Creative aspect of language use

Descartes makes only scant reference to language in his writings. Yet certain observations about the nature of language play a significant role in the formulation of his general point of view.

He did a careful and intensive study of the limits of mechanical explanation. This carried him beyond physics to physiology and psychology.

He became convinced that an animal is an automaton.5

This led to an important and influential system of speculative physiology. He concluded that man has unique abilities that cannot be accounted for on purely mechanistic grounds, though human bodily function and behavior is explained mechanistically.

The essential difference between man and animal is exhibited most clearly by human language. Man can form new statements which express new thoughts and which are appropriate to new situations.

It is quite easy, in his view, to conceive of a machine so constructed so that it utters words, and even words which correspond to bodily actions causing a change in its organs (for instance, if you touch it in one place it asks what you want of it; if you touch it in another place it cries out that you are hurting it, and so on).

But it is not conceivable that such a machine should produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence, as the dullest of men can do. (CSM I, 39)6

This ability to use language must not be confused with “natural movements which express passions and which can be imitated by machines as well as by animals.”

The crucial difference is that automata “could never use words or put together other signs as we do in order to declare our thoughts for others.”

This is a specific human ability, independent of intelligence.

Thus, it is quite remarkable that there are no men so dull-witted or stupid – and this includes even madmen – that they are incapable of arranging various words together and forming an utterance from them in order to make their thoughts understood; whereas there is no other animal, however perfect and well endowed it may be, that can do the same. (CSM I, 39–40)

Nor can this distinction between man and animal be based on peripheral physiological differences.

Thus Descartes goes on to point out this does not happen because they lack the necessary organs.

Magpies and parrots can utter words as we do. Yet they cannot speak as we do: that is, they cannot show that they are thinking what they are saying.

On the other hand, men born deaf and dumb, and thus deprived of speech-organs as much as the beasts, or even more so, normally invent their own signs to make themselves understood by those who, being regularly in their company, have the time to learn their language.

In short, then, man has a species-specific capacity, a unique type of intellectual organization which cannot be attributed to peripheral organs or related to general intelligence7 and which manifests itself in what we may refer to as the “creative aspect” of ordinary language use – its property being both unbounded in scope and stimulus-free.

Thus Descartes maintains that language is available for the free expression of thought or for appropriate response in any new context and is undetermined by any fixed association of utterances to external stimuli or physiological states (identifiable in any noncircular fashion).8

Arguing from the presumed impossibility of a mechanistic explanation for the creative aspect of normal use of language, Descartes concludes that in addition to body it is necessary to attribute mind – a substance whose essence is thought – to other humans.

From the arguments that he offers for the association of mind to bodies that “bear a resemblance” to his, it seems clear that the postulated substance plays the role of a “creative principle” alongside the “mechanical principle” that accounts for bodily function. Human reason, in fact, “is a universal instrument which can serve for all contingencies,” whereas the organs of an animal or machine “have need of some special adaptation for any particular action.”9

The crucial role of language in Descartes’s argument is brought out still more clearly in his subsequent correspondence. In his letter to the Marquis of Newcastle (1646), he asserts that “none of our external actions can show anyone who examines them that our body is not just a self-moving machine, but contains a soul with thoughts – with the exception of spoken words or other signs having reference to particular topics without expressing any passion.”10 The final condition is added to exclude “cries of joy or sadness and the like” as well as “whatever can be taught by training to animals.” (CSMK, 303)11

He goes on, then, to repeat the arguments in the Discourse on the Method, emphasizing once again that there is no man so imperfect as not to use language for the expression of his thoughts and no “animal so perfect as to use a sign to make other animals understand something which bore no relation to its passions”; and, once again, pointing to the very perfection of animal instinct as an indication of lack of thought and as a proof that animals are mere automata.

