Chomsky's Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden? Reading Group

I admit skimming it because I've recognized the various arguments he made articulated elsewhere (I saved the document and will get back to it though) but I never understood the point of his mysterianism. If we're not angels and have cognitive limits, there's no way to know and pinpoint how distant the gap actually is, yet he seems to be confident in how he asserts the implications of such and mapping it directly onto specific scientific examples.

Quoting Saphsin

If we're not angels and have cognitive limits, there's no way to know and pinpoint how distant the gap actually is

I'm not sure I understood this. Angels refers to the beings people believed in back then, who had infinite knowledge, perhaps thinking of God or gods would be less confusing.

Reply to Manuel Our limits to knowledge is figured out on a case by case basis, and even then we may unexpectedly breakthrough an impasse. There’s no way to make detailed generalizations about this unless you already know everything there is to know from the start.

Reply to Saphsin

In this essay, he points out that Newton himself realized that the way gravity worked was an "absurdity" and that no person who was of right "philosophical" mind could ever "fall into it".

The conclusion here being that the world does not work according to our common sense intuition and that the goal of scientific enquiry was henceforth lowered, from understanding the world to understanding theories of the world, which is quite different.

The case was that we thought we knew almost everything about the way matter worked, and were proven wrong.

There's also a reference to a paper by Lewontin, near the end, which also gives strong arguments as to what we cannot know about cognition, for instance. I could share the link, but I'd prefer to stick to this essay for a bit before branching out.

Reply to Manuel The threshold for the big questions that Newton imagined were lowered because the state of body of knowledge was not ready for them at the time, so yes they had to work within the frameworks of the theory. Science advances by answering smaller subquestions through working on the finer empirical details and math and not answering the big questions we’d like, but to suggest that answering more and more of these small subquestions doesn’t give you a new perspective of those big questions, even redefining the big questions, is a claim that’s really odd to me. I mean the action of a distance principle that Chomsky cites that Newton was so bewildered by, we confirmed evidence for gravitational waves just recently. That’s not a complete picture yet, but that’s why we have a century or more of fundamental physics to go.

On evolution of language, that seems to me more akin to something like the problem of Abiogenesis. Both only happened once and we don’t have the comprehensive historical data for it, so we can only make educated guesses. Abiogenesis we can hypothesize through lab experiments and computer simulations, evolution of language is probably tougher (depending on how complicated it actually is. Chomsky’s complicated formalism is a small minority position in generative linguistics, which itself is only one of the theoretical approaches in the broader linguistics field) Yes these are technically examples of our limits of knowledge, but I don’t think that says much about our cognitive constraints, and definitely not generalizable to the extent that it tells us lessons on where to pinpoint our limitations on answering some completely different question.

Quoting Saphsin

but to suggest that answering more and more of these small subquestions doesn’t give you a new perspective of those big questions, even redefining the big questions, is a claim that’s really odd to me.

That's not particularly relevant to the bigger picture.

You're right that we can get a bunch of data from all these fields and learn a lot, but we no longer have any intuitions about how the world works. Action at a distance was inconvenible to Newton because it wasn't materialistic, but now General Relativity and QM is even less materialistic in this sense, as it's much further removed from common sense understanding.

Quoting Saphsin

Yes these are technically examples of our limits of knowledge, but I don’t think that says much about our cognitive constraints, and definitely not generalizable to extent that it tells us lessons on where to pinpoint our limitations on answering some completely different question.

Sure, much of evolutionary evidence we just can't get given the paucity of the fossil record, so in this regard we can't answer certain questions, though this doesn't speak directly about constraint.

The example Chomsky uses in this article is about the "creative aspects" of language use, which interested Descartes and his followers, which don't appear to be within reach of scientific enquiry.

I can't speak of the technical aspects of linguistics, but I'm sure there are other, useful approaches not covered here.

Reply to Manuel Chomsky sees knowledge of what’s “really there” as grasping the deep principles at the fundamental baseline, what you call intuitive knowledge. General Relativity is admittedly itself partial (until we have a confirmed theory of Quantum Gravity, which itself may not be the end), but I have a hard time seeing if Newton was brought to the future, that he would not see it as a closer clarifying answer to what confounded him about Action at a Distance, it became less mysterious so to speak. It helped narrow our view about the nature of phenomenon, and that counts as an improvement of our knowledge of what’s “really there” as far as I can tell, and on the way it continuously redefines what we understood as physical/material.

The world is not continuous, we’re made of discrete atoms, spacetime is an entity and not just a construct of the mind as Kant thought. That this doesn’t count as knowledge of the physical world if we don’t grasp causation all the way down and amounts to just examining theoretical constructs on the surface strikes me as a rather extreme reductionist way of thinking of Chomsky’s. He is perhaps correct in the really long term if we’re talking about a complete penetration of reality, but he speculates specific scientific problems to be beyond us when he doesn’t actually know that, unless he has the foresight of an angel with infinite knowledge.

On the Cartesian question, I was just responding to when you cited the part where Chomsky talks about Lewontin’s claim.

There are probably people on the opposite side of the spectrum who confuse appearances of things with knowledge of scientific principles. I really liked this video here of Chomsky's skeptical argument of A.I. programs as revealing something about human cognition:

https://youtu.be/RdbWSQyfa2g

I just happen to think he takes his position way too far with the whole mysterianism thing.

Georges Rey has a book released relatively recently critiquing Chomsky on the mind-body problem. Haven't picked it up yet, but there may be a review out there somewhere.

Reply to Manuel Thanks for this. There are many people who dislike Chomsky and perhaps will not engage with this in good faith. For my money, Chomsky is likely to be better informed and smarter than possibly everyone on this forum. We can't readily ignore what he says. I have seen his talks on this subject several times and subscribe low-rent mysterianism myself. When I get some time, I will attempt to read this and understand it, which may be somewhat more challenging.

I should say, I appreciate the feedback and thought put into your answers, even if I disagree with some of it, you certainly posing good questions. Just wanted to say that.

Quoting Saphsin

Chomsky sees knowledge of what’s “really there” as grasping the deep principles at the fundamental baseline, what you call intuitive knowledge.

Well, towards the end of the essay, he ends up by quoting Wheeler's "It from Bit" doctrine, but doesn't signal if he accepts or rejects it.

Quoting Saphsin

but I have a hard time seeing if Newton was brought to the future, that he would not see it as a closer clarifying answer to what confounded him about Action at a Distance, it became less mysterious so to speak. It helped narrow our view about the nature of phenomenon, and that counts as an improvement of our knowledge of what’s “really there” as far as I can tell, and on the way it continuously redefines what we understand as physical/material.

Arguably, one can say that General Relativity is more "intuitive". One example would be that, we all feel time differently. What for me seems like forever as I'm in pain, for you passes in seconds as you stroll in the park - and yet only a minute passed for both of us.

In other respects, GR is not intuitive. I don't have the intuition that a body "shapes" the space time around it, it seems to me as if a body is simply there and space and time are around it. Which is strictly speaking false.

The intuition here, the one Descartes and Newton believed in (and the one which seems to be innate in us), is mechanistic materialism, the view that the world functions like a giant clock. The idea was that if someone could build something, that thing was understood.

Crucially, contact is needed from one body to move another body. This direct contact doesn't exist in nature. And in QM, you have people even questioning if causality exists.

Quoting Saphsin

The world is not continuous, we’re made of discrete atoms, spacetime is an entity and not just a construct of the mind as Kant thought. That this doesn’t count as knowledge of physical mechanisms if we don’t grasp causation all the way down strikes me as a rather extreme reductionist view of Chomsky’s.

The important part, I think, is that he's quoting Newton, Locke, Priestley and Hume and seems to agree with them in so far as the world not making sense in relation to our common sense, mechanistic intuitions.

I don't see him arguing for reduction, though he talks about the case of chemistry and QM.

Absolutely, it is knowledge of phenomena. The argument would be that we don't grasp causation in a simple case of a body moving (Newton didn't as quoted), never mind deeper principles.

Our intuition seems to be that of constant conjunction, as Hume pointed out, there's probably more than this to causation, but we can't prove it.

Quoting Tom Storm

Thanks for this. There are many people who dislike Chomsky and perhaps will not engage with this in good faith. For my money, Chomsky is likely to be better informed and smarter than possibly everyone on this forum. We can't readily ignore what he says. I have seen his talks on this subject several times and subscribe low-rent mysterianism myself. When I get some time, I will attempt to read this and understand it, which may be somewhat more challenging.

I think so too.

His views should be taken quite seriously as his breadth of knowledge is considerable.

Having said that, of course one if free to disagree and argue. So, no worries about the reading, give it a try, ask about any doubts - if they arise - and just enjoy.

No time pressure for this type of thread.

I didn't realize Newton had said that rational people would reject gravity for lack of a physical explanation.


If we transport Newton to our time, would he say rational people would reject qualia for lack of a physical explanation?

Reply to Manuel

An important essay indeed. Chomsky's been saying this for years, and too few listen. He demonstrates, quite clearly, how there is no mind/body problem without the concept of "body," which was long ago destroyed as a technical notion -- and hasn't been replaced since.

I don't think he's advocating for "mysterianism" or mysticism. He's simply saying we have limits in our capacities to understand the world, and while we may not know exactly what they are, there are many hints. We seem to progress in some domains and hit brick walls in others, historically.

So any accusation that Chomsky, who's a scientist though and through, is simply becoming a mystic is unfounded. Rather, he's reiterating what Newton pointed out, and using this to demonstrate how little we really know about what's "physical" and "material."

Quoting Tom Storm

For my money, Chomsky is likely to be better informed and smarter than possibly everyone on this forum.

About nearly everything, yes. Philosophy, history, politics, and most of the sciences. But we could mop the floor with him if it came to popular culture.

Quoting frank

If we transport Newton to our time, would he say rational people would reject qualia for lack of a physical explanation?

I've read Priestley, Locke, Hume's Treatise and some Reid. The very clear impression I get from all of them, without doubt, is that qualia exist and are as obvious as anything we can know.

Locke very clearly says that we don't know how objects' powers could possibly cause us to see yellow or have taste.

They wouldn't reject qualia at all, they fully and obviously accept them, but admit that we don't know the explanation for them, it was obvious to those mentioned, perhaps with a slight qualification from Reid, though nothing big.

Reply to Manuel

So qualia is just like gravity in that we know about it, but can't explain it. For gravity, a paradigm shift was required to begin explaining it, but Newton didn't realize that.

Now I'm curious about how we finally decide our definition of "physical" has to change in order to move forward.

I'll keep reading. :grin:

Quoting Xtrix

I don't think he's advocating for "mysterianism" or mysticism. He's simply saying we have limits in our capacities to understand the world, and while we may not know exactly what they are, there are many hints. We seem to progress in some domains and hit brick walls in others, historically.

You're right to point that out. He always calls it "common sense", which is perhaps the one thing I'd disagree with him. Not because what he's saying is crazy, it's just that it to me it seems that such a designation can cause others to think that they're not being common sensical.

I think he should say he a "rationalistic idealist", as he labels Cudworth. Or a modern Cartesian.

The thing is that the name "mysterianism" has stuck, so, might as well use it.

Quoting frank

So qualia is just like gravity in that we know about it, but can't explain it. For gravity, a paradigm shift was required to begin explaining it, but Newton didn't realize that.

Hmmm. In a certain sense, though qualia wasn't a problem for them, in terms of how it is a problem for us in so far as it figures in the "hard problem".

Locke and Hume take them as properties of objects, given properties, obvious properties, forming part of our simple ideas or simple impressions.

Priesteley concludes, in essence, that we don't know enough about matter to say that matter could not be said to have mind, in certain configurations: any arguments to the effect that mind must be immaterial or non-physical is made out of ignorance, because we don't know enough about matter to say otherwise. That includes qualia, clearly.

Top of page 171: [Newton] wrote that the notion of action at a distance is “inconceivable.” It is “so great
an Absurdity, that I believe no Man who has in philosophical matters a competent Faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.”

Can't help but remind me of Einstein's complaints of 'spooky action at a distance' that arose from Schrodinger's equation.

One thought struck me was in regard to the section beginning with this:

[quote=P173]As the impact of Newton’s discoveries was slowly absorbed, such lowering of the goals of
scientific inquiry became routine. Scientists abandoned the animating idea of the early scientific revolution: that the world will be intelligible to us. It is enough to construct intelligible explanatory theories, a radical difference. [/quote]

The mischievious thought that occurs to me is that perhaps what's being shown here is that matter is basically unintelligible. I've been studying ancient philosophy (in a piecemeal fashion), but I recall a general statement about Platonism which is that it held that 'to be, is to be intelligible'. Perhaps the sensory domain/empirical realm/'the world' doesn't actually meet that standard; it's unintelligible, because it is unreal in some sense. We can learn to manipulate it - 'if I pull this lever, than I get x' - without really understanding it. Maybe.

Getting through it but it's a dense paper. I'll read some more later.

Quoting Wayfarer

The mischievious thought that occurs to me is that perhaps what's being shown here is that matter is basically unintelligible

That's actually not far from being the case, in fact it's a plausible reading of this paper.

About the world being unintelligible, in some sense yes: Chomsky mentions Wheeler's "It from Bit", which is a kind of idealist position. So it's an option for him.

I would agree with you that Chomsky at times is focuses on science for many philosophical positions, I'm more liberal and like ordered speculation so...

Quoting Wayfarer

Getting through it but it's a dense paper. I'll read some more later.

Your thoughts are always welcome.

@Manuel

I've not (yet) read the article, though I've been aware of Chomsky's (vague) quasi-mysterianism for decades, and I wonder does Chomsky state clearly what he means by
[b]• understanding
• explanation, explaining[/b]
and demonstrate how he / we can know (i.e. scientifically explain)^ what we cannot know^ or, more fundamentally, what cannot (in principle) be known^. (e.g. Lord Kelvin's prophesy :roll:)? How, with straight faces, can 'mysterians' even feign any confidence in – let alone understand – their own 'mysterianism' (à la Gorgias' p0m0-like performative contradictions)? :mask:

Quoting Wayfarer

The mischievious thought that occurs to me is that perhaps what's being shown here is that matter is basically unintelligible.

Yes, he essentially says this in a couple of lectures I've seen from the 1980's.

Quoting Xtrix

I don't think he's advocating for "mysterianism" or mysticism.

Not mysticism, but he does include himself in mysterianism in the same lectures (which I will try to find, they're on YouTube).

Quoting Xtrix

About nearly everything, yes. Philosophy, history, politics, and most of the sciences. But we could mop the floor with him if it came to popular culture.

:gasp: I know very little popular culture, since I often dislike and avoid it; but with my lack of serious study I probably know more pop than Noam. Not much virtue in this, however. :groan:

Quoting 180 Proof

How, with straight faces, can 'mysterians' even feign any confidence in – let alone understand – their own 'mysterianism'

Doesn't (your oft-mentioned) fallibilism say that hypotheses are only falsifiable conjectures? That they don't need to be declared to be knowledge, as such, provided that they enable accurate predictions?

Reply to Wayfarer 'Mysterianism' is not a hypothesis (i.e. explanation of matters of fact, etc) which is experimentally testable, so your "point", Wayf, is a non sequitur.

Reply to 180 Proof

As I read him, his approach tends to be straight forward, he's always called it "common sense", and thought the term can be misleading, it's a good way to approach him generally. Understanding and explanation are related.

For him, as a scientist/philosopher, understanding is approached via "methodological naturalism": one studies all aspects of nature the same way, as a biologist studies digestion, so a cognitive scientist studies the mind.

The goal of scientific enquiry is to be able to provide a theoretical account or principle, usually as simple as possible but no less, from which predictions and observed phenomena can be accounted for - under the theory.

On this view, an explanation would be what is predicted from the theory. If the theory of General Relativity predicts that light will bend a certain way given how the sun interacts with a planet, then if the light bends in the predicted way, this counts as an explanation and is understood to follow from the theory.

Quoting 180 Proof

How, with straight faces, can 'mysterians' even feign any confidence in – let alone understand – their own 'mysterianism

He cites Hume, Locke and Priestley (among many others) who were wrestling with Newton's discovery of gravity. Prior to Newton, roughly from Descartes until Newton, understanding was taken to mean intuitive understanding: if a billiard ball hits another billiard ball, the cause was a direct contact.

On the old view of understanding, direct contact was how the world worked. It makes sense "folk psychologically" - to use that term.

Under this view, the material world, was understood as being a big machine, not unlike a clock which could be built by an artisan. The problem was that this manner of intuitive explanation, did not reach the domain of mind, specifically the creative aspect of language use which Descartes thought could not be recreated through an automaton.

Newton essentially believed this view, that the world was a clock-like machine. Only that when he discovered gravity he realized that the universe did not work like a machine, there is no direct contact. As Newton says:

"It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact.... is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it."

By "philosophical", Newton meant what we today call "scientific."

The world does not follow our intuitions. We now strive to get explanatory theories that explain aspects of the world, we no longer seek to understand the world itself, as Chomsky points out in the article.

So by "mysterian" (not a term he likes for himself), or "common sense", he simply means that there are aspects about the world we don't understand, given the creatures we are. Our intuitions mislead us into the nature of the world.

Quoting Manuel

So by "mysterian" (not a term he likes for himself)

Just heard the quote - of mysterianism Chomsky says, 'I'm cited as one of the culprits responsible for this strange post-modern heresy which I'll happily accept although I would prefer a different term for it, namely Truism."

Reply to Tom Storm

Exactly. The point is simple. We are biological creatures, like all other biological creatures, we have a nature. Dogs have a nature, birds have a nature, humans too.

Many things birds do, dogs cannot and vice versa.

Our mental capacities are also a product of natural evolution and biology. So there's two options:

Either we are capacitated with certain scopes and limits (this is needed to have a nature - if we had none, we would be a structureless "creature") which include our mental powers.

Or, we have the capacity, through hard work, to understand everything - because apparently the mind is not subject to biological constraints.

As he says somewhere, we have to distinguish "infinite" from "limitless". English is infinite. But it is not Greek. We can picture or imagine infinite things, it does not follow that we can imagine everything that there is in nature.

In any case, I'm off for the night. Thanks for posting that.

Quoting Wayfarer

The mischievious thought that occurs to me is that perhaps what's being shown here is that matter is basically unintelligible.

Exactly right. It’s perfectly fine to use in normal everyday discourse, but it has no technical notion.

Quoting Tom Storm

Not mysticism, but he does include himself in mysterianism

Really? I’ve never heard him say so, so I welcome the correction if I’m mistaken.

Human beings have a scope and limit. I don’t think that’s “mysterianism.” He uses the example of rats failing at a prime number made as an example. Their cognitive capacities are limited. Ours are clearly limited as well. We know this in terms of senses (we don’t have echolocation or the olfactory capability of dogs), perception (the moon illusion), and in terms of basic biology (we can’t fly like birds). I consider this just truism. Shouldn’t be controversial.

So maybe we can’t “understand” the world in the way understanding was once meant.

Reply to Manuel I know all this; in order to evaluate Chomsky's arguments I'd like to read Chomsky's language (in the article at issue) and not mere paraphrases. The conclusions as paraphrased here do not follow soundly and seem polemical at best. I'm not a mysterian and thereby need some uncontroversial, or unambiguous, basis for engaging the topic again. From summaries elsewhere, Manuel, I glean nothing new here in Chomsky's ramblings.

Reply to Manuel

Just wanted to say that I think you’ve understood Chomsky very well. That’s pretty rare, in my experience, despite him usually pointing out fairy straightforward things.

Quoting Xtrix

So maybe we can’t “understand” the world in the way understanding was once meant.

I agree with you. And then there is the matter of individual capacity. I struggle to understand the system I work in, let alone recondite philosophy. The chances that I would every come close to understanding the 'true nature of reality' (however this is to be understood or redefined) is, I would imagine, infinitesimal.

Quoting 180 Proof

I'm not a mysterian

Neither is Chomsky. Try engaging with texts instead of labeling with an “ism.” Or send him an e-mail about his “ramblings” and teach him a thing or two — I for one would be very interested to see it.

Reply to Manuel (I finished reading the article thoroughly) I don't see any reason to adopt the vocabulary of what those in the 17th century thought was the criterion of scientific knowledge, that physical explanations equated to "common sense" and what counts as common sense were people's experience with engineered machines. Of course the world isn't a machine, the world is the world. The modern version of this nonsense is asking whether "if the universe is a simulation" now that we're familiar with video games. There's no reason the world has to comport with our everyday experience, but that doesn't mean increased knowledge of counterintuitive things isn't actual knowledge of how the world works.

The details in the article about Newton, Hume, Locke, etc. is all interesting intellectual history (and as a person on a philosophy forum, I do have great interest in what the old guys think), but I start from an understanding of scientific explanation in terms of conceptualizing what we know from the sciences today, so it doesn't matter to me if Newton's discoveries betrayed some old promise. As I said, as far as I can tell, General Relativity is a more descriptively physical (not just mathematically) explanation of action at a distance than the notions Newton were able to provide. Chomsky conspicuously doesn't mention any of this, and spends many pages talking about how Newton completely dismantled mechanistic philosophy and that what proceeded its course is what tells us about the nature of science. Well, there's no reason to take mechanical philosophy or its corollary seriously now that we have completely new notions, we know what Newton and his contemporaries did not know. The piece is one-sided, a long list of historical roadblocks of when we figured out how much we don't know as science progressed without mentioning any progressive changes of our picture in reality that science has given us.

*Chomsky clearly doesn't believe in the reductionist program when it comes to unification of the sciences, very quite the contrary actually. My use of the term reductionism was atypical because it was addressing Chomsky's portrayal of even foundational physics as superficial manifestations of the real underlying principles governing the world, that we're not actually obtaining descriptions of scientific phenomenon unless we see what's happening regarding totality at the very bottom, like what Laplace's demon supposedly sees or something.

Reply to Saphsin I've heard this take on Chomsky's position before and it seems reasonable. What do you think is going on for Chomsky then? Is he being disingenuous in avoiding certain ideas and over capitalising on others? Do you think he is trying to lead people in a particular direction, or is he grappling with the facts?

Reply to Tom Storm I'm not in a position to psychoanalyze him, he came to his position through observation and experience of real difficulties in science. Those are real, I just take other things into account and don't agree with his philosophical conclusion.

Quoting Saphsin

I'm not in a position to psychoanalyze him,

I hear you but I am not asking for anything as vulgar as amateur psychoanalysis. I'm asking if you think he is being disingenuous. You write -

Quoting Saphsin

Chomsky conspicuously doesn't mention any of this, and spends many pages talking about how Newton completely dismantled mechanistic philosophy and that what proceeded its course is what tells us about the nature of science. Well, there's no reason to take mechanical philosophy or its corollary seriously now that we have completely new notions, we know what Newton and his contemporaries did not know

Sounds to me as if you are describing a basic flaw from C and that this approach is possibly taken with calculative intent - leading us away from potential answers and into mystery. Or have I read you wrong?

Reply to Tom Storm I think psychoanalyzing involves speculating intent, but it looks to me that’s his biased emphasis at least.

Quoting Saphsin

I don't see any reason to adopt the vocabulary of what those in the 17th century thought was the criterion of scientific knowledge, that physical explanations equated to "common sense" and what counts as common sense were people's experience with engineered machines. Of course the world isn't a machine, the world is the world. The modern version of this nonsense is asking whether "if the universe is a simulation" now that we're familiar with video games. There's no reason the world has to comport with our everyday experience, but that doesn't mean increased knowledge of counterintuitive things isn't actual knowledge of how the world works.

This seems exactly right. The whole essay is incredibly underwhelming. It reminds of that parable about the man who can't find his lost keys because they are not under the streetlamps which he is looking for them below. Except Chomsky adduces a few examples of such historical streetlamps from which we are supposed, I guess, to generalize? Or to change the image: one can imagine a post-Scholastic philosopher lamenting how centuries of writing about essence and existence, modes and attributes, have not yet yielded definitive knowledge about the world. But just as that hypothetical writer would be lamenting about nothing more than the uselessness of a mostly outdated vocabulary, is Chomsky doing any different?

One would think that an essay dealing with the limits of intelligibility would have something more to say about the very concept of intelligibility other than what is effectively an outdated literature review! - In this sense @180 Proof is right too. There is little by way of conceptual analysis here, and I don't think Chomsky's historical erudition, no matter how impressive, really gets us any further in thinking about the limits of intelligibility.

That said, what little conceptual analysis there is seems to bear on our notions of 'matter', 'the physical', and 'mechanism'. I did like the suggestion - not pursued with any of the depth it deserved - that 'intelligibility' stands or falls with mechanism. But rather than following the path to see what this might say about intelligibility, Chomsky pursues the path of mechanism, and its failure. But why should we have any stake in that beyond antiquarian interest? Surely it is intelligibility which is of interest here? It just seems like Chomsky had avoided the subject of his own paper to follow what he found more convenient.

This probably comes off as a bit harsh. But I did enjoy the discussion. It is good to have a check, every now and then, on our metaphysical ambitions. But this paper is more gestural than substantive, imo.

Edit: to put the question in the sharpest possible way: even every doubt raised by Chomsky over matter, the physical, or mechanism is correct - why would this tell us anything at all about intelligibility apart from the fact that we have approached it with inadequate terms?

Reply to 180 Proof

I can only give you what I understand his view to entail. The point of this thread is to discuss the text.

Not for me to explain it in his words - for that you should read the text.

If you're not convinced by the outline, and think these are ramblings, then skip it.

Reply to Xtrix

Thanks. I spend a lot of time on it, part of my thesis after all. Also many emails and even a meeting.

But regardless, he is pretty straightforward. Some people don't like the idea, for some reason, that there are things we can't understand.

Oh well.

Reply to Xtrix I've been to a few public lectures he'd given in the 80's & 90's and have read most of his books published before the turn of the millenium. Apologetic pedants don't impress me where Chomsky's polemics are concerned.

Reply to Manuel I didn't ask for an explanation or interpretation of the text, just for someone who's read it to cite from Chomsky's article where he clearly states what he means by
Quoting 180 Proof

• understanding
• explanation, explaining

and also demonstrates

how he / we can know (i.e. scientifically explain)^ what we cannot know^ or, more fundamentally, what cannot (in principle) be known^.

If the article is saying something new, or at least conceptually coherent, about this old bugbear of his, then I'm interested to read what the great man has (re)written.

Quoting Manuel

So by "mysterian" (not a term he likes for himself), or "common sense", he simply means that there are aspects about the world we don't understand, given the creatures we are

Platonists would say that insofar as we can understand anything whatever, it's because the faculty of reason is not something that creatures (other than ourselves) possess. I mean, there's no obvious reason to presume that evolution would equip us for anything beyond what successful adaptation requires.

Reply to Wayfarer Has there ever been a thread about the presuppositions necessary for the possibility of rationality and intelligible experience?

Reply to Tom Storm Here's a six month old thread discussion on "presuppositions" you'd participated in Reply to 180 Proof ...

Reply to 180 Proof Thanks. Totally forgot about this one. :wink:

All the mystery will have gone and at the same time be infinite if we consider charge the magic stuff in nature. Nature is charged, that's a scientific fact. Charge is a mystery. That's a scientific fact. Thus the conscious is a mysterious scientific fact for scientists don't know the nature of charge.

Reply to Raymond What is charge?

Reply to Tom Storm

Exactly! A mystery!

Quoting Raymond

Exactly! A mystery!

Well it's such a mystery I have no idea what it's connected to. Is charge about cooking or trees?

Quoting Tom Storm

Well it's such a mystery I have no idea what it's connected to. Is charge about cooking or sport?

Charge is the content of matter. Electric charge (and more deeper color charges, giving massless fields mass) is contained in in all processes. Structured in the brain, in atoms, proteins, cells, organs, etc. Without it there is no change, no interaction. It's a fundamental will, an unconscious will. It's described in physical theories without them saying what it actually is. Known for it's effects, unknown in nature.

Reply to Raymond Ok, thanks. How do you get from electric charge in matter to will?

Reply to Tom Storm

I think the will is associated with charge. If a magnet pulls a piece of metal it seems there is a will in the magnet and the piece to be together. Just as in people. People are a lot more complicated though. If only we were protons and electrons... :smile:

Reply to Saphsin

Different people have different ways of approaching science. I think the issue here is one of having different takes on intuition. If you say General Relativity is more intuitive than mechanistic materialism, then we slightly differ in common sense understanding.

Quoting Saphsin

the world is the world. The modern version of this nonsense is asking whether "if the universe is a simulation"

It's very obvious know, with 300 years of accumulated knowledge.

Reply to Manuel "To paraphrase with regard to the contemporary analogue I mentioned, it “would be a very great step in science to account for mental aspects of the world in terms of manifest principles even if the causes of these principles were not yet discovered”—or to put the matter more appropriately, even if unification with other aspects of science had not been achieved. To learn more about mental aspects of the world or
chemical or electrical or other aspects—we should try to discover “manifest principles” that partially explain them, though their causes
remain disconnected from what we take to be more fundamental aspects of science. The gap might have many reasons, among them, as has repeatedly been discovered, that the presumed reduction base was misconceived, including core physics.". p. 173

I think this is in line with Integrated Information theory. It lays out what the principles of phenomenal consciousness should look like prior to offering an explanation.

The paragraph that follows that suggests that there's a pendulum in science that swings between dives for foundations and simple acceptance of what? Ungrounded principles? Honestly, it looks like the pendulum swings between a demand to know the truth vs a kind of faith.

And I was thinking about this while reading it:. if nature was as intelligible as we are intelligent, maybe smart people would be in charge a little more often. This is pure Hayek.

A leftist is in the camp of rejecting faith in nature and demanding that we provide our own foundation, which is intrepid, and maybe some day? Like: it's a testament to human ambition that we propose to know what causes gravity and consciousness... maybe someday.

Reply to frank

It's connected to the idea that the world can be fully known - completely, "in itself". It's not mentioned in this article, but one can point to Leibniz and others, who thought we could exhaust the truths about the world by paying careful attention to the phenomena we see.

I don't think it has much to do with faith, anymore, God doesn't figure in modern science. We try to put forth the best model we can, and when we create a model, we obviously have to set aside many phenomena that don't fit into this model.

Of course, it's remarkable that mere creatures like us could have any theories at all. There's nothing in evolutionary theory which would predict that we should be able to do any science at all. So it's amazing that we can do some of it, with significant depth.

Quoting Manuel

It's connected to the idea that the world can be fully known - completely, "in itself". It's not mentioned in this article, but one can point to Leibniz and others, who thought we could exhaust the truths about the world by paying careful attention to the phenomena we see.

In a way that's a kind of faith (or groundless confidence): that out present ideas are sufficient to handle whatever nature happens to be.

Quoting Manuel

I don't think it has much to do with faith, anymore, God doesn't figure in modern science. We try to put forth the best model we can, and when we create a model, we obviously have to set aside many phenomena that don't fit into this model.

I didn't mean faith in God. Having discovered that our ideas can be insufficient (as with gravity), we have to live with the possibility that out present common sense ideas are limiting our ability to know the truth. I don't know what to call that state of mind. You're right, faith isn't the word.

Reply to Wayfarer

Sure. I mean most organisms that ever existed and still exist are very simple structures, lacking perception and reason. It seems as if intelligence, on the whole, is not good for survival, mammals tend to do much worse than bacteria.

Quoting frank

I didn't mean faith in God. Having discovered that our ideas can be insufficient (as with gravity), we have to live with the possibility that out present common sense ideas are limiting our ability to know the truth. I don't know what to call that state of mind. You're right, faith isn't the word.

I'm guessing that our intuitions do not go beyond what is needed for survival, so we can make sense of a prey chasing us or seeing an apple fall or guessing how far one would need to throw an item to hit a predator, etc.

Luckily, we managed to develop a science forming faculty, which allows us to create theories, which differ from common intuitions.

Quoting Saphsin

finished reading the article thoroughly) I don't see any reason to adopt the vocabulary of what those in the 17th century thought was the criterion of scientific knowledge, that physical explanations equated to "common sense" and what counts as common sense were people's experience with engineered machines. Of course the world isn't a machine, the world is the world. The modern version of this nonsense is asking whether "if the universe is a simulation" now that we're familiar with video games. There's no reason the world has to comport with our everyday experience, but that doesn't mean increased knowledge of counterintuitive things isn't actual knowledge of how the world works.

Chomsky isn’t saying we don’t have knowledge about how the world works. He’s saying, at least in my reading, that our ideas of intelligibility have changed, and that words like “physical” and “material” are basically honorific. There can’t be a mind-body problem if we don’t know what “body” is, and there hasn’t been a conception since the mechanistic philosophy, which was destroyed with Newton. That’s basically the thesis.

Science of course did not end with the collapse of the notion of body (material, physical, and so on). Rather, it was reconstituted in a radically new way, with questions of conceivability and intelligibility dismissed as demonstrating nothing except about human cognitive capacities, though that conclusion has taken a long time to become firmly established. Later stages of science introduced more “absurdi- ties.” The legitimacy of the steps is determined by criteria of depth of explanation and empirical support, not conceivability and intelligibil- ity of the world that is depicted.

[my emphasis]

Quoting Saphsin

but I start from an understanding of scientific explanation in terms of conceptualizing what we know from the sciences today, so it doesn't matter to me if Newton's discoveries betrayed some old promise.

That’s the point: there hasn’t been a new conception of “physical” since Newton.

Quoting Saphsin

Well, there's no reason to take mechanical philosophy or its corollary seriously now that we have completely new notions, we know what Newton and his contemporaries did not know. The piece is one-sided, a long list of historical roadblocks of when we figured out how much we don't know as science progressed without mentioning any progressive changes of our picture in reality that science has given us.

What are these “completely new notions”? Chomsky is well aware of relativity and quantum mechanics. I’m not sure what you’re claiming he’s “conspicuously leaving out.” What is the new notion of physical/material?

Quoting 180 Proof

I've been to a few public lectures he'd given in the 80's & 90's and have read most of his books published before the turn of the millenium.

An odd remark. What’s the relevance? That you’ve read a lot of Chomsky? That’s great— but what about the text in question?

Reply to 180 Proof

On Mysteries:

"Newton largely agreed with his scientific contemporaries. He wrote that the notion of action at a distance is “inconceivable.” It is “so great an Absurdity, that I believe no Man who has in philosophical matters a competent Faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.” By invoking it, we concede that we do not understand the phenomena of the material world. As McMullin observes, “By ‘understand’ Newton still meant what his critics meant: ‘understand in mechanical terms of contact action’.”To take a contemporary analogue, the absurd notion of action at a distance is as inconceivable as the idea that “mental states are states of the brain,” a proposal “we do not really understand [because] we are still unable to form a conception of how consciousness arises in matter, even if we are certain that it does.” Similarly,Newton was unable to form a conception of how the simplest phenomena of nature could arise in matter—and they did not, given his conception of matter, the natural theoretical version of common-sense understanding. Locke and others agreed, and Hume carried that failure of conceivability a long step beyond by concluding that Newton had restored these ultimate secrets of nature “to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain”—a stand that we may interpret, naturalistically, as a speculation about the limits of human cognitive capacities."

p.171

On Explanations:

Newton’s famous phrase “I frame no hypotheses” appears in this context: recognizing that he had been unable to discover the physical cause of gravity, he left the question open. [b]He adds that “to us it is
enough that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies,[/b] and of our sea.” But while agreeing that his proposals were so absurd that no serious scientist could accept them, he defended himself from the charge that he was reverting to the mysticism of the Aristotelians.His principles, he argued, were not occult: “their causes only are occult”; or, he hoped, were yet to be discovered in physical terms, meaning mechanical terms. To derive general principles inductively from phenomena, he continued, “and afterwards to tell us how the properties of actions of all corporeal things follow from those manifest principles, would be a very great step in philosophy, though the causes of these principles were not yet discovered.”

p.172

That's about as far as I'll go, if you are interested then read on, if not, don't.

A bit more on intuitive understanding:

https://cprtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/COMPLETE-REPORT-Goswami-Childrens-Cognitive-Development-and-Learning.pdf

"Naïve or intuitive physics, rooted in the perception of objects and events, in general yields
reliable information about the structure and action of physical systems. However, in some
cases naïve physics gives rise to misleading models of the physical causal structure of the
world. For example, most children (and adults) employ a pre-Newtonian, ‘impetus’ theory
of projectile motion (for example Viennot 1979). Each motion must have a cause, and so we
think that if a ball is dropped from a moving train, it will fall downwards in a straight line.
In fact, it will fall forwards in a parabolic arc (Kaiser et al. 1985), as the moving train imparts
a force (Newtonian physics). "

- p.6

Reply to Xtrix Here's a relevant reply to my query Reply to Manuel.

Btw, are these citations from Chomsky's article? :chin:
Quoting Manuel

Newton largely agreed with his scientific contemporaries.
[ ... ]
As McMullin observes, “By ‘understand’ Newton still meant what his critics meant: ‘understand in mechanical terms of contact action’.”

