lenneberg, a note on cassirer's philosophy of language

International Phenomenological Society

A Note on Cassirer's Philosophy of LanguageAuthor(s): Eric H. LennebergSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Jun., 1955), pp. 512-522Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2103911 .

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A NOTE ON CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE*

I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF CASSIRER 'S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

With interest in problems posed by the study of language ever growing, it is proper to analyze the linguistic speculations of one of our leading philosophers: Ernst Cassirer.1

If today Cassirer's role is somewhat controversial between the various disciplines, this may in no small part be due to his linguistic theories which in the course of his life underwent considerable transformation. To point out the thread of thought in this particular area of his work might prove of assistance in the understanding of Cassirer's thinking.

Time and again Cassirer wrote about the place of language in cognition (Erkenntnis), but only in his main work, Die Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen,2 do we encounter substantial reference to and use of concrete empirical language examples. When Cassirer was asked by his English-speaking friends, early in the forties, to translate these tomes into English, he found that he had developed away from his earlier position,3 and, instead of translating the PSF, he wrote a new book, An Essay on Man. The treatment of language that emerged from this new book is quite different from that in the PSF. Although Cassirer stated that one of his aims in writing the Essay was to produce a shorter but more comprehensible version of the PSF,4 it would seem inconceivable that such pronounced changes could have been due entirely to space economy. Consider only three of the most outstanding of these changes.

1) The PSF is permeated with concepts of evolution and of dialectic progressions. Language, which for Cassirer was the entelechy of knowledge,5 is traced there through what he considered to be steps of development. Influenced by Wundt, he discusses for instance the successive formative

* I am indebted to Dr. G. J. Metcalf, The University of Chicago, who has kindly discussed with me some of the problems raised in this article.

1 There is no dearth of interpretations and discussions of Cassirer's philosophy; cf. Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer, Evanston, 1949. Inas- much as the present article is focussed on a particular point in Cassirer's philosophy of language, no attempt is made here either to reinterpret his philosophy nor to review the literature about it.

2 Berlin, 1923 (vol. I); 1925 (vol. II); 1929 (vol. III). All references to this work will subsequently appear as PSF.

8 An Essay on Man, New Haven, 1944, p. vii. Hereafter referred to as Es8ay. 4Ibid. 6 PSF, I, 1-51.

512



CASSIRER'S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE 513

stages of mimesis, analogy, and symbolic presentations Elsewhere he speaks of concepts that evolve from concrete, substantial beginnings to abstract and substance-less symbols.7 Again, throughout his discussion of space, time, and number he holds that the perception of reality proceeds from undifferentiated totalities to fine differentiation.' And all of these ascendancies he illustrates with linguistic examples taken from more than thirty languages, both living and extinct, from clinical reports of patho- logical speech, from psychological literature, from autobiographical material.9

Some ten-odd years after the first volume of the PSF was written, Cassirer expresses himself against linguistic theories based on the concept of mimesis"0 and declares that neither Herbart nor Wundt (to whose views

6 PSF, I, 136 f. and passim. 7 PSF, I, 122-132 and passim. 8 PSF, I, 146-208. 9 There are several passages in the PSF which could be interpreted as if Cassirer

had not intended to document developmental theories by means of language examples (e.g. I, 137, 257, 274). However, if such an interpretation were adopted, how were we to understand such phrases as erste, zweite, dritte Stufe, or niedere, hoehere Stufe (I, 141, 171, 179 ff.)? What would the meaning be of schon die aelteste Schicht der Raumbezeichnung (I, 164) or ein weiterer Schritt auf dem Wege zur generischen Allgemeinheit (I, 261)? If these were figures of speech-methodological schemata devoid of objective correlates in the empirical language material-then quotation of language examples would not only be superfluous but, indeed, misleading.

