Biolinguistics and Philosophy: Insights and Obstacles

Book excerpt: This study explores the current stage of generative linguistics, the Minimalist Program, and examines its philosophical implications, tracing the basic themes back to the seventeenth-century scientific revolutions and the nineteenth-century biological tradition of formalism. Expositions of the 'philosophy of biolinguistics' have previously been few and short, and exploring the insights of recent theoretical linguists and neurobiologists can shed some much needed light on the problems posed by analytical philosophy, such as traditional questions of 'reference' and 'truth.'