles
are, for Fodor, innate and can be selectively impaired (e.g., it follows from
Fodor’s account that rational belief fixation could be impaired while linguis-
tic competence remains intact.) Where Fodor demurs on principle, the theory
theory view can be understood as offering a story about belief fixation (see
Gopnik and Meltzoff, 1997, pp. 63-7). Peripheral modules output the data
which forms the evidence for theory construction on the basis of an initial
innate structure, guided by meta-empirical principles.12 A proper assessment
of Fodor’s account and the theory theory view is beyond my present scope;
fortunately though, at least for my dialectic, neither approach is flush with the
SFF notion Chomsky appears to favour.
Chomsky clearly does not view faculties as theories that are developed
according to domain general principles; on the contrary, he eschews the very
idea of anything approaching a general intelligence in favour of common-
sense faculties, a mathematics faculty, a musical one, etc. Chomsky (1988, p.
47-8) avers: “in any domain…, specific… capacities enter into the acquisition
and use of belief and knowledge”; general mechanisms, “if they exist”, enjoy,
at best, a “doubtful” role. Chomsky (e.g., 1980, p. 135) certainly rejects the
application of domain general theorising with respect to linguistic deve-
lopment, which, for Chomsky, has nothing whatsoever to do with finding
simple and elegant hypotheses or analogical reasoning or any hypothesis
testing at all.
Might a SFF be understood as an abstraction from, or construction out of,
a collection of domain-specific faculties or theories? A SFF, by such a sug-
gestion, would be constituted from our endowed folk understanding of biol-
ogy, physics, etc. This suggestion might be finessed by appeal to Carey and
Spelke (1994). They rightly acknowledge that explicit science is quite differ-
ent from our developmental theorising (if such is what we do) precisely

11 One striking correspondence is that Gopnik and Meltzoff (1997, pp. 26-7/53) claim

that the innate principles (prediction, explanation, etc.) which govern theory formation also
explain scientific convergence. This is one of Chomsky’s key claims (see §5).
12 Gopnik and Wellman (1994) and Gopnik and Meltzoff (1997) follow Karmiloff-Smith

(1992) in assuming that modularity (the faculty approach) has trouble explaining development.
The thought is wholly confused. Of course modules develop, the point is that the crucial deter-
minant of development is the normal maturation of the brain under normal stimulus conditions.
Chomsky makes this point every time he puts pen to paper. It is the theory theory approach, I
should say, that is in trouble (see n.14).
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 141

because it is not restricted to, nor directly constrained by, the domain-specific
‘core’ knowledge which may reasonably be thought of as innate. But they also
picture science proper as enabled (and so limited?) by analogical mappings
across the innate domains which constitute ‘constructed’ knowledge.13 Well,
what makes Carey and Spelke’s hypothesis, and perhaps other such boot-
strapping models, provisionally sound is that the notion of analogical map-
pings allows scientific thinking to come under the purview of developmental
cognitive science without egregiously restricting science to what the child nat-
urally arrives at. The notion, however, is also so loose as to be of scant help
in constructing a workable notion of a SFF. After all, anything is analogous to
anything else. I cannot imagine what the evidence would look like for the
claim that the admissible theories are restricted by innate analogical possibil-
ities. For example, we tend to analogise on the basis of our most complex
machines (water pumps, clocks, computers, etc.), but none of this is innately
specified in the relevant respect. Indeed, if we consider the extent to which
explicit theorising in any given domain has departed from our intuitive out-
look, then it seems that the restriction our ‘natural’ view places on science is
approximately zero. The data there are to support the existence of ‘science’
faculties indicates that they are of a distinctively Aristotelian stripe, an out-
look long since rejected in every area of our understanding of the natural world
(see, e.g., Keil, 1989).14
It bears noting that if Chomsky were commending the SFF thesis as a story
about the principles of central cognition, then he would be quite inconsistent.
Chomsky’s language faculty is not a Fodorian peripheral module; rather, it is
a system that is for thinking (if anything), it is not a mere parser.15 Chomsky,
then, cannot consistently hold to the claim that central cognition (the seat of
thinking) is governed by domain general principles. There is, however, a more