It's not surprising that Newton the alchemist had "agreed" with his contemporaries that there are "occult causes" rather than, also like them, overlooking that those indicated the limits of the scientific practices and prevalent philosophical biases of his day. Anyway, so Chomsky's sense of "understanding" – by extension explicability and therefore inexplicability (i.e. "mysterious, mystery") – is anachronistic and related to / derived from an out-dated, surpassed, methodological paradigm? – okay, got it.

Reply to 180 Proof

These are from the essay.

Yes and no.

Yes in so far as scientists don't worry about a theory making intuitive sense, for example QM and Feynman's quote about it. Of course, we can argue about which interpretation is more reasonable: Many Worlds, Copenhagen, Relational, etc.

No in so far as common sense understanding (folk understanding) is innate as linked in the post directly above yours.

Reply to Manuel Okay. Well, looks like Chomsky still hangs his quasi-mysterianism on antiquated 'folk psychological' hooks, so nothing philosophically significant for me to learn from his article. So much to read, so little time; intellectual triage is of paramount significance in my daily praxis.

Reply to Manuel

So by agreeing with his contemporaries, Newton wasn't denying gravity. He was saying common sense was failing him and his generation, right?

Reply to frank

Yes. Failing him and Hume, Locke, Priestley even, much later, Russell and many others.

Our common sense understanding doesn't reach into the depths of nature, but it was assumed to be true in some form, until it was proven false.

Now it may be easy for us to say "that's obvious", well, I don't share that. I don't think many of us (or any) would have come up with his equations and theory.

That the world doesn't make sense to us - in principle - was a big deal. But you still hear people talking about "materialism" and Newton's "mechanistic understanding" that was only disproven with QM.

That's the opposite of what happened, Newton overthrew materialism, and it has only gotten stranger since - further removed from common sense.

Quoting Manuel

That's the opposite of what happened, Newton overthrew materialism, and it has only gotten stranger since - further removed from common sense.

To further illustrate this point:

Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism#Physicalism_and_materialism

Strawson, on the other hand, describes panpsychism as a form of physicalism, on his view the only viable form.[26] Panpsychism can be combined with reductive materialism but cannot be combined with eliminative materialism because the latter denies the existence of the relevant mental attributes.[8]

emphasis is mine

Quoting Manuel

Now it may be easy for us to say "that's obvious", well, I don't share that. I don't think many of us (or any) would have come up with his equations and theory.

It's still not obvious that the same thing that makes the moon go around the earth makes apples fall.

But what about relativity? Isn't it built on thought experiments that were later verified? At least some of our native reason works?

Reply to javra

That is correct. Chomsky, in this and other articles, thinks that Strawson's construction of materialism is one of the few that makes sense, given the definition and the claims made by the philosophy.

Stoljar too, to a lesser extent.

But, Chomsky doesn't agree with Panpsychism, because he believes "radical emergence" to be part of normal science.

Quoting Manuel

But, Chomsky doesn't agree with Panpsychism, because he believes "radical emergence" to be part of normal science.

Maybe I'm not as well versed on this topic matter; still, I don't find a necessary conflict between the idea of panpsychism and the idea of radical emergence: e.g., even if panpsychism, there would yet be a radical enough emergence of life from nonlife. Any idea of why the two would need to be contradictory?

Quoting frank

But what about relativity? Isn't it built on thought experiments that were later verified? At least some of our native reason works?

Yeah. Einstein understood that Newton's laws could only go so far, it had problems it could not account for, such as the orbit or Mercury.

So Einstein's theory is better for many aspects of astronomy, including say, GPS. Though Newton's laws work pretty well for objects here on Earth.

Quoting frank

But what about relativity? Isn't it built on thought experiments that were later verified? At least some of our native reason works?

I'll add the following: It works quite well, true. As does QM. But because there are disparities between the two, we know that at least one of the two is not accurately representing what is - if not both.

Reply to javra :up:

Quoting javra

Maybe I'm not as well versed on this topic matter; still, I don't find a necessary conflict between the idea of panpsychism and the idea of radical emergence: e.g., even if panpsychism, there would yet be a radical enough emergence of life from nonlife. Any idea of why the two would need to be contradictory?

Strawson postulates panpsychism as necessary because emergence cannot be brute or "radical": there must be something in the phenomena by which new properties arise as they do (in this case consciousness or experience), otherwise it would be a miracle every time a new property arises in nature.

Since Strawson takes experience to be the most obvious physical fact of existence (Strawson's materialism makes him say that everything that exists is physical, he means everything), the basic building blocks of nature (he calls them "ultimates": maybe they are strings, or quantum fields, whatever they may be), must either constitute or realize experience.

There must be something, proto-experiential or experiential at bottom, or else experience is a miracle.

Chomsky takes the case that "radical emergence" is a common thing, such as when molecules combine to give rise to liquids. He says that liquid obviously emerges, but we don't know why. We have a theory for it, but we don't intuitively understand it.

So in the case of experience, Chomsky cites Priestley and says:

"Priestley rejects the conclusion that consciousness “cannot be annexed to the whole brain as a system, while the individual particles of which it consists are separately unconscious.” That “A certain
quantity of nervous system is necessary to such complex ideas and affections as belong to the human mind; and the idea of self, or the feeling that corresponds to the pronoun I,” he argues, “is not essentially different from other complex ideas, that of our country for example.”

p. 193

So there is something about physical stuff that leads, in very specific configurations, to experience, but we don't know what it is. Strawson thinks there's experience at bottom.

Quoting Manuel

Strawson postulates panpsychism as necessary because emergence cannot be brute or "radical": there must be something in the phenomena by which new properties arise as they do (in this case consciousness or experience), otherwise it would be a miracle every time a new property arises in nature. [...]

Awesome. Thank you much for the explanation. I guess I'll be needing to read into the physicalist version of panpsychism, then. This with primary interest in the dichotomy between life and nonlife, which to me still seems rather brute/radical in terms of evolutionary developments (here in the generalized sense of change over time).

I take this to be the crux of the matter:

Classical interpretations having vanished, the notions of body, material, physical are hardly more than honorific designations for what is more or less understood at some particular moment in time, with flexible boundaries and no guarantee that there will not be radical revisions ahead, even at its core.

We can speculate and argue about such things as dualism, the mind/body problem, and the "hard problem", but all such theorizing is based on shifting conceptual grounds.

Reply to javra

Sure! If you are interested, I can see if I can find you an article - or a part of an article - in which Strawson talks about the problem of life in relation to panpsychism.

The gist of it was (if I remember correctly) that all of "life" could be explained by our physics, chemistry and biology, but this still does not touch on the topic of experience at all.

Reply to Fooloso4

Very astute concision.

Quoting Manuel

Sure! If you are interested, I can see if I can find you an article - or a part of an article - in which Strawson talks about the problem of life in relation to panpsychism.

I am interested. Cheers.

Quoting Manuel

The gist of it was (if I remember correctly) that all of "life" could be explained by our physics, chemistry and biology, but this still does not touch on the topic of experience at all.

Right, I'd say. Nor does it yet seem to me to touch on the quantum leap, to so speak, between a bundle of inanimate molecules (like a bundle of individual lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids in a pastry dish) and the homeostatically metabolizing process operating on these otherwise inanimate constituents which is (sentience-endowed) corporeal life per se (tmk, even the most rudimentary bacterium can sense its environment and act/react accordingly).

Reply to javra

https://www.sjsu.edu/people/anand.vaidya/courses/c2/s0/Realistic-Monism---Why-Physicalism-Entails-Panpsychism-Galen-Strawson.pdf

pp.20-24 is the part you'd be interested in, top 3rd of pp.20: "What about the emergence of life?"

To save you much terminological hassle: E means "experiential", NE means "non-experiential".

Experiential is basically consciousness.

Non-experiential is everything that doesn't have experience: a table, a rock, wood (maybe), dry paint, particles, etc.

The topic of the bacterium is very interesting, my intuition doesn't reach that far, but I could imagine a very elementary reaction that could be an extremely rudimentary experience.

Reply to Manuel :up: Thanks a bunch. I'll check it out.

Quoting 180 Proof

Anyway, so Chomsky's sense of "understanding" – by extension explicability and therefore inexplicability (i.e. "mysterious, mystery") – is anachronistic and related to / derived from an out-dated, surpassed, methodological paradigm? – okay, got it.

No, that's not his sense. What Newton believed isn't what Chomsky believes. The passage you cite is a description of what Newton meant. Chomsky is not advocating "understanding" in the sense of the mechanical philosophy, i.e., contact action. This is very clear, if one deigns to read.

Reply to 180 Proof I looked into it and the Kelvin quote seems to be misattributed and decontextualized. I agree with your larger point though.

https://www.quora.com/Which-19th-century-physicist-famously-said-that-all-that-remained-to-be-done-in-physics-was-compute-effects-to-another-decimal-place

Reply to Fooloso4 :100:

Reply to Saphsin :up: The wiki for Lord Kelvin with his "false pronuncements" is interesting though, more or less big whoppers on par with Aristotle's. Chomsky apparently suffers from the same idealist-rationalist projection bias: "ultimately, only what I know (or cogito) is real", etc.

Reply to Xtrix Okay, as I've requested already, cite where Chomsky clearly states what he Chomsky means by "understanding" and "mystery" and where he soundly demonstrates how he/we can understand whatever it is he/we "will never understand". You kibbitz a lot, Xtrix, without staying on topic or addressing my explicit requests. Telling me to "read for yourself" misses the point a g a i n that I need to know whether or not Chomsky says anything new on this topic and, thereby, whether or not there's something new for me learn from him which makes reading the article worth my time. You don't know? You can't / won't help me with that? No problem, just reply to others' posts which interest you and stop wasting my time. :brow:

Quoting 180 Proof

The wiki for Lord Kelvin with his "false pronuncements" is interesting though

I just took a look, thanks

Quoting Manuel

If you say General Relativity is more intuitive than mechanistic materialism, then we slightly differ in common sense understanding.

Also Reply to Xtrix

I've never said anything like this. Rather, I find the way the words "intuitive" & "mechanistic" as used by you to be irrelevant for the reasons me & Reply to StreetlightX have explained. The only reason why I mentioned General Relativity was Chomsky using the example of Newton & his contemporaries proclaiming the impossibility for any physical understanding of Action over a Distance. Both Mechanistic Philosophy and Newton were wrong, the former because it was always nonsense and the latter because of lack of foresight that we have now. It does not illuminate anything on how we should understand the scope of science today. Those are my last words on the subject.

Reply to javra You might be interested in this comment.

Quoting frank

But what about relativity? Isn't it built on thought experiments that were later verified? At least some of our native reason works?

Quoting Manuel

Yeah. Einstein understood that Newton's laws could only go so far, it had problems it could not account for, such as the orbit or Mercury.

So Einstein's theory is better for many aspects of astronomy, including say, GPS. Though Newton's laws work pretty well for objects here on Earth.

I think you are missing Frank's point. Einstein wasn't fiddling with Newtonian mechanics in an attempt to fix a discrepancy in the orbit of Mercury. It wasn't then thought of as a problem with Newtonian mechanics. Astronomers - quite reasonably - hoped to find a new celestial body that would account for the discrepancy. That GR would eventually solve the problem was entirely unforeseen.

The received view to which, I think, Frank was alluding is that, rather than searching for a best fit for some specific empirical observations, in developing his Special and General theories of relativity Einstein's thinking was motivated by very general philosophical intuitions, which he illustrated with his famous thought experiments. The result of which was a more thoroughgoing application of the principle of relativity (or general covariance) than the Galilean relativity that was at the heart of Newtonian physics. (But see John Norton's review General covariance and the foundations of general relativity: eight decades of dispute for a more nuanced analysis.)

Reply to SophistiCat

@javra pointed out that though we may have high confidence in relativity based on our observations, there's still something wrong: relativity conflicts with QM around the "big bang."

So there may be a pending conceptual revolution. That's something we have to live with (those of us who can accept it, that is.)

Reply to SophistiCat

Correct. That was poorly phrased, we can say that Newton's laws work on certain scales,

Einstein's "happiest thought" was essentially a thought experiment that helped him begin to develop a new theory, I doubt he had Newton is mind.

Quoting Wayfarer

You might be interested in this comment.

I don’t find anything disagreeable in the comment linked to. Thanks for it. I’m just struck by, I’ll call it the awkwardness, of physicalism being in this instance in part defined by the occurrence of awareness that is irreducible to nonawareness. Don’t know if you got a chance to visit the wiki page I linked to: though disagreements are many, turns out panpsychism as concept can nevertheless be deemed amiable to most any system of ontology, depending on who you ask. The only stringent exception being that of emergentism as it regards awareness per se. But when it comes to physicalism - irrespective of what future refinements, if any, might be made to the notion of “panpsychist physicalism”- it seem to completely evaporate the semantics by which physicalism is currently understood. For instance, taken from the first page of the manuscript @Manuel linked to:

Quoting Galen Strawson -- Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism

What does physicalism involve? What is it, really, to be a physicalist? What is it to be a realistic physicalist, or, more simply, a real physicalist? Well, one thing is absolutely clear. You’re certainly not a realistic physicalist, you’re not a real physicalist, if you deny the existence of the phenomenon whose existence is more certain than the existence of anything else: experience, ‘consciousness’, conscious experience, ‘phenomenology’, experiential ‘what-it’s-likeness’, feeling, sensation, explicit conscious thought as we have it and know it at almost every waking moment.

This statement, of itself, runs counter to what many a physicalist on this website tend to affirm.

Reply to Manuel

Chomsky addresses the "hard problem" by saying it may eventually be abandoned rather than solved. I don't think that's out of step with Chalmers' opinion. Do you?

Reply to frank

Chalmers' says a lot of things, but I wouldn't be surprised if he accepted this formulation.

It may be abandoned in terms of being called the "hard problem", much like gravity's (or motion more generally) non-mechanistic effects had to be accepted: we'll have to accept the fact that matter thinks, without knowing why.

That's not to say that gravity or consciousness aren't "hard problems", they are. On this view, there are many hard problems in science and human understanding more generally.

Quoting 180 Proof

You kibbitz a lot, Xtrix, without staying on topic or addressing my explicit requests

I, and others, have addressed your issues. But your requests are based on misunderstandings and arrogant presumptions.

Quoting 180 Proof

cite where Chomsky clearly states what he Chomsky means by "understanding" and "mystery" and where he soundly demonstrates how he/we can understand whatever it is he/we "will never understand".

Human beings have scope and limit in their cognitive capacities. That’s obvious. What was once thought as “understanding” — a mechanical view — is no longer the case. Ditto physical and material. This is the claim.

There are things we understand — within the scope of our cognitive abilities — and there are some things we don’t (and perhaps can’t) understand. He talks about rats and the prime number maze — that’s a mystery to them, just as will and the creative use of language is to us today.

If you’re looking for a technical definition of “understanding” or “mystery,” you’ve completely missed the point.

Again, best to start by reading the text rather than coming into a discussion with motivated reasoning, launching accusations which are demonstrably untrue.

Quoting 180 Proof

t I need to know whether or not Chomsky says anything new on this topic

It’s important to understand what the topic is first. If you’re unwilling to do this, that’s OK. But perhaps not waste others’ time on a thread you have no real interest in.

Reply to Xtrix What part of
Quoting 180 Proof

cite where Chomsky clearly states what he Chomsky means by "understanding" and "mystery" and where he soundly demonstrates how he/we can understand whatever it is he/we "will never understand".

do you not understand, Xtrix? :roll:

Quoting 180 Proof

What part of
cite where Chomsky clearly states what he Chomsky means by "understanding" and "mystery" and where he soundly demonstrates how he/we can understand whatever it is he/we "will never understand".
— 180 Proof
do you not understand, Xtrix? :roll:

What part of the article don't you understand?

It's not offering "new" definitions for the words "understanding" or "mystery" -- and asking for such is, as I've said before, missing the entire point. Which you would know if you read it. He does talk at length about aspects of the world that appear to be incomprehensible to the human mind, in the same way that rat's can't run prime number mazes.

So take your rolling eyes and stop wasting time on a thread you never intended on engaging with. Go assign meaningless homework assignments elsewhere.

Reply to Xtrix :eyes:

Quoting Manuel

It may be abandoned in terms of being called the "hard problem", much like gravity's (or motion more generally) non-mechanistic effects had to be accepted: we'll have to accept the fact that matter thinks, without knowing why

That's pretty much what he advocates, although some aspects of thinking can be reproduced mechanically, so the greater focus on the part we can't conceive of reproducing. It would seem miraculous to us to reproduce qualia. That's a sign that our conceptual scheme is failing us?

Reply to frank

He tends to rely on quoting others, we interpret if we think he agrees with the person he's quoting.

Me personally, as I read this essay and say, Locke and heck, how I experience ordinary life it's pretty obvious to me (though I may be peculiar here), I don't have a clue how a colourless photon could create colour experience, or how sound waves could be interpreted as music, etc.

I mean, I know the phenomena happens, I can see the evidence. I can make no sense of it.

Quoting Manuel

I mean, I know the phenomena happens, I can see the evidence. I can make no sense of it.

Yep. Same for free will.

Reply to frank

Exactly!

Reply to frank

Actually, I remember posting this recently, I'll repost it here, it struck me as a very nice quote from Hume, proving your point. Putting aside the dualism implied in the quote, for Hume, free will, is clearly a mystery:

"Is there any principle in all nature more mysterious than the union of soul with body; by which a supposed spiritual substance acquires such an influence over a material one, that the most refined thought is able to actuate the grossest matter? Were we empowered, by a secret wish, to remove mountains, or control the planets in their orbit; this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary, nor more beyond our comprehension."

- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Quoting Manuel

The purpose of this thread is to (hopefully), get a few people interested in reading this very important article by Chomsky:

I am reading this essay (?), and finding it pretty frustrating. Not because it's difficult, but because it reads like unstructured reading notes interspersed with meandering musings. The themes and books that he touches on are interesting in their own right, but so far I don't see what this essay accomplishes, other than giving us a glimpse of Chomsky's intellectual interests.

Reply to Manuel :up:

Reply to SophistiCat

It's now part of a book called What Kind of Creatures Are We? which speaks of different topics concerning human nature, it begins with an essay called What Can We Understand? What is Language? and What is the Common Good? ending up with this one.

Since I've read this essay, many, many times, I don't find it confusing, though it can be dense given how much he cites. If you have a more specific question, maybe I can help out. But I think the point here is to show how we've had to lower the standards of intelligibility in human enquiry, because we know much less than we thought.

I honestly can't help but find a note of arrogance in the essay - as if, if the world does not conform to the categories that we would like to impose upon it - especially the categories as dreamt up by dead 16th Century white men - then well, it really just must be unintelligible. We can't figure it out? Well, so much the worse for the world!

I know it's supposed to be the opposite - a certain sense of humility in the face of the world, but the essay's procedure belies this. It says: look at all these brilliant figures - not even they could figure it out, and if they couldn't do it, who are you to speak? I guess its this weird dialectic right - examine the knowers to figure out the limits of the known. But how human, all too human...

A more interesting - Spinozist - mysterianism would be one for which we don't yet know what we are capable of. A more self-reflexive mysterianism, all the better to defuse the all-too-certain mysterianism of the essay. This is why I think the lack of conceptual attention to intelligiblity or understanding per se - as @180 Proof rightly points out - really vitiates the entire essay.

Quoting Manuel

If you have a more specific question, maybe I can help out. But I think the point here is to show how we've had to lower the standards of intelligibility in human enquiry, because we know much less than we thought.

Thanks. I don't find any specific passage particularly confusing - I just don't see the big picture yet. So far it looks like preparatory notes for a future article or book (or two), rather than the finished thing.

For anyone not willing to read:



See in particular the question and answer section.

"It has become standard practice in recent years to describe the problem of consciousness as “the hard problem,” others being within our grasp, now or down the road.I think there are reasons for some skepticism, particularly when we recognize how sharply understanding declines beyond the simplest systems of nature."

p.177

"History also suggests caution. In early modern science, the nature of motion was the “hard problem.” “Springing or Elastic Motions” is the “hard rock in Philosophy,” Sir William Petty observed, proposing ideas resembling those soon developed much more richly by Newton. The “hard problem” was that bodies that seem to our senses to be at rest are in a “violent” state, with “a strong endeavor to fly off or recede from one another,” in Robert Boyle’s words."

178.

"The “hard problems” of the day were not solved; rather abandoned, as, over time, science turned to its more modest post-Newtonian course."

179.

Very arrogant...

Unless one thinks that mysterianism is either 1) not true in principle or 2) The we don't know yet argument, which misses the point the article is establishing.

Option 1 , suggests that we have no limits in principle: we can know everything there is to know, we just have to work hard enough at a problem. That removes us from biology and nature.

Aside from not understanding (intuitive understanding) how gravity works, we can point to other obvious mysteries: free will, how the world produces qualia, creativity in ordinary language use, imagination, how matter can think and so on.

One can deny free will, to make it less problematic, though no one alive would accept the practical consequences of denying such a thing. One can deny we have common sense intuitions, because we aren't biological creatures.

The we don't know yet, sure, a lot too. We don't know what dark matter/dark energy is, we could find out, or we could not. We don't know if the universe had a beginning or if it is eternal, we could find out, or not.

I think the arrogance is in the opposite view, that we can know everything, that's a theological view of human beings. We should be grateful that we can do what we already can.

Reply to Manuel What I said quite specifically was that the arrogance resides in procedures that Chomsky uses to get at the conclusions you nicely hightlight in bold. By doing a literature review of centuries old dead people with a historically specific vocabulary - some of which we just so happen to still use - and, finding that the world does not fit into these rather specific, historically situated concepts - which may or may not even exist as concepts sooner rather than later - then have the gall to suggest that the world is incomprehensible because of that. It's incrediblely unbelievable.

Quoting Manuel

Aside from not understanding (intuitive understanding) how gravity works, we can point to other obvious mysteries: free will, how the world produces qualia, creativity in ordinary language use, imagination, how matter can think and so on.

Like I said, imagine a post-scholastic Chomsky saying: "we don't know how essence, or attribute, or mode, or [insert outdated vocabulary which no one uses anymore here] works, and it's unlikely that we will ever know. We'll just likely 'move on'!". One would laugh. Of course we will move on. One does laugh.

People deny today that concepts such as 'qualia' are coherent. I think they are right. So too with 'free will'. To think that, because we 'don't know how they work', this tells us something about the universe? No, this tells us about a set of historically and geographically specific humans, and the idea of generalizing about the nature of the universe from their failures is silly - and arrogant.

If some Chinese Chomsky did a review of Chinese concepts that one had never heard of and concluded that those concepts have not fared so well in capturing the world, one would take that for a cute little bit of anthropology. Not some comment on the universe and its mysteries. In fact taking Chomsky's essay as anthropology is probably the best way to take it, and the best way to see its arrogance - intellectual historical anthropology mistaken for philosophy.

Quoting StreetlightX

then have the gall to suggest that the world is incomprehensible because of that. It's incrediblely unbelievable.

No. The gall is suggesting that mere animals can understand everything. We've gotten rid of God in most philosophy, but the idea of being all knowing still persists.

As far as I know, in a mere 300-400 years, our innate, inborn given natures have not changed. I may be wrong in that, we may have advanced conceptually by leaps and bounds, but the evidence suggests babies and children have the intuition that Descartes had about the physical world.

We can't get rid of our intuitions. You can't tell me you don't see the Sun rising in the east and setting in the west even if we know the Sun does no such thing, we can't help but see it.

Quoting StreetlightX

Like I said, imagine a post-scholastic Chomsky saying: "we don't know how essence, or attribute, or mode, or [insert outdated vocabulary which no one uses anymore here] works, and it's unlikely that we will ever know. We'll just likely 'move on'!". One would laugh. One does laugh.

Let's translate then. Essence to fundamental, attribute to property and mode to way of acting.

What's fundamental to matter? Many things, but if you want to be strict, you can say quantum fields, everything else is an illusion. That seems to leave out a lot of fundamental stuff, oh well.

Property. Can you explain to me how a photon turns to the colour we experience when we see an apple or the sky?

Way of acting. Depends on how it's applied, it seems to me that's what we study, how matter acts, not knowing what it is.

Laughable is the folly of creatures who think they have no limits. Literally.

Reply to Manuel This is more argument than Chomsky presented. And if it's really as simple as: "surely you can't believe you will know everything", then I didn't need a 30 page lit review to tell me that. But Chomsky, who knows this, is trying to link a particular and historically and culturally specific vocabulary and arrogate it to the conditions of understanding of the universe itself. But that is no better.

Reply to StreetlightX

OK. :ok:

I'm just saying, if one has square holes, it's silly to say that because one has tried to fit the round pegs every which way and failed, that the square holes are unassailable.

Chomsky's argument though is even more parochial than that: if the world cannot be explained in the terms of these 16th century dead European guys, then it's likely no terms will ever do, forever.

Doubt.

Quoting StreetlightX

then have the gall to suggest that the world is incomprehensible because of that.

Where does Chomsky say the world is incomprehensible?

He's saying we have a much different understanding today, one not confined solely to mechanistic processes -- like contact action, which was what was once meant by "understanding."

Quoting Xtrix

He's saying we have a much different understanding today, one not confined solely to mechanistic processes -- like contact action, which was what was once meant by "understanding."

Would it be that he were just saying that. The failure of the mechanic philosophy - among other things - is Chomsky's license to conclude that there will be many things that will "remain in obscurity, impenetrable to human intelligence". There's nothing wrong with the latter idea per se. But the parochialism lies in the idea that it follows even minimally from the failure of the mechanic philosophy, which, in a word - who cares? As if the whole of the intelligible was at stake in the mechanic philosophy, and not some intellectual trend that will be forgotten in time as a footnote in some future philosophy textbook.

The failure to retrofit our 16th century concepts to what we (can?) know of the world is not a failure of the world. It is a failure of those 16th century concepts.

Or to put it differently again: Chomsky is probably right about two things: (1) the mechanical philosophy has exhausted itself; (2) We probably won't end up knowing everything. But that these things have anything whatsoever to do with each other is incredibly silly.

Quoting StreetlightX

But the parochialism lies in the idea that it follows even minimally from the failure of the mechanic philosophy

When it comes to the mind/body problem, he argues that there hasn’t been a conception of “body” since this time. So ideas about the “physical world” isn’t formulable. That’s one point. But in terms of what’s understood — plenty is understood. Knowledge isn’t impossible. We just have a different conception of “understanding” — one rooted more in theoretical formulation than contact action.

So what about mysteries? Chomsky has made the point, for decades, that human beings have a scope and limits to their cognitive capacities. The same applies here. Perhaps issues like will, the creative use of language, and understanding the world in “physical” terms demonstrate those limits. Maybe. Maybe it will be resurrected — but as of yet, that’s not the case. We still don’t have a conception of “material.”

I think the points are obvious. Of course we have limits. What’s interesting in this particular case — with Descartes, Newton, and the mind/body problem — is that what’s traditionally (and still to this day) been taken as a “scientific” understanding of the world was actually abandoned long ago, and was never resurrected. Thus, there can’t be a mind/body problem — we still have no sense of “body.”

Who cares? Well, I see plenty of threads on this very forum endlessly debating the mind/body issue, discussing the “physical” world, trying to bridge the gap between consciousness and the material world, etc. So I think it’s worth listening to someone claiming that’s all pretty much a waste of time.

Quoting StreetlightX

As if the whole of the intelligible was at stake in the mechanic philosophy,

That would be ridiculous, yeah. But I don’t see that being the claim. That mechanical philosophy is just one example— but an important one.

Quoting StreetlightX

Chomsky is probably right about two things: (1) the mechanical philosophy has exhausted itself; (2) We probably won't end up knowing everything. But that these things have anything whatsoever to do with each other is incredibly silly.

We may not know everything, and perhaps one example is understanding the world in terms of bodies, material, and physical.

That’s the claim, and I still don’t see how it’s silly. In fact if it’s true I think more should pay attention, as I mentioned above.

Quoting Xtrix

Thus, there can’t be a mind/body problem — we still have no sense of “body.”

So what? If this were a medieval internet, someone would complain that we still have no sense of 'substance'. But this would not be a comment on the mysteries of the world: this would be a comment on how useless substance is as a term. That Chomsky talks about bodies is nothing more than an anthropological fact. Its significance is cultural, nothing more - at least, in the absence of any argument otherwise.

Quoting Xtrix

We may not know everything, and perhaps one example is understanding the world in terms of bodies, material, and physical.

Would another set of examples be not understanding the world in terms of qi, or karma, or mana? What claim do 'bodies' or 'material' have which make them anything other than a limited European set of ideas that have been in vogue for some time? Why should the failure of those terms tell us anything at all? Because we are self-important? Because you are contingently situated in this moment of history and place? The elevation of anthropological fact to transcendental condition of intelligibility is - well it's ridiculous.

Again, why the failure to retrofit an outdated vocabulary speaks to something about the universe and not the paucity of European grammar is beyond me. It's like a village engineer with a hammer and a scythe complaining that because his tools are unsuited to fix the car (he's tried everything!), the car is therefore unfixable. What kind of self-assured arrogance is this? Chomsky's essay, is, as far as I can see, the villager's complaint.

A proper image would be even worse: there's people with entire car workshops with state of the art equipment, the the villager is complaining that yes, yes, the state-of-the-art equipment is very good and fixes the car just fine but how oh how is he to reconcile the scythe? No one seems to be able to able to do it! MyStErY. Maybe Chomsky could try just... moving on?

Quoting StreetlightX

What claim do 'bodies' or 'material' have which make them anything other than a limited European set of ideas that have been in vogue for some time?

I suppose we can argue that science is just a Western invention— and there’s something to that. But I’d argue it’s a better example of possible human limits than any of the many examples one could use.

But again, I don’t think the claim is that because one 17th century European conception is obsolete, that all of human intelligibility is lost. It’s that this is one example of something that may demonstrate limits — and a particularly interesting one. You’re saying it’s not particularly interesting — no more so than qi or karma or corpuscles or alchemy. Here again I’d simply say that I do think there’s something sui generis about science. But perhaps that’s another conversation.

Quoting Xtrix

I suppose we can argue that science is just a Western invention— and there’s something to that

Huh? You think science works or does not work because we can't conceptually retrofit things like 'bodies' and 'the physical'? Eliminate both and science will be just fine. The equations will turn out just the same; the predictions will be validated (or not) regardless. Again, the use of some particular vocabulary to characterise what is, in practice, a more or less entirely autonomous field says nothing about that field or its discoveries.

Reply to StreetlightX

I didn’t make any claim about whether science works or not.

The idea of contact action, which was the common sense basis for mechanical philosophy, is a human property. It’s not culturally conditioned any more than the moon illusion is culturally conditioned, or object permanence is culturally conditioned.

Pointing out, as Chomsky does, that we can’t understand the world in this way — as was shown by Newton and others — is perhaps one example of the limits of human intelligibility. The claim that humans have scope and limits is essentially a truism.

I don’t see the relevance of “retrofitting.” No one is trying to retrofit our current understanding, concepts and knowledge to that of 18th century England.

Quoting Xtrix

The idea of contact action, which was the common sense basis for mechanical philosophy, is a human property.

But this is simply not true. Via Christian Kerslake's Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy:

The notion that now strikes us as the most sensible approach to causality, that finite substances are responsible for the changes they cause in other substances (then called the theory of physical influx), was at the time [that Leibniz was writing] the least popular. This was because the only way available to conceive the idea that a substance with a set of properties caused a change in another substance was through the explanation that there was a transmission of properties from the first to the second, which was held to be inconceivable. Therefore, the notions of occasionalism and pre-established harmony became popular among philosophers as elaborate avoidances of physical influx.

Like, our intuitions are useless. Forget them. They're trash and philosophically uninteresting other than a good historical and cultural tale. If you want to read how absolutely bonkers our (by which I only mean Western) schemes of causality really have been, check out Steven Nadler's editied collection on "Causation in Early Modern Philosophy" (you can find it on Libgen). And today, the most cutting-edge way we tend to think of causality today is in terms of counterfactuals (see Judea Pearl's work). Like, maybe bodies and 'the physical' have a place, but that would have to be argued, and not taken for granted - certainly not in the way that Chomsky does.

And even 'free will' and 'consciousness' are totally modern concepts that popped into existence not all that long ago. Like - these aren't some big eternal questions. These are, for the most part, cultural memes given institutional standing.

Quoting StreetlightX

The idea of contact action, which was the common sense basis for mechanical philosophy, is a human property.
— Xtrix

But this is simply not true.

That contact action is a human property, or that it was the common sense basis for the mechanical philosophy?

Your citation seems to be addressing the latter case. That physical flux was the "least popular" explanation of causality around Leibniz's time is interesting, but I don't see the relevance here. In other words, I don't see how it falsifies the claim that it (contact action) was the basis for the mechanical philosophy.

Quoting StreetlightX

Like, our intuitions are useless. Forget them. They're trash and philosophically uninteresting other than a good historical and cultural tale. If you want to read how absolutely bonkers our (by which I only mean Western) schemes of causality really have been, check out Steven Nadler's editied collection on "Causation in Early Modern Philosophy" (you can find it on Libgen).

Sure. But I don't understand why you apparently think I'm arguing the opposite of this. That's in fact the point about contact action being a "common sense" basis for the mechanical philosophy -- namely that intuition simply falls apart when trying to explain, for example, the force of gravity. Which is why Chomsky talks about Newton inadvertently making contributions to the philosophy of mind, since it (arguably) demonstrates an example of cognitive limits.

Quoting StreetlightX

Like, maybe bodies and 'the physical' have a place, but that would have to be argued, and not taken for granted - certainly not in the way that Chomsky does.

Again I don't quite understand this remark. Chomsky is arguing precisely that "bodies" and "the physical" does not really have a place in today's science. I think the following will be helpful to clear away any misunderstanding (this is from Chomsky's lecture in Oslo, which I posted above and which I transcribed -- so any error is mine):

I don't think we can leave materialism behind until someone tells us what materialism is. There was a concept of materialism right through the early scientific revolution, right through Newton -- Newton still accepted it. In fact the great scientists of the next century still accepted it, LaGrange and others still tried to develop a material, mechanistic concept of the universe that went right through the 19th century -- ether theories and so on. It was finally given up in the 20th century. Finally recognized that 'we're never gonna get it.' And totally different ways of looking at things were developed, which have no relation to traditional materialism, if Friedrich Lange is correct -- and nobody has ever suggested another notion.

Materialism is just like anything we more or less understand -- it includes thinking, reasoning, etc. So we can't leave it behind until someone explains what it is. But there's no reason we can't study it. We can study what the human capacity of understanding is. We know some negative things. Like we can't understand how the world works, for example. Because our concept of understanding is too limited to incorporate what Newton described as an absurdity. Newton and Hume and Lock weren't idiots -- we should take them seriously. They regarded it as an absurdity for very good reasons, and modern cognitive science (which somehow tries to recapitulate some of this) finds pretty much that. For example, as I mentioned, an infant, presented with presentations which indicate that there's some kind of causality -- like when the ball rolls this way a light turns red or something -- they will invent a mechanical cause, and they don't care if it's not visible, because infants understand that most of what goes on is invisible but there's got to be some mechanical cause otherwise there's no way to influence anything else. So that does seem to be the way our minds work, and that tells us something about the limits of our understanding; in fact a classical, crucial case -- and it can go on to other cases.

At 1:02:00 on the video.

[Deleted]

Reply to StreetlightX Reply to StreetlightX :fire:

Reply to Xtrix It’s just really odd to say we can’t refer to the word physical because Newton’s contemporaries once associated the word to mean things in the world worked like wheels and clocks.

Did we throw away the concept of space and time because they weren’t what Kant imagined or throw away the concept of life because vitalism was abandoned? Do you think the meaning of the words have to be left fixed, that they have to be abandoned if they were initially tied to disproven ideas? The definition of life for instance is a continued debate so it’s not like we’re talking about concepts in science that have settled metaphysics, but no one seems to have a problem with knowing what is referenced anymore than when we talk about changed concepts like physical or causation.

Anyways the other point being that the reason why they believed physical explanations had to be abandoned because Newton’s contemporaries were convinced we could never understand the mechanisms for Action at a Distance, which they were wrong about. So again who cares how they used these concepts.

Reply to Saphsin Exactly. As if, out of some misplaced sense of fealty, we owe these dead concepts and dead people an explanation of exactly why their dead concepts are just so dead - on pain of impugning our ability to understand the world. But these things have literally nothing to do with each other, and if the dead are dead then may they stay in their graves without it for one moment being a commentary on our ability to understand the world.

[quote=Chomsky]Materialism is just like anything we more or less understand -- it includes thinking, reasoning, etc. So we can't leave it behind until someone explains what it is.[/quote]

I mean what is this nonsense? We can't leave it behind because it "is just like anything we more or less understand"? What is that even supposed to mean? There's no transitivity here. This reads like someone who has invested too much time in studying theology and then insisting that it is now everyone else's problem that his interests are dead.

