Abstract

It is surprising that the human being can form mental representations of objects and properties which its sense organs were not designed by natural selection to register. This is not merely displaced reference, a capacity shared with some other species. After all, displaced reference can be reference to observables. I defend the plausibility of developing a research program for exploring how this capacity relates to knowledge by description in a roughly Russellian sense. As such it is an accidental offshoot of the language faculty, specifically the capacity to construct descriptions. Even more specifically, it requires the ability to form quantifier phrases, as per variants of the theory of descriptions. Linguists have presented evidence for a computational operation proprietary to the language faculty, Internal Merge, which binds variables. I argue for the reasonableness of a program for exploring how the human uniqueness of Internal Merge contributes to our ability for knowledge by description.

Keywords: Description, cognition, language, Russell, Chomsky.