Representation of Language

Georges Rey presents a much-needed philosophical defense of Noam Chomsky's famous view of human language, as an internal, innate computational system. But he also offers a critical examination of problematic developments of this view, to do with innateness, ontology, intentionality, and other issues of interdisciplinary interest.

Georges Rey is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland. He works primarily in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and has written numerous articles on problems surrounding (ir)rationality, concepts, linguistic competence, qualitative experience and consciousness, as well as a book, Contemporary Philosophy of Mind (Blackwell, 1997), where he defends a computational/representational theory of mind as a strategy for dealing with them.

I. The Core Linguistic Theory
1: The Core Galilean Idea and Some Crucial Data
2: The Basics of Generative Grammars
3: Competence/Performance: I- vs. E-languages
4: Knowledge and The Explanatory Project
II. Core Philosophical Views
5: Grades of Nativism: From Projectability to Brute Process
6: Resistence of Even Mental Realists and the Need of Representational Pretence
7: Linguistic Intuitions and the Voice of Competence
III. Intentionality
8: Chomsky and Intentionality
9: Linguistic Ontology
10: Linguo-Semantics
11: Psycho-Semantics of Perceptual Content