[quote=Chomsky]For example, as I mentioned, an infant, presented with presentations which indicate that there's some kind of causality -- like when the ball rolls this way a light turns red or something -- they will invent a mechanical cause, and they don't care if it's not visible, because infants understand that most of what goes on is invisible but there's got to be some mechanical cause otherwise there's no way to influence anything else. So that does seem to be the way our minds work, and that tells us something about the limits of our understanding; in fact a classical, crucial case -- and it can go on to other cases[/quote]

And what, if we can't square our most advanced concepts of understading to the intellectual standards of literal infants this is supposed to be a comment on our understanding other than the fact that infants are literally the stupidest variety of human on the planet? This is so sloppy and the fact that anyone takes it seriously is insane.

Nevermind. I don't want to get into endless debate.

There's no problem if people disagree, in fact, it's welcomed. Others can build ideas on disagreements.

I'll be here for anyone who has questions on the essay, or would like clarification or other sources, or would like to talk about any of the other topics raised in this essay, such as Strawson's panpsychism, Priestley's materialism or Descartes, Locke or anything else mentioned.

Anything Chomsky related, I'd be happy to help, minus the technical linguistic aspects, which are too technical for me.

Quoting Manuel

There's no problem if people disagree, in fact, it's welcomed. Others can build ideas on disagreements.

It’s okay, this particular subject is just among the ones where I digress from Chomsky the most. I agree and disagree with him on the wide array of subjects he covers, just like I do with other people.

Reply to Saphsin

:sweat:

I didn't have you in mind actually. No, of course, I perfectly well understand and respect disagreement with anyone, that's fine. If you aren't challenged, it's harder to learn.

I like Heidegger (Chomsky doesn't) and think that Chomsky at times uses the example of physics too frequently in other arguments, which I think is unsatisfactory.

More than anything is the rhetoric that bothers me a bit.

For instance, I really dislike Dennett's philosophy of mind because I think it is pretty wild. But I say that I don't like Dennett beforehand, and don't usually discuss much of it, because I just get mad and piss other people off.

On the other hand, when he says interesting things about neuroscience or says something useful about free will, I'll engage.

It's temperament related, but if I say something is "nonsense" or "idiotic", I usually let go of some of my rationality, because I expect a fiery reply. I reserve those for very specific occasions.

Quoting Xtrix

Chomsky is arguing precisely that "bodies" and "the physical" does not really have a place in today's science.

Right, and from this he wants to draw the conclusion that there are some things in the world that will always escape us. Again, the latter stands as a perfectly reasonable position (that things will always escape us), but movement from A to C simply doesn't follow. If bodies and the physical don't have a place in today's science then they were always insignificant from the beginning other than as conceptual holding-patterns whose time is done. We owe them nothing and they speak to nothing.

Quoting Xtrix

That physical flux was the "least popular" explanation of causality around Leibniz's time is interesting, but I don't see the relevance here.

The point is that these ideas are throughly historical - they had a date of birth and they will have a date of death. The idea that these senses of causality are deeply held eternal metaphysical notions is just rear-guard parochialism. Even if infants develop certain ideas along a relatively stable developmental path, this might speak to nothing other than the fact, of, I dunno, the necessity of avoiding being eaten by lions. Which is, shall we say, a regional issue at best. Or else that infants hew to an incredibly diminished sense of intellection precisely on account of the fact that they are infants.

Reply to Manuel Oh come, hop in. I'm allowed to be mean to Chomsky he's not here.

Reply to StreetlightX

:wink:

I think Xtrix will have a good time arguing with you.

I think you and I disagree on many, many things including most of philosophy and politics. Also in ways of expressing our opinions, I try to be a bit less intense. Not always. Doesn't make me better or worse, just a style.

That just makes the world go round.

I'm having a Dudeism vibe now, and I like it. By all means, fire away, I'll be having a metaphysical White Russian and chill.

Cheers.

Reply to Manuel Fair enough!

Reply to Manuel I've read the rest of the essay, and frankly I am still not sure what to think of it. That is, the impression that I got after reading about a third of it is still the same: these look like notes on things that Chomsky has read, written down without any plan, flow-of-consciousness style. The themes that he mainly deals with are: (1) 18th century natural philosophers and their struggles with reconceptualizing the physical world in light of Newtonian physics; (2) the mind-body problem as though of by those 18th century philosophers, especially Priestly, plus a few later philosophers, mainly Russell, Strawson Jr. and Stoljar in the end, with some notes of his own concerning language.

The essay is by no means a survey of the themes that it touches on. Compare, for instance, Chomsky's notes on physicalism with Stoljar's SEP article on the same: you will find the latter far more comprehensive and objective. Nor did I find much in the way of an original insight. Chomsky indicates where his sympathies lie: reductive physicalism, monism, opposing Strawson panpsychism and endorsing Stoljar's physicalism, but doesn't add much of his own. I couldn't make much of the brief note on language tucked in at the end, but that's because I have no familiarity with linguistics and Chomsky's work.

Where I encountered difficulty (other than the brief discussion of language) was in the end, in notes on Stoljar, but this could be best remedied by reading Stoljar himself.

Chomsky's not very hidden agenda: innate ideas.

The innate part is no trouble to his philosophical conscience, but the ideas part does seem to have been keeping him up. Innate brain shivers, no problem. I presume.

Reply to bongo fury Yep. Buried in among the thirty pages of warbling is an apologia for his effective creationism about language. One suspects all the rest is just so much superstructure to excuse those few lines.

Reply to Manuel

I'm interested in understanding Strawson's panpsychism. I don't understand why he wants to rule out strong emergence. Why would it have to be miraculous?

Reply to SophistiCat

I read it as a response to those who approach the science of consciousness as if there's no need for a conceptual shift to deal with it.

That all this is mundane to you, suggests that you would criticize Dennett, for instance, for putting so much weight on our present conceptual schemes.

Reply to frank I didn't see much of a consistent agenda behind these rambling notes; I think people read into them whatever prejudices they happen to hold already: about materialism, philosophy of mind, Chomsky himself...

Quoting SophistiCat

I couldn't make much of the brief note on language tucked in at the end, but that's because I have no familiarity with linguistics and Chomsky's work.

Other animals, which have a communication system have a sound-to-object relation. So, for instance, if a monkey makes a particular sound, it means something "predator", "prey", "food", etc., the relation being one of a sound with an object in the external world (extra mental) world.

The case of human languages is different, the vast majority of times there is no relation between sound and object, for instance, now. The human case of language use is much more sophisticated than any animal, which includes things like recognizing that if I say "Boston is awesome", and you knew the context for which I'm using the word, you'd know I speaking of a band, not a city.

He uses this example inNew Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind:

"If I say that one of the things that concerns me is the average man and his foibles, or Joe Sixpack’s priorities, or the inner track that Raytheon has on the latest missile contract, does it follow that I believe that the actual world, or some mental model of mine, is constituted of such entities as the average man, foibles, Joe Sixpack, priorities and inner tracks?"

Etc.

Reply to frank

What Chomsky would say is that there is something or a reason by which something emerges, such as experience, but we don't know what the reason is.

Strawson says that at bottom, whatever there is, must constitute or realize experience. In Strawson's case, then, it's not a huge puzzle as to how matter can be constituted to lead to consciousness in certain configurations, it was there all along.

Quoting SophistiCat

I think people read into them whatever prejudices they happen to hold already:

Sounds like philosophy of mind isn't your cuppa.

Reply to Manuel Thanks for the explanation, but to understand how this ties in with the present context, I would need to have a deeper understanding of the topic, and I cannot commit to that at the moment.

Reply to frank Why? Because I am not taking your side against Dennett?

Reply to Manuel Here is Stoljar's precis of his book Ignorance and Imagination, which Chomsky appears to endorse. Will read that later.

Quoting SophistiCat

Why? Because I am not taking your side against Dennett?

Irritable much?

Reply to SophistiCat

Sure. If you want some more info on some later date on this topic, let me know.

Yes, Stoljar is interesting, but I've mainly focused on Strawson. So I can say less about him than others.

Quoting Manuel

Yes, Stoljar is interesting, but I've mainly focused on Strawson. So I can say less about him than others.

Read Stoljar's precis - that didn't help much... Probably because I am still having difficulties with qualia ("experiential truths") and the zombie argument ("conceivability argument"). Stawson & panpsychism don't interest me, to be honest.

Reply to SophistiCat

Ah.

Sure. No problem. I don't agree with Strawson's panpsychism either, though he's pretty clear with the terms "experiential" and "non-experiential".

The zombie argument isn't particularly convincing, I don't think, I mean, we essentially have very similar examples in people who sleepwalk, or so it seems to me.

As for experiential truths, I can see why "truth", can be problematic. I suppose experiential events or manifest reality are, in some cases, less confusing.

Quoting Manuel

people who sleepwalk,

Aren't they dreaming?

Reply to bongo fury

From what I've seen, accounts vary. Sometimes they remember dreaming, other times, they don't. I'm guessing that it's the same as going to sleep every night, just that they move around and do stuff.

Some people say we actually dream every night, be we just don't remember. I'm skeptical, when I used to party, and went to sleep, I'm pretty confident I didn't dream anything.

Quoting Saphsin

It’s just really odd to say we can’t refer to the word physical because Newton’s contemporaries once associated the word to mean things in the world worked like wheels and clocks.

It's not that -- it's that no alternative has been proposed since. As a technical notion. Common-sense notions in everyday discourse is a different matter. Of course I know what you mean when you say "physical." I know what you mean when you say I'm going to "work." When it comes to science, however, that no longer applies. So the argument Chomsky is making is that there hasn't been a replacement.

The common sense-based notion of contact action, as a basis for "understanding" the world in terms of mechanics (mechanical philosophy), was abandoned and nothing has been proposed since.

Quoting StreetlightX

And what, if we can't square our most advanced concepts of understading to the intellectual standards of literal infants this is supposed to be a comment on our understanding other than the fact that infants are literally the stupidest variety of human on the planet?

You've missed the point entirely. It's not trying to square our technical notions in science with an infant. It's merely pointing out that, much like the moon illusion, or the stick in water that appears broken, this is simply how human beings see things. As adults we realize the moon isn't that big, that the stick isn't really broken, etc., and perhaps infants and children don't -- but we still see the world this way regardless.

These are "common sense" notions. Chomsky is arguing that common sense notions don't help when it comes to science, and in fact "physical" (in terms of contact action) was one of these common-sense based technical notions that was abandoned. Crucially, another technical notion to replace it has never been given. We just have new ways of understanding the world. But we go on seeing broken sticks and making assumptions about contact action nevertheless. That's why magicians can fool us so easily with slights of hand.

Quoting StreetlightX

Chomsky is arguing precisely that "bodies" and "the physical" does not really have a place in today's science.
— Xtrix

Right, and from this he wants to draw the conclusion that there are some things in the world that will always escape us.

Maybe not "always," but yes -- he argues, as you know, over and over again that human beings have a scope and limit to their capacities. Again I think the rats in the prime number maze is a good example -- it's not easy to understand why they can't do it, perhaps, but they can't. Human beings also have their cognitive limits, and we learn something about what they are. Common sense ways of seeing the world and talking about the world -- some of which is just psychologically pre-determined -- fall apart when we study things scientifically. I mentioned the moon illusion, but there are many others. Likewise for our words -- common words like "work" mean something entirely different in everyday life compared to their use in physics.

Quoting StreetlightX

Again, the latter stands as a perfectly reasonable position (that things will always escape us), but movement from A to C simply doesn't follow. If bodies and the physical don't have a place in today's science then they were always insignificant from the beginning other than as conceptual holding-patterns whose time is done. We owe them nothing and they speak to nothing.

I think Chomsky is going from C to A, not A to C. In other words, he's not saying, as you put it, that because a 17th century notion of "physical" was abandoned (A), that this proves human beings have limits (C). Rather, he takes it as a truism that human beings have limits (C) and that this is a crucial example of our limits. Hence the claim that Newton inadvertently made a contribution to the "philosophy of mind."

So if you find the initial position a reasonable one, you're simply disagreeing that this a very good example. But I think that's partly because you've missed the point about infants and contact action mentioned above.

Quoting StreetlightX

The point is that these ideas are throughly historical - they had a date of birth and they will have a date of death. The idea that these senses of causality are deeply held eternal metaphysical notions is just rear-guard parochialism.

Are optical illusions "eternal metaphysical notions"? You're mixing categories here I think. On the one hand we, as human beings, have common-sense experiences and notions about contact action; on the other, we have the mechanical philosophy which tried to describe the world in terms of a causality based in this common experience.

Because the latter was abandoned says nothing about the former. It doesn't make the former go away, nor does it make it some eternal notion.

Quoting StreetlightX

Even if infants develop certain ideas along a relatively stable developmental path, this might speak to nothing other than the fact, of, I dunno, the necessity of avoiding being eaten by lions. Which is, shall we say, a regional issue at best.

Maybe object permanence is regional at best as well. Is this really an argument?

Quoting bongo fury

Chomsky's not very hidden agenda: innate ideas.

That the human capacity for language is genetically determined, yes. Is that really still "controversial"? He's looking at human beings like we look at any other biological organism. We have a genetic structure. That's basically a truism.

Quoting StreetlightX

an apologia for his effective creationism about language

"Effective"? Chomsky has never once, in my reading, questioned whether language evolved. That it came about rapidly instead of gradually, as some propose, yes. That's "effective creationism"?

This is going in circles because of this pick and respond at your convenience.

Quoting Xtrix

"Physical" (in terms of contact action) was one of these common-sense based technical notions that was abandoned.

Sorry but this is just an excuse for what is effectively conceptual chauvinism. There is nothing - nothing - about object permanence that makes physicalism or mechanism 'common-sense based technical notions'. Literally nothing. Again, trying to naturalize and retrofit a set of historical notions as something that is built-in - hey, much like Chomsky's rubbish linguistics - so as to argue for some kind of mysterianism is bad philosophy and worse history. There is no natural mapping from object-permanence to 'mechanism' and physicalism. Just as there is no natural mapping from the failure of the latter to the failure of our cognitive abilities.

Quoting Xtrix

I think Chomsky is going from C to A, not A to C.

To be fair, because the paper is such a rambling mess, I'm quite happy to grant that Chomsky wants it both ways. He does want the failure of mechanism to be an example of how our ability to grasp the world can fail, but he clearly wants it also to shore up the the idea to begin with. But again, the problem is that he says nothing - nothing at all - about what it means to have a grasp on the world in the first place in any independant manner. All he does is index the latter to the former and then say that because the former fails, the latter does too. But this begs the whole question, which is why the paper comes off as nothing more than a provincial dispute arrogated to the status of the universal.

In fact the undecidable shuttling back and forth between A and C exposes the effectively tautological nature of the essay: because Chomsky lacks any terms other than 'the physical' or the mechanical to grasp the world, the failure of his pet vocabulary must imply the failure of human understanding and vice versa. It's like the child who whines that because his toys are broken, no one else can have any toys either. The only appropriate response is to ignore the child, or laugh at it for being so irredeemably moronic.

Quoting Xtrix

"Effective"? Chomsky has never once, in my reading, questioned whether language evolved. That it came about rapidly instead of gradually, as some propose, yes. That's "effective creationism"?

Yeah it "evolved", but exactly how is just one of those mysterious things that we'll never know, because his vision of language is Platonic and basically theological. He wants to pretend that his understanding of language is scientific by paying lip service to the language, but then does literally everything he can to put it outside scientific explanation by - guess what - shrouding the mechanism of that evolution in mystery. "It's innate". lol. Sure. Just like mechanism is 'innate'. He's a priest in disguise.

Reply to Manuel
I haven't read the article, I confess, though I've read the majority of this thread, still trying to determine whether it's worth reading. StreetlightX has pretty much convinced me that it is not. I agree with StreetlightX that a big part of the problem is that we're dealing with antiquated terms. However, unlike what Streetlight says above, I do not think that such terms die. What often happens is that once the conceptual relevance of a word becomes outdated, use of the term will continue, but move off into some realm of free, unbounded usage, where it may be used by anyone, in any way. In the case of scientific or technical terms, which have become antiquated, people will use them in the pretense of saying something important, pretending to know something which others don't, by creating confusion in the minds of others.

The word "matter" with its associated extensions, material, materialism, etc., is such a word. From Aristotle it is well defined as a representation of the unintelligible aspect of the world, "potential", that which neither is nor is not, violating the law of excluded middle. This is why the assumed reality of "matter" is fundamental to early Christian mysticism and fringe religions like Manichaeism. Western science, especially under the direction of Newton, moved to bring "matter" into the fold of intelligibility by assigning it a fundamental property, mass. Newton's laws are applicable to mass, and if mass is equated with matter, matter appears to become intelligible through the category error of making the property the thing itself. The problem though is that there is a multitude of properties, like inertia, and gravitation, which are grouped together under "mass", and the relationship between these properties remained somewhat unintelligible. So Newton had taken the unintelligibility out of "matter" rendering the word useless in its technical definition, and pushed that unintelligibility into aspect of reality more deeply hidden, more mysterious.

However, it is wrong to portray Newton as materialist. He remained fully committed to God and the reality of the immaterial. This is evident from the fact that he appealed to God as required to maintain the truth of his first law of motion. And, the nature of "force", such as gravity, as well as the relationship between light and matter (as a type of force) were maintained as immaterial. What you can see though, is that he inverted the terminology, making "matter" intelligible, and assigning unintelligible to the immaterial, "force". As a result, "matter" in its traditional use has been abandoned to float freely in random use (abuse), and the "immaterial", which had provided the foundation for intelligibility, has now been designated as unintelligible.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Newton was a materialist as pertaining to the physical world, the way the world works. In the essay, which I am now seeing many people not bother reading at all, which is strange for a reading group, you would see that Newton also believed in something called "spirit", which he thought permeated all of nature.

"In Newton’s own words, “spirit” may be the cause of all movement in nature, including the “power of moving our body by our thoughts” and “the same power in other living creatures, [though] how this is done and by what laws we do not know. We cannot say that all nature is not alive.”
pp. 168-169

Terms are only a part of it, it has to do with our innate faculties, the one's all human beings are born with. What's not being mentioned, in these discussions, which you pointed out - and thanks for that - is that "materialism" is part of the issue, the other was that these notions do not reach the domain of mind or soul (which includes more than mind).

But even putting aside the talk of Newton, Descartes, Locke and so on, it's that even today, we know almost nothing about the mental. Hence the misleading "hard problem" of consciousness.

Quoting Manuel

Hence the misleading "hard problem" of consciousness.

Again, my 2 cents worth: Chalmers wouldn't have a problem with this essay. He brings up gravity himself as an example of the kind of conceptual revolution that might be required to approach the hard problem.

If there's a misunderstanding, maybe it's in the way others have taken up his ideas.

Reply to frank

Yep, that's correct.

He's very open minded and considers almost all approaches to consciousness.

Others who use this term are misled by it, as if experience were "not physical" or "spooky".

Quoting Manuel

Others who use this term are misled by it, as if experience were "not physical" or "spooky".

OH, I see what you're saying. :up:

Quoting Manuel

Sure. No problem. I don't agree with Strawson's panpsychism either, though he's pretty clear with the terms "experiential" and "non-experiential".

I don't find terms like "qualia" or "experiential" all that clear myself, and I haven't seen where Srawson added anything useful in that regard (but I've only seen his "Realistic Monism"). I've read a couple of papers that try for a more critical analysis of these concepts (including one by Stoljar), but the matter remains murky in my mind.

(Chomsky doesn't say much about the subject in this essay, except perhaps where he brings up Mary's Room puzzle. But here, as elsewhere, he just writes down some notes and quotes, adds that he disagrees with some influential analyses of the problem, and leaves it at that. The relevance of this discussion to the rest of the essay is unclear.)

Panpsychism is just glorified magical thinking, in my opinion. It's not the exoticism of the concept that bothers me, but its explanatory nullity.

Quoting Manuel

The zombie argument isn't particularly convincing, I don't think, I mean, we essentially have very similar examples in people who sleepwalk, or so it seems to me.

I just don't understand the argument, i.e. what it is that conceivability actually implies and why we should care.

People who sleepwalk are not examples of P-zombies, because they don't behave like conscious people in all outward respects.

Quoting SophistiCat

(Chomsky doesn't say much about the subject in this essay, except perhaps where he brings up Mary's Room puzzle. But here, as elsewhere, he just writes down some notes and quotes, adds that he disagrees with some influential analyses of the problem, and leaves it at that. The relevance of this discussion to the rest of the essay is unclear.)

You're right, because he also doesn't see what the big issue is with qualia. He agrees with Russell here:

Russell held that there are “three grades of certainty. The highest grade belongs to my own percepts; the second grade to the percepts of other people; the third to events which are not percepts of anybody," constructions of the mind established in the course of efforts to make sense of what we perceive.”

Then he goes on to say: "...we recognize their existence [of our own percepts] , at the highest grade of certainty in fact."

Both quotes on pp.181.

One could call a percept a "quale", but Chomsky doesn't. A percept means a moment of experience, such as you reading this sentence as you currently are. Or looking at the window and seeing green grass, or hearing a car zoom by, etc.

I'm unclear why this is confusing, outside of the terminology itself. It's been overwhelmingly taken for granted up until the 20th century, when it suddenly became a problem to a small group of people.

Quoting SophistiCat

Panpsychism is just glorified magical thinking, in my opinion. It's not the exoticism of the concept that bothers me, but its explanatory nullity.

I agree. I studied it for several years, but was not convinced, also on your grounds of it not explaining much.

Quoting SophistiCat

I just don't understand the argument, i.e. what it is that conceivability actually implies and why we should care.

I thought the whole argument was meant to show that experience isn't necessary for a human being to exist as they do. But I also do not see the force to this argument, nor understand the attention given to it.

Quoting SophistiCat

People who sleepwalk are not examples of P-zombies, because they don't behave like conscious people in all outward respects.

That's likely true.

Quoting StreetlightX

There is nothing - nothing - about object permanence that makes physicalism or mechanism 'common-sense based technical notions'.

Contact action, like object permanence, is a “common sense” notion. Same with the moon illusion or any other optical illusion— it’s simply how we see and experience things.

That doesn’t mean the mechanical philosophy is common sense. It means the 17th century notion of understanding was based on contact action. Turns out that’s completely wrong — fine. But importantly, nothing has been proposed since to replace that notion.

I don’t see anything chauvinistic about any of this. You’re simply misreading it.

Quoting StreetlightX

because Chomsky lacks any terms other than 'the physical' or the mechanical to grasp the world, the failure of his pet vocabulary must imply the failure of human understanding and vice versa.

Theory.

Physical and mechanical are hardly his “pet vocabulary” — he’s in fact arguing that they fail, but we have other ways of understanding the world. Ways that aren’t based on “common sense.” Namely, our explanatory theories — which are revised in time.

Quoting StreetlightX

Yeah it "evolved", but exactly how is just one of those mysterious things that we'll never know, because his vision of language is Platonic and basically theological.

His view of language is biological. Never once has he said the evolution of language is a mystery we’ll “never know.” In fact he’s offered plenty of ideas about it over the years. It happened, obviously, through generic changes. Chomsky just doesn’t think it happened through gradual steps.

You’ve now made a number of things up. Platonist, chauvinist, priest, arrogant, etc. Not sure why. But it has nothing to do with Chomsky. It’s fabrication. But that’s your business.

Reply to Manuel

:100:

Quoting Xtrix

but we have other ways of understanding the world. Ways that aren’t based on “common sense.” Namely, our explanatory theories — which are revised in time.

In which case so much for the failure of mechanism to imply anything - literally anything - about our cognitive abilities.

Quoting Xtrix

But importantly, nothing has been proposed since to replace that notion.

Nothing has been proposed? Says who exactly? Have you opened a philosophy journal recently? There are a blossoming of theories all over the place. If you mean there there has not been a consensus reached, then, well, who cares? Consensus is for flies who like shit. And it turns out that the last consensus was pretty rubbish too. Again, just because Chomsky own limited imagination is so limited, does not mean it is limited for others. Neither should anyone else give in to his protestations that they ought to be of limited of imagination as he.

Quoting Xtrix

In fact he’s offered plenty of ideas about it over the years. It happened, obviously, through generic changes. Chomsky just doesn’t think it happened through gradual steps.

Lol, Chomsky literally says that his shitty conception of language cannot be accounted for by natural selection - after which he postulates, with exactly zero elaboration - that it might have been exapted from prior adaptations ... and that's it. It's lip service. It's all he can offer because his shitty conception of language has so thoroughly hermetically sealed it off from the world - being nothing but an instrument of the expression of thought - that it's basically metaphysics - in the bad sense - masquerading as science. Everything about Chomsky's understanding of language is pseudo-scientific, from the ground up. It's all trash, every word of it. He's a closet creationist and nothing he says about language ought to be taken seriously on pain of dying of embarrassment.

Chomsky's theory of language evolution:

1. No language.
2. ??? [exaptation from something, somehow, very quickly, but not natural selection]
3. Language!

Quoting StreetlightX

In which case so much for the failure of mechanism to imply anything - literally anything - about our cognitive abilities.

I’d say a notion of the material world in the early scientific evolution being abandoned, one based on common sense notions — and which hasn’t been replaced to this day — certainly tells us something about our cognitive abilities. It shows us that yet again our intuitions, everyday experiences, folk source, and common sense notions simply don’t work. We have to find other ways of grasping the world — and we have.

Quoting StreetlightX

Have you opened a philosophy journal recently? There are a blossoming of theories all over the place.

I’m talking about science, and I’m talking matter, physical, material, “body,” etc. If a new technical notion has been proposed, I’m happy to take a look.

Quoting StreetlightX

In fact he’s offered plenty of ideas about it over the years. It happened, obviously, through generic changes. Chomsky just doesn’t think it happened through gradual steps.
— Xtrix

Lol, Chomsky literally says that his shitty conception of language cannot be accounted for by natural selection

Not once does he say this. Not once.

I suppose if your starting assumption is that Chomsky is an idiot, the above sounds reasonable. But what he says is that there’s little evidence to suggest that gradualism explains language. That’s not saying it’s God-created, that it’s a mystery, that it’s beyond science, that it didn’t evolve, or that natural selection doesn’t apply (of course it does).

True, language could be magic. But that’s the opposite of what Chomsky had said for 70 years or so.

Quoting StreetlightX

Everything about Chomsky's understanding of language is pseudo-scientific,

Funny you say this. I recall you cited Daniel Everett a while back in support of your claims — who’s shown to be a borderline fraud, and whose conclusions of the piraha language being thoroughly and repeatedly debunked.

Quoting StreetlightX

He's a closet creationist

Okay! :up:

Reply to Xtrix You have to realise than anyone who questions naturalism is a 'closet creationist'. Like Thomas Nagel.

Quoting Xtrix

I’d say a notion of the material world in the early scientific evolution being abandoned, one based on common sense notions — and which hasn’t been replaced to this day — certainly tells us something about our cognitive abilities. It shows us that yet again our intuitions, everyday experiences, folk source, and common sense notions simply don’t work. We have to find other ways of grasping the world — and we have.

*yawn* Again with the conceptual chauvinism. Again, the failure of Chomsky's toys says nothing about anything else. Just because you'd like to give your toys pride of place (by using the weasel words of 'based on common sense' - as if lots of things couldn't be 'based on common sense' or that 'common sense' mandates any technical elaboration of it whatsoever, or that 'common sense' is, in fact, common) doesn't mean they have pride of place.

Quoting Xtrix

I’m talking about science, and I’m talking matter, physical, material, “body,” etc.

No you're not. You like to pretend that you're talking about science, but of course, you are not. You're talking about some conceptual schemes foisted upon science from without, while trying to claim the prestige and backing of science to naturalize what is effectively some backwater vocabulary of a limited cabal of European thinkers. Like I said, science will chug along just fine - in fact, does chug along just fine - without reference to this backwater philosophical vocabulary. In fact this philosophical vocabulary is quite dead precisely because science has been chugging along without it.

Quoting Xtrix

Not once does he say this. Not once.

Oh I see I've made the mistake of assuming you've ever read the person you're discussing:

At present, however, we see little reason to believe either that FLN can be anatomized into many independent but interacting traits, each with its own independent evolutionary history, or that each of these traits could have been strongly shaped by natural selection, given their tenuous connection to communicative efficacy.

http://psych.colorado.edu/~kimlab/hauser.chomsky.fitch.science2002.pdf

Reply to Wayfarer

Chomsky is not questioning naturalism.

Reply to Xtrix Well, maybe not, but his generative grammar seems at odds with it. Anyway, carry on.

Reply to Wayfarer Hey, we agree on something!

Reply to StreetlightX Oops! Better watch my step! :yikes:

Quoting StreetlightX

as if lots of thing couldn't be 'based on common sense' or that 'common sense' mandates any technical elaboration of it)

I’m sure lots of things are based on common sense. That does not mean we formulate technical notions out of them. This is one case in which we did— and they failed. It’s not simply any case— it was the prevailing view at the beginning of modern philosophy and modern science. I’d say that’s relevant.

Quoting StreetlightX

You're talking about some conceptual schemes foisted upon science from without, while trying to claim the prestige and backing of science to naturalize what is effectively some backwater vocabulary of a limited cabal of European thinkers.

Foisted upon science? So Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Locke, etc…the founders of modern philosophy and science — all backwater imbeciles.

:up:

Quoting StreetlightX

Oh I see I've made the mistake of assuming you've ever read the person you're discussing:

At present, however, we see little reason to believe either that FLN can be anatomized into many independent but interacting traits, each with its own independent evolutionary history, or that each of these traits could have been strongly shaped by natural selection, given their tenuous connection to communicative efficacy.

http://psych.colorado.edu/~kimlab/hauser.chomsky.fitch.science2002.pdf

Apparently the only article you’ve read. As you’ve cited it over and over again.

Nevertheless— he doesn’t once say that:

Quoting StreetlightX

language cannot be accounted for by natural selection

Not once. Read the quote again. There’s very little reason to believe that language evolved in parts or for communication.

Of course natural selection played a role in language. It wouldn’t still be here if it didn’t confer an advantage. That’s different from saying it evolved through incremental steps, each through natural selection. Chomsky is arguing against gradualism.

https://chomsky.info/20140826/

Quoting Wayfarer

Well, maybe not, but his generative grammar seems at odds with it.

At odds with naturalism? How? What’s the alternative— that language is supernatural?

The level of misunderstanding here is baffling. No offense— but how much of Chomsky have you really read?

Reply to Xtrix

He's speaking of naturalism a la scienticism, think Dennett or the Churchlands. On this view, then UG does seems at odds with "naturalism". But that naturalism is not the one that actually exists.

One label Chomsky uses consistently in philosophy is "methodological naturalism". However, he is not of the camp that "evolution explains everything" at all. He cites a very interesting article by Lewontin related to this.

Quoting Xtrix

At odds with naturalism? How? What’s the alternative— that language is supernatural?

Not supernatural, but you may recall that one of the still-influential dogmas of empiricism is that there are no innate ideas. It is still so widely accepted that Steve Pinker (of all people) felt obliged to write a book against it (called The Blank Slate.) So Chomsky's 'generative grammar' does, I think, tend to undermine that dogma - if not by suggesting innate ideas, then innate capabilities, which I think are regarded with suspicion by many naturalists on dogmatic grounds.

Quoting Xtrix

No offense— but how much of Chomsky have you really read?

Hardly anything. I did read the paper that Manual posted. I've read other snippets, including this one, which also suggests an approach rather at odds with the mainstream. Unlike others here, I'm not an expert, but then I don't claim to be. I just made an observation, is all.

(From that review I linked: 'Is there an ontological discontinuity between humans and other animals? Berwick and Chomsky arrive, on purely empirical grounds, at the conclusion that there is. All animals communicate, but only humans are rational; and for Berwick and Chomsky, human language is primarily an instrument of rationality.' That is bound to engender pushback, ain't it? 'Speciesism', I think.)

Quoting Xtrix

I’d say that’s relevant

Oh gee, I guess you said it - and Chomsky said it - so it must be true.

Quoting Xtrix

all backwater imbeciles.

Given that the vocabulary is dead in the water - something we which all agree with - then yeah. We do not owe the contingencies of vocabulary which we have now outstripped anything; nor to those contingencies tell us anything necessary about our cognitive capacities. Really, do you have anything else other than an argument from prestige?

Quoting Xtrix

Of course natural selection played a role in language. It wouldn’t still be here if it didn’t confer an advantage. That’s different from saying it evolved through incremental steps, each through natural selection. Chomsky is arguing against gradualism.

Yes, it's telling that the only positive thing Chomsky does in fact have to say on the topic of evolution is in regard to it's pace. Which, conveniently, serves as an excuse as to why he cannot say anything else. The pithy article you cited is nothing but a list of excuses as to why Chomsky can't say anything else about language and evolution - because he has categorically placed it outside the ambit of evolution.

As for the weasel wording of "he isn't talking about natural selection he is talking about gradualism" - well, this isn't the big disjunction you think it is because even in the article you cite, he talks about both in the same breath: "it was acquired not in the context of slow, gradual modification of preexisting systems under natural selection but in a single, rapid, emergent event that built upon those prior systems but was not predicted by them". In other words: magic. Look, I believe in catastrophism in evolution, but it's 100% clear to anyone with a brain that Chomsky's recourse to catastrophism is nothing but an excuse to veil over his theology of language.

Quoting Xtrix

Foisted upon science? So Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Locke, etc…the founders of modern philosophy and science — all backwater imbeciles.

No, but they are dead white guys, and that counts.

Reply to StreetlightX :up:

Reply to StreetlightX

Regarding the article of this thread, don’t take my word for it — it’s all right there:

As the impact of Newton’s discoveries was slowly absorbed, such lowering of the goals of scientific inquiry became routine. Scientists abandoned the animating idea of the early scientific revolution: that the world will be intelligible to us. It is enough to construct intelligi- ble explanatory theories, a radical difference. By the time we reach Russell’s Analysis of Matter, he dismisses the very idea of an intelligible world as “absurd,” and repeatedly places the word “intelligible” in quotes to highlight the absurdity of the quest. Qualms about action at a distance were “little more than a prejudice,” he writes. “If all the world consisted of billiard balls, it would be what is called ‘intelligible’—that is, it would never surprise us sufficiently to make us realize that we do not understand it.”

But even without external surprise, we should recognize how little we understand the world, and should also realize that it does not matter whether we can conceive of how the world works. In his classic introduction to quantum mechanics a few years later, Paul Dirac wrote that physical science no longer seeks to provide pictures of how the world works, that is “a model functioning on es- sentially classical lines,” but only seeks to provide a “way of looking at the fundamental laws which makes their self-consistency obvious.” He was referring to the inconceivable conclusions of quantum physics, but could just as readily have said that even the classical Newtonian models had abandoned the hope of rendering natural phenomena intelligible, the primary goal of the early modern scientific revolution, with its roots in common-sense understanding.

It is useful to recognize how radical a shift it was to abandon the mechanical philosophy, and with it any scientific relevance of our common-sense beliefs and conceptions, except as a starting point and spur for inquiry.

To read this and conclude Chomsky is arguing that because some ideas were abandoned, that somehow everything is mysterious — is absurd.

To read this and conclude that he offers no alternative to the mechanical philosophy or an account of modern understanding— is absurd.

This is what comes of reading to refute, rather than reading to truly understand. So be it.

Quoting StreetlightX

Yes, it's telling that the only positive thing Chomsky does in fact have to say on the topic of evolution is in regard to it's pace. Which, conveniently, serves as an excuse as to why he cannot say anything else.

He says much more, in fact.

Quoting StreetlightX

The pithy article you cited is nothing but a list of excuses as to why Chomsky can't say anything else about language and evolution - because he has categorically placed it outside the ambit.

I’ll assume you didn’t read it. I think that’s the simple explanation for this comment— which is utter fabrication. The entire article, in fact, is about the evolution of language— just not one you like.

To say he’s placing language “outside the ambit” of science is truly laughable. Unless mutations to regulator genes is considered saying “nothing” and retreating into mysticism.

Quoting StreetlightX

"it was acquired not in the context of slow, gradual modification of preexisting systems under natural selection but in a single, rapid, emergent event that built upon those prior systems but was not predicted by them". In other words: magic.

See above. Proposing a rapid neurological rewiring via genetic mutation is “magic”?

Again, this makes sense if we assume Chomsky is a closet priest/mystic who is using all this as a cover and …

Quoting StreetlightX

an excuse to veil over his theology of language.

But I see exactly zero evidence for believing that. Why you do, I don’t know.

Perhaps Chomsky is completely wrong about language. But claiming he’s a mystic resorting to magic, while at the same time taking seriously the long-refuted “work” of Dan Everett — that’s just not convincing.