13 Pinker (1997, Chp. 5) appears to share this view insofar as he explicitly rejects a fac-

ulty for science, but (Chp. 8) argues that we are epistemically bound due to our core endowed
knowledge. Pinker’s reasoning here, however, unlike that of Chomsky, is that natural selection
has constrained what we might understand to being less than the whole truth.
14 There is a serious question as to whether the theory theory approach is distinctive

enough to give us the required domain general principles. The problem is this. The child is
understood to fixate on certain evidentially constrained theories; the child’s brain is built to
arrive at them. This is evidenced by the fact that the theories are more or less uniform across
the species. But thesis and evidence are here unstable: to account for the uniformity, the theo-
ry theorist must enrich the principles the child employs, but the more rich they become, the less
evidence the child requires and the less theory-like the ‘theories’ become. It is therefore moot,
I think, whether the theory theory view offers a coherent alternative to the faculty approach. In
short, the child just isn’t like the scientist, and vice versa. (see Leslie, 2000 for other deep wor-
ries.)
15 For Chomsky’s explicit rejection of the Fodor view, at least regarding language, see

Chomsky (1986, p.14, n.10; 1991a, pp.19-21; 2000a, pp.117-8).

142 John Collins

fundamental problem with the idea of a SFF answering to either the Fodor or
to the theory theory view.
Chomsky’s discussions of the feasibility of a SFF are always presented in
the context of the problem-mystery distinction. The two ideas appear to be
mutually supporting: the SFF hypothesis offers a cognitive explanation of the
distinction; without it we would have no independent ground to say of any
domain that it is mysterious. Concomitantly, the supposed intuitive coherency
of the distinction (as discussed in § 3) gives credence to the view that science
is not the play of a general, unbounded intelligence. Neither the Fodor nor the
theory-theory view support such a position on the problem-mystery distinc-
tion.
Fodor (1983, §V) certainly thinks that there are mysteries; he reasons that
since cognition is innately structured, there are endogenously determined lim-
its on the kind of hypotheses we can entertain. Crucially, however, this has lit-
tle to do with Fodor’s particular architecture of modules and central systems:
any view that gives cognition a fixed architecture of information control and
access is bound to admit the possibility that the world might throw up a prob-
lem which cannot be answered by our minds.16 This reasoning, though, is in
line with my happy concession in § 3. There I suggested that human thinking,
like that of any other organism, is most certainly epistemically bound. But this
is just to admit that we are not potentially omniscient; it is not to concede that
the structure of cognition demarcates between theories, determines a subset of
true theories. Fodor’s account, then, does not give us the kind of cognitive
explanation Chomsky expects. Indeed, Fodor agrees with Chomsky that if cog-
nition is thoroughly modular, then we shall have a clear demarcation of prob-
lems and mysteries, but Fodor’s (1983, 2000) key claim is precisely to deny
the antecedent here: that the mind is not massively modular is what makes it
mysterious!
The theory theory view also fails to give Chomsky the support he wants
for the problem-mystery distinction. The point here is straightforward and is
independent of the details of the theory theory approach. The general princi-
ples at issue are comparative ones: they help us decide between theories or
hypotheses, they do not produce the theories for us. It makes very little sense,
for example, to say that we only select simple theories. We favour the simpler
theory, ceteris paribus. The rider accommodates the fact that we happily neg-
lect the dictates of a given principle, if so doing gives us a greater, all-round

16 E.g., Fodor (1983, p. 123) thinks that even a wild-eyed generalist position such as

Hume’s is still endogenously restricted because such ‘minds’ can only access information
derived from perceptual input.
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 143

