Chuck G. wrote (long ago -- sorry):
>In this endless debate over Whorf, Chomsky, linguistics, cognitive
>sciences and so on, and the search for constants, or structure or a
>formal armature or at least the systematic regularities in languages
>and thought, seems to ignore one giant half of an obvious
>dialectic.
I think you might be lumping too much here. The contemporary Whorf/pragmatics research I was describing has no direct relation, pro or con, to the Chomsky UG debate. They're in a different part of the woods, asking different sorts of questions.
>That other half is the physical world within which all
>these are embedded and function.
>
>Relative to these studies, the physical or material world is relegated
>to the domain of content and dismissed. If the phrase phenomenological
>concreteness has any meaning, then it should at least include the
>material world in its scope.
Not sure I follow your meaning of dismissed "content," but both Deacon's issues and the pragmatics ones certainly include an active material world in their scope. Deacon's a neuroscientist and biological anthropologist: hard to get more material than that. Though I certainly agree with you that his standard adaptationist view of evolution isn't nearly as dialectical or enactivist as it could be. (If this is what you're getting at -- not sure.)
As for the pragmatics linguistics, as I mentioned much of it is influenced by Peircean semiotics, which differs from Saussurean semiology precisely by not closing off materiality in its notion of signs. Structuralist and post-structuralist theories, hall-of-mirrors theories of "the gap," are based on the signifier-signified dyad. But Peircean triadic signs include phenomenological experience in their purview, and materiality does push back.
>But linguistics and cognitive science is hardly alone in their
>dismissals. Most of the controversial and difficult to justify
>constructs in many of the biological sciences suffer the same
>blindness. These organic systems evolved from and are completely
>co-mingled with the physical systems of their own foundation and
>origin. To not take this into account is a kind of narrow minded view
>that functions to inhibit a more complete understanding of what is
>going on. Genetics and evolution are obvious examples.
Agreed. But surely the effects of ongoing processes like genetics and evolution don't need to be taken into account for every sort of question about human meaning. Which isn't to say they aren't playing an actively role, allowing the possibility of our particular meanings, at any moment, but their role can certainly be held constant hence fenced off for many purposes.
Like for the purpose of wondering if I've correctly understood where your critique is coming from.
Maureen