In a letter of 1649 to Henry More, he expresses himself in the following terms: But in my opinion the main reason for holding that animals lack thought is the following. Within a single species some of them are more perfect than others, as humans are too. This can be seen in horses and dogs, some of which learn what they are taught much better than others; and all animals easily communicate to us, by voice or bodily movement, their natural impulses of anger, fear, hunger and so on. Yet in spite of all these facts, it has never been observed that any brute animal has attained the perfection of using real speech, that is to say, of indicating by word or sign something relating to thought alone and not to natural impulse. Such speech is the only certain sign of thought hidden in a body. All human beings use it, however stupid and insane they may be, even though they may have no tongue and organs of voice; but no animals do. Consequently this can be taken as a real specific difference between humans and animals. (CSMK, 366)12,13

In summary, it is the diversity of human behavior, its appropriateness to new situations, and man’s capacity to innovate – the creative aspect of language use providing the principal indication of this – that leads Descartes to attribute possession of mind to other humans, since he regards this capacity as beyond the limitations of any imaginable mechanism. Thus a fully adequate psychology requires the postulation of a “creative principle” along- side of the “mechanical principle” that suffices to account for all other aspects of the inanimate and animate world and for a significant range of human actions and “passions” as well.

Descartes’s observations on language in relation to the problem of mecha- nistic explanation were elaborated in an interesting study by Cordemoy.14 His problem in this study is to determine whether it is necessary to assume the existence of other minds.15 A great deal of the complexity of human behavior is irrelevant to demonstrating that other persons are not mere automata, since it can be explained on hypothetical physiological terms, in terms of reflex and tropism. Limitations of such explanations are suggested by the fact that “they confidently approach something that will destroy them, and abandon what could save them” (p. 7). This suggests that their actions are governed by a will, like his own. But the best evidence is provided by speech, by the connection I find among the words I constantly hear them utter …

For although I readily conceive that a mere machine could utter some words, I know at the same time that if there was a particular order among the springs that distribute the wind or open the pipes from which the sounds came then they could never change it; so that as soon as the first sound is heard, those which usually follow it will also necessarily be heard, provided that the machine does not lack wind – whereas the words I hear uttered by bodies constructed like mine almost never follow the same sequence. I observe moreover that these words are the same as those I would use to explain my thoughts to other subjects capable of conceiving them. Finally, the more I attend to the effect produced by my words when I utter them before these bodies, the more it seems they are understood, and the words they utter correspond so perfectly to the sense of my words that there is no reason to doubt that a soul produces in them what my soul produces in me. (pp. 8–10)

In short, Cordemoy is arguing that there can be no mechanistic explanation for the novelty, coherence, and relevance of normal speech. He emphasizes, however, that care must be exercised in using ability to speak as evidence for the inadequacy of mechanistic explanation.

The fact that articulate sounds are produced or that utterances can be imitated in itself proves nothing, as this can be explained in mechanical terms. Nor is it of any relevance that “natural signs” may be produced that express internal states or that specific signs may be produced that are contingent on the presence of external stimuli. It is only the ability to innovate, and to do so in a way which is appropriate to novel situations and which yields coherent discourse, that provides crucial evidence. “To speak is not to repeat the same words that one has heard, but… to utter different words in response to those” (p. 19). To show that other persons are not automata, one must provide evidence that their speech manifests this creative aspect, that it is appropriate to whatever may be said by the “experimenter”; “… if I find, by all the observations I can make, that they use language [La Parole] as I do, then I will have an infallible reason to believe that they have a soul as I do” (p. 21). Possible types of experiment are then outlined.

For example, one can construct new “conventional signs” [signes d’institution]: I see that I can agree with others that what ordinarily signifies one thing will signify another, and that this has the result that only those with whom I make this agreement seem to understand what I am thinking. (pp. 22–23)

Similarly, evidence is provided when I see that these bodies produce signs that bear no relation to their present state or to their preservation; when I see that these signs match those which I would produce to express my thoughts; when I see that they give me ideas which I did not have previously and which refer to things that I already had in mind; and finally when I see a close correlation between their signs and mine; (pp. 28–29) or by behavior that indicates “that they intended to deceive me” (pp. 30–31). Under such circumstances, when many experiments of this sort have succeeded, “it will not be reasonable for me to believe that they are not like me” (p. 29).