Quoting Wayfarer

So Chomsky's 'generative grammar' does, I think, tend to undermine that dogma - if not by suggesting innate ideas, then innate capabilities, which I think are regarded with suspicion by many naturalists on dogmatic grounds.

True.

Quoting Wayfarer

Unlike others here, I'm not an expert, but then I don't claim to be. I just made an observation, is all.

So far the only person who’s clearly read and understood Chomsky - that I see here - is Manuel. There’s a lot of misunderstanding around what Chomsky says about a lot of things, so it’s important to read him directly, listen to lectures/interviews/Q and As, or speak with him directly.

The rest is just speculation and fabrication, based on God knows what (casual reading, secondary sources, etc).

Reply to Xtrix Right, so you don't have anything argument apart from an argument from prestige. Got it.

Quoting Xtrix

Unless mutations to regulator genes is considered saying “nothing” and repeating into mysticism.

Hahahaha, 'evolution happened because some changes took place in genes' = 'evolution happened because evolution happened'. Does your credulity know no bounds? Which genes? How? When? Via what mechanisms? For what reasons? And - most importantly - how do those changes relate to linguistic ability? If you find tautologies convincing then no wonder you think anything that Chomsky has written on evolution is of any significance whatsoever.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Ray Jackendoff has rightly called Chomskys' view on evolution and language a 'retreat to mysticism', which, of course, it is.

How to pretend to science:

1. Propose some bullshit.
2. Say that its origins are shrouded in evolutionary history.
3. But it's compatible with evolution because "some changes happened to some genes - which ones? Dunno - somewhere, at some point, pretty quickly but who knows really".
4. And how do those genetic changes - whatever the fuck they are - relate to linguistic ability? Who the fuck knows?
5. Bullshit validated.

Quoting StreetlightX

Unless mutations to regulator genes is considered saying “nothing” and repeating into mysticism.
— Xtrix

Hahahaha, 'evolution happened because some changes took place in genes' = 'evolution happened because evolution happened'. Does your credulity know no bounds? Which genes? How? When? Via what mechanisms? For what reasons? And how do those changes relate to linguistic ability?

You already conceded that rapid change is possible— so that already takes the claims out of the realm of “magic.” It’s a claim about how the system evolved— not that it evolved. That’s one point.

As for the questions. Which genes? Possibly regulator genes. How? Via mutation. When? We can’t possibly know exactly when— but evidence from paleoanthropology suggests behaviorally modern humans have been around for roughly 200 thousand years. For what reasons did language evolve? Possibly by chance — but that it stuck around is obvious, and so must have had a selective advantage. I find that an odd question though. What “reasons” are there for anything to evolve beyond chance and selection?

How the changes relate to linguistic ability — I can’t say I understand this question. What do you mean by linguistic ability? According to the article, language is given a technical notion. One basic property — called merge — is what is discussed, along with computational efficiency.

Quoting StreetlightX

If you find tautologies convincing

I don’t. But I’m not seeing the tautology here. Language evolved — that’s a given. How? Through changes in genes— that’s obvious. Did this happen gradually or rapidly? Chomsky argues it happened rapidly, and provides reasons and evidence (and speculation) — based on findings in genetics, paleoanthropology, cases of rapid evolution, etc. i don’t see how this equates to “evolution happened because evolution happened.” No one is arguing that language didn’t evolve — is that tautological?

Quoting StreetlightX

Ray Jackendoff has rightly called Chomskys' view on evolution and language a 'retreat to mysticism', which, of course, it is.

Never heard of him — but didn’t you mention something about “argument from prestige?”

Regardless— if he offers convincing reasons for this claim, fine. I’m not seeing them from you. Frankly I think the accusation is ludicrous, when Chomsky has said repeatedly that language is biological and has evolved, perhaps rapidly. How that’s somehow “mysticism” is yet to be shown.

Quoting Xtrix

As for the questions. Which genes? Possibly regulator genes. How? Via mutation. When? We can’t possibly know exactly when— but evidence from paleoanthropology suggests behaviorally modern humans have been around for roughly 200 thousand years. For what reasons did language evolve? Possibly by chance — but that it stuck around is obvious, and so must have had a selective advantage. I find that an odd question though. What “reasons” are there for anything to evolve beyond chance and selection? How the changes relate to linguistic ability — I can’t say I understand this question. What do you mean by linguistic ability? According to the article, language is given a technical notion. One basic property — called merge — is what is discussed, along with computational efficiency.

Ladies and gentlemen, Science.

Reply to StreetlightX

No— plenty more to say about it, more in depth and with references. But figured I’d give at least a lightning sketch. I never said it was convincing or even anything other than speculation. But certainly not mysticism.

Also, I googled Ray Jackenoff:

Over the years, I have come to disagree with Noam on just about every detail of the formalism (beyond the existence of phrase structure), and as well on many aspects of the overall architecture of the language faculty. I have even begun to wonder (horrors!) whether Zellig Harris’s notion of transformations might be closer to the truth than Noam’s. But I still consider myself to be working within his overall vision of what language is like and how one should investigate it. I still believe that children have come equipped with a brain specialized for learning language, and I find it important to find out what that specialization is. And I still find it imperative to explore the structure of language in rigorous formal terms, even if my technology is quite different from his (and becoming more so). And I’m still in awe of his incredible intellect, which created this crazy field we’re in. I wouldn’t be in the business if it weren’t for Noam.

So I wonder about that aforementioned quote. But no matter.

Quoting Xtrix

But figured I’d give at least a lightning sketch.

Mmm, so did Chomsky, before stopping right there. And well done on Googling I'm very proud of you.

Reply to StreetlightX

Thanks, old chap.

I guess I’ve failed to persuade you once again.

So what do you find more convincing about language evolution, beyond Chomsky?

Reply to Xtrix

Here:

https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/danield/files/2010/07/selection-paper.pdf

Or: https://edoc.bbaw.de/opus4-bbaw/files/244/20mD5eCLI1Ih2_195.pdf

Basically Chomsky has everything ass-backwards: in his efforts to make communication a mere auxiliary of language - rather than its raison d'etre - he metaphysicalizes it and places it outside of any natural evolutionary account. It's why you are reduced to platitudes like: 'it evolved because gene changes' and 'it happened by chance' (what's next? Water's wet?). That's the only level of specificity Chomsky's theory of language allows because beyond the bare minimum without which its theological essence would become obvious, Chomsky has to say these things otherwise his theory's anti-scientific status would become clear as day. Chomsky's account of language is basically an allergic reaction to behaviourialism which he responded to by hermetically sealing language off from the world and entombing language in asocial brain-vaults considered as nothing more than meat carriers for immutable and Platonic language 'modules' that appeared one day out of thin, mythical air. It's vulgar Platonism forcibly shoved into a linguistic costume.

Reply to Xtrix Agree. I always appreciate Manuel’s contributions.

Reply to Wayfarer

Thanks, appreciated. :cool:

Reply to Xtrix

I mean, it helps to read Russell, Locke, Hume, Cudworth in addition to all you mention, lectures, interviews and so on.

Not that he can't be understood without all the extra work, far from it, but as you read these people, you realize that what he cites and interprets, tends to be spot on. Which doesn't mean one can't disagree with him, of course you can.

It's just that there's a lot of misunderstanding about Newton, Descartes and Hume in academia, it's surprising when you read primary sources or detailed scholarship.

Quoting Manuel

One could call a percept a "quale", but Chomsky doesn't. A percept means a moment of experience, such as you reading this sentence as you currently are. Or looking at the window and seeing green grass, or hearing a car zoom by, etc.

I'm unclear why this is confusing, outside of the terminology itself. It's been overwhelmingly taken for granted up until the 20th century, when it suddenly became a problem to a small group of people.

percept is usually understood as the product of mind's interpretation of sensory stimuli, the awareness of an object or event, such as grass outside your window or a car zooming by. This is distinct from the stimulus or the raw sense data (if that's a thing). And it is again distinct from the "what-it-is-likeness" of experience, which is what Nagel, Searle, Chalmers, etc. put forward as the phenomenal experience, or qualia, the thing outside the reach of physical accounting (unless we wave our hands and invoke something like "panpsychism"). (If all this seems confusing, then I've made my point.) Chomsky doesn't engage with any of this. He mentions the "hard problem," but he doesn't actually talk about it. Whatever his "mysteries" are (he never clearly and consistently articulates what they are), they aren't that.

Quoting Manuel

I thought the whole argument was meant to show that experience isn't necessary for a human being to exist as they do. But I also do not see the force to this argument, nor understand the attention given to it.

Well, what the argument means to show is that phenomenal experience (which p-z's hypothetically lack) cannot be accounted for by materialism/physicalism as presently understood, and therefore materialism/physicalism is false/incomplete. (How it does that is what I don't quite understand.) Again, Chomsky doesn't engage with any of that. As far as he is concerned, materialism has been dead since at least Newton, but not for any reasons having to do with the "hard problem." For his definition of physicalism he picks that horn of Hempel's dilemma which anchors it to present-day physics, and he associates materialism specifically with pre-Newtonian natural philosophy, thus defining it into irrelevance.

Quoting SophistiCat

percept is usually understood as the product of mind's interpretation of sensory stimuli, the awareness of an object or event, such as grass outside your window or a car zooming by. This is distinct from the stimulus or the raw sense data (if that's a thing). And it is again distinct from the "what-it-is-likeness" of experience, which is what Nagel, Searle, Chalmers, etc. put forward as the phenomenal experience, or qualia, the thing outside the reach of physical accounting (unless we wave our hands and invoke something like "panpsychism"). (If all this seems confusing, then I've made my point.)

I think that those are perhaps too many distinctions, which makes the topic more difficult than it needs be. The first sentence you write makes sense to me, and is what I take Russell to be talking about.

"This is distinct from the stimulus or the raw sense data". Why isn't the sensory stimulus raw sense data?

The whole "what it's likeness" is a complication here. It's supposed to point out that "there is something it is like" for a person (you, me, anyone) to see the colour red, or read this sentence. I can see red and am writing and reading this sentence, is there "something it is like to do this"? Sure, I guess, I don't think it says much, but I don't doubt my experiences.

Yes, Chomsky says little about this, outside of mentioning this quote of Russell's or citing Strawson's essays and books, he doesn't see a big problem here.

Quoting SophistiCat

As far as he is concerned, materialism has been dead since at least Newton, but not for any reasons having to do with the "hard problem."

Because then it meant that it was an intuitive description of the world - and crucially excluded the mental.

Since that doesn't hold up any longer, then if we want to use the word "physical", we can adopt Strawson's use of the word and say, that the physical is everything that is, unless someone can say way something isn't physical. This includes experience, at the highest grade of certainty.

Or we can say that physicalism is what physics studies and that experience is an illusion or not real. This is incoherent to me, but, it's an option.

By then it becomes terminological, and not too substantive, I think.

To be clear, it's not that consciousness isn't a hard problem - it is - but so is gravity, electromagnetism, creativity, free will, and so on. There isn't the hard problem, but many.

Quoting SophistiCat

Well, what the argument means to show is that phenomenal experience (which p-z's hypothetically lack) cannot be accounted for by materialism/physicalism as presently understood, and therefore materialism/physicalism is false/incomplete. (How it does that is what I don't quite understand.)

That's correct. Not false, simply not all-encompassing.

Why don't they ask for a "physical explanation" of why music makes us feel good? Or a "physical explanation" of why we have dreams? And so on.

It's becomes a bit silly. Physics is the study of abstract properties of matter, and this phenomena are simple structures, nothing as complex as biology. It isn't reasonable to expect it to explain things way outside its purview.

Quoting StreetlightX

his efforts to make communication a mere auxiliary of language - rather than its raison d'etre

Quoting StreetlightX

basically an allergic reaction to behaviourialism

I was thinking he gets to the former from the latter via the competence/performance distinction...

Can I just ask, what’s going on here philosophically? You accuse Chomsky of promoting various sorts of pseudo-science, which suggests you see the role of philosophical analysis of linguistics as demarcation. Is that how you see what you’re doing here?

I’m just always confused by these discussions that pit one scientist against another. We’re amateurs at philosophy, and presume to pick winners and losers in various fields we’re even less qualified to judge than philosophy, not only that but presume to say who’s a real scientist and who’s a charlatan, even if he’s been teaching at MIT for a lifetime and the acknowledged leader of his field (though never without controversy).

Is linguistics so easy that we can swoop in and settle all the outstanding issues in the field of an afternoon? Is it slightly easier or slightly harder than the other topics we discuss on this forum, such as evolutionary biology or quantum physics?

This is all a far cry from that philosopher who felt his only advantage was that at least he didn’t think he knew what he didn’t.

Reply to Manuel

Indeed. Much like the Bible, in fact. Often revered but never read. Adam Smith also jumps to mind.

Quoting StreetlightX

in his efforts to make communication a mere auxiliary of language - rather than its raison d'etre - he metaphysicalizes it and places it outside of any natural evolutionary account.

You keep repeating that, but it's still incoherent. He's said repeatedly that language is a biological capacity, and one that evolved. That's not metaphysics or mysticism or theology.

What he is saying -- as you correctly point out -- is that language is not simply about communication. He defines (1) language as a biological, computational system -- a system for the expression of thought, and (2) that it might have evolved rapidly. Gives plenty of reasons for these claims. Could be completely wrong, but it's not theology.

Incidentally, when looking at the function of language by observing characteristic use, it's not at all obvious that its primary function -- or raison d'être -- is for communication. It's true that we talk to ourselves all day long, but how much of that gets communicated (whether through speech or sign)? And how much of that is simply phatic communication? Rather, it seems the "function" of language is to link interface conditions, where the computational system is optimal in linking the interface but non-optimal in terms of communication -- and there's a lot of evidence for this. But thanks for the references, I'll check them out.

@Manuel - forgive me for this tangent on language. I should probably start a new thread.

Reply to Xtrix

It's in the final part of this essay, but is only touched upon. You can continue here or start a new thread.

Both are fine with me.

I'm thinking a few of the chapters in New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind as well as the first two chapters in Power and Prospects are really good on this topic.

Or whatever essay you have in mind. It's all good.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2254605

Reply to Manuel

Appreciate it.

From that article, regarding metaphysics:

I would like to discuss an approach to the mind that considers language
and similar phenomena to be elements of the natural world, to be studied
by ordinary methods of empirical inquiry. I will be using the terms "mind"
and "mental" here with no metaphysical import. Thus I understand "men-
tal" to be on a par with "chemical", "optical", or "electrical". Certain phe
nomena, events, processes and states are informally called "chemical"
etc., but no metaphysical divide is suggested thereby. The terms are used
to select certain aspects of the world as a focus of inquiry.

This is why it's baffling that he can be accused of metaphysical chicanery. He's done more to de-mystify language than almost anyone else in fact.

Reply to Xtrix

:up:

I tried to attribute a metaphysics to him in my work. :groan:

That quote is practically a classic for me. The issue is that, his conclusions seem magical to many, who think innate ideas, physic continuity and other ideas, can't be explained by current science (maybe ever).

People who disagree with him tend to be externalists, which is contrary to what scientists actually do.

Quoting Manuel

:up:

I tried to attribute a metaphysics to him in my work.

In a sense we all have a metaphysics. But to describe generative grammar as metaphysical is just nutty.

Reply to Xtrix

Agreed.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

Can I just ask, what’s going on here philosophically? You accuse Chomsky of promoting various sorts of pseudo-science, which suggests you see the role of philosophical analysis of linguistics as demarcation. Is that how you see what you’re doing here?

It's not demarcation - it's simply because Chomsky literally is wrong about everything. Seriously. If Chomsky said something about language, the truth of the matter will be the diametrically opposite of what he said. Chomsky says language is an individual/cognitive capacity; it's not, it's a social one; Chomsky says language is geared for the expression of thought; it's not, it's geared towards communication; Chomsky says language is characterized by universals; it's not: it's characterized by sheer diversity and not a single universal outside of the universality of diversity. Chomsky's whole program is a theory in search of data; an a priori that tries to curve-fit language into its ludicrous, idealist, metaphysical program. I mean it: if you take what Chomsky says about language, and then do the exact reverse of anything he says, you will arrive at quite a good picture of how language actually functions in the real world.

There is no one who has set the study of linguistics backwards by a matter of decades more than Chomsky. If there is any advantage in studying him, it is to know what to avoid at all costs when it comes to the study of language.

Quoting Xtrix

He's said repeatedly that language is a biological capacity, and one that evolved. That's not metaphysics or mysticism or theology.

Of course he claims that. Otherwise he would be shown for the charlatan he is. But what he says and what he does are two very different things. The question is whether his theories about language do in fact lend themselves to being understood biologically, or evolutionarily, in any sensible capacity. They do not. Confusing Chomsky's lip-service to science with it actually being science is exactly how he gets away with all the bullshit he's peddled for years. Don't look at what he says about his theory - look at how the theory functions, what it entitles one to say. It does not entitle Chomsky to make any claims to science whatsoever.

Quoting Xtrix

It's true that we talk to ourselves all day long, but how much of that gets communicated (whether through speech or sign)? And how much of that is simply phatic communication?

This is a total non sequitur. It's like saying that because the function of ears are to hear, it cannot possibly be the case that eyes are also meant to perceive things. So there is pathic communication. What does this say about language? Literally nothing (incidentally: Chomsky's pet vocabulary is bunkum - what does this say about intelligibility? Literally nothing). In any case any the specificity of language is its symbolic function. Language introduces the negative into communication: one can communicate about what is not present at hand (I'm not referring to Heidegger); it allows one to say what cannot be shown, and represents a massive gain (along a certain dimension) of communicative capacity. There is, in other words, a functional specificity to language. It is not just any communication tool; it is very specific kind of communication tool.

Quoting StreetlightX

The question is whether his theories about language do in fact lend themselves to being understood biologically, or evolutionarily, in any sensible capacity.

Indeed. And since they do, your fabrications are just that.

Quoting StreetlightX

Don't look at what he says about his theory - look at how the theory functions, what it entitles one to say.

It "entitles" one to say a great deal, which is why Chomsky is so influential and his theories have been highly fruitful.

You're not a linguist, and in fact haven't shown you really understand Chomsky's work; nor have your childish insults really been substantiated in any way. So if it once again boils down to some strange vendetta you've developed, I'm not interested.

Quoting StreetlightX

They do not.

Ladies and gentlemen...science.

Quoting StreetlightX

It's true that we talk to ourselves all day long, but how much of that gets communicated (whether through speech or sign)? And how much of that is simply phatic communication?
— Xtrix

This is a total non sequitur. It's like saying that because the function of ears are to hear, it cannot possibly be the case that eyes are also meant to perceive things.

What? I genuinely don't understand what this sentence is supposed to mean.

I mentioned characteristic use. I'd say that the ears' characteristic use is hearing, and eyes seeing -- which could tell us something about their primary function.

Similarly, the characteristic use of language is internal -- 99% of it. We know that. You can, in fact, check this yourself. So if we want to talk about its "raison d'être", it's function -- it's hardly about communication.

So despite whatever you meant to say, your claim is more like "the eyes' raison d'être is to cry." I suppose we can make up a story that says the 1% of the time we're communicating, phatically or otherwise, is the actual function of language. But there's no evidence for it.

As I said before, there's evidence that suggests that the computational system is not optimal in communication -- it's optimal in linking interfaces. Plenty of work on this.

Quoting StreetlightX

Chomsky says language is an individual/cognitive capacity; it's not, it's a social one

This is meaningless. Language can be used to communicate (as can non-verbal behavior), and so is social. It can only be acquired in the presence of a language -- so that's certainly social. But it's still a cognitive capacity. It's genetically determined, which is why children can develop a language and non-human primates cannot, for example. This is not controversial.

Quoting StreetlightX

Chomsky says language is geared for the expression of thought; it's not, it's geared towards communication

There's little evidence to support this, as I've already mentioned. Externalization happens maybe 1% of the time. To argue this is what language is "geared towards" is just a fairytale.

Quoting StreetlightX

Chomsky says language is characterized by universals; it's not: it's characterized by sheer diversity and not a single universal outside of the universality of diversity

Chomsky does not say language is "characterized by universals" -- this too is completely meaningless. What you mean to refer to is universal grammar, which is simply the name for the theory of the genetic component of language. That language is a universal human property -- i.e., that it's found in every human culture -- is hardly controversial.

Quoting Xtrix

Similarly, the characteristic use of language is internal -- 99% of it. We know that. You can, in fact, check this yourself.

This is funny because it is so wrong and so commonly known a misconception that it is nothing other than a metaphysical prejudice - it's like opening the fridge door to check if the fridge light is on, only to find that lo and behold, it is every time! Not only do some people simply not have an internal dialog, any phenomenology of this 'dialog' will recognize it as a low-grade, scattered and fleeting use of 'language' that is more a matter of fragments and shards rather than language-use proper. It is certainly nowhere near what is needed to explain the genesis of grammar. Again, just as everything Chomsky says about language is wrong such the opposite is the case in reality, so too is it the case here: it's not that communication is an 'externalization' of language which first finds its home internally; it's that the 'internal' use of language is an internalization of language-use which developed as a communicative capacity between humans in the first place. Taking 'internal dialog' as the 'characteristic use of language' is about as sophisticated as considering the Sun revolving around the Earth because that's what you see everyday: a cute bit of so-called 'obvious' folk psychology, but completely wrong when even minimally investigated.

Quoting Xtrix

There's little evidence to support this, as I've already mentioned. Externalization happens maybe 1% of the time. To argue this is what language is "geared towards" is just a fairytale.

Yeah, except for all the mass of evidence for it, which, despite your out-of-thin-air claim to the contrary, there is. I've cited two papers, and you're welcome to read both Dor's and Jablonka's independent work on the topic, which shows quite clearly how syntactic constraints developed as normative rules to coordinate communication between speakers - i.e. an empirically grounded mechanism that actually explains why and how grammar takes on the particular forms it does, rather than theory-laden pre-postulates about 'universal grammars' pulled out of this air. I realize you literally can't name any linguists apart from Chomsky or Everettt, only one of whom you've ever read - slavishly - but your ignorance of the evidence does not, in fact, translate into the absence of it. But I suppose this is a particularly Chomskian move, considering the paper in the OP: to make one's utter ignorance into an other people's problem.

Quoting Xtrix

What you mean to refer to is universal grammar, which is simply the name for the theory of the genetic component of language.

Wait, you think UG simply refers to the fact that 'there is a genetic component to language'? My God. I didn't realize I was literally arguing with someone who has no idea what he is talking about. UG does not refer to the mere fact of there 'being a genetic component to language'. That would be trivial and dumb, and thank God even Chomsky is not so vulgar as to describe it as such. It is meant to explain how this genetic component (whatever it is, which Chomsky never, ever expounds on because he cannot), accounts for the various grammatical structures found in language. I didn't realize I had to explain this but clearly I'm assuming more competence on this subject than you minimally exhibit.

Quoting StreetlightX

Not only do some people simply not have an internal dialog,

What people? We’re talking to ourselves all day long. Just introspect for a while. We don’t usually notice we’re doing it — but that’s irrelevant. We don’t usually notice we’re breathing either.

Quoting StreetlightX

any phenomenology of this 'dialog' will recognize it as a low-grade, scattered and fleeting use of 'language' that is more a matter of fragments and shards rather than language-use proper.

It is indeed scattered. The mind thinks all kinds of things. Similarly, we constantly talk to ourselves.

Again, this is going on close to 100% of the time— that’s just a fact. If language “proper” means what gets communicated, then you’re essentially saying that 1% of the time that we’re actually communicating constitutes proper function. I realize that may be commonly thought — but it’s just a mistake.

Quoting StreetlightX

it's not that communication is an 'externalization' of language which first finds its home internally; it's that the 'internal' use of language is an internalization of language-use which developed as a communicative capacity between humans in the first place.

But again, this common story has almost no evidence in favor of it. In fact you’ll find that many of the mechanics of the language system are poorly designed for communication — a fact Chomsky points out repeatedly. You can see this in parsing programs, as an example. Computation efficiency is favored over ease of communication.

Also worth keeping in mind is that nearly every organism on earth, including the insects, have some form of communication. Human speech and sign are unlike anything seen in other species. No other species have language. Given the generic similarity of humans and non-human primates, one could reasonably assume— if the communication story is correct — that apes can learn how to sign if given the opportunity. This too has been tried and has failed.

So whatever is going on with human beings, our ability to think seems interconnected with language — and is unique in nature. It’s mostly an internal process that sometimes gets externalized. But to say language is simply communication is like saying communication is just writing — there’s little reason to do so.

Quoting StreetlightX

Taking 'internal dialog' as the 'characteristic use of language' is about as sophisticated as considering the Sun revolving around the Earth because that's what you see everyday: a cute bit of so-called 'obvious' folk psychology, but completely wrong when even minimally investigated.

Forget Internal dialogue and look at the amount of time spent speaking. Compare that to thought. We’re thinking and talking (internally) literally all the time. In fact for any meditators out there, this is one of the first things you notice — along with other mental phenomena.

So you have it backwards. Minimal investigation shows exactly this. Again— that it’s scattered and habitual and mostly unnoticed is irrelevant. It’s still a fact, regardless of the story we tell about language and thought: we simply spend the vast majority of our lives NOT speaking externally.

Quoting StreetlightX

shows quite clearly how syntactic constraints developed as normative rules to coordinate communication between speakers

This is almost laughable. By this premise, our communication today should lead to new developments in our language capacity. The genes will come later — once the communication and “normative rules” get internalized.

I’ll check it out to see if it’s indeed as ludicrous as you’re describing. I hope you’re misunderstanding that like you’ve misunderstood and fabricated nearly everything else so far.

Quoting StreetlightX

What you mean to refer to is universal grammar, which is simply the name for the theory of the genetic component of language.
— Xtrix

Wait, you think UG simply refers to the fact that 'there is a genetic component to language'? My God. I didn't realize I was literally arguing with someone who has no idea what he is talking about. UG does not refer to the mere fact of there 'being a genetic component to language'. That would be trivial and dumb, and thank God even Chomsky is not so vulgar as to describe it as such.

“Universal grammar is just the name for the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty.” — Noam Chomsky

:lol:

https://youtu.be/vbKO-9n5qmc

Almost verbatim. Didn’t have to look very far, either.

Yeah yeah— This only means Chomsky is as dumb and vulgar as me, etc. No chance that perhaps you’re misunderstanding — as you’ve demonstrated repeatedly.

If only you could teach him a thing or two about linguistics and show him how it’s really done.

Quoting StreetlightX

There is no one who has set the study of linguistics backwards by a matter of decades more than Chomsky.

Says someone who goes on about “arrogance.”

The father of modern linguistics? A charlatan and fool. Why? Because it’s not to my liking.

Quoting Xtrix

Yeah yeah— This only means Chomsky is as dumb and vulgar as me, etc.

Well, point to you, I concede!

Reply to Xtrix Jokes aside, I was right about the fact that you cannot read: the quote rightly refers to the fact that UG refers to "the genetic component of the language faculty", the genitive here referring not to language simpliciter but to Chomsky's technical term for the so-called invariant and computational part of language which he just so happens to identify with the genetic component of language tout court. One could see, however, how a vulgar reader could confuse the two, insofar as Chomsky himself would like to arrogate his idealist phantasm - really better named the Linguistic Soul to bring out its status as metaphysical hocus pocus - to the status of genetic fact. So I take my concession point back, and Chomsky can resume his rightful place as being mildly more intelligent than his internet stalwart.

Quoting Xtrix

What people? We’re talking to ourselves all day long. Just introspect for a while.

I don't think it's quite right or fair to elevate your mental illness to the status of general linguistic theory. Like I said, there are plenty of people for whom this internal dialog is minimal or even absent entirely. Again, the contingent pathologies of your idiosyncratic self-chatter isn't science, sorry to have to break it to you. No doubt this fact will not get in the way of you making your wrong theory unfalsifiable by both asking people to introspect before dismissing any inconvenient case where, having done just that, they apparently just 'don't notice' what you say is 'obvious to everyone'. But the sheer contradictions of your positions are yours alone to deal with, no matter how many slap-dash riders you use to patch them over.

Your imaginary head-friends do not a theory of language make. And in any case the idea that thinking is co-extensive with 'inner speech' is basically a child's understanding of thought. No one takes it seriously. To quote Dennett: "Our access to our own thinking, and especially to the causation and dynamics of its subpersonal parts, is really no better than our access to our digestive processes ... Consciousness is not just talking to yourself; it includes all the varieties of self-stimulation and reflection we have acquired and honed throughout our waking lives. These are not just things that happen in our brains; they are behaviors that we engage in". (From Bacteria...). And in any case, those who do in fact study 'inner speech', recognize as a matter of course that it is nothing other than internalized - albeit it transformed in the process - external or social speech - i.e. language.

Quoting Xtrix

Also worth keeping in mind is that nearly every organism on earth, including the insects, have some form of communication. Human speech and sign are unlike anything seen in other species. No other species have language. Given the generic similarity of humans and non-human primates, one could reasonably assume— if the communication story is correct — that apes can learn how to sign if given the opportunity. This too has been tried and has failed. So whatever is going on with human beings, our ability to think seems interconnected with language — and is unique in nature.

Which is why I have already addressed this by noting that language is not just any communicative tool, but one with specific design functions geared towards social coordination across distances in space and time. Language is unique in nature - but this is not a point against it's communicative grounding, but one for it. And it's true that Chomsky does seem to think language is badly designed for communication - but of course, that's precisely because language is not a general purpose communication tool - it fails badly at analog complexity and intensity but is exceptional at extensive, digital communication of types and kinds. But of course because of Chomsky's own failure of imagination, he imputes his own failure to grasp this point as a failure of language's communicative capacity tout court. But, like yours, Chomsky's failures are his alone.

Quoting Xtrix

The genes will come later — once the communication and “normative rules” get internalized.

Look, I realize that your understanding of linguistic theory and evolution has not itself evolved past the 1970s when Chomsky could in fact be taken seriously, but yes, that is precisely how the Baldwin effect works. Maybe you can read about it once you have expanded the range of linguists you are able to cite past exactly two.

Quoting StreetlightX

Jokes aside, I was right about the fact that you cannot read: the quote rightly refers to the fact that UG refers to "the genetic component of the language faculty", the genitive here referring not to language simpliciter but to Chomsky's technical term for the so-called invariant and computational part of language which he just so happens to identify with the genetic component of language tout court. One could see, however, how a vulgar reader could confuse the two, insofar as Chomsky himself would like to arrogate his idealist phantasm - really better named the Linguistic Soul to bring out its status as metaphysical hocus pocus - to the status of genetic fact. So I take my concession point back, and Chomsky can resume his rightful place as being mildly more intelligent than his internet stalwart.

You make it awfully difficult to admit, but yes — you’re right. I should have said the language faculty, or system. It would be like saying that there’s a theory about the genetic component of vision, when what should be said is the visual system — which is obviously related, but not the same thing. Fair enough.

That being said, I think what’s more relevant here is the “theory” part of that sentence. The statement was in response to the claim that Chomsky asserts language is “characterized by universals.” Other than assuming (1) all humans have language (which thus is a universal feature) and (2) that there’s a genetic component to this capacity, I have no idea what that means. Either you disagree with (1) and (2), which I assume you aren’t, or by “universals” you’re referring to universal features (like negation or noun/verb phrases). I assumed the latter — and if so, that’s misleading.

Quoting StreetlightX

What people? We’re talking to ourselves all day long. Just introspect for a while.
— Xtrix

I don't think it's quite right or fair to elevate your mental illness to the status of general linguistic theory. Like I said, there are plenty of people for whom this internal dialog is minimal or even absent entirely.

Mental illness? The article you cite itself says that the vast majority of people do indeed talk to themselves. Why you would characterize the vast majority as mental illness and not the exceptions is strange.

If you wanted to seriously pursue this line, then there’s interesting things to be said about the deaf, who obviously don’t think in verbal terms. (At least those born completely deaf.)

But all of this is missing the point. In all people, whether deaf or otherwise, social communication — through speech or sign — is hardly characteristic use. You can elevate that 1% or so of the time when we’re speaking or signing as characteristic of language, but that’s like arguing the primary function of a screwdriver is to open paint cans.

Quoting StreetlightX

Again, the contingent pathologies of your idiosyncratic self-chatter isn't science,

As if internal dialogue is somehow a peculiarity of mine. This is just nonsense.

Also, from your source:

One theory proposes that people who do not produce inner speech are unable to activate those networks without also activating their motor cortex.

Another theory is poor introspection, which refers to a person's ability to examine their own mental processes.

According to this theory, everyone produces inner speech, but some people are conscious of it whereas others are not.

Personally I think there’s something to this, but it’s not relevant — except to show how absurd it is to claim inner speech is somehow “idiosyncratic” or “mental illness.” I realize you value “winning” an argument above all else, but there’s no reason to resort to absurdities in that pursuit.

Quoting StreetlightX

And in any case the idea that thinking is co-extensive with 'inner speech' is basically a child's understanding of thought. No one takes it seriously.

Nor do I. Which is why I never once said it.

Quoting StreetlightX

And in any case, those who do in fact study 'inner speech', recognize as a matter of course that it is nothing other than internalized - albeit it transformed in the process - external or social speech - i.e. language.

Presumably you mean Vygotsky. But this is strange — because at no point did I say “talking to yourself” isn’t internalized speech. I also talk to myself in English and not Spanish, etc. I learned to speak English as a child, and so my internal speech will, naturally, be in English. This tells us exactly nothing about the capacity to acquire language, its evolution, or — relevant to what’s being discussed — characteristic use, which is almost completely internal.

To characterize language as external speech is therefore still pretty strange. Again, it’s asserting that language is primarily a means of communication. But since speech is so infrequent, and communicative efficiency is so often sacrificed for computational efficiency, it’s an odd claim. Language can be used for communication— of course. But so can gait. It’d be equally odd to claim, therefore, that walking is primarily a social/communicative phenomenon.

Quoting StreetlightX

Which is why I have already addressed this by noting that language is not just any communicative tool, but one with specific design functions geared towards social coordination across distances in space and time.

Same can be argued about clothing. That can communicate a lot too, and has very specific functions.

It’s true that language also has specific and unique communicative functions. But again, whether this lends support for characterizing it as primarily a means of communication is, at minimum, debatable.

Quoting StreetlightX

that is precisely how the Baldwin effect works.

The capacity to acquire language already exists in infants. Once learned, they internalize that language — whatever it may be. English, Swahili, whatever. While every other animal has means of communication, they don’t have language. If language is simply the internalized system of complex social communication, which evolved gradually, then each step along the way had to somehow effect genetics — otherwise non human primates could learn language (as once thought, and probably still thought). But that’s not the Baldwin effect — that’s Lamarckism.

When we think of words, we often see a string of letters. That too is internalized. Numbers are internalized. The alphabet and mathematical symbols are relatively recent phenomena. Should we assume the capacity for writing and mathematics followed the invention of writing and mathematics?

Reply to Manuel Really interesting stuff. I'm only a three pages in but it's very dense and I've already had to look up a bunch of stuff. I never gave it much thought when I used words like body and matter. I guess it's one of those things you take for granted. I guess I assumed it's whatever is made of atoms. But I can see how gravity sort of disrupted other ideas about it. I just thought we had a different definition now. but after looking it up on wikipedia, it's true that matter has several definitions. I thought chomsky was a linguistic, not a philosopher.....he seems to be making a big argument and I'm surprised this isn't debated more. Good idea for the thread!

Reply to John McMannis

Thanks.

Yes, I think this essay is very important, it points to historical aspects in philosophy which are barely known.

Because of this, a lot of debate arises that are based on incoherent ideas.

If you have any questions, need clarification or want more sources or videos or anything like that, I'll be happy to help.

Quoting Xtrix

Other than assuming (1) all humans have language (which thus is a universal feature) and (2) that there’s a genetic component to this capacity, I have no idea what that means.

Then I would suggest that you do not know what Chomsky means. UG is not just the mere idea that there is a genetic component to language. It specifies - gives specificity to - this genetic component, by suggesting that it is composed of - depending on when exactly one were to ask Chomsky, since he keeps dropping elements as they become more and more inconvenient and obviously implausible - sets of rules or principles by which 'external' language becomes articulated. He calls this "I-language" ('internal language'), as distinct from 'E-language' ('external language'). The technicalities of it are whatever, but the whole schema can be captured by recognizing that it is basically a renovated substance-accident model that's just Aristotle linguistically redux'd.

The ridiculousness of the schema comes clear in Chomsky's insistence, often made, that there really is only 'one' language, whereas the actually existing diversity of languages are basically epiphenomena. In Kantian terms, Chomsky posits a linguistic noumena that underlies the linguistic phenomena, with the former accounting - magically - for the latter. As for the role of culture and society, it does nothing more than bring out this or that feature of I-language already there from the start ('parameters'). This is of course, pure metaphysics, and of the worst kind too - the kind that people used to mock when they posited that it was by means of 'dormitive virtues' that opium put people to sleep. Chomsky's answer to how language comes about is basically the same: language works by means of 'linguistic virtues' - a re-doubling of the explanandum in the explanans as though anyone with half a brain ought to be persuaded by this stupidity.

