Language is central to every aspect of our lives: intellectual, social, and cultural. So any insight that linguistics can provide should be welcomed by disciplines that rely on an understanding of language: philosophy, psychology, computer science, literature, the study of individual languages, anthropology, and others too numerous to mention. Yet the reaction to Chomskyan linguistics has sometimes been suspicious, hostile or even antagonistic, and the domain where there has been most resistance is philosophy. In the eyes of (many) linguists Chomsky's arguments are cogent and convincing. Why don't the philosophers agree? In this chapter I want to look at Chomsky's philosophical commitments and the overall coherence of his linguistic theory, and try to explain some of the bases for the disagreements and misunderstandings. I have used the headings “commitments” and “controversies,” but the commitments are controversial, and the controversies reflect commitments, so the boundary between the two is by no means clear-cut.

Commitments

Chomsky has argued powerfully for realism, naturalism, and mentalism: three strands in his thinking that converge in his internalist concentration on I-language as opposed to E-language.