Throughout, what is stressed is the innovative aspect of intelligent performance. Thus, … the new thoughts that come through our conversations with other men are a sure sign to all of us that they have a mind like ours; (p. 185) … our whole reason for believing that there are minds united with the bodies of men who speak to us is that they often give us new thoughts that we did not have, or they oblige us to change the thoughts that we did have… (p. 187)

Cordemoy consistently maintains that the “experiments” that reveal the limitations of mechanical explanation are those which involve the use of language – in particular, what we have called its creative aspect. In this, as in his discussion of the acoustic and articulatory basis for language use and the methods of conditioning, association, and reinforcement that may facilitatehowever, that care must be exercised in using ability to speak as evidence for the inadequacy of mechanistic explanation.

he fact that articulate sounds are produced or that utterances can be imitated in itself proves nothing, as this can be explained in mechanical terms. Nor is it of any relevance that “natural signs” may be produced that express internal states or that specific signs may be produced that are contingent on the presence of external stimuli. It is only the ability to innovate, and to do so in a way which is appropriate to novel situations and which yields coherent discourse, that provides crucial evidence. “To speak is not to repeat the same words that one has heard, but… to utter different words in response to those” (p. 19).

To show that other persons are not automata, one must provide evidence that their speech manifests this creative aspect, that it is appropriate to whatever may be said by the “experimenter”; “… if I find, by all the observations I can make, that they use language [La Parole] as I do, then I will have an infallible reason to believe that they have a soul as I do” (p. 21). Possible types of experiment are then outlined. For example, one can construct new “conventional signs” [signes d’institution]: I see that I can agree with others that what ordinarily signifies one thing will signify another, and that this has the result that only those with whom I make this agreement seem to understand what I am thinking. (pp. 22–23)

Similarly, evidence is provided when I see that these bodies produce signs that bear no relation to their present state or to their preservation; when I see that these signs match those which I would produce to express my thoughts; when I see that they give me ideas which I did not have previously and which refer to things that I already had in mind; and finally when I see a close correlation between their signs and mine; (pp. 28–29) or by behavior that indicates “that they intended to deceive me” (pp. 30–31).

Under such circumstances, when many experiments of this sort have succeeded, “it will not be reasonable for me to believe that they are not like me” (p. 29). Throughout, what is stressed is the innovative aspect of intelligent perform- ance. Thus, … the new thoughts that come through our conversations with other men are a sure sign to all of us that they have a mind like ours; (p. 185) … our whole reason for believing that there are minds united with the bodies of men who speak to us is that they often give us new thoughts that we did not have, or they oblige us to change the thoughts that we did have… (p. 187) Cordemoy consistently maintains that the “experiments” that reveal the limitations of mechanical explanation are those which involve the use of language – in particular, what we have called its creative aspect. In this, as in his discussion of the acoustic and articulatory basis for language use and the methods of conditioning, association, and reinforcement that may facilitate acquisition of true language by humans and nonlinguistic functional communication systems by animals, Cordemoy is working completely within the framework of Cartesian assumptions.

