With reference to my treatment of ``the familiar linguistic form/meaning dichotomy'', Harris thinks that where I am coming from is ``the late 19th century''. Indeed, Saussure, in the early 20th century, emphasized the close binding of form and meaning within a holistic system. But form and meaning are not, even in Saussure's view ``inseparable'', if by that is meant ``indistinguishable''. Else, how could Saussure have written about a relationship between the two? Saussure acknowledged, but gave little emphasis to, the fact that the two elements of the linguistic sign, the form and the meaning, had links to things outside the linguistic system, acoustic patterns and motor commands in the case of language form, and the referents or denotations of words in the case of meaning. My project is centrally about the integration of language with other experience and activity. Harris generously suspends final judgement on my larger project by waiting to see what I have to say about the origins of linguistic form. I may be able to assuage him by saying that I acknowledge that the binding of a pre-linguistic concept to a form (such as a word) has a transforming effect on the original concept, a result confirmed by several psychological experiments, rather than armchair theorizing.
The Origins of Meaning is concerned with the origins of language, necessarily considering a stage in evolution when there was no linguistic sign. The linguistic sign didn't just spring from nowhere. I am indeed coming from the late 19th century, following Darwin, and all subsequent serious thinkers about the human condition, in insisting on the continuity between that condition and the condition of apes. Again, this is about integrating our view of humans with our view of non-humans, without, of course, minimizing the differences. Harris' review swipes aside thought about the origin of language as a ``Darwinian will-o'-the-wisp''. I partly share Harris' appreciation of Saussure, but wonder what he thinks about Darwin.
Another way of saying, as Harris does, that I have ``bought heavily into the current jargon of animal `cognition', `mental representations' '', etc. is to describe the project as synthesizing relevant 20th and 21st century scientific research in human and comparative psychology. ``Much of what Hurford and other anti-Cartesians say about animal minds sounds like upmarket Mickey Mouse, decked out in pseudoscientific terminology.'' This seems to show where Harris is coming from. Implying some ``pro-Cartesian'' stance makes him a strange bedfellow of Chomsky, whose ideas Harris has elsewhere castigated in similarly energetic manner. More broadly, the quoted sentence is a fundamental attack on almost all current thinking in psychology, and certainly on mainstream comparative psychology. Maybe the 22nd century will judge Harris to be right, and we have been wasting our time, following another will-o'-the-wisp, but from where I am now, it doesn't seem likely.