¹ For obvious reasons, Bloomfield's own version of Bloomfieldian antimentalism is taken as my point of departure. But I could just as easily have taken any one of the many anti-mentalist positions found in the tradition of American behaviorist linguistics—for instance, with Twaddell's view of the psychological reality of linguistic concepts as expressed in his influential paper On defining the phoneme = Language monographs no. 16 (1935). There Twaddell writes:

'It is a work of supererogation to try to restate what Bloomfield has so well stated. For the sake of completeness, though, it may be justifiable to recapitulate the general principles which invalidate any “mental” definition of the phoneme.

‘Such a definition is invalid because (1) we have no right to guess about the linguistic workings of an inaccessible “mind”, and (2) we can secure no advantage from such guesses. The linguistic processes of the “mind” as such are quite simply unobservable; and introspection about linguistic processes is notoriously a fire in a wooden stove. Our only information about the “mind” is derived from the behavior of the individual whom it inhabits. To interpret that behavior in terms of “mind” is to commit the logical fallacy of “explaining” a fact of unknown cause by giving that unknown cause a name, and then citing the name x as the cause of the fact. “Mind” is indeed a summation of such x's, unknown causes of human behavior.‘

Other particularly explicit statements of the antimentalist viewpoint against which I intend to argue include C. F. Hockett, ‘Biophysics, linguistics, and the unity of science’, American scientist 1948. 558–72; and a work as recent as R. M. W. Dixon, Linguistic science and logic (The Hague, 1963).

² L. Bloomfield, Language 32 (New York, 1933).

³ Bloomfield, ‘Linguistic aspects of science’, International encyclopedia of unified science 1.231 (Chicago, 1938).

⁴ Ibid. 231.

⁵ Cf. N. Chomsky, ‘A transformational approach to syntax’ and ‘Current issues in linguistic theory’, The structure of language: Readings in the philosophy of language, ed. by J. Fodor and J. J. Katz (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1964).

⁶ Cf. H. Putnam, ‘Minds and machines’, Dimensions of mind, ed. by S. Hook (New York, 1960).

⁷ For further discussion of this concept cf. J. J. Katz and P. Postal, An integrated theory of linguistic descriptions (Cambridge, Mass., 1964).

⁸ This, then, is the answer to Hockett's question about how to construe ordering otherwise than historically; cf. ‘Two models of linguistic description’, Word 10.233 (1954) : ‘. . . if it is said that the English past tense form baked is “formed” from bake by a “process” of “suffixation”, then no matter what disclaimer of historicity is made, it is impossible not to conclude that some kind of priority is being assigned to bake as against baked or the suffix. And if this priority is not historical, what is it?‘

⁹ Chomsky, review of Verbal behavior by B. F. Skinner, Lg. 35.26–58 (1959).

¹⁰ Bloomfield, Language 213.

¹¹ Cf. S. Bromberger, The concept of explanation (dissertation, Harvard University, 1960), for the first set of convincing examples of this kind to be proposed.

¹² For a general discussion of the fictionalist view of scientific theories cf. Katz, ‘On the existence of theoretical entities’, in preparation.