For our purposes what is important in this is the emphasis on the creative aspect of language use and on the fundamental distinction between human language and the purely functional and stimulus-bound animal communication systems, rather than the Cartesian attempts to account for human abilities. It is noteworthy that subsequent discussion rarely attempts to meet the Cartesian arguments regarding the limitations of mechanical explanation. Descartes argued that a “thinking substance” must be postulated to account for the facts that he cites. This proposal is generally countered by the claim that a more complex organization of the body is sufficient to account for human abilities, but no serious attempt is made to show how this might be possible (as Descartes, Cordemoy, and others tried to show how animal behavior and human bodily functions of many kinds can be explained on the basis of assumptions about physical organization). La Mettrie, for example, holds that man is simply the most complex of machines. “He is to the ape and the cleverest of animals what the Huyghen’s planetary clock is to one of Julien Leroy’s watches” (p. 34; MaM, p. 140).16 There is, in his opinion, no difficulty in accounting for thought on mechanical principles. “I believe thought to be so little incompatible with organised matter, that it seems to be one of its proper- ties, like electricity, motive power, impenetrability, extension, etc.” (p. 35; MaM, pp. 143–144). There should, furthermore, be no obstacle in principle to teaching an ape to speak. It is only “a defect in the speech organs” that stands in the way, and this can be overcome by proper training (p. 11; MaM, p. 100). “I hardly doubt at all that if this animal were perfectly trained, we would succeed in teaching him he might at last be taught to utter sounds and consequently to learn a language. Then he would no longer be a wild man, nor an imperfect man, but a perfect man, a little man of the town” (p. 12; MaM, p. 103). Similarly, a talking machine is not beyond imagination. “If it took Vaucanson more artistry to make his flautist than his duck, he would have needed even more to make a speaking machine, which can no longer be considered impossible …” (p. 34; MaM, pp. 140–141).

Several years before the publication of L’Homme Machine, in a slight and presumably only semi-serious work, Bougeant produced one of the very few attempts to refute explicitly the Cartesian argument that human and animal language differ in a fundamental way,17 but his supposed counterargument merely reaffirms the Cartesian position regarding human and animal language. He bases his claim that “animals speak and understand each other just as well as we do, and sometimes better” (p. 4) on the grounds that they can be trained to respond to signals, that they exhibit their “various feelings” by external signs, that they can work in cooperation (for example, beavers, to whom he ascribes a

language that has much in common with those “language games” that Wittgenstein regards as “primitive forms” of human language). However, he recognizes that “the language of animals is entirely limited to expressing feel- ings of their passions, which may all be reduced to a small number” (p. 152). “It is necessary that they always repeat the same expression, and that this repetition last as long as the object occupies their attention” (p. 123). They have no “abstract or metaphysical ideas”:

They have only direct cognitions that are completely limited to the material objects that strike their senses. Man is infinitely superior in his language, as in his ideas, being incapable of expressing himself without composing his speech of proper names and relative terms, which determine its sense and application. (p. 154) Animals, in effect, have only names for various “passions that they feel” (p. 155). They cannot produce “a phrase which is personalized and composite [personifiée et composée] as we do” (p. 156):

Why has nature given animals the faculty of speech? Solely so they can express to each other their desires and feelings, and thereby satisfy their needs and whatever may be necessary for their preservation. I know that language in general has quite a different objective, which is to express ideas, cognitions, reflections, reasonings. But whatever theory one holds regarding the knowledge of animals … it is certain that nature has endowed them with knowledge only of what is useful to them or necessary for the survival of the species and of individuals – consequently, with no abstract ideas, no metaphysical reasoning, no enquiry or curiosity about the objects surrounding them, no knowledge except how to conduct themselves, keep well, avoid whatever may harm them, and acquire goods. Nor has one ever seen them engaged in public discussion, or argument about causes and effects. They know only the life of an animal. (pp. 99–100) In short, animal “language” remains completely within the bounds of mechani- cal explanation as this was conceived by Descartes and Cordemoy.

Evidently, neither La Mettrie nor Bougeant comes to grips with the problem raised by Descartes – the problem posed by the creative aspect of language use, by the fact that human language, being free from control by identifiable external stimuli or internal physiological states, can serve as a general instrument of thought and self-expression rather than merely as a communicative device of report, request, or command.18 Modern attempts to deal with the problem of intelligent behavior are hardly more satisfactory. Ryle, for example, in his critique of “Descartes’s myth”19 simply avoids the issue entirely. He claims that the Cartesians should have been “asking by what criteria intelligent behavior is actually distinguished from non-intelligent behavior” (p. 21) rather than seeking an explanation for the former. Properly understood, these are not mutually exclusive alternatives. The criteria that Ryle discusses differ little, in principle, from Cordemoy’s proposed “experiments”; but whereas Ryle is content simply to cite the fact that “intelligent behavior” has certain properties,20 the Cartesians were concerned with the problem of accounting for such behavior in the face of their inability to provide an explanation in mechanical terms.