10 "Die Sprache und der Aufbau der Gegenstandswelt" Deutsche Gesellsehaft fuer Psychologie, Bericht ueber den XII Kongress, April 1931, p. 134. Even in the PSF Cassirer expressed himself occasionally (I, 21 ff., 42 if., 129-135, III; 128 ff.) against the traditional theories of the origin of language based on the principle of imitation. While he did not there postulate a primeval language stage of pure imitation, he had by no means discarded the notion that the mimetic expressions constitute a primitive substratum of language. (Cf. his concept of Lautmetapher I, 140 and his discussion of imitation I, 137 ff.) In an earlier lecture ("Der Begriff der Symbo- lischen Form im Aufbau der Geisteswissenschaften" Bibliothek Warburg, Vortraege 1921-22, Leipzig, 1923) Cassirer's position is even less ambiguous; beside the progres- sion from mimesis to analogy he speaks there of the Ehrenrettung des vielgeschmaehten Prinzips der Lautnachahmung (p. 19). Even the deictic principle is reduced in the PSF to imitation (cf. Naturlaute I, 149 and vokale Gesten I, 150 both of which are Wundtian concepts). We are up against a logical difficulty when we try to harmonize Cassirer's concept of the symbol with his subscription to imitation. A symbol, he holds, results in the amalgam of an objective stimulus and a subjective reaction. Symbolization is an original, autonomous act of the intellect, an Urfunktion, and the relation of symbol to symbolized (das symbolische Grundverhaeltni8) is an Urpheno- men (PSF, III, 144.) There need not be a natural similarity between the expression (the exterior aspect of the symbol) and the signified object. (cf. discussion of the role of the reflex, PSF I, Introduction and p. 132). Throughout the PSF Cassirer emphasizes that the symbol is never just a replica of an objective reality but rather the formulation of relations (PSF, III, 147 ff.). If, however, symbolization is said



514 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

he had so far generally adhered in his phenomenology of language) had proposed theories by means of which the essence of language could be understood. Thus he is clearly undermining the very basis on which the developmental theories of the PSF had been erected.

In the Essay, again ten years later, genetic "explanations" of the essence of language are altogether repudiated, especially when such explanations purport to be based on empirical, language-historical evidence.11 At this point a basic aspect of Cassirer's thought as exhibited in the PSF is funda- mentally transformed.

2) The change, throughout the years, in Cassirer's philosophy of language also becomes evident if we study the use which he makes of linguistic evidence over the years of his research. Cassirer's earliest statement on symbolic forms12 has but a few linguistic corroborations. He introduces the subject matter as lying specifically outside of either history or "culturology" (Kulturwissenschaft) and specifies it as "systematisch- philo8ophisch." In such a context the scantiness of empirical material is not surprising. In the PSF, published two years later, the linguistic speculations assume a new character: they are now presented as a "phenomenology of language."13 In the preface he states that he has endeavored to answer the philosophical questions posed in that book by reference to empirical, linguistic research and evidence.-4 And later on, with deeper philosophical significance:

In defining the distinctive character of any spiritual form, it is essential to measure it by its own standards. The criteria by which we judge it and ap- praise its achievement, must not be drawn from outside, but must be taken from its own fundamental law of formation.15

Philosophical inquiry into artistic as well as mythical and linguistic expression is in danger of missing its mark if, instead of immersing itself

to be possible at the earliest stage of development without the need of a natural connection between symbol and symbolized, and if, on the other hand, the trend of symbolization is complete dissimilarity between signified and signifier (I, 135), why then postulate also a primary mimetic stage, and why then is it necessary to stress the onomatopoetic principle as an important factor in the origin and development of language?

11 Essay, 116-119. 12Warburg Vortraege, 1921-22. 13 The first volume has the subtitle, Zur Phaenomenologie der sprachlichen Form.

For a discussion of Cassirer's concept and use of the term phenomenology see Fritz Kaufmann, "Cassirer, Neo-Kantianism, and Phenomenology" in the Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer, 823 ff.

14 PSF, I, p. viii. 15 PSF, I, 122. Passages quoted in English are taken from Ralph Manheim's

translation of the PSF, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1953, but p. refs. are to the German edition.




freely in the particular forms and laws of expression, it starts from dog- matic assumptions regarding the relation between "archetype" and "re- production," "reality" and "appearance," "inner" and "outer" world. The question must rather be whether these distinctions are not determined through art, through language and through myth, and whether each of these forms must not draw its distinctions according to different perspectives, and consequently set up different dividing lines.16

Language is for Cassirer a "Grundform des Verstehens," a basic form of knowledge, and since he emphasizes in the PSF that such a form can only be characterized and understood in its own and peculiar terms, it is easy to see why he embarked there on a study of grammars and linguistic research. In the PSF Cassirer holds, in line with philosophical idealism, that the distinction between essence and form is merely a methodological abstraction and that both concepts, essence as well as form, have one and the same referent. Applying this to language he says:

