Hence the misleading "hard problem" of consciousness. — 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". — 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. — Manuel
(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.) — 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. — SophistiCat
I just don't understand the argument, i.e. what it is that conceivability actually implies and why we should care. — SophistiCat
People who sleepwalk are not examples of P-zombies, because they don't behave like conscious people in all outward respects. — SophistiCat
There is nothing - nothing - about object permanence that makes physicalism or mechanism 'common-sense based technical notions'. — 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. — 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. — StreetlightX
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. — Xtrix
But importantly, nothing has been proposed since to replace that notion. — 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. — Xtrix
In which case so much for the failure of mechanism to imply anything - literally anything - about our cognitive abilities. — StreetlightX
Have you opened a philosophy journal recently? There are a blossoming of theories all over the place. — 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 — StreetlightX
Everything about Chomsky's understanding of language is pseudo-scientific, — StreetlightX
He's a closet creationist — StreetlightX
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. — Xtrix
I’m talking about science, and I’m talking matter, physical, material, “body,” etc. — Xtrix
Not once does he say this. Not once. — Xtrix
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.
as if lots of thing couldn't be 'based on common sense' or that 'common sense' mandates any technical elaboration of it) — 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. — 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 — StreetlightX
language cannot be accounted for by natural selection — StreetlightX
At odds with naturalism? How? What’s the alternative— that language is supernatural? — Xtrix
No offense— but how much of Chomsky have you really read? — Xtrix
I’d say that’s relevant — Xtrix
all backwater imbeciles. — 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. — Xtrix
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.
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. — 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. — 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. — StreetlightX
an excuse to veil over his theology of language. — StreetlightX
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. — Wayfarer
Unlike others here, I'm not an expert, but then I don't claim to be. I just made an observation, is all. — Wayfarer
Unless mutations to regulator genes is considered saying “nothing” and repeating into mysticism. — Xtrix
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? — StreetlightX
If you find tautologies convincing — StreetlightX
Ray Jackendoff has rightly called Chomskys' view on evolution and language a 'retreat to mysticism', which, of course, it is. — StreetlightX
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. — Xtrix
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.
But figured I’d give at least a lightning sketch. — Xtrix
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