fit with the other principles: as regards causal structure, the move from Carte-
sian to Newtonian mechanics is an example; so is, perhaps, the development
of quantum mechanics this century. Being comparative, these principles can-
not preclude certain hypotheses or theories from consideration, they can only
advice us against them once they are on the table, as it were. Consider, for
example, one of Chomsky’s (2000a, p. 85) speculative examples: dark matter.
There are a number of proposals on the market, involving, variously, the size
and shape of the universe, the presence of super-massive (hence, super-dense)
black holes, hitherto undetected elementary particles, etc. Now let us hypoth-
esise that the nature of dark matter is mysterious for us. In what way could
this be a function of our meta-empirical principles? It is certainly not to the
point to say that the true theory is too complex. It might be too complex, but
this would have nothing to do with our favouring simplicity; after all, if the
correct theory is too complex to entertain, then we cannot get around to judg-
ing its simplicity relative to another theory. What if the truth of the matter did
not admit to a causal explanation? Again, this would not necessarily portend
mystery. A variety of indeterminacy hypotheses have been happily entertained
and accepted in the absence of a settled interpretation (read ‘mechanism’),
notoriously, the collapsing wave packet in quantum theory. We like causal
mechanisms, but we can and do forego them; mutatis mutandis, I submit, for
the other principles. The principles help us decide between the theories on the
table, but they will not reject all the theories, still less provide a licence for us
to say that no theory will do. Again, therefore, the theory theory approach,
even if it were otherwise acceptable to Chomsky, does not provide for a cog-
nitive explanation of the problem-mystery distinction.
The position we have arrived at is that while the strict construal of science is
patently inadequate to satisfy any of the faculty diagnostics, it clearly does make
sense of the problem-mystery distinction in the way Chomsky sets it up. On the
other hand, while the views we have just been considering do offer the kind of
principles relevant to theory construction and assessment that may well be innate
(if not quite faculty-like), they do not offer a cognitive ground for the theory
demarcation Chomsky wants. Perhaps, as it seems, Chomsky wants it both ways.
It must be kept in mind that Chomsky’s SFF is an unabashed speculation and, for
all we presently know, there might be innate principles that are rich and specific
enough to determine the set of theories we may access. As it stands, I think the
proposal falls between the two stools of the strict and liberal construals.
In the next and final section I shall look at Chomsky’s specific argument
for a SFF based upon the poverty of stimulus diagnostic. This separate treat-
ment is apposite, for Chomsky, at least in one place, appears to understand our
fourth diagnostic as the crucial one.
144 John Collins

Induction and Convergence

For Chomsky, the most telling indicator that a competence is faculty-based is
its satisfaction of our fourth diagnostic. We have already seen, though, that sci-
ence is not a competence in the way that language is, say: our acceptance of
the theory of geodesic planetary orbits is patently not underdetermined by data
in the same way that our acceptance of the principles of binding theory is. In
what respect, then, does the fourth diagnostic militate for a SFF? Chomsky
(1975b, p.24-5; cf. 1971, pp.49-50) has contended that without a SFF “it would
be impossible for scientists to converge in their judgement on particular
explanatory theories that go far beyond the evidence at hand,... while at the
same time rejecting much evidence as irrelevant or beside the point, for the
moment at least” [my emphasis]. The nature of the inference here appears to
be that if our convergence is to be possible (not a miracle), we need extra-
empirical principles to weed out all but a few of the contrary theories that we
could otherwise find to comport with the data; a SFF is simply the seat of such
principles. I must say that I find this argument to be very weak indeed; before
demonstrating why, however, a word of caution is in order.
Chomsky’s early views were certainly motivated by Quine and, especially,
Goodman’s work on induction: Chomsky agreed with many others that uncon-
strained induction is untenable, whether as a model of learning or the norms
of science, but he also rejected any empiricist band-aids to cover the problem
(see Chomsky, 1975a, Introduction). Chomsky, to my knowledge, however,
offers the above direct argument to a SFF only in the two places cited above
(see below for a qualification); his more recent discussions simply associate
the SFF thesis with the coherency of the problem-mystery distinction (e.g.,
Chomsky, 1991b, p. 41; 1993, pp. 44-5; 2000a, pp. 82-3). Perhaps, then,
Chomsky’s considered view is that there is no inference from the inductive
practise of science to the existence of a SFF (cf., Chomsky, 1980, pp. 139-40).
Whatever the case may be, the argument is worth considering, for it purports
to offer precisely the backing the SFF thesis requires.
Chomsky’s concern, of course, is with the cognitive basis of our rational-
ity, not with the clarification of the concepts of validity or justification. That
humans, especially in their scientific mode, are concerned to cleave to rational
norms, tells us a simple truth about human thought: there is a slack between
our receipt of data and the convergent beliefs we arrive at. Such a slack, how-
ever, amounts to no more than the fact that we are not blank slates. Crucially,
the possibility remains open that the innate equipment that enters into our abil-
ity to take up the slack is not the set of the methodological principles that gov-
ern self-conscious scientific investigation and even if it is, it does not follow,
as made clear above, that the equipment makes up a faculty. All that does fol-
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 145

