OAO - Chomsky

[theapportioner]

Since you are a self-professed rationalist, what do you think of Chomsky's linguistic theory?

[Brandon]

Give him some time to look it up.

Then prepare for the deluge.

[Protoclown]

And how!

[Emu]

Look at this topic go! :(

[theapportioner]

Shhh... give OAO some time to look it up so that he can post someone else's thoughts verbatim.

[Ant10708]

someone already made that same exact joke. >:

[theapportioner]

Who says it's a joke? It's the TRUTH.

[Ant10708]

True enough.

[Abcdxxxx]

Chomsky sure mumbles a lot for a linguistics expert.

[mburbank]

I think guy you look stupid because you don't know who he is, the foremost proponent of philosiphy you look stupid becuase you don't know what it is really finished the whole term I'm smarter than you are for being familiar with/term I'm smarter than you are for being familiar with argument when he said quote you are stupid because you've never heard of it. But that's just because I'm a snotty little self impressed punk who confuses showing off with discourse.

[kellychaos]

Wiggenstein (sp?) makes me laugh more.

[The One and Only...]

Well, it certainly does explain why so many languages have similar underlying principles.

I like the fact that while Chomsky does refer to innate intellectual structures, he avoids a claim of innate knowledge.

As much as I differ from Chomsky politically, I have to give him some credit for pointing out some of the inconsistancies within standard explanations for language.

Personally, I never understood the empiricist's rationale for language anyway. Language had to be created before it could be taught down the generations.

[kellychaos]

I think innate knowledge infers a higher power ... like someone is trying to instill in mankind some "starter knowledge" to set us along our way in the world. The idea of an innate intellectual and/or learning structure/matrix had been broached at least as long ago as Kant and is, obviously true or we wouldn't be conversing right now. I'm not familiar with the impericist's rationale for language but I think, and I'm going on assumptions here, that anyone who assumes that we've ALWAYS had language highly underestimates the human mind and the limits of it's adaptability. I'm of the opinion that, although language hasn't always been around, it's far from the end of it's evolution. It's in a constant state of change with little sparks of hope (i.e. literature, poetry, song, ect.) along the way.

[theapportioner]

I think a strong language empiricist would say that we are a blank slate at birth, and that language is taught to us, and furthermore, that our thoughts are shaped by our language. Whorf and Sapir claimed to go around and show that the Hopi had no conception of time, etc. Cognitive scientists like Pinker reject this view, instead claiming that there is a sort of independent "mentalese", or language of thought, that is innate and does not depend on differences in languages. I take a more intermediate view.

[The Unseen]

I prefer Howard Zinn.

[derrida]

I think one would be misreading Chomsky if they decided that his theories pointed towards the existance of an innate knowledge. It is more likely that Chomsky is suggesting that human thought is shaped and constrained by the biological mechanics of the brain, itself formed by the uncertainty of evolution.

I don't think that a discussion of the possible mutually influential co-evolution of our linguistic software and hardware precludes the validity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, given Lakoff's explanation of consciousness as metaphor.

[The One and Only...]

I don't think it would either. If one takes a stimulus-responce model as the basis of function in the brain, it would be possible that one of our own responces becomes a stimulus, which leads to another responce. In such a case, the hypothesis could be absolutely correct about the confines of our thinking, particularly when you consider that our grasp of language grows strongly from our early youth (which we generally cannot remember by the time we are capable of abstract and applied thought).

I'm not saying that I accept the position, but I certainly accept the proposition that it is not mutually exclusive with Chomsky's proposition.

Why do I get the sense that you are like an older, postmodernist version of myself?

[AChimp]

Why do I get the sense that you are like an older, postmodernist version of myself?

Because you're self-absorbed?

[theapportioner]

Yeah I am pretty skeptical of Pinker's and Fodor's ideas on the existence of an internal language. Pinker's arguments, though making significant challenges to Sapir-Whorf, do not advance his theory of a mentalese, in my view. I think that a lot of what Pinker cites as evidence of mentalese could be explained in a different way from this rather cumbersome idea. At any rate, calling it a language is extremely misleading, and I take Wittgenstein's position that there can't be a private language because we would not be able to assign meaning to it.

[The_Rorschach]

Sumerian mythos make a strong case for an internal language actually :)

[kellychaos]

So everyone here has words for EVERYTHING that they've ever thought? I find it insulting that people should think that something as complex and flexible as the human mind sould ever be constrained by a human construct. Actually, it's a kind of vanity, isnt it? If this were true, for example, why and how would language ever evolve?

[The_Rorschach]

Actually it doesn't "evolve" as such. Most competent linguists, or at least the personnel at the Defense Language Institute where I started my first year in the Navy, will tell you most languages are actually in a state of regressed de-evolution. Most tend to denigrate over time, or decay, as a consequence of mingling promiscuously with other tongues :)

[kellychaos]

OK. I'll buy that to some degree but in that co-mingling, would'nt you say we pick up some stray knowledge (be they idioms or whatever) in the exchange? In addition, the advent of new technology, or even new ideas in the arts, adds to language to some degree.

Your honor, may I present Exhibit "A":

Doh!

- Homer Simpson

P.S. Actually a recent addition to Webster's Standard Dictionary.

[theapportioner]

Mentalese, in my view, assumes that there is a symbolic language in the mind, deep in the unconscious, that is logical and the generator of thought. This language is the same for everyone, so everyone thinks the same way. You do not need to go to the level of neuroscience to figure out what thought is - if you can figure out the language, you are set.

I have about a dozen problems with this view. First of all, it is insiduously Cartesian - some executive in the brain is using this mentalese to think, and translating between English etc. and mentalese all the time. Then there's the evolutionary problem - how did this mental language develop? Then there's the fact that this approach has failed in AI.

I think connectionism holds quite a bit more promise for developing a theory of thought.

[kellychaos]

EDIT: Never post while drinking. "Stream of consciousness" takes over and sentence structure goes out the window.

I don't think that there is a set language (or set of symbols) so much as a matrix, of sorts, that governs the WAY in which thought, and consequently language, is carried out that is common to all. There has to be a common framework of thought to serve as a starting point for language, else, how is it that most humans are able to communicate at all? Barring any kind of handicap (blindness, deafness, ect), how is it that all culture's primary means of communication is to speak through their mouths, listen through their ears and interpret with their minds? I mean, there are other options of communications open.

[theapportioner]

????

So this "matrix" is none other than the human genome, you are saying??

"how is it that most humans surmised that..."

There is no "surmising"; an infant does not "surmise" before hearing or seeing. He or she just does it.

[kellychaos]

"Surmise" was a poor choice of words. Perhaps language development was more of an evolutionary thing. Those who were able to communicate better (even in a very basic way), consequently, were able to survive better. "Survival Of The Fittest" need not only refer to physical traits.

Also, read my EDIT. My first attempt wasn't very coherent, I'm afraid.