It can hardly be claimed that we have advanced significantly beyond the seventeenth century in determining the characteristics of intelligent behavior, the means by which it is acquired, the principles that govern it, or the nature of the structures that underlie it. One may choose to ignore these problems, but no coherent argument has been offered that suggests that they are either unreal or beyond investigation.

Modern linguistics has also failed to deal with the Cartesian observations regarding human language in any serious way. Bloomfield, for example, observes that in a natural language “the possibilities of combination are practi- cally infinite,” so that there is no hope of accounting for language use on the basis of repetition or listing, but he has nothing further to say about the problem beyond the remark that the speaker utters new forms “on the analogy of similar forms which he has heard.”21

Similarly, Hockett attributes innovation completely to “analogy.”22 Similar remarks can be found in Paul, Saussure, Jespersen, and many others. To attribute the creative aspect of language use to “analogy” or “grammatical patterns” is to use these terms in a completely metaphorical way, with no clear sense and with no relation to the technical usage of linguistic theory. It is no less empty than Ryle’s description of intelligent behavior as an exercise of “powers” and “dispositions” of some mysterious sort, or the attempt to account for the normal, creative use of language in terms of “generalization” or “habit” or “conditioning.” A descrip- tion in these terms is incorrect if the terms have anything like their technical meanings, and highly misleading otherwise, in so far as it suggests that the capacities in question can somehow be accounted for as just a “more compli- cated case” of something reasonably well understood. We have seen that the Cartesian view, as expressed by Descartes and Cordemoy as well as by such professed anti-Cartesians as Bougeant, is that in its normal use, human language is free from stimulus control and does not serve a merely communicative function, but is rather an instrument for the free expression of thought and for appropriate response to new situations.23 These observations concerning what we have been calling the creative aspect of language use are elaborated in several ways in the eighteenth and early nine- teenth centuries, as we shall see directly. At the same time, Descartes’s second test for determining whether automata are “real men” is also reinterpreted, within the context of the “great chain of being.” Descartes makes a sharp distinction between man and animal, arguing that animal behavior is a matter of instinct and that the perfection and specificity of animal instinct make it subject to mechanical explanation. A characteristic subsequent view is that there is a gradation of intelligence and that perfection of instinct varies inversely with intellectual ability. To La Mettrie, for example, it seems to be a universal

law of nature “that the more one gains in intelligence [du côté de l’esprit], the more one loses in instinct” (p. 99). (Cf. notes 7, 29.) The two Cartesian tests (possession of language, diversity of action) are interrelated by Herder, in an original way, in his influential Prize Essay on the origin of language.24 Like Descartes, Herder argues that human language is different in kind from exclamations of passion and that it cannot be attributed to superior organs of articulation, nor, obviously, can it have its origins in imitation of nature or in an “agreement” to form language.25 Rather, language is a natural property of the human mind. But nature does not provide man with an instinc- tive language, or an instinctive faculty of language, or a faculty of reason of which language is a “reflection.” Man’s fundamental quality is, rather, weak- ness of instinct, and man is clearly far inferior to animals in strength and certainty of instinct. But instinct and refinement of sense and skill correlate with narrowness of the scope and sphere of life and experience, with the focusing of all sensitivity and all power of representation on a narrow fixed area (pp. 15–16). The following can be taken as a general principle: “the sensitivity, capability, and productive drive of animals increase in power and intensity in inverse proportion to the magnitude and diversity of their sphere of activity” (pp. 16–17). But man’s faculties are less acute, more varied and more diffuse. “Man does not have an unvaried and narrow sphere of activity, where only one task awaits him” (p. 17). He is not, in other words, under the control of external stimuli and internal drives and compelled to respond in a perfect and specific way.