Here again that relation between "essence" and "form," which is expressed in the old Scholastic dictum forma dat esse rei, is confirmed also for language. Epistemology cannot analyze the substance and form of knowledge into independent contents which are only outwardly connected with one another; the two factors can only be thought and defined in relation to one another; and likewise in language, pure, naked substance is a mere abstraction-a methodological concept to which no immediate "reality," no empirical fact corresponds.17

In Cassirer's philosophy a study of language is clearly more than the study of various outward forms that encompass independent and universal thoughts-this would presuppose an actual distinction between the being of knowledge and the form of knowledge. Instead he considers it to be the study of different types of knowledge altogether. The being of knowledge is its form, and since languages differ from one another in their form, Cassirer holds that they also embody different kinds of knowledge."8 This is the skeleton of assumptions underlying the PSF. We can see from the language examples cited by Cassirer throughout the PSF that he believed at that time that the essence of knowledge can be studied by analyzing morphologi- cal, syntactical, semantic, and even phonological phenomena of language. Only the overall characterization of languages or the typological classification of languages into polysynthetic, agglutinative, and isolating or analytic types he rejected as irrelevant for epistemological investigations of language.'9 It is the individual linguistic detail which, to him, revealed knowledge as manifested in languages.

16 PSF, I, 123. 17 PSF, I, 278. 18 This is the implication of all comments on language examples cited in the PSF. 19 PSF, I, 278.




In the Essay reference to linguistic detail has almost completely dis- appeared. It looks as if Cassirer's position, which in the PSF was sub- stantiated by the citation of linguistic forms, is now derived primarily from theoretical considerations. Data produced by empirical linguistics have now the character of analogies rather than of validation. Indeed, a recurrent theme in the Essay is that the epistemological aspect of language cannot be discovered in a study of grammar.20 The PSF gave the impres- sion that each individual language generated a peculiar type of knowledge; intheEssay, however, itis human speech as such that is treated as a medium of knowledge, while the linguistic detail has receded into the background of the exposition.2"

3) Closely related to the change in use of linguistic material is Cassirer's varying treatment of space and time. In the PSF these epistemological categories are not only discussed in their genetic succession-space - time- - number - objectivity-(Cassirer also traces the evolution within each category), but the successions themselves are illustrated with linguistic examples of a grammatical, idiomatic, or lexical character. Not so in the Essay. The short chapter entitled "The Human World of Space and Time" has not a single illustration prevenient from language. Unlike the other chapters, it does not even refer to the PSF for more detailed discussions.

II. AN EXPLANATION OF CHANGES OBSERVED

The following critical analysis of the treatment of language in the PSF is offered as an explanation of the changes that took place when Cassirer discussed language twenty years later in the Essay.

a) The Problem of the significance of individual word-meanings for a theory of knowledge.-If languages are matrices of knowledge for entire speech communities, as Cassirer assumed, the question arises what and how much must we know about a language in order to have access to the essence of knowledge that is being manifested in that language? Can a grammar that is written in a European language give us a clue to the intellectual world of the peoples who speak Klamath, Baikiri, Ewe, an Eskimo language, an Athapascan language, Mande, Nuba?22 Is not our information, thus gathered, likely to be distorted by the theoretical constructs needed for the writing of a grammar? How much do we know about the linguistic means at the disposal of a people after we have learned that their language has

20Essay, 126 ff- 21 Cf. Essay 128 if. The concrete language examples are crowded into the last

three pages of the chapter on language. Nevertheless, the earlier viewpoint that every language is the mark of a peculiar world-perspective (Weltansicht) has not been completely eradicated. 'Cf. 120.

22 Languages frequently quoted in the PSF.




no one word for our word W or that in their language only one word is used for our words W1, W2, W3 ... W.?23 What do we know about a people's language when we hear that a certain metaphor is used in a context in which we apparently do not use a metaphor?24 These types of statement are far too particularistic, too incoherent, too much out of context to give us a comprehensive idea of a people's linguistic ways and means towards expression. From the proposition that language and knowledge constitute an entity it need not follow that individual words correspond to specific "units" of knowledge, nor that we can learn something about knowledge by simply discussing the meaning of a word. There is no cogent reason to assume that the grammarian's articulation of the stream of speech is coterminous with an articulation of knowledge or the intellect. We may think of language as "path-finder" for knowledge without either having to assume the distinction between being and form (which was so odious to Cassirer), or that an inspection of words will introduce us to the nature of cognition (an assumption which involves several difficulties to be discussed presently). If -we choose to believe in such a thing as the "genius" of a language (in the sense in which the idealists from Herder to K. Vossler have used the word),25 then we must at least admit that nothing short of a complete mastery-an actual "living in the language"-will reveal to us that genius. An armchair knowledge of one or another isolated language fact about some remote language, presented to us in the drab garb of a grammar written in German or English, is as likely to give us a feeling for the "spirit