Incidentally, the fact that Chomsky is basically rehashing 17th century metaphysics - if not ancient Greek metaphysics - in linguistic garb might explain why, having been mired in that useless bog for his entire career - he also considers the failure of that outdated nonsense to say something about our capacities to understand things. It's almost as if the essay in the OP is nothing other than a projection writ scholarly.

Quoting Xtrix

But all of this is missing the point. In all people, whether deaf or otherwise, social communication — through speech or sign — is hardly characteristic use.

'Characteristic use' is irrelevant, even if I were to grant that it is in fact, characteristic use - which is neither here nor there. I use my computer everyday, but this says nothing about how it came to be as it is. The same is true of language: the issue is to account for why grammar is as it is. Chomsky's answer is basically a theological one: grammar appeared one day out of the blue, by a means lost in time, fully formed, and society just activates this or that already-latent potential in contingent and accidental ways. But this of course is no better than the positing of a linguistic Soul - a bit of unobservable magic that Chomsky by fiat claims to be identical to biology although exactly how that biology relates to language is someone else's problem, and not Chomsky's. It has no explanatory power, not one iota of it, no more than 'God did it'.

To understand language as social at it's core however, it to actually account for the mechanism by which grammar takes the shape it does, rather than believing in magic: because grammatical constraints are normative categories that specify what ought to be relayed in communication, society actually has a role as a selective mechanism (as in 'natural selection') which shapes grammar from the outset. This places language in time, in history, rather than essentializing it as having formed whole-cloth and positing - though an act of the mind alone - some linguistic Soul residing deep in the genes.

Having learnt language through social use, and then putting that learning to use in 'inner speech' is perfectly consistent with the theorized developmental pathway of 'inner speech'. As the article outlines - it begins with public speech (inter-social communication: 'mama, dada'), then private speech (talking to oneself out-loud), then 'inner speech'. That we end up 'using' the latter so much says nothing about why or how it got there. Again, your perspective is the same as the peasant who sees the sun rising every day while claiming that really, it's the sun that revolves around the earth, because that's the 'characteristic' phenomenology. It sure is, but it's also utterly irrelevant.

Quoting Xtrix

e. If language is simply the internalized system of complex social communication, which evolved gradually, then each step along the way had to somehow effect genetics — otherwise non human primates could learn language (as once thought, and probably still thought). But that’s not the Baldwin effect — that’s Lamarckism.

Unsurprising, for the follower of a priest, this is the same kind of rhetoric that creationists use to question evolution in general: "what's the use of half an eye"?. But what we know is that cultural evolution can far outstrip genetic evolution, without any necessary one-to-one relationship. In fact it is precisely this mismatch in pace that explains the Baldwin effect - cultural evolution confers an advantage without any corresponding genetic change, which then serves as a selective mechanism for genetic variation at the level of biology. That's nothing Larmarky about this, and is in fact just how evolution works past first year biology.

I ended up opening a thread in linguistics sub reddit and after reading all 90+ comments, the gist that I grasp about the subject corresponds with one friend of mine who went to graduate school in linguistics:

“Almost everyone who comments on UG can’t even define it. It just means ‘innate capacity for language’ That’s all it means.”

I’m mostly fed up with the subject, linguistics needs a centralized institution that decides and standardizes what all the terms mean just like Chemistry does as one of the comments pointed out. Hope they get their shit together on the subject in future decades.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/sa0tan/why_is_there_no_clear_definition_of_universal/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Reply to Saphsin For a fun debate about universals, along with all the ways in which they are characterized, Evens and Levinson's essay, on the Myth of Language Universals - along with replies both for and against, is a very good read:

https://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/Evans-Levinson%20BBS%202009.pdf

Tomasello's reply - lovingly titled "Universal Grammar is Dead" - is wonderful:

"Universal grammar is, and has been for some time, a completely empty concept. Ask yourself: what exactly is in universal grammar? Oh, you don’t know – but you are sure that the experts (generative linguists) do. Wrong; they don’t. And not only that, they have no method for finding out. If there is a method, it would be looking carefully at all the world’s thousands of languages to discern universals. But that is what linguistic typologists have been doing for the past several decades, and, as Evans & Levinson (E&L) report, they find no universal grammar.

...For sure, all of the world’s languages have things in common, and E&L document a number of them. But these commonalities come not from any universal grammar, but rather from universal aspects of human cognition, social interaction, and information processing – most of which were in existence in humans before anything like modern languages arose. The evolution of human capacities for linguistic communication draw on what was already there cognitively and socially ahead of time, and this is what provides the many and varied “constraints” on human languages; that is, this is what constrains the way speech communities grammaticalize linguistic constructions historically (what E&L call “stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints”)."

UG is a farce; reading Chomsky to understand language is like reading Galen to understand biology: Chomsky's 'universals' are as scientific as Galen's 'humors' - and just as laughable.

Reply to StreetlightX I don’t have any stake on this so I can only talk second-hand about the subject from personal conversations and reading comments by linguists, but all UG was coined to mean is the initial state of the language learner, what is the biological capacity for language. Not language universals. That’s why some people refer to it as the Faculty of Language to be less misleading. There’s a long back and forth in the comment section in the link I provided.

Quoting Saphsin

but all UG was coined to mean is the initial state of the language learner, what is the biological capacity for language. Not language universals.

This is both true and not true. True in the sense that UG was meant to mean the "biological capacity for language", but not true in that what was/is understood as "biological capacity" is a particular sense of what this term means - as I mentioned in my post to Xtrix above. And of course, the idea that universal grammar does not concern itself with universals, well, I'll leave you to make the inference. The very last line of Tomasello is relevant here:

Why don’t we just call this universal grammar? The reason is because historically, universal grammar referred to specific linguistic content, not general cognitive principles, and so it would be a misuse of the term. It is not the idea of universals of language that is dead, but rather, it is the idea that there is a biological adaptation with specific linguistic content that is dead.

Reply to StreetlightX As there is no consensus yet in what particular sense, thus the distinction between UG & theories of UG as pointed out by different people in the thread. UG just denotes an object of study, not a theory of how language is determined by the biological capacity. This isn’t so much an argument from authority (someone is more knowledgeable than me so their conclusion is correct) as much about testimonies of how the term is used in their field. I don’t see why I shouldn’t believe what they’re saying.

Reply to Saphsin I'm sorry, you're right, I defer to your reddit thread, please ignore my citation of a linguist, or the series of essays I posted, my mistake.

Reply to StreetlightX Shrugs, I tend to believe they went to school for linguistics, as well people I know personally who definitely have went.

“A lot of people misunderstand what Universal Grammar (UG) is. UG is not about grammatical structures being in the brain at birth, or anything like that.

In its most simplified form, the argument for UG goes like this: all (non-mentally disabled) people learn languages. The ability to learn things depends on mental properties. Therefore, there must be some mental property all (non-mentally disabled) people have that allows them to learn languages. Let's call this mental property "Universal Grammar." That's it.

I don't think anyone really disagrees with the argument up to this point. I guess someone who doesn't think learning things is a mental process might, but that's kind of the fringe. Most people who disagree are usually just misunderstanding the argument. What people tend to actually disagree on is how much of UG is specific to humans, and how much of UG is specific to language and how much is domain general. Chomsky argues that UG is specific to humans and that there is at least one language specific feature in UG. Others argue that there aren't any language specific features in UG. (Fewer argue that it's not species specific, though there are some who do.)

A lot of people assume that being specific to language is an intrinsic part of UG, but it's not. Most people arguing against UG are actually arguing against UG being language specific: they are arguing that the mental property or properties that allow humans to learn languages are also applied in a variety of ways to tasks not involving language.”

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-universal-grammar-theory/answer/Michael-Wilson-11

Reply to Saphsin I find this to be such a dodge. Here, substitute anything that we can do for 'language' and you can see why:

"A lot of people misunderstand what Universal Insulting (UI) is. UI is not about insult structures being in the brain at birth, or anything like that. In its most simplified form, the argument for UI goes like this: all (non-mentally disabled) people learn insults. The ability to learn things depends on mental properties. Therefore, there must be some mental property all (non-mentally disabled) people have that allows them to learn insults. Let's call this mental property "Universal Insulting." That's it."

I mean this is a philosophy forum. Have people forgotten that the ancients used to refer to a 'faculty of the imagination', or 'a faculty of sensibility' - typically attributed to the Soul or the 'Rational Intellect'? I mean literally, this is metaphysical language. You can't get more metaphysical if you tried. It is not some kind of neutral characterization. And of course the reason we don't go searching for a 'faculty of sensibility' or 'faculty of insults' (anymore) is because it's not at all clear that these are insolatable, biological 'properties'. This stuff is theory-laden as can possibly be: in particular the language of 'faculties' precisely individualizes and anatomizes what is, properly understood, a social technology. Is there a 'faulty of the internet'? A 'faculty of the post office'? Like, why not a faculty for everything we can do? A faculty for laughter? A faculty for driving home drunk on a Saturday night? Pretty sure monkeys can't do the last thing either - must be a 'faculty'.

Reply to StreetlightX

Tigers are pre-wired to hunt. Humans, to speak. You're the one who's trying to make it into something spooky.

Quoting frank

Tigers are pre-wired to hunt.

Ah, must be because of their hunting faculty. The Universal Hunting (UH) module. If you question it, you're being spooky.

Why [anything]? Because of [anything] faculty.

Ah, science.

Even Molière found this shit embarrassing in the 1600s, and people are supposed to take it seriously today.

Reply to StreetlightX

Reply to StreetlightX I have no idea how you drew that interpretation from the quoted passage I linked, that talking about the capacity for language acquisition means it’s wholly biologically autonomous and determined or whatever.

I believe it is a mistake to understand "language" as one coherent whole, as if we could have a concept of language which would encompass all aspects of it. What is evident, is that there are two distinct aspects of language, the vocal and the written, which initially evolved to serve very different purposes. The vocal evolved with a social purpose of communication. And this type of language has been around for a very long time. There's no point to discussing the age of it, because evidence shows that even dinosaurs used sounds to communicate. The written evolved with the purpose of a memory aid, make a mark, a sign to remind yourself of something at a future time. This is a very personal purpose, and due to competitive motives, the memory aid, sign, might be designed with a view towards being difficult to understand by others. Therefore we have fundamentally incompatible elements of "language" if taken as a whole.

It is only when these two very distinct aspects of language became united in actual use, or used together, that there was any sort of "rapid" evolution of language. The rapid evolution can be described as due to the increased ability to pass the contents of one memory to another memory through written symbols, when marking symbols is adapted to a social context rather than a personal context. This implies a shift from making the symbols difficult to understand by others, for the purpose of hiding things from others, toward a universal intelligibility.

Further, it is wrong to characterize these two aspects as one internal, and the other external. As you can see, they both have internal aspects as well as external aspects. The difference between them is in the intent, or purpose, for which they evolved in the first place, one being communion oriented, the other selfish. The incompatibility between these two types of intent make "language" as a whole, unintelligible. When language is characterized as fundamentally communicative, the roots of the selfish aspect, the personal use of signs, is commonly excluded from "language" because it is not consistent with the communion oriented aspect. So those who take this view are prone to simple denial of this aspect. But this renders understanding of the selfish aspect of language, what a sign actually symbolizes, as completely unintelligible, such that any attempt at representing this, is filled with misunderstanding, such as Platonic realism.

Reply to Saphsin Yeah I also don't know how I changed one word and drew this totally erroneous conclusion.

You know what never mind. You quoted Quora. That, like Reddit, is definitely a source more authoritative than the papers I posted. I defer again to your Google searching.

Reply to StreetlightX Well I wish there were better methods for me to cite for it look more official, but academics use these websites to share information and their perspective. I hate twitter’s format for instance, but academics for some reason gather there to talk more than any other website.

It looks to me you have an axe to grind on the subject to be honest. Like Jablonka & Dor in that paper you cited, they disagree with his generative approach and its implication for evolution of language, but they explicitly say that Chomsky brought valuable progression on the questions needed to be asked about language acquisition (it’s an old paper from 20 years describing a different state of the debate, but never mind that for now). Your portrayal of the ideas being debated, it’s hyperbolic.

Quoting Saphsin

. Like Jablonka & Dor in that paper you cited, they disagree with his generative approach and its implication for evolution of language, but they explicitly say that Chomsky brought valuable progression on the questions needed to be asked about language acquisition (it’s an old paper from 20 years describing a different state of the debate, but never mind that for now).

Sure, and Ptolemy was a bona fide astronomical genius who just so happened to believe in geocentrism. Chomsky is effectively a linguistic geocentrist - or rather, a linguistic noocentrist in his case; like, sure, he made up alot of cool stuff, but he's just like, fundamentally, deeply wrong at the level of approach. To quote Tomasello from his other paper - found in your Reddit thread, incidentally:

Evidence has overtaken Chomsky’s theory, which has been inching toward a slow death for years. It is dying so slowly because, as physicist Max Planck once noted, older scholars tend to hang on to the old ways: “Science progresses one funeral at a time. ... [On the basis of that evidence,] all of this leads ineluctably to the view that the notion of universal grammar is plain wrong.

http://lefft.xyz/psycholingAU16/readings/ibbotson-tomasello-2016-scientific-american.pdf

Quoting Xtrix

That being said, I think what’s more relevant here is the “theory” part of that sentence. The statement was in response to the claim that Chomsky asserts language is “characterized by universals.” Other than assuming (1) all humans have language (which thus is a universal feature) and (2) that there’s a genetic component to this capacity, I have no idea what that means. Either you disagree with (1) and (2), which I assume you aren’t, or by “universals” you’re referring to universal features (like negation or noun/verb phrases). I assumed the latter — and if so, that’s misleading.

Quoting StreetlightX

UG is not just the mere idea that there is a genetic component to language. It specifies - gives specificity to - this genetic component, by suggesting that it is composed of - depending on when exactly one were to ask Chomsky, since he keeps dropping elements as they become more and more inconvenient and obviously implausible - sets of rules or principles by which 'external' language becomes articulated. He calls this "I-language" ('internal language'), as distinct from 'E-language' ('external language'). The technicalities of it are whatever, but the whole schema can be captured by recognizing that it is basically a renovated substance-accident model that's just Aristotle linguistically redux'd.

Recall what Chomsky said, and I was trying to emphasize: UG is the name for the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty.

Obviously a lot has to be clarified here. What is meant by "language"? What is meant by "faculty"? And what, exactly, is the theory about this genetic capacity?

You're right that i-language is a term made up by Chomsky. It is taken to consist, essentially, of merge -- the ability to take two objects and make a new one. (i.e., binary set formation.) Recursion is thought to be a property of the faculty of language -- just as binocular vision is a property of the human visual system.

"Faculty" refers to the system/capacity itself. Again, vision is a good example. We have a visual system, a visual faculty. There's no controversy about that -- any more than there is a circulatory system. Is it something you can cut out, like an actual organ? No. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I don't see how any of this is related to Aristotelianism.

Quoting StreetlightX

The ridiculousness of the schema comes clear in Chomsky's insistence, often made, that there really is only 'one' language, whereas the actually existing diversity of languages are basically epiphenomena. In Kantian terms, Chomsky posits a linguistic noumena that underlies the linguistic phenomena, with the former accounting - magically - for the latter.

This is just another mischaracterization, in my view. Of course there's a diversity of languages. There's a diversity of skin color as well. It's not that this fact is "epiphenomena," it's that it's trivial.

Likewise, no noumena are being proposed.

Quoting StreetlightX

As for the role of culture and society, it does nothing more than bring out this or that feature of I-language already there from the start ('parameters'). This is of course, pure metaphysics, and of the worst kind too [...]

I don't see how, really. Culture, society, and the environment in general bring out all kinds of features of human beings, not just language. If you restrict the human ability to be around a language, they will not acquire the ability to speak. If you blindfold a human from birth, they won't acquire vision. The environment is extremely important. But there is still, nevertheless, a biological/genetic component -- and that's true for everything in biology. So if it's true for everything, it's going to be true for language.

In any property, there is a genetic component and the data from the environment. There's no way around it. It's true that this isn't saying much, but that's the basic approach to studying any biological property -- whether insect navigation or aviation or the visual system. Why shouldn't it apply to the language capacity? What's metaphysical about it?

Quoting StreetlightX

I use my computer everyday, but this says nothing about how it came to be as it is. The same is true of language: the issue is to account for why grammar is as it is.

It will tell you little about how it evolved perhaps, but that wasn't the point. The point was about language's function. Your claim is that it's for social communication. "Function" is a fuzzy word, of course (what's the function of the bone? To store calcium, to keep the body from falling to the ground...) -- but still, when asking this question we tend to look at how the object in question is used. When we do so, it seems to be more about thought than about speech. Does this tell us how it evolved? No.

Quoting StreetlightX

Having learnt language through social use, and then putting that learning to use in 'inner speech' is perfectly consistent with the theorized developmental pathway of 'inner speech'.

We acquire the ability to see through our interaction with the environment. We can then shut our eyes and imagine all kinds of things, internally. This tells us nothing about the human visual system.

No one is debating whether there's an environmental/social component to language.

Quoting Saphsin

Chomsky argues that UG is specific to humans and that there is at least one language specific feature in UG. Others argue that there aren't any language specific features in UG. (Fewer argue that it's not species specific, though there are some who do.)

Exactly.

Quoting StreetlightX

I find this to be such a dodge. Here, substitute anything that we can do for 'language' and you can see why

Of course you can substitute almost anything for it. It's a truism. Which is why the arguments against it tend to be absurd -- they're simply misunderstanding it.

Again, in any system of growth and development -- the visual system, the immune system, the circulatory system, or the language system -- there is going to be external data (which have an effect on how it develops -- like in the visual system, where if you manipulate early visual stimulation you get totally different visual systems), some sort of genetic component, and natural law.

So for language, the data could be from English or Portuguese, the genetic component is what's being researched (UG), and natural law will be things like computational efficiency.

That's not enough to answer everything, but it's the framework for any answer -- and used in all the rest of the biological sciences.

To argue this is metaphysics, or theology, or creationism, etc., is simply hyperbole.

Quoting StreetlightX

This stuff is theory-laden as can possibly be: in particular the language of 'faculties' precisely individualizes and anatomizes what is, properly understood, a social technology. Is there a 'faulty of the internet'? A 'faculty of the post office'?

That's like asking if there's a genetic component to the Internet or the Post Office. Is there a genetic component to a hammer?

If you think this is the same as asking about the genetic component of language, or vision, or walking -- then yes, you've completely lost the plot.

EDIT: I posted a response to this thread but I got a heart palpitations attack this afternoon and cant continue any discussions. I just need to focus on relaxing hobbies atm.

Reply to Saphsin don't smoke pot, cigarettes or drink caffeine

Reply to Xtrix
Yep, but the basic idea is nothing strange. You're born with an innate capacity for walking, but the structures needed for walking won't form until you try to walk. And if you never try, you'll never walk. Innate capacity doesn't mean assured ability.

Doesn't mean Chomsky is right, just means his view is entirely possible.

Reply to Saphsin

Jeez! Those really suck.

Hope you're OK.

If you have anti-anxiety meds, that could help.

Relax and come back when you're feeling better. Good luck.

Quoting frank

You're born with an innate capacity for walking, but the structures needed for walking won't form until you try to walk.

Exactly -- not until you've grown in a normal environment. Not all people can walk, not all birds can fly, etc. -- there are exceptions, depending on environment or genetic disability. But that there's a capacity and a genetic component is just assumed in any other biological system. When it comes to language, or human cognition generally, there's an impulse to become irrational.

So yes, maybe language is primarily a system of communication, and evolved as such. Maybe not. But that there exists in the human brain a capacity for acquiring language is hardly metaphysics.

I think a question that should be asked is, is language something that can be understood in principle solely through the lens of biological evolution? I notice one of the criticisms of universal grammar is that 'it is in conflict with biology: it cannot have evolved by standardly accepted neo-Darwinian evolutionary principles.' Again, that criticism is grounded in the empiricist bias of science - that explanations have to be grounded on observable, biological grounds, or else they're suspiciously like the:

Quoting StreetlightX

'faculty of the imagination', or 'a faculty of sensibility' - typically attributed to the Soul or the 'Rational Intellect'

and are suspicious on those grounds alone. There's a 'deep structure' right there.

Note also the problem of recursion: that language and rational abstraction are themselves the basis of whatever explanation naturalism wants to articulate. So, how to explain the very faculty which enables naturalistic explanations? To put it another way, what naturalistic explanation might there be for the assumptions that naturalism starts with? Let's not forget that naturalism begins with excluding certain categories of ideas from consideration. So, maybe universal grammar is too close to scholastic realism for comfort, being too close to the 'innate ideas' of platonism which were rejected at the outset by naturalist dogma.

What if, with the advent of language, speech and abstract thought, h. sapiens has begun to transcend the biological? That is, to enter a domain which is not reducible to the kinds of factors that evolutionary biology comprehends? That's what I think is behind a lot of this pushback.

Quoting Xtrix

But that there exists in the human brain a capacity for acquiring language is hardly metaphysics.

:up:

Quoting Xtrix

But that there exists in the human brain a capacity for acquiring language is hardly metaphysics.

'Interpretations of physics' are metaphysics. Metaphysics is a lot more than what is in textbooks about metaphysics.

Quoting Xtrix

But that there exists in the human brain a capacity for acquiring language is hardly metaphysics.

Isn't the question whether that capacity is specialized to language?

Reply to Srap Tasmaner

There's neurophysiological evidence for this:

"Consider speech processing. Babies are immensely attracted to language. They probably begin to learn it inside the womb, because even newborns can distinguish sentences in their mother tongue from those in a foreign language. Language acquisition happens so fast that a long line of
prestigious scientists, from Darwin to Chomsky and Pinker, has postulated a special organ, a “language acquisition device” specialized for language learning and unique to the human brain. My wife, Ghislaine Dehaene Lambertz, and I tested this idea directly, by using fMRI to look inside babies’ brains while they listened to their maternal language. Swaddled onto a comfortable mattress, their ears protected from the machine’s noise by a massive headset, two-month-old infants quietly listened to infant-directed speech while we took snapshots of their brain activity every three seconds.

To our amazement, the activation was huge and definitely not restricted to the primary auditory area. On the contrary, an entire network of cortical regions lit up (figure 34). The activity nicely traced the contours of the classical language areas, at exactly the same place as in the adult’s brain. Speech inputs were already routed to the left hemisphere’s temporal and frontal language areas, while equally complex stimuli such as Mozart music were channeled to other regions of the right hemisphere. Even Broca’s area, in the left inferior prefrontal cortex, was already stirred up by language. This region was mature enough to activate in two-month-old babies. It was later found to be one of the earliest-maturing and best-connected regions of the baby’s prefrontal cortex."

Consciousness and the Brain - Stanislas Dehaene

pp.253

More info can be found in this very interesting book, pp.253-257

http://www.softouch.on.ca/kb/data/Consciousness%20and%20the%20Brain.pdf

Reply to Manuel

It is curious not that the functions of a human brain are ‘localized’ to some degree, but that they are localized in the same places, which suggests existing and inherited specialization waiting to be activated rather than very general learning capacities. But maybe not, depending on what we take ‘activation’ to mean. After all, linguistic ability being localized is not quite the same thing as there being a ‘language acquisition module’ of some kind — which of the linguistic modules is the one responsible for acquisition, and what happens to it after the lion’s share of your language learning has been done?

Anyway, leaving all that to one side, what does this evident brain specialization, however the details work out, tell us about the nature of language?

Reply to Srap Tasmaner

Very little, I think. Maybe sometime in the future some great technology will arise that may help us make sense of it, but I'm skeptical.

My take on this topic - which tends to be controversial - is that aside from hints and suggestions, looking at the brain tells us very little about higher cognitive faculties. It's not nothing, obviously, but little in terms of what we would like to know, such as the question you are asking.

What's curious here, about this activation pattern, is that (I don't think it's in this book, but in another essay whose name I've forgotten) similar sounding noise doesn't activate it. For instance, if I say:

Under space roaring goes doesn't anywhere nothing.

Here each individual word makes sense, but the sentence is gibberish.

On the other hand, if I quote Chomsky's famous:

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

The sentence makes syntactic sense but doesn't mean anything. I'm blanking on the study, but if I find it, I'll post it here.

When they do tests with subjects, they show them ordinary languages that they don't know. If it's a human language, the brain activates. But if they produce sentences that breaks these rules, the subjects don't register it as a language.

This of course leads to even deeper questions, such as, why don't we register every sound as something significant and meaningful and say, don't confuse others sounds with language? There must be an innate property we have, that accounts for this.

So other than a general comment about, human language being an extremely sophisticated, unique to humans' phenomena, I can't really answer the question.

Reply to Manuel great book, thanks for it. :up:

Reply to Wayfarer

Yeah, the book and science are very good.

His philosophy isn't, it's the type of thinking you and I very much disagree with.

But don't let that get in the way of the rest of it, it's pretty interesting. :cool:

Quoting Manuel

similar sounding noise doesn't activate it

I’m almost certain there’s something similar with dogs. Did you hear about that little study? Somebody put a few dozen dogs into an MRI and had people speak to them. The result was that the dogs were responding not just to tone of voice, as one might speculate, but to specific words, because if you said some nonsense or some inappropriate words with the same tone and prosody as you usually said, “Good dog, Ginger!” the brain did not light up the same way. Dogs are able to learn to recognize specific words, as I suppose any serious dog trainer might tell you.

On the point of learnability: there are certainly things we want to say based just on the fact that language can be learned — that we must acquire a system for producing and consuming language, on demand, not just a bunch of language, not just, say, the meanings of a large number of sentences. Just as interesting, it must be acquirable in stages and usable, if limited, at each step of acquisition. That’s a whole different sort of structure, the sequencing of acquisition.

I know that for concepts there’s work suggesting children generally start roughly in the middle on a spectrum of abstraction: you learn “dog” before “mammal” or “cocker spaniel”. I don’t know how the language story goes, but there are things about language use you clearly have to have some language to learn. (This is nearby the old criticism of older speculation about language acquisition, that people will tend to imagine it as learning another language, having already mastered one, and all the habits of thought that go with it, rather than genuinely imagining what it’s like to start from nothing.)

It’s not perfectly clear what philosophical hay can be made of any of this, especially since mistaken views about mind or language that might be corrected by the science were not exactly philosophy anyway, but armchair science.

I suppose what I’m wondering is whether learning more about how language is implemented will tell us more about what exactly it is — and that’s not perfectly clear, though it seems like it should. As noted above, we already know a little something of the constraints on what language can be just from knowing that it must be something that can be physically instantiated in a human being, and be acquirable. I suppose, in a sense, the controversy around Chomsky’s views is precisely about what could not conceivably be acquired and must simply be inherited.



(There is exactly one programming language I know of that took this lesson to heart — Raku, nee Perl 6 — because its designer, Larry Wall, did linguistics as an undergrad: you’re expected to speak “baby Raku” at the beginning, and be successful at that, and only gradually add more sophisticated constructions as you learn them.)

Reply to Srap Tasmaner

I'll get back to you, have to go.

:victory:

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

But that there exists in the human brain a capacity for acquiring language is hardly metaphysics.
— Xtrix

Isn't the question whether that capacity is specialized to language?

That the capacity to acquire language is specialized to language? I don't quite understand the question, I guess. Are you referring to things like mathematics and music (i.e., other human properties that it may be more specialized towards?)

Quoting Xtrix

UG is the name for the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty.

There is no, and cannot in principle be, a ‘genetic component of the language faculty’. That's the point. Quite literally, there is nothing biological that corresponds to anything like ‘a language faculty’, nor could there be, not even in principle. This may sound wild to your ears, but it is no wilder than saying that ‘there is no genetic component of the faculty of driving drunk on a Sunday’: there are certainly biological prerequisites without which one cannot drive drunk on a Sunday, but the level of specificity packed into the idea of a ‘drive-drunk-on-a-Sunday-faculty’ is as arbitrary and only slightly more stupid than the idea of a language faculty.

Tomasello said it best: “children are not born with a universal, dedicated tool for learning grammar. Instead they inherit the mental equivalent of a Swiss Army knife: a set of general-purpose tools—such as categorisation, the reading of communicative intentions, and analogy making, with which children build grammatical categories and rules from the language they hear around them.” That we can learn language, is, at it were, a bonus, what in some biological vocabulary they call a ‘kludge’. Language-ing is, as it so happens, just one of the things we can do - like walking or shitting - given the kind of beings we have evolved as. Of course this doesn’t preclude the fact that, having been the result of a kludge which has contingently conferred evolutionary advantage, evolution selects for adaptations that refine said kludge. Hence why no one looks for a walking or shitting faculty - and why anyone who does ought to be laughed out the room, as one should laugh Chomsky's writings on language out of existence.

This is why the faux-innocent counter-objection that UG is merely the search for the biological pre-reqs of language is anything but innocent: it already builds in a one-to-one mapping from biological capacity to language. But such one-to-one mapping is both an illusion and a metaphysical - that is, entirely non-empirical, in fact anti-empirical - assumption. Rather, the mapping is many-to-many: there are range of biological capacities, many developed for things far removed from language, that, when put to use for a range of linguistic abilities (not ‘language’), happen to allow for language. Incidentally this is far more plausible given what we understand of evolution than Chomsky’s just-so magic theory of spooky creationism.

Again, the idea is that Chomskites like to push is that while the ‘content’ of UG is up for grabs - so up for grabs that speculation over that content is the effectively the same as scholastic arguments over the properties of God, just like the theology it is, with no agreement and constant, un-empirical speculation - it is nonetheless the case that [I]something[/I] will correspond to it. The problem for them - and you - is the details. But point is that there is not and cannot be, even in principle, anything that could correspond to it. It’s not the details that are up for grabs. It’s the entire research project, which is trash.

Quoting Xtrix

This is just another mischaracterization, in my view.

Your view, as usual, is wrong. From Chomsky’s [I]Language and Nature[/I]: “A rational Martian scientist would probably find the variation rather superficial, concluding that there is one human language with minor variants”. This ‘one human language’, is of course, Chomsky’s noumenal language: its one no one has ever seen, said to be the Linguistic Soul that animates the actual diversity of real languages, which are just so many accidents that happen to be birthed from the Linguistic Substance buried at the core of humans. That anyone could read Chomsky and not see in him the shitty speculations of an armchair metaphysician is beyond me.

Ahh, Tomasello is such a king:

I think it is important that the oddness of the UG hypothesis about language acquisition be emphasized; it has basically no parallels in hypotheses about how children acquire competence in other cognitive domains. For example, such skills as music and mathematics are, like language, unique to humans and universal among human groups, with some variations. But no one has to date proposed anything like Universal Music or Universal Mathematics, and no one has as yet proposed any parameters of these abilities to explain cross-cultural diversity (e.g., +/- variables, which some cultures use, as in algebra, and some do not — or certain tonal patterns in music). It is not that psychologists think that these skills have no important biological bases — they assuredly do — it is just that proposing an innate UM does not seem to be a testable hypothesis, it has no interesting empirical consequences beyond those generated by positing biological bases in general, and so overall it does not help us in any way to get closer to the phylogenetic and ontogenetic origins of these interesting cognitive skills

https://www.eva.mpg.de/documents/Benjamins/Tomasello_Evidence_StudLang_2004_1555709.pdf

This whole for page paper is worth reading. It shows nicely just how utterly fucking rubbish UG is.

Reply to Xtrix

Right. The question was whether more general learning mechanisms could account for learning language as well. More or less as old-timey empiricists might have imagined.

But it looks like a bad question to me now. We already know (as @Manuel reminded me) that linguistic functionality is localized in the brain, predictably so in normal, healthy brains, so it seems to be more a matter of activation, rather than learning or acquiring. — At least for certain aspects of linguistic capability.

Do we know something similar about mathematics? It would make sense. Music I would guess is more complicated. (I remember hearing many years ago that when listening to music, it’s the left brain for musicians and the right for non-musicians that lights up, or some such thing.)

I’m honestly not that interested in the brain science. I am interested in what philosophical hay we expect to make of all this. Thoughts? Why should current findings in neurolinguistics matter to us?

But no one has to date proposed anything like Universal Music or Universal Mathematics

Isn't mathematics universal already?

Reply to Wayfarer As a biological faculty?

Quoting StreetlightX

UG is the name for the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty.
— Xtrix

There is no, and cannot in principle be, a ‘genetic component of the language faculty’. That's the point.

Try this argument with the visual system or the nervous system. Also complex, and also involves genetics.

True, language could be magic. But that gets us nowhere, so I'm not interested.

Quoting StreetlightX

children are not born with a universal, dedicated tool for learning grammar.

That's not UG.

Children are born with a capacity to acquire language. Primates are not. This is why children can learn a language and non-human primates cannot.

Whatever is meant by "grammar" here is not the claim being made. Unless one takes grammar to mean "merge," which is an actual claim being made.

Quoting StreetlightX

It’s the entire research project, which is trash.

So the biological sciences are likewise "trash." No need to study the genetics of the visual system, or the navigational systems of insects, etc. That's "metaphysics."

It's clear you just don't know what you're talking about. You're welcome to create some straw man and hurl accusations about -- but it's irrelevant.

Quoting StreetlightX

“A rational Martian scientist would probably find the variation rather superficial, concluding that there is one human language with minor variants”. This ‘one human language’, is of course, Chomsky’s noumenal language

So the fact that a human baby can learn any language on earth is irrelevant, apparently.

The capacity for language is a universal human property, regardless of whether it's English or Swahili -- which is trivial. A Martian would indeed look down and conclude the same thing about skin -- all humans have it, despite different colors.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

I’m honestly not that interested in the brain science. I am interested in what philosophical hay we expect to make of all this. Thoughts? Why should current findings in neurolinguistics matter to us?

Because it's the best we can do to study thought. Language isn't the same as thought, of course, but it's related.

Quoting Wayfarer

But no one has to date proposed anything like Universal Music or Universal Mathematics

Isn't mathematics universal already?

Indeed.

Tomasello wants to make a name for himself by going after Chomsky, but is as convincing as Everett -- who's a complete fraud.

The reality is that there has been much written about both mathematics and music -- including ideas about how they may be piggybacking off of language.

Question: Why do objects fall to the ground and the moon revolve around the earth?

Answer (Newton): Objects with mass exert a force (called gravity) on other objects with mass.

Question: Why do objects with mass behave this way?

Answer (Einstein): Objects with mass bend space (the force of gravity is an illusion).

Question: Why do objects with mass bend space?

Answer: ? (remains unexplained)

Explanations, the above count as such, lead to an infinite regress (of explanations explaining explanations). In other words, there's always room in science for mysterianism and mysterianism itself, as an alternative explanatory scheme, is susceptible to this infinite regress - mysterianism within mysterianism within mysterianism...

The observation about social context is actually uncontroversial with regard to communication — you can’t study communication without social context, that’s virtual tautology. So, of course, the study of communication takes it into account. But it’s also uncontroversial that the study of the mechanisms that we put to use in action, whatever it is, that study typically ignores social context and quite rightly so. For example, for those of you who know this work, the classic work on neurophysiology of vision, say, Hubel and Wiesel’s work, for which they got the Nobel Prize.

…

Or in fact virtually all of the fundamental work that aims to determine the properties of the modules of cognition at whatever level it’s conducted whether it’s neurophysiological, behavioural, perceptual, whatever, – it ignores social context totally, just following the normal methods of the sciences. However, we’re instructed that the study of mechanisms used, say, in the examples I mentioned, these ECP examples, or the study of, for example, vowel harmony in Turkish, or of the relative scope of operators, or, in fact, everything else about language has to depart from the scientific norm. That’s a principle. It cannot follow the methods of the sciences.

Well, this kind of critique, which is quite widespread, is, in fact, accompanied by a novel concept of science that has emerged in the computational cognitive sciences and related areas of linguistics. With this new notion of science, which is all over the literature, an account of some phenomena is taken to be successful to the extent that it approximates unanalysed data.

…

The major cognitive science journals, and general journals like Science, regularly publish articles triumphantly listing dramatic failures which are called successes because they accord with this new concept, which is unique in the history of the sciences and very radically restricted, in fact, almost specifically to language. So, nobody would suggest it for physics or bee communication or almost anything else, because it’s so obviously absurd that people would just laugh. In fact, it’s not even suggested for systems as close to a language as arithmetical capacity. So, you don’t study arithmetical capacity by constructing models based on a statistical analysis of masses of observations of what happens when, say, people try to multiply numbers in their heads without external memory. At least, I hope nobody does that.

