The pronoun problem

Question

the pronoun problemThe passage below is from ‘the Blank Slate’ by Steven Pinker.http://evolbiol.ru/blankslate/blankslate.htm Evolution is central to understanding ourselves because signs of design in human beings do not stop at the heart or the eye. For all its exquisite engineering, an eye is useless without a brain. Its output is not the meaningless patterns of a screen saver, but raw material for circuitry that computes a representation of the external world. That representation feeds other circuits that make sense of the world by imputing causes to events and placing them in categories that allow useful predictions.In this passage I want to know what the underlined pronoun ‘them’ refer to.It seems to represent causes in the context.Am I right?(If not, what does it stand for?)Regards.

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Stenka25I want to know what the underlined pronoun ‘them’ refers to.

causes

Deadrat · Answer

The syntax of the sentence makes "events" the antecedent, but the semantics requires that "causes" be the antecedent.

Stenka25 · Answer

Thanks a lot, Mister Micawber.
Thanks a lot, deadrat.

Let I ask one more pronoun, I mean relative pronoun ‘that’ in ‘that allow useful predictions.’
Is ‘that’ also stands for ‘causes’?

Thanks a million.

Deadrat · Answer

by imputing causes to events and placing them in categories that allow useful predictions.

What is it that lets us make predictions? It's the imputing of causes and the placing in categories. The antecedent of "that" is the compound object of the preposition "by," which happens to be the two clauses.

The sense doesn't allow "causes" to be the antecedent by itself because we're not privy to the actual causes. All we can do is have our brains impute causes, and that mental activity is part (half, I guess) of what allows for predictions.

Stenka25 · Answer

Thanks a lot for your thoughtful answer.
In semantic sense I think your answer makes sense.

But if so, the antecedent of 'that' is 'part of the sentence.'
In that case, It seems that if there is contradiction in the grammar sense.

As far as I know, if the antecedent of the relative pronoun is 'part of the sentence' or 'previous clause,' then only 'which' can be used to make the sentential relative clause as following sentence.The streets were empty, which was unusual for this time of day.Am I right?

If I am right.
Don't you think we have to find out the antecedent of 'that' which satisfies both semantic and grammatical sense.

If I am wrong, can you point out where my grammar goes wrong?

Let me out of this dilemma.

Regards.

Mister Micawber · Answer

Just to confuse the issue: I read 'that' as referring only to 'categories'.  It is the resulting categories that allow predictions.  Of course, I don't know what Pinker is really on about.

Deadrat · Answer

That representation feeds other circuits that make sense of the world by imputing causes to events and placing them in categories that allow useful predictions.

I think you're right that English doesn't admit of a restrictive sentential relative clause, as in "The streets were empty that...." And I also think you're right that we have to find antecedents that make syntactic and grammatical sense, but English is by and large a positional language (as opposed to an inflected one) and it allows wide latitude in placement. If I said, "I went to visit my boyhood home in Seoul, which was painted pink" would anyone insist that the city of Seoul had been painted pink?

I've read the sentence in bold so many times that the words are starting to sound nonsensical in my mind, but to rephrase a bit, I think the meaning is "imputing and categorizing that allow predictions." This is grammatical, implying that there's other kinds of less useful imputing and categorizing that don't allow predictions. The problem for me is that by the time the gerunds are objects of the preposition "by" and the gerunds have each been supplied with their own objects, I can't quite find where the restriction goes anymore.

As MM points out (and which I think you've detected as well), the clause "that allow useful predictions" has an attraction for the nearest plural antecedent, "categories," reenforced by the construction "circuits that make sense," which precedes our gerunds in the same sentence. But the categories by themselves don't do anything. I think it's fairly clear that Pinker means that certain mental activities (the imputing and categorizing) give rise to accurate prediction. This is sloppy writing in any case.

If there's a dilemma, it's not of your failure to understand but of Pinker's to express himself clearly. Part of this is that he's been carried away on the tides of his metaphoric "just-so" story about the operation of the human brain.

Stenka25 · Answer

Thanks a lot as always, Mister Micawber.
Thanks a lot for yet another thoughtful reply, deadrat.

Your replies made my English reading a wider perspective.
Thank you for everything.

The pronoun problem

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