In this chapter, the focus switches from thought to language, specifically to the higher-order cognitive processes involved in allowing us to successfully use language. Once again, the primary concern of this chapter is not to demonstrate that a particular theoretical account of these processes is wrong (or right). This, as probably will be clear by now, would not cohere with the overall strategy of this book. This has been not to demonstrate the falsity of the internalist pre-theoretical picture of the mind but to unseat or subvert it by showing that we are not required to think about the mind in the way this picture requires. In this way, the motivation for the internalist picture is, at least to some extent, removed. Consequently, the strategy in these chapters has been not to show that particular theoretical articulations of this internalist picture are false; the strategy has, rather, been to remove their motivation and thus loosen the grip their underlying picture has on us. Part of this strategy, moreover, has been to show the deleterious, or potentially deleterious, effect a tacit commitment to the internalist picture can have on our thinking and theorizing about the mind; how the picture can close off various legitimate and potentially important avenues of inquiry. In the case of our theorizing about language use, I shall argue, this is precisely what has happened.

One central question in recent discussions of the processes responsible for language use has been this: in virtue of what can a system or organism be capable of obeying principles of linguistic composition?