23 This type of statement is found throughout the PSF: the Baikiri have no generic word for either parrot or palmtree but names for every individual species of parrots or palmtrees (258); on the other hand, they have only one word for the German ich, meines, das ist mein, das gehoert mir, etc. (221); the old Egyptian word kod stands for the most varied concepts: to make pottery, to be a potter, to form, to create, to construct, to work, to draw, to navigate, to travel, to sleep; also in a nominal sense: likeness (Ebenbild), picture, simile, likeness (Aehnlichkeit), circle, ring (256); there are 5744 names for the camel in Arabian (258), yet not one of these gives a general biological concept (Essay, 135. Apparently Cassirer misunderstood his source; see Hammer-Purgstall, Das Kamel, Kais. Akad. d. Wiss. Phil.-Hist. KI., Wien 1855 f. vols. VI & VII, p. 10).

24 Instances abound throughout the PSF: instead of the German words hinter and vor, the Mande people have words meaning the "back or buttock" and "eye" re- spectively; their word for the German auf means "neck;" in means "belly." (157). The word which corresponds in Eskimo to our word twenty actually means "a man is completed" (i.e. all his fingers and toes have been counted) (184). In Malayo- Polynesian languages the phrase five horses means literally "horses, five tails;" four stones means literally "stones, four round bodies," etc. (190).

26 In the PSF Cassirer uses W. v. Humboldt's term innere Sprachform; in the Essay he speaks of the "spirit of language." The terms appear to be synonymous if we may judge by the context.




of a language" as knowledge of the physical elements contained in a cake is likely to make us experience the taste of the cake.26 It is yet an unan- swered question whether a language with which we have had no living contact whatever and of which we have but the vaguest academic knowledge can be subjected successfully to a phenomenonological analysis.

b) The problem of selection of language examples.-Throughout the first volume of the PSF language is discussed in terms of developmental stages. Time and again Cassirer emphasizes, however, that he does not believe that languages develop homogeneously, and he rejects therefore the idea of a phylogenetic arrangement of languages as for instance suggested by August Schleicher.27 In every language, he holds, features representing a low stage of development may coexist with features that may be characterized as developmentally "advanced."28 Thus German, e.g., is "primitive" in its gender classification2 but "advanced" in certain aspects of its vocabu- lary.30 The citing of one and the same language in different contexts is not in itself methodologically unsound. What is considerably more disturbing is the fact that Cassirer drew his examples, illustrating one and the same process, from a great number of unrelated languages without even choosing language phenomena that have a common functional denominator. Let one example of the procedure stand for many:

To illustrate an assumed evolution from a primeval stage of mimesis to a final one of symbolization,3' Cassirer quotes examples from the following languages: Kawi, Siamesian, Proto-Indoeuropean, Proto-Germanic, un- identified languages discussed in Fr. Mueller's Grundriss der Sprachwissen- schaft (Vienna, 1876-1888), Ewe, Golo, Ethiopian, Yakuts, Ural-Altaic languages, and Klamath. The phenomena discussed are onomatopoieia, sound-metaphors, pitch-phonemes, noun-verb distinctions, vowel harmony, agglutination, reduplication. The semantic significance of the phenomena discussed is as varied as space, time, affirmation-negation, quantity, diminu- tion-augmentation. Had Cassirer confined his linguistic illustrations to one level of description (e.g. if all examples cited in connection with the evolution from mimesis to symbolisation were pertinent to, say, pho- nology, or to morphology, or to syntax) then it might have been possible (at least in theory) to verify empirically the usefulness and tenability of that particular concept of evolution. A basis for comparison would then be

26 Cassirer makes a similar point later, Essay 121 ff. 27 PSF, I, 278. 28 PSF, I, 265. as PSP, I, 268. 30 This is implied in his discussion of other languages. Cf. footnotes 23 and 24

above. 31 PSF, I, 139-145.




