Rules as Resources: An Ecological-Enactive Perspective on Linguistic Normativity

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09676-0 Rules as Resources: An Ecological-Enactive Perspective on Linguistic Normativity Jasper C. van den Herik 1 # The Author(s) 2020 Abstract In this paper, I develop an ecological-enactive perspective on the role rules play in linguistic behaviour. I formulate and motivate the hypothesis that metalinguistic reflexivity – our ability to talk about talking – is constitutive of linguistic normativity. On first sight, this hypothesis might seem to fall prey to a regress objection. By discussing the work of Searle, I show that this regress objection originates in the idea that learning language involves learning to follow rules from the very start. I propose an ecologicalenactive response to the regress objection. The key move is to deny that language learning consists initially in learning rules. A child first engages in regular communicative behaviour, by learning first-order linguistic skills, and then retroactively interprets her own behaviour in normative metalinguistic terms, i.e., as being guided by rules by relying on reflexive or second-order linguistic skills. On this view, metalinguistic reflexivity enables regulation of already regular communicative behaviour, and thereby constitutes linguistic normativity. Finally, I argue that linguistic rules are resources: they are available to participants in order to (re)negotiate properties of situated language behaviour and thereby reorganize linguistic practices. The account developed in this paper thus allows us to understand the constitutive role of metalinguistic reflexivity for linguistic normativity without falling prey to the regress objection. Keywords Rules . Normativity . Ecological-enactive approach . Language . Reflexivity . Metalanguage Many of our everyday activities involve rules that prescribe or prohibit certain behaviours. Think for example of a sign in the park that says ‘keep off the grass’ or the code of conduct for a company. A paradigmatic activity involving rules is playing a game. * Jasper C. van den Herik 1 Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands J. C. van den Herik The rules of games can be transient, formulated on the spot, and leave room for interpretation, as is often the case in children playing together, or can be fixed, codified in a rule book, and written with the express intention of preventing room for interpretation, as for example in the ‘FIDE Laws of Chess’ rule book. Wittgenstein (1953) proposed that we can think of language in terms of language-games. Regardless of whether one thinks the analogy of language and games holds up, many philosophers and linguists assume that language is like a game at least in the sense that it is a normative activity subject to rules (e.g., Itkonen 2008; Hacker 2014). However, theorists of language disagree about the role that rules play in linguistic behaviour. On what Matthews (2003) calls the received view, linguistic behaviour is governed by rules that are represented in the cognitive system of individuals (e.g. Fodor 2008). On such a view, learning to speak revolves around forming mental representations of the rules that constitute a particular language. In opposition to the received view, proponents of embodied cognition argue that mental representations do not exist.1 Embodied cognition aims to show how behaviour can be ‘regular without being regulated’ (Gibson 1979, p. 215) by showing how cognitive structures emerge from a history of sensorimotor interactions of an organism with its environment (Varela et al. 1991). In line with embodied cognition, people have sought to redescribe language in terms of embodied action, for example in terms of a catalyst of cognition (Verbrugge 1985), a system of replicable constraints (Rączaszek-Leonardi 2009; RączaszekLeonardi and Kelso 2008), attentional actions (van den Herik 2018), or in terms of future attractors in dynamic systems (Thibault 2011). However, the role that linguistic rules play in an embodied account of linguistic behaviour is currently underexplored. In this paper, I start from the ecological-enactive approach to cognition,2 a prominent proponent of embodied cognition, and show a possible way in which this approach could account for the normativity of language. Linguistic rules are understood in a sense which lies much closer to the everyday use of the word ‘rule’: namely as prescriptions, formulated in language, that normatively structure linguistic practices, where rules are formulated and enforced in interaction. In particular, I put forward as a hypothesis the thesis that metalinguistic reflexivity is constitutive of linguistic normativity. By this I mean that the normativity of language requires metalinguistic practices, by means of which the properties of language behaviour can be (re)negotiated. It is often assumed that this constitutive role of reflexivity runs into a regress objection. If language is indeed subject to rules, and these rules are formulated in public language, it 1 Not all approaches under the embodied cognition banner eschew mental representations. Conservative embodied approaches claim that mental representations are not abstract symbols, but rather make use of the sensorimotor system of the brain (e.g. Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Barsalou 1999); radical embodied approaches, on the other hand, aim to explain cognition without invoking any mental representations (e.g. J.J. Gibson 1979; Varela et al. 1991; Chemero 2009; Hutto and Myin 2017). 2 The ecological-enactive approach (Rietveld et al. 2018; Rietveld & Kiverstein; cf. van den Herik 2019, §1.1.8) combines insights from ecological psychology (J.J. Gibson 1979; Chemero 2009) and enactivism (Varela et al. 1991; Noë 2012; Hutto and Myin 2013). Although initially developed independent from one another, these approaches can be considered complementary. For example, they both start from the idea that cognition consists in a continuous and dynamic sensorimotor process, and they share influences ranging from the pragmatism of Dewey and James to the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (e.g. Heras-Escribano 2019, §5.1). The ecological-enactive approach combines the idea that the concept of affordances, or possibilities for action, is central for understanding cognition, with the idea that these affordances are enacted by individuals in the context of socio-material practices. Rules as Resources: An Ecological-Enactive Perspective on... seems that one must already understand language in order to learn language (Sellars 1954; Searle 1995). In this paper, I argue that the regress objection can be evaded from an ecological-enactive perspective by proposing a conceptual account of how a child learns language by first learning what I dub first-order linguistic skills, and then retrospectively interpreting her own behaviour and that of others in normative metalinguistic terms, i.e., as being g (...truncated)