It is not. The rights of private property are gifts from the state. Those rights are also protected by the state. If a bum is on your property, you ca...
Awesome — so first and foremost let’s abolish private property, which is created and protected by state power. There’s nothing about your condition — ...
I stop and help them. If that’s too hard for you, perhaps a lost child is an easier example. Maybe you struggle with leaving it to the government beca...
What founders "theorized" about this? Certainly not Madison. Worth remembering that the "founders" were also slave-owning, generally wealthy individua...
I disagree with this in general. Regarding Chomsky's work as "religion" or "pseudoscience," I have yet to see any substantiation from you. Again, parr...
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 yo...
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 ha...
Yes, that's an augment against Chomsky -- and happens to be completely wrong. The evolution of language is mostly speculative, whether one claims it e...
Does recursion explain the capacity to learn English and Japanese? No, of course not. Recursion is a property of the human language system. Binocular ...
Again a matter of definition. By "big" questions, or "perennial" questions, or "fundamental" questions, I mean essentially the same as you're saying h...
I guess I disagree as a matter of definition. If one is asking big questions, one is doing philosophy. That doesn't mean it's good philosophy. Having ...
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 ...
I think so, yes. But this is a minority view, and I don't pretend to speak for everyone. But apart from professionalization, I can't see what philosop...
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 s...
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 ...
I said a philosopher is defined by the questions he or she asks, because that's what I consider philosophy. The "interest" in these questions is incid...
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 frau...
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 rea...
I didn't say it was about interest -- I said it was about questions. One has to first have an interest, yes -- but that's obvious. There is no definit...
If you're both interested in biology and ask/answer questions about biology (and, because it's a science, perhaps conduct research), then yes. What el...
Because it's the best we can do to study thought. Language isn't the same as thought, of course, but it's related. Indeed. Tomasello wants to make a n...
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...
I think philosophy, and therefore philosophers, is simply the asking of certain questions. This predates the word "philosophy," of course. So a philos...
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 mat...
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 ...
Exactly. 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...
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 l...
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...
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 ...
I see. I don't know if Aristotle really argues that the virtuous man should be treated differently, like some kind of master. From what I've read of t...
Indeed. And since they do, your fabrications are just that. It "entitles" one to say a great deal, which is why Chomsky is so influential and his theo...
Not really. Plato had an influence on the middle ages as well, through his major influence on Christianity. Both men are in a league of their own, and...
Appreciate it. From that article, regarding metaphysics: This is why it's baffling that he can be accused of metaphysical chicanery. He's done more to...
Indeed. Much like the Bible, in fact. Often revered but never read. Adam Smith also jumps to mind. You keep repeating that, but it's still incoherent....
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 o...
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 ev...
True. 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 Ch...
Regarding the article of this thread, don’t take my word for it — it’s all right there: To read this and conclude Chomsky is arguing that because some...
At odds with naturalism? How? What’s the alternative— that language is supernatural? The level of misunderstanding here is baffling. No offense— but h...
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— an...
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 re...
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