established and the corollaries that should follow from the thesis could be checked against objective data. Cassirer chose a less positivistic course of research because he considered the methodological requirements for philosophy to be different from those for empirical sciences. In the PSF this is implicit. In the Essay, however, he makes this point quite clear:

The variety of individual idioms and the heterogeneity of linguistic types appear in a quite different light depending on whether they are looked at from a philosophical or from a scientific viewpoint.

and Yet the true unity of language, ... cannot be a substantial one; it must rather be defined as a functional unity. Such a unity does not presuppose a material or formal identity. Two different languages may represent opposite extremes both with respect to their phonetic systems and to their parts-of- speech systems. This does not prevent them from accomplishing the same task in the life of the speaking community. The important thing here is not the variety of means but their fitness for and congruity with the end.3la

Cassirer apparently felt throughout his life that linguistic data have quite a different significance within an epistemological context than within a descriptive, empirical context. Presumably, the philosopher can see a common essence in the language examples cited in the PSF where the empirical linguist discerns only incommensurable facts. There is an inconsistency here: on the one hand the PSF champions the unity between being and form, declaring that language and knowledge are merely two aspects of one and the same essence, and on the other hand it pronounces itself exempt from the methodological rules which govern those sciences in which the perceivable phenomena-in which forms-are studied. This inconsistency is minimized (though still present) in the Essay owing to the almost complete omission of linguistic data.

The lack of a functional common denominator among the language examples cited in the PSF does not necessarily disprove Cassirer's views; -yet no weight is added by their citation. As long as the underlying assumptions are that any language may or may not have retained some vestiges of an archaic stage; that archaisms may be retained in any aspect of language behavior and that they may present themselves in an unpredictable variety of appearances; and, that the decision of what constitutes an archaism rests entirely on unique and, in a sense, arbitrary interpretation, absolutely anything that we may find in a language can either be said to belong to an early, an intermediary, or a late stage of development. In view of this it will be impossible ever to find a phenomenon that could contradict the theory for which empirical substantiation is being sought, and we might

81a Essay 129 f.




thus save ourselves the trouble of studying or referring to linguistic material in the first place.

In summary, the difficulty is this. The scholastic maxim forma dat esse rei which is so essential in Cassirer's philosophy would logically demand that linguistic data always "mean" the same thing, no matter whether viewed from an empirical (i.e. formal) or from a philosophical standpoint. If a particular array of linguistic facts is incommensurable and therefore unin- terpretable by the empirical linguist, the doctrine of the being-form unity should automatically disqualify such material from a meaningful philosophical interpretation. The empirical data worked into the PSF add little to Cassirer's theory and this may well be the reason for the greatly shortened treatment of language in the Essay.

c) The problem of transcending language boundaries.-Consider the following proposition which is basic for an understanding of Cassirer's thought:

The spirit apprehends itself and its antithesis to the "objective" world only by bringing certain distinctions inherent in itself into its view of the phenomena and, as it were, injecting them into the phenomena.32

According to Cassirer language reflects and is a perceivable aspect of the intellect or spirit (Geist)." This belief led him to hope that he might be able to "demonstrate the truth" of the above proposition by showing that the objective world is actually known in quite different terms because languages deal with it in such diversified ways.34 In the PSF he assumed that the Weltanschauungen encompassed by the individual languages are obligatory upon the speakers. Once these assumptions are accepted and used as starting points for empirical investigations they cannot help but lead the investigator to a deadlock: as a rule (not without exceptions) we have only one native language and thus our knowledge of the world would be mediated, according to those assumptions, by only one language system. If we study other languages it should become exceedingly difficult, if at all possible, to rid ourselves of the mediating effect exercised by our own native language in our endeavors to know something about an un- familiar language. As long as we satisfy ourselves with reading, in our own tongue, about some individual facts pertaining to such a foreign language, those facts fall obviously into the same category as the "phenomena of the objective world" and cannot be conceived except in terms of our own

32PSF I, 123. 38 Refs. and implications to this effect throughout the PSF, I: Sprache ... Grund-

form des Verstehens (p.v.); Sprache . . . geistiges Grundmittel, vermoege dessen sich, fuer uns der Fortschritt von der blossen Empfindungswelt zu der Welt der Anschauungen und Vorstellungen vollzieht (20); Sprache . . . als Spiegelbild des Geistes (146).

