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Title:: Computationalism in Chomsky s Theory of Language and Mind:Its Origins, Essence and Influences

Keywords:: Chomsky; computationalism on language and mind; rationalism; cognitive sciences

Abstract:: Computationalism is a philosophical theory of mind arising from the rationalist tradition, model of Turing machine and modern computer science. Its key proposition is to regard the cognitive process as the operation of the algorithm in Turings computable functions. Influenced by this, Chomsky created his theory of generative linguistics on the basis of modern scientific developments and in the framework of the rationalist cognitive innatism in order to characterize the key human cognitive capacity—the human language competence, which has greatly promoted the development of cognitive sciences in general and cognitive psychology in particular. In its essence, the generative linguistics is a strand of computationalism on human language and mind, characterized by its emphases on the speciesspecificity and domainspecificity of the computation of human language. Despite many controversies it causes, Chomskys computationalism on human language and mind can help us better understand the current developments in such areas as cognitive psychology, neuroscience of the brain and artificial intelligence if we have an appropriate understanding of its origins, essence and influences.