This freedom from instinct and from stimulus control is the basis for what we call “human reason”: “… if man had the drives of animals, he could not have in him what we now call reason, since such drives would unknowingly pull his forces towards a single point, so that he would have no free sphere of awareness” (p. 22). It is this very weakness of instinct that is man’s natural advantage, that makes him a rational being. “If man cannot be an instinctive animal, he must – enabled by the freely working positive power of his soul – become a reflective creature” (p. 22). In compensation for his weakness of instinct and sense, man receives the “advantage of freedom” (p. 20). “No longer inevitably a machine in the hands of nature, he himself becomes the purpose and the objective of his efforts” (p. 20).

Free to reflect and to contemplate, man is able to observe, compare, distin- guish essential properties, identify, and name (pp. 23f.). It is in this sense that language (and the discovery of language) is natural to man (p. 23), that “the human being is formed to be a creature of language” (p. 43). On the one hand, Herder observes that man has no innate language – man does not speak by nature. On the other hand, language in his view is so specifically a product of man’s particular intellectual organization that he is able to claim: “If I were to gather up all the loose ends and display that fabric called human nature: definitely a linguistic weave!” The resolution of the apparent paradox lies in

his attempt to account for human language as a consequence of the weakness of human instinct.

Descartes had described human reason as “a universal instrument which can be used in all kinds of situations”26 and which therefore provides for unbounded diversity of free thought and action.27 Herder does not regard reason as a “faculty of the mind” at all but defines it rather as the freedom from stimulus control, and he attempts to show how this “natural advantage” makes it possible – in fact, necessary (p. 25) – for humans to develop language. Somewhat before Herder, James Harris had given a characterization of “rationality” in terms rather similar to his, that is, as freedom from instinct rather than as a faculty with fixed properties. Harris distinguishes between the “Human Principle,” which he calls “reason,” and the “Brutal Principle,” which he calls “instinct,” in the following passage:

MARK then … the Difference between Human Powers and Brutal – The Leading Principle of BRUTES appears to tend in each Species to one single Purpose – to this, in general, it uniformly arrives; and here, in general, it as uniformly stops – it needs no Precepts or Discipline to instruct it; nor will it easily be changed, or admit a different Direction. On the contrary, the Leading Principle of MAN is capable of infinite Directions – is convertible to all sorts of Purposes – equal to all sorts of Subjects – neglected, remains ignorant, and void of every Perfection – cultivated, becomes adorned with Sciences, and Arts – can raise us to excel, not only Brutes, but our own Kind – with respect to our other Powers and Faculties, can instruct us how to use them, as well as those of the various Natures, which we see existing around us. In a word, to oppose the two Principles to each other – The Leading Principle of Man, is Multiform, Originally Uninstructed, Pliant and Docil – The Leading Principle of Brutes is Uniform, Originally Instructed; but, in most Instances afterward, Inflexible and Indocil.28

Thus we may say “that MAN is by Nature a RATIONAL ANIMAL,” meaning by this nothing more than that he is free from the domination of instinct.29 A concern for the creative aspect of language use persists through the romantic period, in relation to the general problem of true creativity, in the full sense of this term.30 A. W. Schlegel’s remarks on language in his Kunstlehre31 give a characteristic expression to these developments. In discussing the nature of language, he begins by observing that speech does not relate merely to external stimuli or goals.

The words of language, for example, may arouse in the speaker and hearer ideas [Vorstellungen] of things that they have not directly perceived but know only by verbal description or that they “aren’t able to intuit sensuously at all because they exist in an intellectual [geistigen] world.” Words may also designate abstracted properties and relations of the speaker to the hearer and to the topic of discourse, and relations among the elements of the latter. In combining our “thoughts and ideas” we use “words with such subtle meanings that to clarify them would disconcert a philosopher.” Still, they are used freely by the uninstructed and the unintelligent: