Chomsky, Naturalism, and Conceptual Engineering

Noam Chomsky’s contributions to the study of language span over seven decades. His work is often attributed the status of scientific revolution (Miller 2003). He is especially accredited with resetting the agenda in theoretical linguistics towards the investigation of an idealised state of the mind/brain (Chomsky 1965) interpreted as an innate, internalised system or an I-language (Chomsky 1986). Chomsky’s philosophical defence of this view has generally been along naturalistic lines, i.e., the most tractable scientific way to study language involves treating it as a domain-specific state of the human brain (Chomsky 2000). In this article, I explore an alternative interpretation of Chomsky’s philosophical contributions to language in terms of the emerging field of conceptual engineering. First, I distinguish between naturalism and conceptual engineering. Even though the two approaches can be complementary, I suggest that the latter involves an overt ameliorative or normative element (Cappelen 2020; Haslanger 2000). I then show that certain aspects of Chomsky’s oeuvre are better suited for a conceptual engineering interpretation (i.e., I-language) while others align more closely with his naturalism (i.e., biolinguistics).