...and he's also mystified why a serious journal is devoting an issue to it. If other parts of philosophy had as clear Wissenschaftlich standards as philosophy of language/linguistics does, there' be more protests of this kind.
(Thanks to Peter Ludlow for the pointer.)
UPDATE: I've heard from one well-known philosopher and one well-known psychologist telling me that things are not quite as simple as they appear. The psychologist, for example, wrote:
Re the Hornstein post, you're way overestimating the degree of agreement among linguists (I don't know about philosophy of language) re standards of evidence, argumentation, what counts as progress, which issues have been resolved or are open, etc.
The book in question addresses many issues that remain contentious in modern linguistics. The author apparently takes positions that Hornstein deeply opposes. I have not read the book and do not know if the arguments are any good, but the questions are valid ones, and matters of ongoing debate. The journal in question is at least as credible as the others he mentions, and less parochial, so airing the disagreements is a reasonable thing to do--assuming the book is not poorly done, not merely at variance with NH's personal views. The Language editorial board includes many outstanding scholars—including ones who compare favorably to Hornstein I would say. It is not heavily weighted to the traditional MIT/generative grammar side of the field, however. But the current MIT department doesn’t seem to be either!
Norbert is a keeper of the Chomskyan faith. That approach and set of beliefs has faded in prominence and acceptance, mainly because it got overtaken by progress achieved by other approaches. The fate of Chomsky's proposals about language (structure, origins, acquisition, brain bases) will be a great case study in the history of ideas. Pinker's popularizations bought the approach some extra time, but most of the important claims turn out to have been wrong (e.g., that language is an "instinct," that there is a "language organ", that language is unrelated to other types of cognition, or to other forms of communication, etc.).
It's been amazing to watch how the events have played out over the past 40 years, since I got into it.
You can now expect to receive responses to the effect that these comments are as worthless as that book. The line between intensive intellectual debate and trolling is a thin one.