Enfield, in the same article, he also puts forth a far-reaching thesis which is quite standard in the cognitive sciences and a very clear expression of the non-existence hypothesis, I’ll quote him. He says: “Language is entirely grounded in a constellation of cognitive capacities that each, taken separately, has other functions as well.” Notice, that’s kind of an updating of the nineteen-fifties position that I quoted. Well, that means language exists only in the sense that there exists such a thing as today’s weather, which is also a constellation of many factors that operate independently.

…

There’s another influential version of the idea that language doesn’t exist. It’s sort of highly dominant in language acquisition studies and the leading figure is Michael Tomasello. So, in a recent handbook of child development he explains that there aren’t any linguistic rules and there’s nothing to say about descriptive regularities, say, like those ECP examples. Rather, there’s nothing at all except a structured inventory of meaningful linguistic constructions, all of them meaningful linguistic symbols that are used in communication. That’s his topic, there being no such thing as language. The inventory is structured only in the sense that its elements — words, idioms, sentences like the one I’m now speaking — they’re all acquired by processes of pattern finding, schematization and abstraction that are common to all primates. A few other processes, all left quite obscure. So, in other words, these ECP examples that I mentioned, according to this story, are learned just the way a child learns ‘horse’, or an idiom like ‘how do you do’ or, say, ‘kick the bucket’ meaning ‘die’, and so on, or this sentence, they’re all learned exactly the same way. And the child somehow learns that the ECP violation is not usable for communication, even though the thought is fine, although the other expression somehow is. And presumably, the expressions could have virtually any other properties in the next language you look at. In fact, the inventory, as in the 1950’s versions is essentially an arbitrary collection of unanalysed linguistic symbols and it’s also finite, just like Quine’s pattern, apart from some hand-waving. In fact, I can think of no rational interpretation for any of this, but it’s overwhelmingly dominant in the fields, you might think about it.

Enfield also presents a closely related thesis, that’s also very widely held, I’ll quote it: “There are well-developed gradualist evolutionary arguments to support the conclusion that there’s no such thing as language, except as an arbitrary complex of independent cognitive processes.” Again, no relevant sources cited, and none exist.

https://chomsky.info/20110408/

Quoting Xtrix

Try this argument with the visual system or the nervous system.

Except language is not a biological capacity. I don't know how many times I have to say this. It is not a biological capacity like writing letters is not a biological capacity. This doesn't make letter writing any more magic than language. Again, it's this assumption - metaphysical and unempirical - that needs to be exploded. Your incredulity is nothing but a function of the fact that you're wedded to a completely mistaken conception of language which has so stunted your imagination that moving beyond the terms posed by UG is impossible for you.

Quoting Xtrix

A Martian would indeed look down and conclude the same thing about skin -- all humans have it, despite different colors.

It's cute how you went from "that's a mischaracterization" to white knighting for your priest once it was pointed out that he said the very thing you said he did not. Like arguing with a Trump supporter. In any case, grammar is somewhat more complex than skin color, and the analogy is a total non-sequitur.

Quoting Xtrix

Tomasello wants to make a name for himself by going after Chomsky, but is as convincing as Everett -- who's a complete fraud.

Lmao, Tomasello is one of the most prolific and respected cognitive scientists out there. He doesn't need to make a name for himself. See, he is an actual scientist, unlike Chomsky, who made shit up while sitting in his basement. It's funny that anyone who disagrees with Chomsky is suddenly a fraud though, even as, uneducated as you are, you've never heard of them in your life - says more about your slavish adherence to doctrine rather than anything else.

Reply to Xtrix Yes, if one makes the utterly wrong assumption that language is a biological capacity, then it follows that one can bracket social and communicative contexts. But it is just that assumption that is bunkum, and pointing to other fields of study which are entirely disanalgous to language is nothing more than an excercise in question begging. Which, of course, is about the best way to characterize the program of UG.

Quoting Xtrix

Tomasello wants to make a name for himself by going after Chomsky, but is as convincing as Everett -- who's a complete fraud.

I don’t have a pony in this race, but Tomasello looks like a guy worth learning about.

Quoting Xtrix

The reality is that there has been much written about both mathematics and music -- including ideas about how they may be piggybacking off of language.

It did occur to me that there may be another option: perhaps what Chomsky has hypothesized as necessary for getting language going is the same thing that’s necessary for getting math or music going. He may even have said as much, I don’t know. Montague used to say that linguistics is a branch of mathematics (though he also thought Chomsky was full of shit).

Quoting Xtrix

Because it's the best we can do to study thought. Language isn't the same as thought, of course, but it's related.

Hmmm. This is a mess, but I want to say that thought is a psychological phenomenon, but something else too. Maybe it’s only the having of a thought that is a psychological phenomenon. There are related problems with language as, on the one hand, a means of either expression or communication, but on the other hand as something symbolic. — There is at the very least Frege’s little argument against psychologism and for the ‘third realm’, that it makes no sense to speak of “my Pythagorean theorem” and “your Pythagorean theorem” but only of “the Pythagorean theorem”. Frege, Platonist that he was, certainly saw something, shall we say, objective in thought and language, something beyond what’s in an individual skull. It may be possible to locate that sense of objectivity in very many skulls and their history, but David Lewis tried to do exactly that in Convention and couldn’t quite pull it off.

Reply to StreetlightX

Can you explain to me like I’m five why it’s important for philosophy that Tomasello is right and Chomsky is wrong? What’s riding on this for philosophy?

Quoting StreetlightX

Try this argument with the visual system or the nervous system.
— Xtrix

Except langauge is not a biological capacity.

Of course it is. The capacity is there from the beginning, just as walking or vision. Yes, the environment has a crucial role to play.

There is no reason to doubt, and every reason to assume, that the brain, cells, neurons, etc., are involved with the development of language, like any aspect of growth and development. Unless it's magic.

Quoting StreetlightX

It is not a biological capacity like writing letters is not a biological capacity.

The ability to write is also not magical. It has a neurological and, hence, biological component as well, yes. Why? Because writing is something that is learned -- like walking or riding a bike. That doesn't mean there's a specific organ in the body that accounts for it. It means the capacity to walk, to write, to speak, to see, to play music, etc., is there -- otherwise it wouldn't be acquired. Hence why we don't see apes speak or play music, or even "get drunk on a Sunday night," for that matter. These are not possibilities for them, because the capacity (which is genetic, despite your claims of magic) is not there.

Quoting StreetlightX

It's cute how you went from "that's a mischaracterization" to white knighting from your priest once it was pointed out that he said the very thing you said he did not.

It is a complete mischaracterization, as I said all along. Language is a universal human property. What a Martian would conclude, hypothetically, is hardly what Chomsky is claiming. It would be rational to conclude this, but it's clearly wrong -- there are many languages. There are also many skin colors. But keep trying.

Quoting StreetlightX

Lmao, Tomasello is one of the most prolific and respected cognitive scientists out there.

Like Chomsky, in fact.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

I don’t have a pony in this race, but Tomasello looks like a guy worth learning about.

Yes, but his claims about Chomsky are a joke. His article in Scientific American, years ago, was laughable. Incidentally, I didn't claim he was a fraud, I was referring to Everett. It's not that Tomasello isn't a scientist, it's that he completely misunderstands Chomsky. This has in fact been pointed out several times in print.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

He may even have said as much, I don’t know.

He points out that if you restrict the lexicon to 1, with merge you can get arithmetic. But that's a different discussion.

Reply to Srap Tasmaner In a word, essentialism vs. materialism. Or idealism vs. science. I've tried previously to characterize this in terms from the history of philosophy: Chomsky's is a substance-accident conception of language. Language appeared fully-formed, out of the blue one day, as a mysterious substance - the content of which no one can agree on, which alone should damn it to irrelevance - which is supposed to explain the diversity of actually existing language. It's the substance which underlies the accidents. It's like a germ-plasm theory of language. This substance also happens to be totally immutable: all of history, all of the dynamics of society, all of human interaction, merely activate (or not) the latent potentialities of this substance, which is otherwise unaffected by it. It stands outside of space and time (other than having appeared one day like the monolith in A Space Odyssey), and, like a Platonic Form, is meant to explain the grammatical features of language. Just like a Platonic Form however, it is also entirely mythical. A pure posit, a theory in search of evidence, which cannot be falsified. It precludes all novelty, and cannot be squared with evolution (the only thing Chomsky has to say about it is that it happened really fast, and, because of that, natural selection cannot bear upon it). It is sheer idealism, and nothing other.

Reply to StreetlightX Whereas the materialist explanation is that....

Quoting StreetlightX

In a word, essentialism vs. materialism.

Okay, but you’re answering a different question.

As I understand you, you’re saying Chomsky’s — I don’t know — “underlying” philosophy or even metaphysics is suspect, and therefore to oppose Chomsky is to oppose him as a philosopher who belongs to the opposing school of philosophy. No more, no less.

But you don’t see two scientists with different ideas here at all. And therefore there is nothing for philosophy riding on what some might see as an intramural conflict between scientists. There are genuine scientific disputes — I’m only assuming you agree — because evidence is incomplete and theories are imperfect, but this isn’t one of those at all.

You chose your philosophy (or even metaphysics) first, and then offer your support to the professor who is more closely aligned with your philosophy, and you oppose the professor who seems more aligned with an opposing philosophical camp. Is that right?

Quoting Xtrix

There is no reason to doubt, and every reason to assume, that the brain, cells, neurons, etc., are involved with the development of language, like any aspect of growth and development.

Except that Chomskites keep wanting to make the move from this triviality ('biology is involved' - yeah no shit Sherlock), to the non-trivial claim that it is this biological 'involvement' (nice and vague) that actually explains the specificities of actually existing grammar. But actually existing grammar is communicatively shaped; what is contingent, in fact, is the biology itself. Hence why Chomsky is a linguistic geocentrist. Insofar as language is a literal technology, trying to understand it as a biological capacity (rather than saying that we have a capacity to employ said technology, that just so happens to be biological, because what else could it be?) is to approach it from the entirely wrong way. It's not just that 'the environment has a crucial role to play' (again with the vagueness) - it's that the environment (or better, interaction in the environment) that explains the grammar.

What it as stake is the mechanism of grammatical genesis. That there is biology 'involved' or that language seems to be universal among humans does not allow one to make the leap that the mechanism is itself biological. Those two conditions are too underdetermined to explain why grammar is as it is.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

You chose your philosophy (or even metaphysics) first, and then offer your support to the professor who is more closely aligned with your philosophy, and you oppose the professor who seems more aligned with an opposing philosophical camp. Is that right?

No, I disagree. My philosophical priors gives me reason and motivation to suspect that Chomsky is full of shit, and, having actually looked to see if the theory stands on its own two feet, it turns out that it does not. This is not surprising of course, given that all idealism is full of shit, but it's all full of shit for localized reasons, which are worth exploring on their own. And I like to think I've done the latter. And I don't believe this is a intra-scientific dispute either, because - and I mean this, I'm really, really not being hyperbolic - I don't believe that what Chomsky is doing is science. His approach to language is theory-first, and to the extent that he looks to the science, it is to curve-fit it into his theory. Like all idealism, Chomsky places language outside the remit of science: or better science becomes a matter of mere taxonomy, or rather, taxidermy, not genuine discovery. Grammar simply has to 'fit' what is already in the theory, which accounts for all of grammar from the get-go, the only question being how. It's because I would, in fact, like the study of language to be scientific, that I think Chomsky needs to be thrown in the trash.

I really think the comparison to geocentrism is apposite: UG is basically full of people positing epicycles, retrograde motions, and unseen bodies in order to account for the fact that so much of it comes to naught, empirically. I mean, really, look:

[quote=via Tomasello]Although the most common practice is to invoke UG without specifying precisely what is intended, there are some specific (though mostly non-exhaustive) proposals:

– In his textbook, O’Grady (1997) proposes that UG includes both lexical categories (N, V, A, P, Adv) and functional categories (Det, Aux, Deg, Comp, Pro, Conj).
– Jackendoff’s (2002) proposal includes X-bar syntax and the linking rules ‘NP = object’, and ‘VP = action’. Pinker (1994) agrees and adds ‘subject’ and ‘object’, movement rules, and grammatical morphology.
– The textbook of Crain and Lillo-Martin (1999) does not provide an explicit list, but some of the things they claim are in UG are: wh-movement, island constraints, the subset principle, head movement, c-command, the projection principle, and the empty category principle.
– Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002) claim that there is only one thing in UG and that is the computational procedure of recursion. Chomsky (2004) claims that the only thing in UG is the syntactic operation of merge.
– Baker (2001) lists a very long set of parameters in UG, including everything from polysynthesis to ergative case to serial verbs to null subject. Fodor (2003) gives a very different list, with only a couple of overlaps, for example: V to I movement, subject initial, affix hopping, pied piping, topic marking, I to C
movement, Q inversion, and oblique topic.
– Proponents of OT approaches to syntax put into UG such well-formedness constraints as stay, telegraph, drop topic, recoverability, and MaxLex (see Haspelmath 2003 for a review).
– And Wunderlich (this special issue) has his own account of UG, which includes: distinctive features, double articulation, predication and reference, lexical categories, argument hierarchy, adjunction, and quantification (he specifically excludes many of the other things on the above lists).[/quote]

It's like scholastics listing the properties of angels. It's an embarrassment. The only empirical surety about it is that it has no empirical surety. The only stable content UG has, is its metaphysics - essentialist and idealist in form - which is why it pays to deal with it at that level. It also happens that the above list is more than enough to give lie to @Xtrix's protestations that UG is nothing but a theory of the genetic component of the language capacity. UG is all about positing grammatical structures that are (somehow, magically) "instantiated" in biology (much like the Platonic Forms are 'instantiated' in particulars), which then go on to explain the shape of actually existing grammars. This isn't biology, or science. These are speculative castles in the sky, no more scientific than glitches in the Matrix being an explanation for deja vu. They are supposed to explain why grammar is as it is. They do not.

Reply to Srap Tasmaner

I saw a video about this but did not read a study - at least not one I can recall at the moment. Given that the exposure of the dogs to certain words ("sit", "paw", "down", etc.) is very frequent, they'd associate such sounds to an act of some kind. But if you go beyond that, it would be meaningless, they can't associate very many words we use to some object or act, it's way too much. And the way dogs interpret language is likely very very different from the human case.

There's one quite important philosophical conclusion in all this, and this is the notion of "innate ideas", already argued for by Plato, Descartes, Cudworth, Leibniz and so forth. The only thing I'd be cautious with in your account is the notion of "learning", it's more akin to growth. Babies grow into the language they are exposed to. And of course, young children have a much easier time acquiring a new language while young than after say, young adulthood.

This is an excellent interview with Chomsky by an excellent philosopher Bryan Magee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVXLo9gJq-U

The relevant part on learning is from minute 5:26, probably goes on for a minute or two.

Th idea of "Universal Grammar" seems analogous to the idea of "inter-subjectivity". People take a variety of very wide ranging activities, which are quite difficult to understand the true nature of, and class them under one name. This facilitates reference to these activities, as a group, for the purpose of arguing a philosophical position. But it creates the illusion that there is a real, justifiable category of well-defined activities which is being referred to by the terms.

In reality such usage of terms is a symptom of a philosophical laziness, a declination from properly understanding the activities which get classed together, and apprehending the differences between these activities, recognizing the incompatibilities between them which make such categorization logically impossible.

Even the word "language" is used in this way. It's used to class together a wide ranging variety of activities which are so different from each other, that some of them ought not ever be placed together in any rigorously defined logical category. Hence the argument that there is no such thing as "language". That word does not name any sort of justifiable category of activity.

Both the assumed existence of the universe as a language and math being the language spoken by it (the "universal language") are utterly nonsensical. The assumptions reflect the attitude to objectivize a way of thinking, and by projecting these on the universe it makes one think that there is only one true language for all.

Reply to Manuel

I don't know if you have any interest in this question, I was just curious: if you were going to launch a serious attack on the OP essay, or on innate language capacity, how would you do it?

Reply to StreetlightX That’s quite helpful. Thanks.

Quoting StreetlightX

Grammar simply has to 'fit' what is already in the theory, which accounts for all of grammar from the get-go, the only question being how.

I’m not sure this is fair, historically. The search for “deep structure” may fail, but is analagous to the search for “logical form” — which Wittgenstein also concluded had failed. But it begins as an attempt to explain known phenomena: back in the days of transformational grammar, for instance, as an attempt to systematize the apparent connection between the syntax of statements and questions. Montague, who did his Ph.D. under Tarski, denied there was a distinction — as Tarski had assumed — between formal and natural languages. He seems to have believed that so-called natural languages are just more complicated, but just as a systematic as, say, first-order predicate logic.

But for such a research program, the proof is in the pudding: can you produce a model that accounts for all the data? Tomasello is right that there is something suspiciously ad hoc about what various people think goes in the core — but it’s ad hoc precisely because it’s trying to track the data, again rather like geocentric astronomy. You see the claim that there is a core syntax as the equivalent of the assumption that the heavens revolve around the earth, the assumption that both adds complexity to the theory and limits it. People working on UG might agree that what they have so far is a bit Keplerian, but they’re all looking for that Copernican breakthrough simplification. To make your analogy hold, you, or Tomasello, would have to show that by dropping the assumption of there being a UG at all, you can produce a dramatically simpler and convincing account of syntax. Is that what’s happened?

There’s another argument I think is lurking in the background: y’all have been at this for 65 years; if you haven’t figured out the elements of UG by now, it’s not gonna happen. You’ve been chasing a ghost. That’s not a terrible argument, but it’s not a great argument either. We’ve had quantum mechanics for a hundred years, and I don’t think anyone’s happy with the state of things, but our failure to finish it doesn’t mean we ought to just abandon the whole thing and start over.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

People working on UG might agree that what they have so far is a bit Keplerian, but they’re all looking for that Copernican breakthrough simplification.

I don't think so. They've reconstructed proto-Indo-European. They know how, for instance, Semitic languages imagine events vs other languages. The very act of analyzing languages implies a common ground. I think the science of linguistics, the child of Chomsky, is much more sophisticated and complex than you're thinking.

Reply to frank I mean, it’s not interesting to me, insofar as I agree with this approach to philosophy and see people who disagree with the main points to be very mistaken. However, if I had to attack it, I don’t see any alternative to people who currently ridicule “mysteriansim”, like Dennett or the Churchlands. I’d say that we don’t know what we don’t know beforehand, and that many times in the past something seemed impossible, yet was achieved by a lot. Therefore, those who say that there are forever mysteries, will be proven wrong as was done before. That would be the idea. I think this completely misses the point, and implies that Hume, Newton, Leibniz, Locke and others, were stupid in the way they reasoned, which hasn’t improved to my knowledge- which is a remarkable conclusion. But I can see those arguments, and they make sense, even if I think they are way wrong. So in short, read those two authors, or even better, read Alex Rosenberg.

Quoting Manuel

However, if I had to attack it, I don’t see any alternative to people who currently ridicule “mysteriansim”, like Dennett or the Churchlands. I’d say that we don’t know what we don’t know beforehand, and that many times in the past something seemed impossible, yet was achieved by a lot. Therefore, those who say that there are forever mysteries, will be proven wrong as was done before. That would be the idea. I think this completely misses the point,

Could you explain why it misses the point?

Reply to frank Because they assume that all there is is “understanding” in the theoretical sense. Therefore, if we understand a theory, we understand everything that matters about that phenomenon. Tell that to a painter about colours, they are “just” light, or to a mother who has lost a son that she lacks serotonin or tell any person that’s burning that it’s just particles moving fastly, so don’t worry about pain. In short, such an attitude assumes science can say MUCH more than it does. I think it is obvious that understanding is not close to being exhausted by theoretical accounts. And I also think it is equally obvious that we don’t really understand much of anything, hence the infinite "why" questions, which must be answered with a “that's the way it is” type replies. Because we just don’t know.

Reply to Manuel
I'm going to have to ponder that for a while.

Reply to frank

Sure man, it's all about what you find plausible and credible based on your own experience of the world.

Quoting Manuel

The case was that we thought we knew almost everything about the way matter worked, and were proven wrong.

That's simply because we don't know how it is to be matter.

Quoting StreetlightX

Except that Chomskites keep wanting to make the move from this triviality ('biology is involved' - yeah no shit Sherlock), to the non-trivial claim that it is this biological 'involvement' (nice and vague) that actually explains the specificities of actually existing grammar.

That's like saying they're trying to explain the specificities of German or Swahili or Japanese through biology. That's not the case. The capacity to acquire German or Swahili or Japanese, which every human baby is already equipped with, is what's being sought to explain. You mentioned before the principles and parameters view. That's changed somewhat, to the "minimalist program." I talked before about merge, which is central to this view. It's a computational view of language's recursion property -- i.e., binary set formation. From there the research gets technical -- but none of this is the religious chicanery you make it out to be.

Quoting StreetlightX

It's not just that 'the environment has a crucial role to play' (again with the vagueness) - it's that the environment (or better, interaction in the environment) that explains the grammar.

What grammar are you referring to? Different languages have different syntax and morphology, which are shaped by the social environment. Who's denying that?

Quoting Manuel

There's one quite important philosophical conclusion in all this, and this is the notion of "innate ideas", already argued for by Plato, Descartes, Cudworth, Leibniz and so forth.

That is the underlying cause behind the acrimonious debate in this thread. "Innate ideas" are a no-go for empiricism as they're intractable to naturalism, which long ago banished Platonism to the dustbin of history. Hence:

Quoting StreetlightX

I don't believe that what Chomsky is doing is science. His approach to language is theory-first, and to the extent that he looks to the science, it is to curve-fit it into his theory. Like all idealism, Chomsky places language outside the remit of science: or better science becomes a matter of mere taxonomy, or rather, taxidermy, not genuine discovery. Grammar simply has to 'fit' what is already in the theory, which accounts for all of grammar from the get-go, the only question being how. It's because I would, in fact, like the study of language to be scientific, that I think Chomsky needs to be thrown in the trash.

Whereas, I am more than happy for the nature of language and indeed rationality to be declared out of the reach of science, as science is all about subordinating human nature to objective measurement and control, and is intrinsically anti-humanist and reductionist.

Note this conclusion to a review of Chomsky and Berwick's 'Why Only Us?':

Is there an ontological discontinuity between humans and other animals? Berwick and Chomsky arrive, on purely empirical grounds, at the conclusion that there is. All animals communicate, but only humans are rational; and for Berwick and Chomsky, human language is primarily an instrument of rationality. They present powerful arguments that this astonishing instrument arose just once and quite suddenly in evolutionary history—indeed, most likely in just one member of Homo sapiens, or at most a few. At the biological level, this involved a sudden upgrade of our mental machinery, and Berwick and Chomsky’s theories of this are both more plausible than competing theories and more consistent with data from a variety of disciplines. But they recognize that more than machinery is involved. The basic contents and meanings, the deep-lying elements of human thought—“word-like but not words”—were somehow there, mysteriously, in the beginning.

So that challenge to empiricism can never be allowed to stand. Hence the hostility.

Reply to Wayfarer

But Chomsky is empirical, and is a scientist. He's not an idealist. The "innate ideas" he's proposing has very little to do with past thinkers. He's starting with a truism in biology: there's a biological substrate. Much like the mammalian visual system, or spatial navigation in ants, it's something that can be studied biologically. It's not magic. It's not supernatural. We don't possess the ability to speak because of a miracle.

We cannot do experiments with humans like we can with animals, so we have to find different ways of studying the biological capacity of language. That's the difference.

He's the modern founder, basically, of "biolinguistics." There's really nothing voodoo about any of this, and attempts to portray Chomsky as a mystic or Platonist is just hyperbolic rantings -- no sense paying much attention to it. The more frequently and vehemently it's claimed, the easier it is to ignore. Because it's unsubstantiated high school gossip.

Quoting Wayfarer

That is the underlying cause behind the acrimonious debate in this thread. "Innate ideas" are a no-go for empiricism as they're intractable to naturalism, which long ago banished Platonism to the dustbin of history. Hence:

I mean, I agree with you if by naturalism you mean what is meant by Dennett and Carrol and so on. I don't think that's "real naturalism", but this is terminological quibble.

What's a bit interesting, is that these things (innate ideas) are assumed for other creatures. We take it for granted that a puppy knows not to go over a ledge, or that a cat "knows" how to avoid falling on its back and so on - this isn't learning.

What's quite ironic in all of this - these so called "naturalists" and "empiricists" - who look at say, Hume, with much admiration, is that they don't read him, or they read him badly, not only with regard to mysteries, but regarding "innate ideas".

This is Hume, worth quoting in full:

"But though animals learn many parts of their knowledge from observation, there are also many parts of it, which they derive from the original hand of nature; which much exceed the share of capacity they possess on ordinary occasions; and in which they improve, little or nothing, by the longest practice and experience. These we denominateInstincts, and are so apt to admire as something very extraordinary, and inexplicable by all the disquisitions of human understanding. But our wonder will, perhaps, cease or diminish, when we consider, that the experimental reasoning itself, which we possess in common with beasts, and on which the whole conduct of life depends, is nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power, that acts in us unknown to ourselves; and in its chief operations, is not directed by any such relations or comparisons of ideas, as are the proper objects of our intellectual faculties. Though the instinct be different, yet still it is an instinct, which teaches a man to avoid the fire; as much as that, which teaches a bird, with such exactness, the art of incubation, and the whole economy and order of its nursery."

Bold letter added by me.

Reply to Xtrix

Eh. I wouldn't phrase it like this, nor do I think he would agree. I don't think he would mind being called a "rationalistic idealist" like he labels Cudworth, though he prefers "methodological naturalism."

Remember he says that the shift from "magic" to "science" is subtle.

And he does actually refer to Descartes and Cudworth for innate ideas, saying that he agrees with this tradition. What he says is that this tradition should be fleshed out.

These things are astonishing for him and for I think most people in the world who have babies, they are shocked to see how the baby does things or says things they weren't taught.

See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVXLo9gJq-U&t=328s

Min. 37:43 onward.

Quoting Xtrix

But Chomsky is empirical, and is a scientist.

Forgive me, but my observation is that you also have a bit of a hot button about this issue. Whenever it's suggested that Chomsky's ideas might be incompatible with naturalism, you react strongly against that - the suggestion, for example, of 'voodoo' in the post above. The implication is, either you're a naturalist, empiricist scientist, or the alternative is 'voodoo' and supernaturalism, as if that line is clearly delineated. But I think that is a product of an underyling fissure in the culture which you're giving voice to. Consider the subject of this particular debate, which is speech and language - that is also the subject of many other disciplines, as diverse as linguistics, semiotics, and even literature and communications. You can study it from a naturalist perspective, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has a wholly naturalistic basis. But to question the scope of current naturalism isn't therefore to 'accept voodoo'. You should ask yourself why you automatically react that way.

Quoting Xtrix

He's starting with a truism in biology: there's a biological substrate. Much like the mammalian visual system, or spatial navigation in ants, it's something that can be studied biologically. It's not magic. It's not supernatural. We don't possess the ability to speak because of a miracle.

The vistas, the possibilities and potentialities, that are opened up by speech and language, are, I think, incommensurable with those of ants or insects or even other animals. From the viewpoint of biology, we study h. sapiens as a species, and in that sense study the evolution of language. Butare language, culture, ideas, reason thereby solely biologically determined? Obviously a very big question.

When h. sapiens evolves to the point of being able to speak, create art, tell stories, and contemplate meaning, and so on, then I say we've transcended the strictly biological domain. To say that all human culture past this point is a product of biology is the essence of biological reductionism. And if you ask the question 'why did the human species evolve the ability to speak and reason?', the only answer that neo-darwinism seems to have is the same reason that applies to any other species - to successfully survive and procreate. That is really what constitutes 'a reason' in biological terms but it doesn't cut it as a reason in the philosophical sense. OK, you'll say, there isn't any reason. But that is also a philosophical judgement, and one that is often implicit, being culturally-determined.

(I've mentioned it before, but one of the essays pinned to my profile is relevant - Maritain's critique of the cultural consequences of empiricism. It is writ large throughout this debate. Yes, Maritain was a Roman Catholic, that immediately disqualifies him for a lot of people, although I'm not, and it doesn't, for me. Logging out for the day, I have an assignment.)

"The epistemic naturalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth century was science, and attempt to construct an empirical theory of mind…” (Chomsky, 2000: 80)

“We plainly cannot read back into earlier periods a distinction between science and philosophy that developed later. We would not use the term “visual naturalism” to refer to the empirical study of the growth and functioning of the visual system… implying that there was some coherent alternative for the same realm of problems.”

Quoting Manuel

Eh. I wouldn't phrase it like this, nor do I think he would agree. I don't think he would mind being called a "rationalistic idealist" like he labels Cudworth, though he prefers "methodological naturalism."

Fair. I didn't mean to imply Chomsky doesn't pick out parts of Plato, Descartes, etc., but he rejects (as he says in the video you linked to) a great deal of this thinking as well. He re-interprets Plato's reincarnation of the soul to be essentially referring to genetic endowment.

Quoting Manuel

What he says is that this tradition should be fleshed out.

Right.

Quoting Wayfarer

But to question the scope of current naturalism isn't therefore to 'accept voodoo'. You should ask yourself why you automatically react that way.

What is the alternative, exactly? I've written for years on this very forum about the very concept of "nature," and how materialism (or naturalism) cannot explain everything in the world. But that doesn't mean when it comes to language we have to depart from the standard framework of all the biological sciences.

Quoting Wayfarer

Butare language, culture, ideas, reason thereby solely biologically determined?

Not solely, no.

Quoting Xtrix

but he rejects (as he says in the video you linked to) a great deal of this thinking as well. He re-interprets Plato's reincarnation of the soul to be essentially referring to genetic endowment.

Correct.

He also rejects the notion of transparent ideas, or the notion that we can introspect into our ideas perfectly clearly, this is also common with the empiricists incidentally, but it's not true.

I think that if we have a disagreement (foreseeing one which is possible and good), would have to be on what we think philosophy can do for the study of mind. Besides some topics in linguistics and perhaps some psychological studies, we just know too little about the mind.

I think this is fertile area for conceptual analysis, which can help clear up some confused notions get a better framework for analyzing different aspects of the world and so on. Chomsky tends to go to physics for a lot of clarification on many of these things, I think that that approach makes sense, but it can be limiting to an extent. Here, I know I'm playing with fire.

So in this case, you tend to go with Heidegger's philosophy, I tend to like Tallis' approach. But I honestly think, however self-flattering this may sound, that in this area, we have lots of fertile stuff to think about and try to clear up, acknowledging that we're likely wrong in many important aspects.

But if you think philosophy is either much more than this, or much less, then we'd disagree. I know you haven't said anything, I'm just thinking out loud...

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

y’all have been at this for 65 years; if you haven’t figured out the elements of UG by now, it’s not gonna happen. You’ve been chasing a ghost. That’s not a terrible argument, but it’s not a great argument either.

To be clear, I'm not arguing against UG because of it's empirical failures. Those failures are to be expected and are the natural outcomes of it's prior metaphysical commitments. To the degree that UG is an empirical mess, that only serves to confirm what can be figured out before hand.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

To make your analogy hold, you, or Tomasello, would have to show that by dropping the assumption of there being a UG at all, you can produce a dramatically simpler and convincing account of syntax. Is that what’s happened?

There are models, and they revolve around recognizing that it is communication between agents that drive syntax formation. That's the Copernican revolution - in displacing the centre of gravity from language as a tool for thought, to language as a tool for communication. Chomskities have been famously averse to this because of the so-called 'poverty of stimulus' argument - really the only argument they have for the mythological innateness of grammar. It's the idea that socializing cannot account for the rapid grasp of syntax amongst new language-learners. From this, they conclude - in what amounts to nothing other than a failure of their own imaginations - that the only alternative choice is that grammar must be innate.

But, as has been pointed out by plenty of people, the 'poverty of stimulus' argument relies on a crude 'associationist' approach to learning that isolates language-learning in children from any other cognitive and pragmatic skills that children have. But as soon as children are taken as living, thinking, interacting beings (beings-in-the-world with language ready-to-hand, as distinct from having language merely present-to-hand, to use the Heideggarian lingo), there simply is no poverty of stimulus. Attention-directedness, social-cues, semantic constraints, memory of previous social interactions and so on, all serve to account perfectly well for the so-called surprise at 'ungrammatical' statements.

To quote Daniel Dor: "Observations of syntactic complexity thus reflect the prescriptive meanings of the symbolic landscape — not the experiential meanings of private cognition. This is why they are autonomous, just as Chomsky claimed. They are autonomous, however, not because they are cognitively unique, but because they are collective. Syntactic analysis, the crown jewel of cognitive science, is a fundamental branch of the social sciences" (Dor, The Instruction of the Imagination). So really, the poverty of stimulus argument ought to be turned around on its creators: it is the Chomskites' own narrowed and stilted vision of the human being (as effectively language-processing robots abstracted from the world) that attests to a poverty of stimulus - not of children, but of Chomsky.

As for the specifics of the alternate accounts, I refer you to the essays I've linked to which attempt to cash out just what it means to understand syntax as a matter of social interaction. I will say that they will not necessarily be simpler than UG. By taking language out of the mystical and Platonic realm of innateness, grammar is properly situated in history, social dynamics, and concrete utterances: the study of grammar becomes properly empirical, and not metaphysical: not a mythical, unobservable posit lurking like a noumena behind the diversity of actually existing languages, but a study of language evolving in time, contingently, and according to the dictates of social prescriptions. A properly materialist, rather than idealist understanding of language, in other words. Better, in any case, than the "God did it" account of Chomsky and his idiot retinue (UG only quibbles among itself as to what, exactly, God did).

Quoting Xtrix

I've written for years on this very forum about the very concept of "nature," and how materialism (or naturalism) cannot explain everything in the world. But that doesn't mean when it comes to language we have to depart from the standard framework of all the biological sciences.

But language surely straddles two realms. Yes, we're biological beings but we're observably the only beings that really have language. We're unique in that respect - so where within the standard framework should this go? Might it not be anomalous?

There was something a bit fishy about that quote earlier about treating 'the mind' the same way you treat the objects of physics and chemistry - because (and I say this a lot) the mind is not an object, not at all. (This is why behaviourism and eliminativism are the most honest empiricists.) You can experiment on the objects of physics and chemstry, make testable predictions with great accuracy. But you can't do that with the mind, and hardly with language, as it's such a vast subject matter. So it's a bit trite to say that the mind can be dealt with in that way.

Quoting Xtrix

What is the alternative, exactly?

What I'm observing is that the argument against Chomsky is that his theory of universal grammar is not a properly empirical theory, that it's dependent on metaphysics or something like 'innate ideas'. Which is leads to the:

Quoting StreetlightX

"God did it" account of Chomsky

Even though Chomsky never refers to or invokes God. But it is implied by what he says. If his theory is not an empiricist account, 'properly situated in history, social dynamics and concrete utterances' then what else can it be? That's why I said earlier in this thread that he must be basically regarded as some kind of closet theist.

This is what I mean by the cultural dynamics behind this argument. I hope you can see that now.

Quoting Wayfarer

Even though Chomsky never refers to or invokes God. But it is implied by what he says. If his theory is not an empiricist account, 'properly situated in history, social dynamics and concrete utterances' then what else can it be? That's why I said earlier in this thread that he must be basically regarded as some kind of closet theist.

Agree again! God is of course, the ultimate reductionist, which all Chomsky-like accounts end up being, whether recognized or not.

Quoting Xtrix

That's changed somewhat, to the "minimalist program." I talked before about merge, which is central to this view. It's a computational view of language's recursion property -- i.e., binary set formation. From there the research gets technical -- but none of this is the religious chicanery you make it out to be.

Oh yes, it has indeed changed to the 'minimalist' program, because one-by-one, as the claims of UG have been shown to be trash, it has had to whittle itself down into a theory of almost nothing in order to save whatever claim of explanatory power it could possibly - minimally - have. And, having whittled itself down to recursion (at least for Chomsky), what it has given up is precisely any linguistic specificity. Its minimalism is bought at the price of its generality which has exposed ever more easily how stupid the whole enterprise is. So let's examine recursion. Does it do this?:

Quoting Xtrix

The capacity to acquire German or Swahili or Japanese, which every human baby is already equipped with, is what's being sought to explain.

The answer is a laugh-out-loud "No". Evens and Levinson:

1. Many languages do not have syntactic constituent structure. As such, they cannot have embedded structures of the kind indicated by a labelled bracketing like [A[A]]. Most of the suggestions for rule constraints (like Subjacency) in UG falsely presume the universality of constituency.

2. Many languages have no, or very circumscribed recursion in their syntax. That is, they do not allow embedding of indefinite complexity, and in some languages there is no syntactic embedding at all. Fitch et al’s (2005) response that this is of no relevance to their selection of syntactic recursion as the single unique design feature of human language reveals their choice to be empirically arbitrary.