low is that the scientist needs some innate equipment to be so much as a thinker
as opposed to a S-R device. Let us see this in some detail.
An underdetermination thesis UT says, for some set of methodological
canons C, that data-set D does not confirm or corroborate a theory T on the
basis of C at the expense of all other contrary theories. Now if we do in fact
converge on T, then, relative to UT, any potential addition to C would over-
ride the underdetermination problem, i.e., UT would not show that there is no
rational justified choice to be had. It might be that every theory is underdeter-
mined by every possible D given any C, but I know of no argument that
attempts to show that this is so. To assess any given UT then, we need to ask
whether the associated C is reasonable or realistic. If the answer is ‘No’, then
we do not have a sound underdetermination claim; if the answer is ‘Yes’, then
we do. So, Chomsky is perfectly correct in thinking that some C is required,
but the requirement is not based on a need to overcome underdetermination;
C is needed so that our theories may rationally confront the data in the first
place, whether or not the confrontation leads to underdetermination. Where,
then, does the claim come from that the scientists’ C must be innate? For all
that has been said, it is still open to think of C as the product of our thought,
rather than being our thought as such, as it were. It looks as if the claim that
scientists’ C is the innate content of a faculty floats free of any underdetermi-
nation thesis.
Consider Hume on induction. Hume demonstrated the deductive underde-
termination of theories (hypotheses); that is, for any D, if theory T is confirmed
by entailing D, then there are contrary theories that are equally confirmed. This
notion of underdetermination, however, amounts to the now trivial claim that
scientific inference is non-demonstrative or, so as not to exclude the Popper-
ian, deduction cannot amount to justification. As regards Chomsky’s inference
to a SFF, if this is the only underdetermination a scientist must face, then all
that follows about convergence is that it cannot be explained on the assump-
tion that the scientist’s canons are wholly deductive. For example, theories T1,
T2,…Tn might all entail D, but if T1 were the only theory consistent with an
associated favoured theory Tn+1, then it would be rational to choose T1. Other-
wise put, Chomsky’s argument can be spiked by so little as an appeal to a sin-
gle canon of reason (e.g., choose the theory that least disrupts your other com-
mitments) that goes beyond the entailment of D; there is not a whiff here of an
inference to an innate SFF. I do not mean to suggest, of course, that any such
canon(s) would in fact uniquely single out a theory in any epistemic scenario;
my point is only that deductive underdetermination leaves such an option open.
As indicated above, a notion of underdetermination closer to what Chom-
sky has in mind is the one due to Goodman’s (1954/83) ‘new riddle of induc-
146 John Collins

tion’. Familiar details aside, Goodman shows that if hypothesis H (e.g., ‘All
emeralds are green’) is confirmed by its observed instances (i.e., green emer-
alds), then a contrary hypothesis H* (‘All emeralds are grue’) is also confirmed
by the same instances, where ‘grue’ means ‘either green if first examined before
2050AD or blue if not first examined before 2050AD’. The riddle is that we
unerringly take the ‘green’ hypothesis to be confirmed (to some degree) by the
observation of emeralds, even though the grue hypothesis is confirmed to the
same degree by the emeralds. If we did not so converge, we would have no
shared sense of laws, natural kinds, explanation, prediction, etc., but the basis
for the convergence appears to be prior to the actual framing and corroboration
of hypotheses. Do we need the SFF thesis to explain this?
To keep things finite, let us assume that Goodman’s claim is well-founded.
What Goodman shows is that enumerative induction is not sufficient to give
a hypothesis a unique degree of confirmation. So, if we wish to explain con-
vergence on, say, ‘green’ rather than ‘grue’, we have no greater license from
the riddle than to add to C (= enumerative induction). This, of course, is pre-
cisely what Goodman did, for good or ill, with his historical notion of
entrenchment: roughly, we converge on ‘green’ because, unlike ‘grue’, it has
been successfully projected in the past. Alternatively, Harman (1994) proposes
a practical principle of simplicity to rule out ‘grue’. Now, these and many
other ‘solutions’ do not necessarily speak to the ‘genetic problem’ of how
humans do in fact converge (Chomsky, 1971, p.6). But the same point holds
for the riddle itself: it does not so much as indicate the shape of a cognitive
solution, still less necessitate one along faculty lines. At best, the riddle shows
that enumerative induction is inadequate as either a model of justification or,
indeed, cognition. This is an instance of the general moral: underdetermina-
tion arguments are negative; they work against a given set of methodological
cannons, they do not establish the identity of the cannons which in general are
required for rational convergence.
I have not insisted that we should read Chomsky’s direct argument from
convergence to a SFF as being a gloss on Goodman’s riddle. For sure, Chom-
sky (1975a, pp. 33-4; 1971, pp.6-8) does appeal with perfect legitimacy to the
riddle as a central plank in the argument against a general empiricist model of
learning, but no direct association with a SFF is made. Perhaps, though, Chom-
sky, at least in (1975b) where the direct argument is made, is conflating the
SFF thesis with Fodor’s position on concept learning. The proceedings of the
1975 Royaumont conference (Piattelli-Palmarini, 1980) suggest this. Fodor
and Chomsky there argued that the moral of Goodman’s riddle is that any
induction is “logically impossible” without an “a priori [innate] ordering of
hypotheses [or predicates]”; Fodor took this to be “so self-evident that it is
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 147

