The "potency" criterion alluded to in the preceding section is somewhat ill-defined, but may include "exhaustiveness", "effectiveness', and an affective component as well.
As Chomsky put it in an earlier work: The theory of linguistic structure must be distinguished clearly from a manual of helpful procedures for the discovery of grammars.
[2] ...the grammar gives a correct account of the linguistic intuition of the native speaker, and specifies the observed data (in particular) in terms of significant generalizations that express underlying regularities in the language.
It is suggested that the system of levels proposed by Chomsky in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax has its antecedents in the works of Descartes, Kant, Carnap, Quine, and others.
This concept should not be confused with the "causal adequacy principle," which refers to Descartes' version of the ontological argument for the existence of God in his Meditations on First Philosophy.