34 PSF, I, p. viii by implication.




"knowledge-structure." The claim that one may discover differences in "knowledge of the world" by inspecting descriptions of languages becomes a logical impossibility if one holds at the same time that we cannot know (erkennen) except in terms of [our own native]3" language. In accordance with the argument advanced here it can, of course, not be demonstrated empirically that Cassirer did or did not succeed in transcending language boundaries when discussing foreign languages. Yet it is interesting to note that at least some of his discussions are apparently biased by an "Indo- European point of view."38 as shown by the following.

In PSF I, chapter IV, Cassirer postulates an ubiquitous trend towards generalization of concepts. The primitive stage is characterized, he asserts, by a proliferation of terms denoting separately each constituent of a given logical category without, however, having a general term which would denote the category as such. In the course of linguistic (and therefore intellectual) development an ever more generalizing and subsuming termi- nology evolves until finally the logical category itself is abstracted and labelled with a term. To illustrate the early stage, Cassirer cites a report by Trumbull according to which some American Indian Languages lack our general concepts "to eat" and "to strike."37 Instead of these general concepts very specific sub-concepts are used by the speakers of these languages, describing in great detail the exact modalities of eating and striking. Ap- parently Cassirer was not aware that the German words essen and schlagen are not logical and all inclusive categories either. Essen for instance is never substituted for fressen or fuettern although they both refer to the intake of food. Likewise the word schlagen does not include such activities as peitschen, boxen, hacken, whereas these together with schlagen might be subsumed logically under the category violent action upon an object, for which we have no single general term. In these illustrations Cassirer seems to have been deceived by the fact that a given concept existing in his own language is lacking in many others.

III. CONCLUSION

In view of Cassirer's neo-Kantian position some interpreters of his philosophy may say that the many references to linguistic material in the

36 The words our own native are my own interpolations. In terms of Cassirer's own arguments he had no means of viewing all the languages he cited from a completely objective viewpoint, i.e. one that is not biased at every step by his own native language.

'f For a more detailed treatment and further illustrations of this point my paper The linguistic theories in Ernst Cassirer's Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen may be consulted. It was submitted, unpublished, to the faculty of Germanic Languages and Literature at the University of Chicago in fulfillment of degree requirements.

87 PSF I, 258.




PSF were not regarded by Cassirer as empirical evidence, i.e. as corrobora- tion of hypotheses through sense perception, but were thought of as immediate and self-evident manifestations of reason. Such an interpretation, while giving a certain depth to Cassirer's thought, fails however to solve the following difficulty: Details of foreign languages have to be learned by us or are known by us in exactly the same manner as certain details of the objective world. If our knowledge of the objective world is actually subject to and molded by the modes of cognition that are "built into" our intellectual faculties, and if every language constitutes a mode of cognition of its own (as implied by Cassirer and other philosophers, e.g. J. Stenzel and W. Urban), then it should be impossible ever to know the objective intellectual essence of an alien language, particularly when we know that alien language only through the medium of literal translation into our own language.38 At the time Cassirer wrote the E8say he had by and large abandoned the view that every language represents a specific modus cogitandi. Instead it is human speech as such which he now held to be the symbolic medium that is essential for the full realization of knowledge. The formal detail of this medium, however, he no longer regarded as particularly relevant to a theory of knowledge.

If our knowledge of foreign languages is the same in nature as our knowledge of the objective world, then speculations about languages such as the PSF assume the character of working hypotheses about a natural phenomenon so that the references to concrete language examples begin to appear as empirical verification of an evidence for such hypotheses. Under these circumstances it becomes reasonable to question the logical soundness of Cassirer's "methods of verification," and in this connection his procedure for gathering, arranging, and interpreting linguistic data must be earnestly criticized from an empirical point of view.

While there seemed to be a need to point out that a collection of unrelated quotations from various grammars is no evidence for any hypothesis regarding the cognitive function of language, certainly the argument that the linguistic data in the PSF are unproductive does not at the same time deny that the basic conception of a philosophy of the symbol is a great contribution to epistemology. However, the nature of this contribution has been dealt with sufficiently in the philosophical literature to need any further confirmation here.

ERIC H. LENNEBERG. MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY.

38 The difficulties posed in this connection by the process of translation have been discussed in detail in my article "Cognition in Ethnolinguistics" Language vol. 29 (1953) pp. 463-471.



lenneberg, a note on cassirer's philosophy of language

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