superfluous to discuss it” (Piattelli-Palmarini, 1980, pp. 259-61). Now I do not

so much think that this line is false, as woefully underspecified. What is “self-
evident”, let us grant, is that blank-slate induction is impossible. Goodman
(1954/83, p. 82) himself claimed this in arguing that a mere habituated fixa-
tion on a regularity à la Hume cannot establish which predicates are the pro-
jectible ones, because green and grue instances are equally regular by defini-
tion. The point is well taken but it hardly leads us to credit the scientist with
a SFF, even one which consists of a predicate metric alone. The inference is
blocked because the scientist is patently not otherwise a blank slate. Such,
indeed, is Goodman’s point: scientists’ choices are a function of history. As
regards the developing child, if one is running a hypothesis confirmation
model of learning, as Chomsky (1965) was with language and Fodor (1975)
was considering with concepts, then one faces the problem of explaining how
the child fixates on a given hypothesis when the data does not determine such
a choice. As with underdetermination generally, the answer is to be found in
a methodological organon C. In the learning case, both Chomsky (1965) and
Fodor (1975) take C to consist, inter alia, of a simplicity metric defined over
an innate set of grammars and predicates respectively. For present purposes I
have no problem with such proposals, although both Chomsky (1981) and
Fodor (1981) rejected them in favour of triggering models (such is perhaps
why Chomsky ceases to appeal to Goodman after the development of the P&P
approach.) My point is simply that the scientist faces quite a different under-
determination problem from the child: the child, on the assumption that he or
she is a hypothesis confirmer, needs some C prior to the data; this is enough
to undermine blank-slate empiricism in favour of an indeed self-evident
nativism. The issue for the scientist, on the other hand, is what, if anything,
can go into C to enable one to arrive rationally at some hypothesis, but there
is no argument here to say that whatever C comprises must be what the child
has; a fortiori there is no argument which says that the scientist’s C must be
innate. I should say that if Chomsky and Fodor were guilty of this conflation
of the child with the scientist at Royaumont, the confusion did not last. There
is some dispute about this.
Putnam has persistently attributed to the ‘Chomskyan’ (a nomenclature
apparently co-extensive with ‘Fodorian’) an ambition to find an inductive
algorithm which would explain our scientific reasoning, an ambition that is
spiked by Goodman’s riddle.17 In point of fact, though, even in his (1975),

17 For the association of Chomsky with inductive logic, with references to Goodman’s

‘refutation’ thereof, see Putnam (1981, pp. 125-6; 1983, p. viii; 1988, pp. 82-3; 1992, pp. 14-
6).
148 John Collins