3. The cross-linguistic evidence shows that although recursion may not be found in the syntax of languages, it is always found in the conceptual structure, that is, the semantics or pragmatics – in the sense that it is always possible in any language to express complex propositions. This argues against the syntacticocentrism of the Chomskyan paradigm. It also points to a different kind of possible evidence for the evolutionary background to language, namely, the investigation of embedded reasoning across our nearest phylogenetic cousins, as is required, for example, in theory of mind tasks, or spatial perspective taking. Even simple tool making can require recursive action patterning.

Dor elaborates on point 3, which, frankly, is the most devastating:

"The idea that recursion generates infinity is valid as a logical statement, but this logical statement is only applicable to mathematics. As far as language is concerned, it is nonsensical: nothing in human life is infinite. Recursion has been shown to play an important role not just in language, but also, for example, in toolmaking (Greenfield 1991), but no one would suggest that the capacity to re-apply manual operations to their own outputs—and then to do it again and again—allows for the making of infinitely complex tools. The recursive operations in message construction (in those languages that have them) do allow for the production of very complex messages, much more complex than the messages produced in non-recursive languages, but this is all."

In other words, not only has UG contracted itself to a single, measly syntactic operator, in any case controversial and empirically destitute, it has also abstracted itself to so rarefied a level that it is unable to function as a recognizable theory of language. It's like a dying star, winking itself out into irrelevance.

Quoting StreetlightX

But as soon as children are taken as living, thinking, interacting beings (beings-in-the-world with language ready-to-hand, as distinct from having language merely present-to-hand, to use the Heideggarian lingo), there simply is no poverty of stimulus. Attention-directedness, social-cues, semantic constraints, memory of previous social interactions and so on, all serve to account perfectly well for the so-called surprise at 'ungrammatical' statements.

This type of description misses one very important aspect, and that is the will to learn. The distinction between "ready-to-hand" and "present-to-hand" is dependent on practice. That distinction takes practice for granted. But practice requires will. Because the nature of "will" remains in the category of the mystical, the mystical aspect cannot be avoided in this way.

In Aristotelian terms, from his On the Soul, the child is born with a "potential". Also, the grown and learnt human being, has a "potential". But these two senses of "potential" are obviously very different. We might say that the latter is an "informed potential". And the problem we have with this type of analysis is that providing a description of the "informed potential" does not give us a method toward understanding the uninformed potential, because a description always refers to the formal part. So taking the descriptive aspect of informed potential, "grammar", and applying it toward the uninformed aspect is actually a step in the wrong direction.

The issue present at hand though, is that the deeper we move toward the more raw, or uninformed potential, the bigger the gap we get between our principles for understanding, which are posterior to practice, and how well they are suited toward understanding what we are trying to understand, what is prior to practice. So we have to turn around, and start from the very bottom, and consider the principles required to describe the most raw potential possible. This is metaphysics. But such a start leaves absolutely no direction for the will. Therefore we must conclude that the will is directed by something completely other than "informed potential", being in some way the cause of informed potential, and this conclusion provides no way out of mysticism.

Reply to StreetlightX

Chomsky's primary opponent was Skinner. You're kind of dancing on Chomsky's shoulders claiming to have killed him.

Reply to StreetlightX

Interesting stuff, particularly Daniel Dor. I am in your debt.

My sympathies tend to be with the communication-first side, but of course language as a technology for communication is enabled by capacities not necessarily evolved for that. That’s saying nothing, so an example: I’ve never forgotten my German linguistics professor demonstrating the original purpose of vocal chords by lifting the end of a table as he spoke (they close the windpipe to maintain air pressure in the chest under load).

In a related way, I find the speculation that language was originally gestural rather than vocal interesting, because vocal language also involves very precise gestures we don’t think of that way because they are done with the tongue and the mouth; thus not only are there obvious advantages to switching to sound as your medium, you may get to repurpose the brain’s existing skill at orchestrating complex fine motor movements. Which obviously also has other uses. Pure speculation.

In that spirit, I have tried to leave room for what I think of as language to be dependent on something more like what Chomsky thinks of as language, which looks more like a mathematical symbol system. I do wonder if the communication-first, social technology sort of view — which, as I said, is where my sympathies lie — can quite reach to certain fundamentals: the distribution of sign tokens into buckets via systems of differences (as in phonology and morphology); the ability to take a sound or a mark or a gesture as a sign at all, to treat it as referential.

It’s hard to shake the intuition that communication is late to the party in some respects, that certain key abilities must already be in place before we can talk about communication, language as a technology for solving coordination problems, and so on. So, as I said, I’ve tried to leave open the possibility that Chomsky’s little syntax engine, even if it’s really a machine for assembling a syntax engine, is one of those things, but that’s all.

Again, really interesting stuff, Street. Much appreciated.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

I’ve never forgotten my German linguistics professor demonstrating the original purpose of vocal chords by lifting the end of a table as he spoke (they close the windpipe to maintain air pressure in the chest under load).

As any weight-lifter knows, it's dangerous to hold your breath while lifting a load. Your lung expansion is maintained by your ribs and diaphragm, not your trachea. This is why linguistic professors shouldn't play pulmonologist.

Reply to frank

Fair enough

Quoting StreetlightX

So let's examine recursion. Does it do this?:

The capacity to acquire German or Swahili or Japanese, which every human baby is already equipped with, is what's being sought to explain.
— Xtrix

The answer is a laugh-out-loud "No".

Does recursion explain the capacity to learn English and Japanese? No, of course not. Recursion is a property of the human language system. Binocular vision is a property of the human visual system. So yes, exploring this won't explain everything, but it's a research goal.

Quoting Wayfarer

What I'm observing is that the argument against Chomsky is that his theory of universal grammar is not a properly empirical theory

Yes, that's an augment against Chomsky -- and happens to be completely wrong.

The evolution of language is mostly speculative, whether one claims it evolved for communication or for thought. To argue one theory is empirical and the other isn't (because it's largely speculative), is just asinine.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

In a related way, I find the speculation that language was originally gestural rather than vocal interesting, because vocal language also involves very precise gestures we don’t think of that way because they are done with the tongue and the mouth

It's hard to make up a story that starts with a sensorimotor system fully ready for speech. Whatever changed with the human brain, it's unlikely it happened to several people all at once. If some neural rewiring occurred in the brain of one person, and gave that person a selective advantage that than spread to others, then it would take time both to link this change to the sensorimotor system and for others to be able to understand any received messages. There's good reason to believe that gestures -- a kind of sign language -- was the first to develop.

Infinite expression with finite means. That seems to be the case with language -- we can express almost any thought/feeling we want, using very few tools. We see this in writing. The English alphabet consists of 26 letters, yet we see what we do with them. Likewise for phonemes. Limited in number. If we want to claim this was all acquired gradually, it always appeared to me that there's simply not enough evolutionary time -- given that behaviorally modern humans have been around for maybe 200 thousand years. What changed? Well, the capacity for language changed -- the capacity that separates us from other species. Either this took millions of years to evolve gradually, and then reached a point where creativity exploded (tools, cave art, burials, etc), or it happened very quickly (similar to the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis), perhaps even in one individual -- which is Chomsky's position.

All of it is pretty speculative, and although I find Chomsky's position more compelling, I have no solid stake in it. If it turns out language evolved gradually as a communicative tool, so be it. The evidence for this is very limited indeed.

Quoting Manuel

I mean, it’s not interesting to me, insofar as I agree with this approach to philosophy and see people who disagree with the main points to be very mistaken. However, if I had to attack it, I don’t see any alternative to people who currently ridicule “mysteriansim”, like Dennett or the Churchlands.

As I already said earlier, I don't think that Chomsky, in this essay at least, engages with the issues that animate debates between Nagel, Chalmers, McGinn, etc. on the one side, and Dennett, Churchlands, etc. on the other. Calling Chomsky's position "mysterianism" is misleading. Indeed, going by the evidence of this essay, I am not sure that he is even familiar with that other "mysterianism."

If you think that he is advancing a "mysterian" thesis, how would you summarize it? It is not all that clear to me that he is developing a consistent thesis throughout the essay, but here is how I might tentatively reconstruct it. As Chomsky tells it, up until Newton, natural philosophy was following our intuitive understanding of how the world works. At one point he makes a connection with our innate intuitions, as revealed in psychological studies - folk physics and the like. More often, he talks about a "conception of the world as a machine"; how naturally intuitive that is is not obvious to me, but apparently he believes it to be so.

(This is a very dubious claim, by the way: to equate 18th century European philosophers' thinking with innate, animalistic intuitions. So, neither Aristotle nor three millennia of human civilization made a dent in their thinking? Or were they all that childish-simple, Aristotle included? I hesitate to attribute this claim to Chomsky, so correct me if you read it differently.)

So then comes Newton with his radically unintuitive theory, and after some fruitless attempts to reconcile it with traditional metaphysics, he throws up his hands and pleads hypotheses non fingo: it's just a mathematical theory, and the only thing going for it is that it works. And thus modern science was born, increasingly divorced from our intuitions, comprehensible only to the intellect, if even that.

But the picture is not so simple, is it? Our understanding evolves throughout our individual lives, as well as throughout humanity's cultural evolution. At one point Chomsky seems to acknowledge this, seemingly contradicting the thesis that he has been developing, when he quotes 19th century mathematician Friedrich Lange saying that we have "so accustomed ourselves to the abstract notion of forces, or rather to a notion hovering in a mystic obscurity between abstraction and concrete comprehension, that we no longer find any difficulty in making one particle of matter act upon another without immediate contact, ... through void space without any material link." The same could be said about anyone educated in a modern school system. Action at a distance is not that big a deal any more. We throw around concepts like "force" and "energy" as if knew what we were talking about. And that's just the average person; physicists, mathematicians and other specialists develop even more advanced intuitions in their areas.

There could be a case to be made for a core of innate intuitions, but what would be the significance of it? That we can transcend our nature-endowed intuitions is perhaps the defining trait of our species. So what is all this hand-wringing about the unintelligibility of the universe?

Quoting Manuel

What's quite ironic in all of this - these so called "naturalists" and "empiricists" - who look at say, Hume, with much admiration, is that they don't read him, or they read him badly, not only with regard to mysteries, but regarding "innate ideas".

"Naturalists" and "empiricists," with or without scare quotes, can admire Hume, if it pleases them, but why should they slavishly follow him in everything? What good are you as a philosopher if all you can do is repeat what someone else wrote three hundred years ago? Don't confuse philology with philosophy.

Reply to SophistiCat

The point is that people like Sean Carroll or Daniel Dennett say they follow Hume, so they too "repeat what someone else wrote three hundred years ago", it's just that they do so quite poorly on elementary reading, literally.

Of course, all the classical figures made plenty of mistakes, that's clear. I don't think anyone today would be a Humean empiricist nor a Cartesian rationalist, much less a Platonist in the exact same terms and ideas they used back then.

We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We modify the terms for contemporary issues.

Admitting the mistakes they made - while being aware of the mistakes we're surely making now - it's evident they have things to teach us that we're forgotten or are thinking about in muddled way.

Philosophy is one of the few traditions that engages with people thousands of years ago and continues in the great debate concerning the most difficult questions people have been asking for a long time.

While not obligatory by any means, not engaging with such classics, likely makes one's philosophy poorer.

Quoting SophistiCat

As I already said earlier, I don't think that Chomsky, in this essay at least, engages with the issues that animate debates between Nagel, Chalmers, McGinn, etc. on the one side, and Dennett, Churchlands, etc. on the other. Calling Chomsky's position "mysterianism" is misleading. Indeed, going by the evidence of this essay, I am not sure that he is even familiar with that other "mysterianism."

Correct. He calls it a "truism", he doesn't like the term mysterian. Mcginn and others adopted it because the labels stuck. He has spoken about Dennett and Nagel and others in different essays.

Quoting SophistiCat

If you think that he is advancing a "mysterian" thesis, how would you summarize it? It is not all that clear to me that he is developing a consistent thesis throughout the essay, but here is how I might tentatively reconstruct it. As Chomsky tells it, up until Newton, natural philosophy was following our intuitive understanding of how the world works. At one point he makes a connection with our innate intuitions, as revealed in psychological studies - folk physics and the like. More often, he talks about a "conception of the world as a machine"; how naturally intuitive that is is not obvious to me, but apparently he believes it to be so.

It's the simple view that there are things we can know and things we cannot, given that we are natural creatures. Not in this essay, but in a different one, he distinguishes between "problems" and "mysteries", problems are those questions we can ask and (hopefully) answer. "Mysteries" are those we can ask and not answer, such as say, free will or how is it possible for matter to think? Then there are questions we can't even ask, because we don't know how to phrase them.

This would give an "updated" view on the intuitive aspect:

https://cprtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/COMPLETE-REPORT-Goswami-Childrens-Cognitive-Development-and-Learning.pdf

Particularly "naive physics" p.6.

Quoting SophistiCat

This is a very dubious claim, by the way: to equate 18th century European philosophers' thinking with innate, animalistic intuitions. So, neither Aristotle nor three millennia of human civilization made a dent in their thinking?

The 17th century scientific revolution was a reaction to Aristotelean physics, which postulated occult forces that no longer made sense. But of course, Aristotle was taken very seriously and was considered by many to be among the greatest of thinkers, no doubt about that. Aristotle was likely highlighting other aspects of our innate "folk psychology", putting emphasis on different aspects of the world, which were not satisfactory for many of the 17th century figures.

Quoting SophistiCat

Action at a distance is not that big a deal any more. We throw around concepts like "force" and "energy" as if knew what we were talking about. And that's just the average person; physicists, mathematicians and other specialists develop even more advanced intuitions in their areas.

There could be a case to be made for a core of innate intuitions, but what would be the significance of it? That we can transcend our nature-endowed intuitions is perhaps the defining trait of our species. So what is all this hand-wringing about the unintelligibility of the universe?

I agree that we just use these concepts without being troubled anymore. The issue, I think, is that we tend to be quite puzzled by QM - we don't understand how the heck the world could act like this. Yeah, well, we don't understand gravity either, we just got used to it. But it took over a hundred years to develop this attitude. Maybe in a few decades QM will simply be accepted as is, and we won't be puzzled by it anymore.

I'd only quibble that I don't think physicists have intuitions about how gravity works, they have intuitions about how theories about gravity work and how they can relate to other phenomena in the world. The intuition would be on the theory side.

The main topic of the essay, as I read it, is that we've lowered the standards of science, we no longer seek to understand the world, but seek theories about aspects of the world. That's a big lowering of standards of explanation.

As for your last question, I think, in the end, the point is going to be person dependent. For me, it's quite crazy that we understand so little and that the world exists at all, it's baffling to me. There's no reason to expect any species to evolve having a capacity to ask and answer questions about the world at all, there's no obvious benefit to doing these things.

Heck, we might be the only intelligent species in the universe, as some biologists say.

Which makes me grateful for the parts of the world we can understand to an extent, due to the advances of modern science.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

I have tried to leave room for what I think of as language to be dependent on something more like what Chomsky thinks of as language, which looks more like a mathematical symbol system. I do wonder if the communication-first, social technology sort of view — which, as I said, is where my sympathies lie — can quite reach to certain fundamentals: the distribution of sign tokens into buckets via systems of differences (as in phonology and morphology); the ability to take a sound or a mark or a gesture as a sign at all, to treat it as referential.

It’s hard to shake the intuition that communication is late to the party in some respects, that certain key abilities must already be in place before we can talk about communication, language as a technology for solving coordination problems, and so on. So, as I said, I’ve tried to leave open the possibility that Chomsky’s little syntax engine, even if it’s really a machine for assembling a syntax engine, is one of those things, but that’s all.

This is why I am really partial to the treatment of grammar as being a matter of social normativity: it places language on a continuum with extra-linguistic behaviour (like gesture, or even music). If grammar is fundamentally a matter of protocol - a conventionally agreed "how" (messages are communicated) - then grammar is, fundamentally, a kind of (set of) behaviour (but not a matter of 'behaviouralism' insofar as behaviour here isn't a matter of stimulus-response, but of active communicative/lived problem-solving). In which case, knowing - or not knowing - whether a gesture is a sign, or a mark is referential, is not a linguistic behaviour, but a semiotic one, continuous with, say, tracking a bear in the woods by means of following its droppings and pawprints.

Dor again: "When conventionalizing a speech-act, what the members of the community agree on is this: “from now on, when we behave this way — when, in these particular contexts, we use this intonation, this word order, this gesture — we mean to ask a question (or make a promise, or tell a story)... When the members of a community mutually identify a norm, what they say to each other, across the experiential gap, is: “here we do the same thing.” (Incidentally, compare Wittgenstein on grammar: "The danger here, I believe, is one of giving a justification of our procedure where there is no such thing as a justification and we ought simply to have said: that’s how we do it".)

This 'embedding' of language in wider structures of living and communicating is correspondent with a broader and more encompassing conception of how learning works: Chomsky's - correct - aversion to behaviourialism shared with it its rather stilted conception of learning. But the kinds of (biological!) capacities involved in learning language are not necessarily language specific. Tomasello: "These skills are necessary for children to find patterns in the way adults use linguistic symbols ... are evolutionarily fairly old, probably possessed in some form by all primates at the very least. [They are] domain-general, in the sense that they allow organisms to categorize many different aspects of their worlds into a manageable number of kinds of things and events (although it seems very likely that when these skills are applied to linguistic symbols — as they are in humans but not in other primate species — some novel characteristics emerge)").

Which is all to agree that communication is late to the party and that it piggy-backs off capacities already developed for other uses, as you said. What seems specific about grammar is that it is a kind of 'calcified semantics': it deferentially specifies what *kind* of information we ought to convey in a message (if an [event] then what about a [temporality] or an [agent]? Was the [event] [passive] or [active]? Should the grammar be indexed to a first, second, or third person?, etc). In any case, it makes more naturalist sense than Chomsky's sui generis, deus ex machnia "account" of language.

Quoting Xtrix

No, of course not. Recursion is a property of the human language system. Binocular vision is a property of the human visual system. So yes, exploring this won't explain everything, but it's a research goal.

Ah right so you're just restating your claims without addressing anything I said. Well, fun's over I guess.

In fairytale his universal grammar of, Chomsky, style in a close coming the to UG has he in mind, faithfully being to imperative grammar the, that it's possible to make a "perfect copy" of you and me of your genetic material (and, so he claims, as we approach the atomic level, we are all the same...). How convenient for his theory!

Universal Grammar... As silly an attempt to catch human language as the attempt to find a theory of everything in nature. Though such a theory (a ToE) is useful in the realm of the singularity, it completely fails in everyday reality. True, looking with a microscope, you will see time reversible motion of Planck-sized geometrical massless structures, with magical charges, loving and hating each other under the safe guidance in the sea of hidden variables we call space, but if we zoom out new, irreducible and irreversible structures come into focus.

Likewise for language. While common features can be found by studying phonetic patterns, and while we all have a brain that obviously has to be organized, and commonalities can be found in them, it's an illusion that a universal grammar is to be found in them. Though at the basic level we are all a bunch of elementary particles...

Quoting Manuel

I think it is obvious that understanding is not close to being exhausted by theoretical accounts. And I also think it is equally obvious that we don’t really understand much of anything, hence the infinite "why" questions, which must be answered with a “that's the way it is” type replies. Because we just don’t know.

But this is different from claiming we can't gain an understanding of how consciousness works. That claim could be based on the belief that we can have no vantage point on consciousness. Is that what you're thinking?

Reply to frank

Close. I think we may get to the point in which we have some type of theory of consciousness, perhaps someone discovers which brain regions are strictly necessary for it - though we have anesthesia - or someone may come up with a model as to how certain patterns in brain matter lead to experience. Maybe.

But it's not going to be in a way in which we're going to say "I get it". If we look at matter outside our bodies, we have no idea how that stuff out there, could have experience in certain configurations.

So we may get a theory, perhaps, but how can something "objective" could lead to something "subjective", goes beyond our comprehension, it seems to me.

Quoting Manuel

So we may get a theory, perhaps, but how can something "objective" could lead to something "subjective", goes beyond our comprehension, it seems to me.

Sure. I think Chalmers suggests accepting consciousness as an entity in its own right, in pretty much the same way Newton put gravity forward as something we know about, but haven't explained yet.

He sees this as the first step in creating a theory of consciousness.

The point I saw Chomsky making about this was that Chalmers' approach seems to suggest that we understand matter as thoroughly as possible, and we don't. I don't think Chalmers does assume that. He's a soft ontological anti-realist, so there's mysterianism in that. We have no vantage point on the physical/mental divide, so these terms aren't drawn from observation, they're just useful residents of thought. See what I mean?

Quoting frank

The point I saw Chomsky making about this was that Chalmers' approach seems to suggest that we understand matter as thoroughly as possible, and we don't. I don't think Chalmers does assume that.

The first sentence is crucial, in that we do not "understand matter as thoroughly as possible." That is exactly right. In fact, as Strawson and Chomsky point out, it was precisely this very assumption that made Descartes postulate a second substance, res cogitans.

It turns out he was wrong then, Dennett and the Churchlands are making the same mistake now, only with updated physics.

Quoting frank

See what I mean?

In the essay, he doesn't pick put Chalmers specifically, he quotes the "hard problem". So while Chalmers may have been the one to coin it in this manner, Chomsky's comments need not be directed at him at all.

For Chomsky, as these terms are commonly used today, "physical" stands in for what we more or less theoretically understand, physics, biology, etc.

"Non-physical" stand in for those things we don't understand the mind, consciousness, thinking, etc.

Quoting Manuel

It turns out he was wrong then, Dennett and the Churchlands are making the same mistake now, only with updated physics,

Maybe it's normal to try to push our present conceptual scheme to its limits before giving up and calling for new ways of thinking.

I'm pretty unsatisfied with Dennett because he doesn't really push the envelope. His ambitions seem to be limited to casting doubt that we need new ideas.

Quoting Manuel

For Chomsky, as these terms are commonly used today, "physical" stands in for what we more or less theoretically understand, physics, biology, etc.

"Non-physical" stand in for those things we don't understand the mind, consciousness, thinking, etc

So in the past, "physical" was things like billiard balls. Now it covers the whole range of the objects of theory. :up: If we don't have a theory for it, it's non-physical.

Quoting frank

Maybe it's normal to try to push our present conceptual scheme to its limits before giving up and calling for new ways of thinking.

I'm pretty unsatisfied with Dennett because he doesn't really push the envelope. His ambitions seem to be limited to casting doubt that we need new ideas.

I mean, one thing is to read his essays. But to listen to his lectures or interviews, I find it pretty remarkable. He's like "it's obvious that this and this will happen in such systems" and "of course this will happen given natural selection."

He even said regarding Chomsky and mysteries-for-humans, something like "it doesn't follow, I mean, do apes have language, can they ask all the questions we can ask?"

As if being able to ask a question means we can answer them. I find it embarrassing. But, many like him and think it's worth pursuing his ideas.

Quoting frank

So in the past, "physical" was things like billiard balls. Now it covers the whole range of the objects of theory. :up: If we don't have a theory for it, it's non-physical.

Yep, exactly.

Quoting Manuel

mean, one thing is to read his essays. But to listen to his lectures or interviews, I find it pretty remarkable. He's like "it's obvious that this and this will happen in such systems" and "of course this will happen given natural selection."

Yep. Same with his ideas about morality: all bluster and nothing of substance behind it.

Quoting StreetlightX

Ah right so you're just restating your claims without addressing anything I said.

Yes, because you haven't demonstrated a great understanding of what's being claimed, nor displayed a tone of openness to the ideas.

The authorities you cite may very well be correct, but in order for me to really know I'd have to read responses from Chomsky and proponents of his theory, see if what they say makes sense, cite them, etc. This then becomes a game of two internet forum members trying to out-do one another by citing works from a field they're not themselves experts in. We could do the same thing with quantum mechanics as well. I'd rather not play that game, as interesting as it may be.

I'm not a linguist, and frankly don't care very much whether Chomsky is right or wrong on this issue -- I'll let the experts in that field work that out with new evidence and new theories. What I object to specifically in your claims, is the characterization of his work as "creationist" and "theological," which still strikes me as completely unsubstantiated, and pretty clearly motivated by other factors.

Quoting Xtrix

Yes, because you haven't demonstrated a great understanding of what's being claimed, nor displayed a tone of openness to the ideas.

Yes, because I don't believe that religion ought to be accorded any respect whatsoever, especially religion masquerading as science, still less religion that has effectively set back linguistics by an order of decades. You may not like that Chomsky is a closet creationist, or that his writing is indistinguishable from theology, or the fact that you are an effective temple devotee - but that is your problem, not mine.

Dor again is worth quoting as usual (emphasis in the original!):

After fifty years of research, all that is left is the original assumption of infinite generativity—the idea that everything we ever do and experience, which is finite by definition, is always an arbitrary obstacle on our way toward the fulfillment and understanding of our infinite linguistic potential. This is a philosophical assumption, actually a religious assumption, that goes against the very idea of science. In this sense, the series of articles by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch might be more favorably read as joint statements of resignation: we have tried to find common ground between linguistics and evolutionary science; as far as the periphery of language is concerned, we believe there is no real problem; at its core, however, language still seems to defy the mode of explanation that is at the core of evolutionary theory; maybe, only maybe, what we believe about the core of language might be reconciled with something at the periphery of evolutionary theory; but beyond that, we really have nothing to offer. The mystery is there to stay.

Hence my original claim that the article in the OP is nothing other than a bunch of scaffolding to justify Chomsky's linguistic creationism.

Quoting StreetlightX

I don't believe that religion ought to be accorded any respect whatsoever

I disagree with this in general.

Regarding Chomsky's work as "religion" or "pseudoscience," I have yet to see any substantiation from you. Again, parroting a handful of experts doesn't prove anything except that you have -- for whatever reason -- chosen to believe that this is "the" truth. What it is, in reality, is a genuine scientific debate, so far as I can see. I've often heard Chomsky use "dogma" to describe gradualism in evolutionary theory, which is also not too helpful. But I wouldn't consider traditional Darwinists to be on the level of creationists.

Ironically enough, you're using the same tactics actual creationists use against "evolutionists" -- and with the same conviction. They also gladly seize upon genuine scientific debate as a means to paint it all as religious.

After fifty years of research, all that is left is the original assumption of infinite generativity

Hardly true. Which you'd know if you read anything outside of Tomasello, Dor, and Everett.

the idea that everything we ever do and experience, which is finite by definition, is always an arbitrary obstacle on our way toward the fulfillment and understanding of our infinite linguistic potential. This is a philosophical assumption, actually a religious assumption

Maybe. But unfortunately for Dor, this has nothing to do with digital infinity or recursive enumeration. I doubt Dor himself knows what "infinite linguistic potential" even means. You won't find any such claims in Chomsky.

This is why I think this discussion -- and most discussions with you -- are pointless. Unfortunate, given that we share similar interests. So it goes.

Quoting Xtrix

Which you'd know if you read anything outside the Tomasello, Dor, and Everett.

One day you'll cite someone other than Chomsky, and then you'll be allowed to talk.

Reply to Manuel

"Here the best starting point for distinguishing between the two usages is to note that the animate and the inanimate often elicit different linguistic treatment. Languages, for instance, tend to structure narratives from the perspective of people (especially the first person), rather than things, so people are more likely to be sentence subjects, things to be objects."

-- How Dead Languages Work by Coulter George

So languages tend to be structured to distinguish animate from inanimate, and to specify a pov. That would be a reason to lean toward a soft mysterianism. We'd have to transcend our own language structure to embrace any kind of monism without basically belying it with every sentence.

So this is Sapir-Whorf territory. The movie Arrival is about that. Plus early USSR poets thought a drastic linguistic change would have to accompany their new culture.

Reply to frank

Sapir-Whorf has been studied for decades, it turns out to not hold up to scrutiny, which is not to say that different languages may express very specific things differently, for instance, the Aboriginals instead of having a word for "red" say "like blood", and so on. Similar curiosities arise in different cultures.

Reply to Manuel

Sure. A soft version of Sapir-Whorf is generally accepted by linguists. It's the hard version that's rejected.

ds

Quoting Manuel

It's the simple view that there are things we can know and things we cannot, given that we are natural creatures. Not in this essay, but in a different one, he distinguishes between "problems" and "mysteries", problems are those questions we can ask and (hopefully) answer. "Mysteries" are those we can ask and not answer, such as say, free will or how is it possible for matter to think? Then there are questions we can't even ask, because we don't know how to phrase them.

This would give an "updated" view on the intuitive aspect:

https://cprtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/COMPLETE-REPORT-Goswami-Childrens-Cognitive-Development-and-Learning.pdf

Particularly "naive physics" p.6.

Yes, there is an interesting body of research in psychology and education regarding "folk" or "naive" conceptions of the world and their relation to science. What has been found is that folk have fairly robust beliefs and (arguably) theories concerning the operation of the physical world, that they often conflict with the scientific view, and that they are resistant to modification via scientific instruction (though the extent of their incorrigibility is debated). Is this what you think Chomsky means with his "mysteries"?

The claim itself is unremarkable, considering that it has been known and studied for decades. But the implication of the unintelligibility of the world and impossibility of knowledge is nonsense. Intelligibility and knowledge aren't about innate intuitions, or else we would have to say that pretty much our entire body of so-called knowledge isn't actually intelligible to us! This is just language on holiday.

Quoting Manuel

The 17th century scientific revolution was a reaction to Aristotelean physics, which postulated occult forces that no longer made sense. But of course, Aristotle was taken very seriously and was considered by many to be among the greatest of thinkers, no doubt about that. Aristotle was likely highlighting other aspects of our innate "folk psychology", putting emphasis on different aspects of the world, which were not satisfactory for many of the 17th century figures.

The conception of the world as a mechanical contraption, which Chomsky identifies with materialism and contrasts with later scientific ideas, such as Newton's gravity, is actually pretty specific to that time and place on which he dwells the most. I am sure that it has connections with folk physics, but I don't think that it is identical to it. Those materialists were pretty sophisticated folk, for better or for worse.

Quoting Manuel

I'd only quibble that I don't think physicists have intuitions about how gravity works, they have intuitions about how theories about gravity work and how they can relate to other phenomena in the world. The intuition would be on the theory side.

Point taken, these are not identical to physical intuitions, as those psychology studies that we've been referring to show.

Quoting Manuel

The main topic of the essay, as I read it, is that we've lowered the standards of science, we no longer seek to understand the world, but seek theories about aspects of the world. That's a big lowering of standards of explanation.

But whose standards are these? Who ever thought that a newborn babe, so to speak, could intuitively grasp how the world works, down to the very foundations?

This is why I am skeptical that this is really what Chomsky was driving at - that he was even driving at any such specific thesis. He seems perfectly happy and engaged with his dilettante notes on the history and philosophy of science, but I don't see him pushing hard for some grand claim.

Quoting Manuel

As for your last question, I think, in the end, the point is going to be person dependent. For me, it's quite crazy that we understand so little and that the world exists at all, it's baffling to me. There's no reason to expect any species to evolve having a capacity to ask and answer questions about the world at all, there's no obvious benefit to doing these things.

Well, evolution is notorious for its lack of foresight. I also don't think that there was any simple and specific reason for this outcome.

Quoting SophistiCat

Is this what you think Chomsky means with his "mysteries"?

It's studying what the classics - up till Newton - and a bit beyond him, took to be a fact about the world, that we could understand it. We can't. What we can understand are theories about the world, which do give us interesting insights - as seen by modern physics. But it's way less than what they (Descartes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Leibniz, etc.) would have wanted and thought possible.

So that we can't understand the world, as opposed to theories about it, is the mystery. Now as you say, we take it for granted, it's not a surprise, because we've gotten used to it.

Quoting SophistiCat

The claim itself is unremarkable, considering that it has been known and studied for decades. But the implication of the unintelligibility of the world and impossibility of knowledge is nonsense. Intelligibility and knowledge aren't about innate intuitions, or else we would have to say that pretty much our entire body of so-called knowledge isn't actually intelligible to us! This is just language on holiday.

That's true, now. Not then.

I also agree it is nonsense to argue about the "impossibility of knowledge". Chomsky doesn't say that at all. Otherwise, why would he bother developing linguistics?

Unintelligibility of the world, not about theories concerning it.

He written a decent amount about "language going on holiday". This video is less than an hour long, but he discusses much of what he takes to be confusions in contemporary philosophy, largely based on mistaken technical notions. I'll post it here for anyone interested, but I don't expect anyone to see it all, there's already too much in the essay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHS1NraVsAc

Quoting SophistiCat

But whose standards are these? Who ever thought that a newborn babe, so to speak, could intuitively grasp how the world works, down to the very foundations?

This is why I am skeptical that this is really what Chomsky was driving at - that he was even driving at any such specific thesis. He seems perfectly happy and engaged with his dilettante notes on the history and philosophy of science, but I don't see him pushing hard for some grand claim.

By the standards of essentially all the early modern scientists. They had what we still have, an innate "mechanistic" understanding of the world, they thought the world worked like this.

Chomsky is simply quoting distinguished figures from Descartes to Newton, implying he agrees with them. The sources he gives are easy to find and I think back up his interpretation.

It's perhaps difficult now, because we've advanced quite a lot in science, in terms of technique and theory formation. We take too much for granted.

I suppose one should keep in mind that they lived in a time in which they believed in God and that the world existed for a reason. It wouldn't make sense for God to create a world which we can't understand - save by theories about it. We now don't use God.

I think the same arguments can be rephrased by using "nature" instead of God. But this may be a reason for thinking this essay is missing something.

Quoting SophistiCat

Well, evolution is notorious for its lack of foresight. I also don't think that there was any simple and specific reason for this outcome.

Yep. Maybe no reasons at all, just chance and luck. If we are the only creature with the capacity for knowledge in the entire universe, which could be the case, then that's pretty mind boggling to me.

Reply to Manuel

I want to say, first, that I approve of your sense of wonder.

@SophistiCat, I read a lot of what you post and generally find it both well-informed and level-headed, but as long as I’ve been reading you, you have remained, shall we say, unimpressed by such expressions of wonder and bafflement. For you, if there’s a theory that works, all strangeness of the phenomena accounted for is banished, and no strangeness attaches to a theory that is successful. I’m exaggerating, I suppose, but have I mistaken your attitude?

I'll venture out on a limb. What I often find most interesting in philosophy is something that looks like it might not be philosophy at all, but rather “psychology of philosophy”. I’m thinking of the way Wittgenstein describes us as held captive by a picture we have of how language works, or Sellars’s discussion of the myth of the given or of the manifest and scientific images of man. It seems more and more to me that the “deep structure”, if I may put it that way, of philosophy (because, of thought) is not really logical at all, but something more like this. This might be in the neighborhood of Lakoff with his metaphors, or even Jung with his myths and archetypes. As I said, I’m out on a limb here.

Now, @Manuel, when you say that today’s scientists, and by extension those of us who have realigned our worldview to theirs, to whatever degree, only understand their theories, not the world, I wonder if we could take this as an inability to form a new picture (or metaphor) to go with the theory. “Inability” would support the idea of a limit to what we can understand; perhaps it’s enough to say that we haven’t yet come up with such a picture. The old picture still holds us captive, and perhaps we’re stuck with it, as a bequest from Darwin. (Sellars thought it was inevitable that the manifest image be replaced by the scientific image, but that it was an uncomfortable process, and he advocated a “stereoscopic vision”.) Or perhaps not. But these things tend to be old, and, until someone brings them to light, unnoticed. Jung specifically places this sort of thing in the unconscious, apparently with good reason, so you have to wonder just how much they are within our “control”. (And of course Wittgenstein is widely read as suggesting that what’s needed to deal with such a complex is therapy.)

It does seem to me that understanding might find its home around here, in this sort of pre-logical, perhaps metaphorical or pictorial layer, and this is worlds away from knowing how to operate a theory like a bit of machinery.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

I want to say, first, that I approve of your sense of wonder.

Thanks. I fully agree with Raymond Tallis when he says "In the beginning was astonishment."

Reply to Srap Tasmaner

That looks accurate to me and it makes sense, once we move away from intuitions - including "naïve realism" - to see what's "really" there, we lack the capacity to form a good picture as it forces us into a world which we don't experience as science describes.

We see red and blue, not photons hitting the eye. We see stable objects, not objects in two states at once, etc.

As for us yet not having a good metaphor, that's true. We cannot shrink to QM scales and are forced to use analogies from the manifest image, like dropping a pebble on a lake, and speaking of "waves" in the quantum world in a similar-ish manner, just to get a picture.

Even this image is not quite correct, so we need to get an even stranger analogy and distort that to some extent, to even get any "picture" at all.

Here's actually a very good video directed at newbies to QM (I'm not far from being one), but I think the imagery used here may approximate what you have in mind. He's an excellent popularizer, I think:

The "useful imagery" begins at 3:00 min, but especially at 4:40.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlEovwE1oHI&t=500s

As for your last sentence, that's likely really crucial. This is where Cartesian "creativity" comes in or the "imagination" as Hume uses the phrase.

Descartes in no small measure postulated his second substance in an attempt to try and make sense of this, as even by his standards, mechanistic materialism could not explain it. For Hume, the imagination is a mystery.

