Between Chomskian Rationalism and Popperian Empiricism

Noam Chomsky's rationalist account of the human mind has won many adherents and attracted many critics. What has been little noticed on either side of the debate is that Chomsky's rationalism is best viewed as a pair of quite distinct doctrines about the mental mechanisms responsible for language acquisition. One of these doctrines, the one I will call rigid rationalism, entails the other, which I call anti-empiricism, but the entailment is not mutual. Rigid rationalism is much the stronger of the two. What is more, the argument Chomsky offers for rigid rationalism is quite distinct from the argument for anti-empiricism. In the first section of this paper I will set out what I take to be the most favourable interpretation of each of these doctrines, along with the argument supporting it. Until recently, one of Chomsky's most energetic supporters has been Geoffrey Sampson.' However, Sampson has now jumped ship and joined the ranks of the opposition. To make matters worse, Sampson did not leave the Chomskian camp empty handed. He absconded with the data. In an intriguing argument Sampson urges that the very data which Chomsky uses to support his rationalist theory of mind are in fact better evidence for a radically different theory of mind, an empiricist theory suggested by the work of Karl Popper and his followers.2 In the second