Fodor was not arguing for a theory of inductive concept learning; his claim
was that if that is one’s model, then one is de facto committed to an innate
inductive logic (his major point, of course, was that such a model does not
amount to concept learning – there is no such thing – but to belief fixation.)
Fodor’s (1981) triggering proposal is by definition non-rational: a trigger is
caused, it isn’t warranted. Since then, Fodor (1983, 1987, 2000) has claimed
that we have not a hope of a prayer of discovering any general inductive algo-
rithm, because our computational theory of mind does not account for non-
modular processes, viz. abductive ones. Chomsky (1980, p. 140; cf. Piattelli-
Palmarini, 1980, p. 320) agrees with Fodor (see quotation in §4.)
Well, if Chomsky and Fodor do not run child and scientist together, we
appear to be left with no argument from underdetermination to a SFF as the
only possible explanation of convergence. Notwithstanding Chomsky’s choice
of modality for his direct argument, let us relax his inference to a best expla-
nation one. The thesis now becomes quite tempting, for it seems that its only
competitor is a sociological account, which threatens to make scientific con-
vergence no more rational than our allegiances to football teams. The choice
between cognition or society, however, does not exhaust the options.
Let us agree that individual scientists are rational, they hold to their theo-
ries because they judge them to be true or at least well corroborated. So much,
of course, does not explain convergence, but can we not say that agreement
arises due to individuals being trained within a research program and their the-
oretical energies being spent therein? Otherwise put, scientists employ their
cognition to a highly restricted space whose shape is due to exogenous fac-
tors; convergence is explained by ‘society’ determining the options from
which cognition chooses. Well, this appears quite inadequate. Chomsky’s SFF
thesis is offered as an explanation of convergence, an appeal to research pro-
grams seems to be simply a re-description of the explanandum; we want to
know why there are such programs in the first place. Such a riposte is apt for
those who take the sociological to be primitive, but that is not what I am sug-
gesting.
Since scientists are rational creatures, as we all are, then endogenous fac-
tors clearly have a role to play, but the fact of convergence does not lead us to
any particular thesis about those factors. It is perfectly intelligible to appeal to
a central, global rationality along the lines of Fodor (1983, 2000) or perhaps
some ensemble of faculties. We must be careful, though, not to run child and
scientist together again. There may be deep similarities as the theory theory
teaches, but while it is true, I think, that children’s commonsensical conver-
gence is principally due to cognitive factors, the same explanation does not
work for scientists. It only takes one person to produce a hypothesis that
 On the Very Idea of a Science Forming Faculty 149

answers certain questions or makes novel predications that the extant com-
petitors fail to do. This relative success means that the research gets taught, it
has possible technological side-effects, it attracts funding, it is popularised to
a general audience,... it snowballs. In short, the norm is for scientists to con-
verge on given extant hypotheses; the norm is not for them, as it is for chil-
dren, individually and creatively to converge, although sometimes it happens.
Again, there is nothing irrational in following a good idea. Individual scien-
tists are not drones to the program, they simply tend to be unconcerned in their
day to day activities with formulating novel theories, for those they have work
very well and there is much interesting testing and tweaking to be done. After
all, if there is nothing obviously wrong with one’s theory – it withstands
attempted falsifications and continues to explain novel data – then one would
be irrational to forsake it.
If this model is anywhere near correct, then individual scientists within
communities, both through their education and in their maturity, do not face
the array of possible theories with data in hand and plum for just a few out of
the indefinite options. Were this the case, a SFF would indeed be required,
unless we thought science a miraculous affair. But scientists are always some-
where, occupying a theoretical position. As such, the choices they make are of
the form ‘I would rather be here than there’, or vice versa. They are not
nowhere, child-like, deciding where they wish to be, but faced with underde-
termination where ever they turn. Scientists will stay where they are, and are
rational to do so, if their theories do enough good work. If the work dries up,
or some other theory does more work better, or (indeed!) is simpler, or more
elegant, or integrates better with some other accepted theory, or if its mathe-
matics is more user friendly,... then, ceteris paribus, it will be rational for the
scientist to vacate his or her theory. I fail to see, then, the SFF thesis as the
best explanation of convergence: the rationality of science is not exhibited by
convergence in the face of underdetermination, it is manifest in the subtle
interplay of factors which determines when a scientist should move or should
just stay put.

Concluding Remarks
I have not sought to refute the SFF thesis either empirically or conceptually.
At our current state of knowledge, the former route is unavailable and to fol-
low the latter one would simply be to misunderstand the issue. Moreover, I
have ran with the speculation, offering a number of substantiating proposals
and batting off some ill-founded ripostes. Charitably construed then, my claim
is just that, upon reflection, it is unclear what the SFF thesis amounts to, more
work needs to be done before we can seriously treat it as a hypothesis. I wish,
150 John Collins

though, for my conclusion to be slightly less modest: the deep problem with
the thesis is its presupposition of a universal individualism, the idea that the
endogenous factors which shape any of our practises are specifiable inde-
pendently of, and have primacy over, the exogenous ones. Such thinking is
what drives the problem-mystery distinction and it is this that gives so much
sustenance to the SFF thesis, so much so that Chomsky nigh conflates the two.
I have argued in respect to both problems and mysteries and scientific con-
vergence that a two-way street approach is at least as viable for something as
broad and amorphous as science. Individualism is a sound assumption, I think,
when we are dealing with a competence that has the look of a faculty, but sci-
ence is not such a competence. Still, who knows... Would that we were all
capable of the Chomskyan speculations that have turned out to be true.18

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