But it's fundamental to human beings, maybe our most unique trait. It's what we do almost all the time. When it's done by smart people, it can lead to deeper understanding - as Einstein's "happiest thought" demonstrated.

Apropos of some of the ideas discussed this thread, if not of Chomsky in particular, I've found an intriguing chapter by Neal Stephenson, well known as a sci-fi and fantasy author, but in this case concerning the metaphysical implications of Liebniz' and Newton's debates. It can be found here http://faculty.cord.edu/andersod/Stephenson-Metaphysics.pdf

Reply to Wayfarer
If I remember correctly, the biggest dispute between Leibniz and Newton was concerning the importance of Newton's "momentum", mass times velocity, which Leibniz called dead force, in relation to Leibniz's "vis viva" (living force), which he expressed as mass times velocity squared. It turned out that the two principles are not incompatible, but Leibniz's principle became far more useful, and central to the concept of energy.

Reply to Manuel

There’s an essay I read many years ago, I think it must have been by Howard Nemerov, where he defines poetry as “getting something right in language”. His example, if I recall correctly, came from a journal of Audubon’s — I forget the details, but it was something like this: he described some species of bluebird as looking just like a sparrow that had been dipped in blue ink. Now, of course, that’s not something one could actually do with a living bird, and even with a dead one it would not have the effect Audubon suggests, and yet as an image it strikes home. We understand it, and Nemerov seizes on just this sort of feat of imagination as characteristic of poetry. (Perhaps in this essay or in another, he devotes several pages to Herbert’s metaphorical description of prayer as “reversed thunder”.)

So yes I agree that imagination belongs here, and in particular as a perhaps unlikely source of understanding — “unlikely” because we might be tempted to align understanding with, you know, reality, and imagination not. Or we might say something about the value of hypothetical thinking (in counterfactual reasoning, prediction, and so on) and reduce imagination to a sort of technique we use for grasping reality analytically. But it could very well be the other way around, that it’s imaginative understanding we seek, and in some cases analysis can help us achieve that — if it provides a way to leverage understanding we already possess.

Reply to Srap Tasmaner

It's very hard to say. Hume, for instance, argues that what we get are perceptions and form ideas out of these. But for many ideas, the imagination must play a role, such as registering an object as being the same throughout time.

So we could have a realism in which we take what we directly experience as "more true" to what's in the world than what our ideas add to this. But one must imagine that when great new theories are put forth, it's only possible because of our imagination, thus, there's something about it which is more accurate as to the nature of the world than perception.

Animals can't formulate theories and are stuck in the present. As we gain sophistication in terms of mental power, we pierce further in the universe.

So I don't know. Maybe imagination has nothing to do with what's out there, and what matters are theories that get things right, we happen to get help by ways of using it. On the other hand, perhaps there's no understanding at all, without imagination.

We don't know enough to be able to say definitely in such a dense topic.

Quoting Manuel

But one must imagine that when great new theories are put forth, it's only possible because of our imagination, thus, there's something about it which is more accurate as to the nature of the world than perception.

Quoting Manuel

As we gain sophistication in terms of mental power, we pierce further in the universe.

This is a good point, and one that hadn't occurred to me. But the question seems to be whether we can form a "clear and distinct idea" of what we theorize. And, as you suggest, maybe we can't, but that's just the way it is, and the products of our imagination, in one sense, reach beyond what we can imagine, in another sense. If so, that in itself is an interesting result. That something like this goes on is old news -- mathematicians routinely deal with many-dimensional spaces that they cannot picture, and so in that sense can't imagine, for instance. What remains at issue would be the claim that in doing so we understand the theory, not the object treated of by the theory.

On the other hand, the cognitive scientists are going to tell us that all we've ever understood are theories we generate unconsciously. But there may still be a difference in kind, if our "native" theorizing hooks up to particular cognitive capacities that our scientific theories don't.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

And, as you suggest, maybe we can't, but that's just the way it is, and the products of our imagination, in one sense, reach beyond what we can imagine, in another sense. If so, that in itself is an interesting result.

I think so.

I mean, it's the question Hawking asks: "what breathes fire into the equations"? They're mathematical theories that happen to link up with the world, somehow. That's modern physics.

We can come up with nice artistic illustrations that may help a bit. I like them, seeing equations only few people get doesn't really excite my mind.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

On the other hand, the cognitive scientists are going to tell us that all we've ever understood are theories we generate unconsciously. But there may still be a difference in kind, if our "native" theorizing hooks up to particular cognitive capacities that our scientific theories don't.

It's hard to doubt that most of what we "process" goes on outside our immediate awareness.

For me, as pertaining to this essay and how I view the subject, is this: say you're at a park, seeing some people play football (soccer). They pass the ball one to other. We see a foot strike the ball with a certain force, we project the ball will go to the other person.

Say one of the people playing kicks the ball really hard and the ball goes off in the distance, that's not confusing. We get that, we "understand" at this level, that if a person kicks a rubber object, these things will follow.

The problem starts when we become puzzled about this common sense. It may even begin by seeing an apple falling from a tree and asking why does it drop instead of going up or shooting sideways?

After that, all bets are off.

Quoting Manuel

The problem starts when we become puzzled about this common sense.

Yes, one result of this sort of thing might be a scientific theory that works, whether we exactly understand it or not, or do in some senses but not others. (It's Asimov, right? Discoveries begin not with "Eureka!" but with "That's funny...")

On the other hand, you might note that the apple falling makes sense to you, but shouldn't.

In both science and philosophy, theorizing ought to save the appearances, even when that's our own habitual worldview. For example, a theory that we have nothing like what we think of as free will ought also to explain why it seems to us that we do. Or, in the case of the falling apple, there ought to be an explanation for why we don't find its behavior surprising.

But first there's the imaginative leap (something like Pound's "Make it new!") of seeing the ordinary as strange. It's the crucial step for everything from science to poetry to political activism. And by definition, that step is all about us, about, at the very least, our expectations and prejudices. You can see this beautifully in Plato's dialogues, when Socrates's interlocutors so often experience a sort of vertigo. ("I thought I knew what love is, but now that you ask, I don't know.") And there again it's a question of how our various capacities hook up one with another -- not everything you understand can readily be put into words, for instance.

What then, after all, are we up to when doing philosophy?

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

On the other hand, you might note that the apple falling makes sense to you, but shouldn't.

It's close to this, not exactly though. The apple falling does make sense to us and probably should, given (probably, I'm totally guessing) elementary survival needs. If we needed to question the need for apples falling, we would probably be killed.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

Or, in the case of the falling apple, there ought to be an explanation for why we don't find its behavior surprising.

Yes.

We see surprise in other intelligent animals rather intermittently and for very few phenomena.

The issue becomes if we begin to question this. Why do apples fall and not rise? There's nothing in experience that guarantees that apples won't go up next time they "break away" from a tree.

It's a bit tough to phrase out, but you more than get the gist here. I'm impressed. It's really about being baffled, I think. Most people - this isn't a criticism by the way - just aren't. Things work the way they do because that's what they do.

I get that attitude too, but it misses out or overlooks on important aspects about ourselves and the world.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

And there again it's a question of how our various capacities hook up one with another -- not everything you understand can readily be put into words, for instance.

What then, after all, are we up to when doing philosophy?

Everybody has different interests. Some like to have clarity of thought, others want to unite the sciences. Many care about ethics, etc, etc.

Speaking for myself, I suppose it's taking the given and seeing that it's extremely far from being a "free lunch".

Quoting Manuel

The apple falling does make sense to us and probably should

Quoting Manuel

There's nothing in experience that guarantees that apples won't go up next time they "break away" from a tree.

I guess in our context here, the idea is that we can see no reason for the apple to fall, but we have observed the constant conjunction of and so we have induction to justify the reasonableness of the apple falling — but nothing justifies our use of induction. This is tricky territory if we expect making sense and being justified always to go together. Or maybe not — if we allow that induction itself doesn’t actually make sense!

The wonder thing — it’s got two sides: there’s mystery, the confrontation with what exceeds our understanding; but then there’s seeing what’s familiar in a new light, and that involves a step of defamiliarizing — the temporary mystery — but the experience is completed in an illumination of the familiar, a deeper understanding of what we had understood somewhat superficially. We can, sometimes, through discipline, defamiliarize the ordinary, but that’s not the final goal. (I’ll keep quoting poets, this time Eliot from Four Quartets: “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.”)

At a glance, it looks like the first sort would be primary, and that we defamiliarize the ordinary because we have had the experience of confronting something new, and then learning to understand it. We aim to mimic that experience by making the familiar new. Sometimes this may be more or less forced upon us — if we’re brought up short, if our expectations of how something familiar would be behave are not met. But it’s hard to see how we could mimic that experience. Instead, it looks like we need to begin with something like a suspicion that perhaps there is more here than meets the eye. We have to imagine that our understanding — which has proven its adequacy — is incomplete. That’s a curious thing. Having merely opened the door there, it’s generally not hard to begin asking questions that are difficult to answer. — But maybe it takes no such effort of imagination; maybe most of our beliefs show themselves inadequate at some point, and we’re just adept at ignoring their shortcomings. In that case, the trick would be catching yourself in the act of sweeping problems under the rug.

Reply to Srap Tasmaner

Historically, simplifying a great deal and looking at tendencies while skipping major figures, I think that Descartes invoked God as an assurance that we can't obviously be mistaken about our common beliefs. Though we can't explain mind, we can say a great deal about bodes.

Along comes Locke and says, we can't go that far, yes, ultimately, we are in the hands of the Almighty for ultimate causes, because we just don't understand them.

But already there are seeds that, by merely looking at ordinary objects, we have trouble, we can't really say if secondary qualities exist in the objects or not, but it doesn't matter for our practical affairs. Nor do we know essences - if they even exist.

Then Hume comes along and says, all we have empirical verifiable evidence for is constant conjunction, but this does not mean that's all there is to causality, it's merely what we can say with confidence about it.

Many things, including experiencing one object being the same after two different instances of perception are a "fiction" - his word - meaning, more than can be empirically verified, but a sensible postulate. Along with this, he points out that our individuating objects as one being different from another, is another fiction, useful, but not at all certain.

Beyond that, going through Kant and beyond, the project seems to me to simultaneously show how little we can say confidently about the world, while sticking to causal relations, connected by us and assumed to belong to the world - and we've had great success.

But as each major figure advances, the key is, as you say, being utterly baffled by what we assume to be true and realizing, after close scrutiny, that our common sense beliefs do not hold up to the mind-independent world. I think the case is both, our understanding is in fact incomplete and we have to catch ourselves from sweeping things under the rug. Today we hear people say "that obviously follows from learning/natural selection/laws of physics".

The problem here, is that the gap between physics and biology to the psychology of a human being, in terms of complexity, is just massive.

Reply to Manuel

Instead of (one of the versions of) the epistle I could post here, I'll just say this: your principal concern seems to be with the perceived conflict between our everyday understanding of things and the scientific view; my principal concern is that we don't generally understand our everyday view at all. For me, the value of the step of wonder or bafflement is to see the everyday view as a view, to scrub off the patina of "natural" it has acquired. (Really don't like the word "view" here, much less "theory", but there you go.)

Reply to Srap Tasmaner

I don't disagree at all. I mean, for me everything is essentially a mystery, science included. It's not as if science makes sense, as I've been saying through-out this thread (we don't understand the world, physics is mathematical, math is...?, etc.) .

I have a conflict with Peirce's quote:

"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."

I don't doubt colours exist, objects exist, music (for us) exists, etc. But my reason tells me otherwise. We add all these things to the world and would not exist as postulated by us, absent us. It's maddening because it's a constant conflict between feeling and reasons.

Quoting Manuel

I don't disagree at all. I mean, for me everything is essentially a mystery, science included. It's not as if science makes sense, as I've been saying through-out this thread (we don't understand the world, physics is mathematical, math is...?, etc.) .

I think this is a reasonable position. Why should anything 'make sense' - the very idea of something making sense is in itself just a frame driven by humans who are meaning making creatures with a fetish for certainty. I guess science as practiced by many does take a metaphysical position that the world is intrinsically knowable - it this a case of elevating predictability to the status of certainty? I am often haunted by something Richard Rorty said in an interview on Dutch TV - "We don't know anything at all about truth, all we know is how to justify ideas."

Reply to Tom Storm

:up:

I'm sympathetic to that view and it seems to me to be reasonable, again, given the creatures that we are.

I mean, this whole problem with "Truth", can send people down a rabbit hole. We can say some things about the world, which are subject to revision and refinement.

But there are far more questions than answers.

Quoting Manuel

But there are far more questions than answers.

No question. I don't think we can underestimate the emotional hook concepts like 'truth' have on people who so often seem to require such notions in order to feel safe and worthwhile. You often hear the echoes of this in discussions of morality "If there is no God then there is no reason to be moral and life is meaningless." That kind of thing. Truth and foundational guarantees still make the world go around.

Reply to Tom Storm

I mean, I think we can use the word "truth", with a lower case "t". I'm seeing letters on a screen is true, at one level of description. Photons are hitting my eye, likewise, etc.

But this is different from "Truth", which many seek to know.

Reply to Manuel

Your predicament seems to have this structure: reason tells you that color, objects, music, and so on, are things you or we have added to the world, and, by telling you that, at the same time reason tells you that you or we can take all that away, at least imaginatively. Thus we can say, that's not really a mountain, it's just a bunch of particles or fields or something that we happen to call a "mountain"; is not really there, but something we add to the world.

I'd want to look closely at how this argument works. For instance, is this the real argument, or is the real argument the other way around: that is, because we can imaginatively subtract, we conclude that we must have added. Just how strong is this argument, in either direction? How do we imagine this adding and subtracting business to work? What convinces us this is how it works?

Quoting Manuel

I'm sympathetic to that view and it seems to me to be reasonable, again, given the creatures that we are.

Ought not to be forgotten that the Greek philosophers thought we were something other than, or more than, other creatures. ('Creatures' means 'created beings', and in traditional philosophy there was a fundamental distinction between Creator and created.) In any case, in Greek philosophy, 'nous' was differentiated from sensory perception, imagination, and memory as being 'that which is able to discern the real.' It was, if you like, 'the residue of the real' in the soul. Of course in our sceptical day this is regarded as archaic, along with the rest of scholastic philosophy, but it might be worth at least remembering that distinction.

Quoting Manuel

I don't doubt colours exist, objects exist, music (for us) exists, etc. But my reason tells me otherwise. We add all these things to the world and would not exist as postulated by us, absent us. It's maddening because it's a constant conflict between feeling and reasons.

I think the distinction that modern philosophy has lost is between what exists and what is real. They are after all regarded as synonymous in the modern lexicon - that what exists is what is real. But I say that what is real overflows the bounds of what exists, because it includes such things as numbers and judgements.

You might say that numbers and judgements are the product of the mind, but they're essential to the way we parse experience. The constitute our world, insofar as we're rational beings.

The problem with empiricism is that it has no conceptual space for such realities. As far as empiricism is concerned, such ideas are

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

not really there, but something we add to the world.

But what 'world' would we see, without those intellectual operations? It would be altogether unformed and in that sense unintelligible. The problem with empiricism is it's looking for intelligibility in the wrong place viz. in objects and the objective domain. It wishes to derive everything from sensory experience and cannot admit of any form of innate ideas. We've already been through that in this thread and you saw the arguments.

Reply to Wayfarer

I mean, our vocabulary changes with the times, that makes sense. And we can still use the word "soul", as in, "that moved my soul". If it has religious implications, implying supernatural causes, that is, causes not found in nature at large, then it's not going to be attractive to many people.

Of course, this depends on how we think about "nature", which can be very varied.

I think one can hold that view that we are quite special creatures, we have the capacity for reflection and explicit knowledge. But we are still part of the world.

Reply to Srap Tasmaner

That's a supremely difficult question and answers will depend on sensibilities.

Let's take a mountain. Plainly a "mountain", as a word and as a concept, is human specific. There likely is more to concepts than words, but words are necessary at least.

I see a mountain. But now I close my eyes. There's still a mountain there, I can touch it, hear it, and so on. But suppose I lost my sense of touch and smell and proceed so on down the line, there's precious little left to say, as far as our sense go.

But now consider this: deaf-blind people, who acquire the capacity to read braille, show a remarkable capacity for a very rich inner life, based on some small bumps on a page. Likewise by merely putting there hands on your throat, they can understand the words you say.

The stimulus is poor (as Chomsky would say) , the reply is rich. That strongly hints, at least to me, that we overwhelmingly add things to the world, that aren't there absent us.

What would the opposite look like? If the world was rich, and our nature poor, I'd expect all species to have essentially the same cognitive capacities, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Quoting Manuel

If it has religious implications, implying supernatural causes, that is, causes not found in nature at large, then it's not going to be attractive to many people.

There's nothing else in nature remotely like h. sapiens, in terms of our cognitive abilities - but this seems a forbidden truth. I think it's one of the pernicious consequences of adopting Darwinism as a philosophy, which it is not.

Quoting Manuel

I see a mountain.

There is a Zen koan, 'first, there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is'. It was made into a song by Donovan. Interpretation is like this - in the first stage, mountains are just mountains and rivers are just rivers. This is unreflective realism; there are teachers to learn from and things to be learned—in other words a mountain to climb.

The second stage, when mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers, is starting to see things as they truly are - that everything is made up of other things, that nothing exists on its own right. Those mountains are made up of rocks and trees and grass and other things. Everything is connected to everything else. When we become conscious that this applies to ourselves too. We live in the sense that we are separate from the world around us. This causes us to suffer and has stopped us from understanding.

When we come to realize the oneness of things, we comprehend that we are Enlightened, and we have been the whole time. It’s at the third stage, when mountains are once again mountains and rivers are once again rivers, that we really understand; we reconcile the paradox of being. This is where we learn to dwell in both the transcendent reality and the immanent one.

Quoting Wayfarer

There's nothing else in nature remotely like h. sapiens, but this seems a forbidden truth. I think it's one of the pernicious consequences of adopting Darwinism as a philosophy, which it is not.

I agree.

We mostly disagree on terminology: "naturalism", "empiricism", etc.

But the terminological oddities are mine, you use them as they are commonly employed in contemporary philosophy. I think these terms are misused, but it's splitting hairs.

Reply to Wayfarer

That makes sense to me, in so far as things like this can make sense. That koan proceeds to take apart what we take for granted.

What is curious is to see how far can we push our ordinary commonsense understanding in everyday affairs.

The issue, as Magee put it, is to not confuse an epistemology (what we experience) for an ontology (what there is). This is what happens to certain strands of empiricism, the textual evidence for Locke and Hume is much more subtle though.

As Chomsky puts it in a related essay to this one, we have a "given" in experience. The thing is that the given is already formed by us. So it's not actually given.

It's as Tallis says somewhere, "there is no given without a taken."

Quoting Manuel

What would the opposite look like? If the world was rich, and our nature poor, I'd expect all species to have essentially the same cognitive capacities, which doesn't seem to be the case.

So precisely because we are so intellectually gifted, our ideas are not to be trusted. Where does that come from? Is that suspicion of the smooth talker, the over-educated, the city slicker? It’s not without foundation, but it’s an odd peg to hang a worldview on.

I cannot get a fix on what the source of your anxiety is. Each time I think I have it, you veer off into something else. But it’s been an enjoyable exchange all the same.

Reply to Srap Tasmaner

Richly cognitively endowed, yes. So far as the manifest image goes, it works rather well for ordinary affairs- day to day stuff.

It becomes hard once we begin attributing our manifest image to a mind independent world, that's when our ideas should be suspect.

These are different domains of intellect and cognition, I think. Chomsky calls it a "science forming faculty".

If I have trouble explaining myself, I may well have trouble ironing out these issues. I'm working on that for a project I want to write, but requires much more reading and thinking.

In any case, thanks for the exchange, you always seem to get the main gist of what I'm saying, which is a relief, frankly.

Quoting Manuel

It's studying what the classics - up till Newton - and a bit beyond him, took to be a fact about the world, that we could understand it. We can't.

Where "understanding," according to you (I am not sure about Chomsky), means reconciling with our hypothetical innate intuitions. I say "hypothetical" because, other than young children, everyone's innate intuitions are mixed up with learned or constructed "theoretical" understanding, and separating them takes some work. In addition to which, intuitive understandings are, for the most part, unthought and unarticulated, many of them embodied in our physical abilities of seeing, hearing, moving, and so on. Making these implicit beliefs and theories explicit also takes quite a bit of reconstruction.

But, as I keep saying, it is simply implausible to assert that "the classics" were feral savants, operating on pristine God- or Nature-given intuitions. They were not. They were as sophisticated theoreticians as anyone today - it's just that their background was of their age, not ours. If anything, it was Hume and his fellow empiricists who pushed to clear out the "occult" deposits of classical theory and turn to a more direct, phenomenological perception of the world. Which just served as a renewed basis for more theory construction. That innocent age of theory-free understanding of the world? I don't think it ever happened.

What I think the Newtonian revolution in physics exemplifies is a rise of empirical science that was happening at that time, enabled and spurred on by developments in instrumentation and analysis and the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge. Prior to this development, natural philosophy could be intuitive or "occult" or somewhere in-between. There were controversies, but as long as contesting theories remained nice and vague and metaphysical, they were all on equal footing, and one was free to believe whatever appealed to one's intuitions, politics or learned doctrine.

The new sciences, when they arrived, had an unfair advantage: they "worked." And it is hard to argue with what works; even the unlearned could eventually appreciate their fruits in the form of useful technologies. And so, like it or not, they had to win out.

I don't mean to frame this as an opposition between benighted tradition and the objective truth that science finally uncovered. I think there is continuity and mutual influence between the old and the new ways of thinking. The shape and direction of scientific theorizing owes much to our nature and to our culture. On the other hand, what today's common man or woman considers commonsense are just the sort of things that were baffling Newton and his contemporaries (with the caveat of the enduring pull of folk science). 300 years of scientific dominance have left their mark on our cultural background.

"10. Every solution of a problem raises new unsolved problems; the more so the deeper the original problem and the bolder its solution. The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance -- the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

We may get a glimpse of the vastness of our ignorance when we contemplate the vastness of the heavens: though the mere size of the universe is not the deepest cause of our ignorance, it is one of its causes. "Where I seem to differ from some of my friends', F. P. Ramsey wrote in a charming passage of his Foundations of Mathematics (p. 291), is in attaching little importance to physical size. I don't feel in the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does. I take no credit for weighing nearly seventeen stone."

I suspect that Ramsey's friends would have agreed with him about the insignificance of sheer physical size; and I suspect that if they felt humble before the vastness of the heavens, this was because they saw in it a symbol of their ignorance.

I believe that it would be worth trying to learn something about the world even if in trying to do so we should merely learn that we do not know much. This state of learned ignorance might be a help in many of our troubles. It might be well for all of us to remember that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal."

-- Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

SophistiCat, I read a lot of what you post and generally find it both well-informed and level-headed, but as long as I’ve been reading you, you have remained, shall we say, unimpressed by such expressions of wonder and bafflement. For you, if there’s a theory that works, all strangeness of the phenomena accounted for is banished, and no strangeness attaches to a theory that is successful. I’m exaggerating, I suppose, but have I mistaken your attitude?

I don't know, I don't think I have a consistent attitude towards wonder and bafflement in general. There is one sense in which this is probably true: if we are talking about surprise as an epistemic state, i.e. what happens when we encounter something unexpected, or something for which we have no explanation. This state of surprise is eliminated if we find a satisfactory explanation. Of course, nothing can be totally explained without a residue, so you might say that, upon reflection, we should always be in a state of wonder: Why does the world exist? Why is it the way it is? That sort of thing.

Reply to SophistiCat

Sure. Nothing's ever innocent in this respect, as long as we're human beings, we are going to have biases for everything, if we didn't we'd likely be dead, that's the way to avoid bias. And by "bias" here, I simply mean having a certain perspective on how things should work or look like.

Today, we are dealing with very sophisticated and strange theoretical posits, such as "Many Worlds" or the multiverse and other strange hypothesis, which could turn out to be correct.

And sure, in 300 years, we are going to develop different intuitions and lack certain others. We can't get rid of some of them, such as seeing the sun rising and falling, even though this does not literally happen in the universe, but we can't deny our eyes, even if we know better.

But other intuitions, we take for granted, like gravity on a day to day basis, for some people anyway.

Reply to SophistiCat

Maybe we could say something like this:

(a) The goal of science is to understand everything.
(b) The process of science is to separate what you understand (about a given phenomenon) from what you don't, and then of course try, gradually, to enlarge the bits-we-understand part, shrinking the bits-we-don't part.

We corral what we don't understand into a we'll-get-to-you-later holding pen. Insofar as there's anything to the unity of science, we might find the not-yet-understood bits of various domains overlapping, leaving one last (hopefully little, and smaller all the time) pocket of things we don't understand yet.

One concern perhaps relevant to this discussion is to remember that this is what we're doing: it's all too easy to think that by naming what we don't yet understand, we do understand it. Thus we use words like "energy" and "matter" and "force" as if they mean something. We can show how we use those terms in our theories, and thus how they connect up to things we consider explained and understood, but there's some lingering suspicion that we don't really understand our explanations. (If some of our variables are still unbound, the logician might remind us, we don't yet have a proposition -- only something like a proposition generator.)

That's a sort of engineering take. The philosopher in me would like to approach the issue backwards:

• Why don't we understand everything?

Seriously, why don't we? Most people are just going to say, well, you know, human finitude and all that, of course we don't. Is that an explanation, or is it just putting a name on what we don't understand?

• Why aren't we gods?

• Why isn't the way the world works perfectly clear to us, with nothing hidden?

• Why should it take effort to understand something?

And here maybe the response will be more specific: something about our senses, information, modeling, all that sort of thing. Which would be fine -- to see ourselves as science does leads to no inconsistency -- except it seems to create an unsolvable problem: what about the stuff in the not-yet-understood box?

In a suitably limited domain, our partitioning procedure worked just fine; you can circumscribe what it means for a tool to work, and what will count as an explanation relative to the stuff you're not dealing with. You can puzzle over the interpretation of statistical data without saying, "Hang on -- what are numbers anyway?"

But this perfectly reasonable and practical process does not generalize: we have no way of establishing that our research tools (our own minds) are in good working order (there's no standard we could possibly reach for) -- and if that's the case, just what do we think we're doing? We don't know. We'll have no way of saying whether what we don't understand belongs to us or to the domain.

So I'm not convinced you can just science your way to an understanding of why we don't understand everything.

Of course the question I'm asking -- why don't we understand everything? -- is almost equivalent to asking why we need science. I'm just going to point out (again) that there is a funny doubling-back of the question: we do science because we don't understand everything -- which is just a presumption here -- and we do science by separating what we understand from what we don't, and we also presume we can do that. Can we? How would we know whether we can do this?

(Does it make sense to say, maybe we do understand everything but think we don't? Why or why not? Is it possible to be mistaken about whether you understand something?)

@Manuel, what do you think? Why don't we understand everything? -- Oh, and maybe I should ask, do we just happen not to? Or is this the same as asking, can we understand everything?

Reply to Srap Tasmaner

There's no reason to expect a species to need science to survive. Most living organisms are bacteria, they do quite fine without positing any theory at all.

It's very much going to sound like "stoner talk", but, I think the correct take is to ask "how does this even make any sense?" to almost everything.

We all have the intuition that nothing would be "cheaper" than something - maybe that's wrong as a matter of cosmological fact.

But it doesn't make sense, because, clearly nothing is less problematic than something, but then it isn't. And what are numbers anyway, why can't we seem them in the world?

How can I even lift my arm up? And so on. That's how I think.

There are practical limits to understanding: brain size, limits to our senses, etc. In short, there's no reason to expect us to understand anything. That we can understand anything, to any degree, is remarkable.

Quoting StreetlightX

One day you'll cite someone other than Chomsky, and then you'll be allowed to talk.

Would it be helpful if I quoted linguists who follow Chomsky’s program? I could do so, but I don’t see any need to yet. My understanding of his thought is enough to recognize Dor’s (and, I assume, your own) characterization is completely wrong. So there’s no need to go into technical detail (where I do not have sufficient knowledge), and thus no reason to cite scholars outside Chomsky.

So the comment about reading outside the few scholars you have cited (all prominent critics of Chomsky, one which you have quoted in the past a borderline fraud), while snarky, also happens to be accurate. Doesn’t matter if they were 100 in number — if they misread Chomsky they misread Chomsky. What can I say?

Maybe some of them really do destroy Chomsky’s theories. Fine. I’d have to look at the details and responses, etc— all that I mentioned before. But when you cite Dor, and apparently endorse a comment like

all that is left is the original assumption of infinite generativity—the idea that everything we ever do and experience, which is finite by definition, is always an arbitrary obstacle on our way toward the fulfillment and understanding of our infinite linguistic potential.

then a technical analysis isn’t required. All that’s required is knowing what Chomsky actually says.

And it’s not this. Why?

Because what we “do and experience” does matter, just as what we see matters. And just as there are biological and physical principles involved in vision, there are also principles involved in language.

Chomsky believes there is such a thing as human nature. Perhaps this is wrong. But if it isn’t wrong, then it’s hard to argue (in my view) that language isn’t part of that nature— and an important part. Maybe thinking and awareness are also important parts (I tend to think so). But if we’re approaching these phenomena scientifically, we’re approaching them physically (chemically, biologically), in terms of theory. That’s what Chomsky is doing, and that’s why Chomsky is a scientist.

The best criticism I see is that of unfalsifiability, to be honest. What he’s really doing is applying logic/ mathematics to language. If we reduce language to a simple operation (merge), that may make sense — but only if we first agree with the mathematicalization. Perhaps that’s the wrong emphasis.

But that’s a larger discussion to be had.

[@Manuel I tagged you here to get your thoughts as well, if interested.]

Reply to Xtrix

I can only speak of the larger significance of Chomsky's linguistic theory as it pertains to philosophy. I know a little about the linguistics aspects, though nowhere near enough to speak about the specific details with the authority I would like.

His program tends to be a minority one in linguistics, though obviously this doesn't speak to the truth or falsity of his theory. A glance at some of the literature reveals that a good deal of the criticism is based on empirical assumptions that are just wrong, as a matter of fact. This is shown most strongly in the dogma of externalism in relation to language use.

Connected to this is a view which seems to me to restrict what "empirical" evidence means, to that which is publicly observable. This happens to leave out that which allows us to observe and make theories in the first place: experience. That's not publicly observable, but it is empirical. You can deny it if you wish, just as one can deny how old the Earth is, but it doesn't touch the fact.

Since we can see that people use words to refer to things, and the things referred to are observable, it's assumed this is what language does, refer to external things.

What's also left out, is this extremely rich, sophisticated and extremely sublime aspect of innatism. It's never denied for any other animal, so far as I'm aware (perhaps with the exception of radical behaviorism in the 50's). There's a lot to say about this topic, much of it fascinating - particularly in the philosophical tradition, in which some history has been obscured and important figures, like Cudworth or More are not even known.

But's that would be the topic for another thread.

Beyond this, I can't really say much.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

Why don't we understand everything?

Understanding is always understanding something in terms of something else; reducing one thing to another; fitting the explanandum within an explanatory framework - explanans, which is, for the present purposes, taken for granted. Therefore, understanding literally everything is an oxymoron. A narrative that purports to explain everything would not even be recognizable to us as an explanation. Any explanation must be grounded in some givens.

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

One concern perhaps relevant to this discussion is to remember that this is what we're doing: it's all too easy to think that by naming what we don't yet understand, we do understand it. Thus we use words like "energy" and "matter" and "force" as if they mean something. We can show how we use those terms in our theories, and thus how they connect up to things we consider explained and understood, but there's some lingering suspicion that we don't really understand our explanations. (If some of our variables are still unbound, the logician might remind us, we don't yet have a proposition -- only something like a proposition generator.)

This, as they say, is a feature, not a bug. Feynman has a nice discussion of force in his lectures apropo of exactly this.

Science doesn't attempt to understand everything: scientific explanations are reductive, rather than totalizing. You study some phenomena from a certain perspective, identify an underlying structure, then try to fit the phenomena of interest within that structure. The structure - the scientific theory - is your given in this context. Science has many constantly evolving theories, but theories are only succeeded by more theories. There can never be a point where everything is explained away into nothing.

Of course, understanding, sense-making is a much more general activity than just doing science. We engage in it constantly, in every act of cognition. Vision, for example, is a low-level, largely unconscious process of sense-making, where we reconcile visual signals with a predictive model, adjusting the model as needed.

It is possible to explain everything within the context of an explanatory framework - that is, explain everything other than the framework itself. It doesn't usually happen in science, but a broader gestalt, a religious or spiritual system, or even just a state of mind, however fleeting, can make such a claim. (Perhaps this is what people mean by being at peace with the world.) But even such all-encompassing sense-making frameworks depend on something being taken for granted, left unexplained: they cannot explain away themselves. As you say,

Quoting Srap Tasmaner

we have no way of establishing that our research tools (our own minds) are in good working order (there's no standard we could possibly reach for)

Even where we can reach for some other standard (than a given explanatory framework), that only moves the question one step further.

Quoting SophistiCat

Understanding is always understanding something in terms of something else

I like this answer enough that I have given it myself on this forum several times, and even referred to Feynman in doing so.

But I still have some questions.

It's as if we're describing explanation as solving for an unknown in algebra: there is some leveraging of known information, using it, referring to it, describing the unknown in terms of the known, the known determining the unknown, and so on. How far does this analogy generalize?

For instance, how does one bootstrap such a system? If we are born with no information, then we can acquire none. If we are born understanding nothing, then we have nothing "in terms of which" to understand or explain anything. Do we then conclude, as Chomsky urges us to, that there must be something "wired in", as they say? The only explanation anyone will offer for such wiring is Darwin, and it's not obvious that even is an explanation.

Another issue: to say we understand something new (to us) "in terms of" something old (to us) makes sense, and everyone has had such experiences, but it also gives people the willies: everyone nurses doubts that they are doing justice to the novelty, to the strangeness, of the new, and we are all also familiar with cases where this enveloping of the new by the old is to some degree a sham. Ordinary people worry about this sort of thing with relationships -- that is, projecting past experiences, memories of previous relationships and so on, onto new relationships. That phrase "in terms of" is a little scary, and with good reason. (It's why the arguments about relativism and incommensurability don't go away: it's cold comfort that you wouldn't recognize a genuinely alien perspective as either alien or a perspective, as you choose.)

What about circularity? Is that an option? Might we explain X given framework A, and an element Y of framework A in terms of framework B, eventually -- the longer the chain, the safer -- working our way back around to X? Within each framework, you're fine, but only by artificially defining the boundary of the "framework" so that circularity lies outside it...

Is there no rock bottom? It begins to look like the institution of science is embedded in an already given, "taken for granted", as you say, system of cognition. This sense of a science being embedded in something else can be disconcerting. One area I know a little about arises in philosophical logic: look at a dozen introductory textbooks and compare how they introduce the "schemas" or "templates" that will make up the bulk of the book; there's no agreed upon way to introduce these things, no agreement on what they are, what their logical status is, and so on. Each author seems to go his own way with this because if you want to use logic for problems expressed in a natural language, you have to cross that divide somehow. (There's something similar in getting mathematics going, teaching kids what sets and numbers are, and so on.) There is no obvious way to do that, so textbook authors take a variety of approaches with varying amounts of hand-waving. It's hard not to wonder exactly what you're ending up with if this messiness is apparently required around the edges, and particularly required somewhere uncomfortably near the foundations of your science. (And again, mathematics and sets.)

Your reference to vision suggests that some of what's going on here just isn't what we think it is, that we are consciously building systems to try to understand how we are unconsciously managing so well, and so, in that sense at least, it is just ourselves we are always trying to understand. As you note -- much to your credit! -- there is more to cognition than science, and more to us than cognition. There's religion and spirituality, gestalten and feelings.

And now we come all the way back around, because if cognition, and, in particular, scientific cognition, are embedded in us, then we have to face up to our uncertainty about what is being understood "in terms of" what. To what degree are we alien to ourselves, or at least to ourselves qua scientists? The newborn of the empiricists is always presented as a small, admittedly inexperienced but astonishingly capable scientist, observing patterns and theorizing about them. Put so baldly, we can't take that image seriously, but I wonder if we don't secretly believe something very close to it. But what if we are not scientists in human clothing? Can we understand our own strangeness if we only have frameworks that will filter out that strangeness?

Eh. Thanks for a lovely response I don't think I've done justice to. I'm just rattling cages again...

@Mods

If you think this goes against the rules, in terms of reviving an old thread, please delete. If not, I'd like to share something here.

Here's a very good discussion w/ Chomsky on philosophy, were he explain very clearly all the confusions which arose here, in my opinion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNXqAaF_cxU

Reply to Manuel That's a great interview. Thanks.

Reply to Tom Storm

My pleasure.