LANGUAGE AND RESPONSIBILITY

By Noam Chomsky

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394736192
• ISBN13: 9780394736198
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: Pantheon
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Philosophy and linguistics

A good part of this book may be enjoyed without prior knowledge of Chomsky's linguistic work. I shall quote some highlights. Human language capacity is innate and one should "seek to determine the genetically fixed mental structures" (p. 95), which will be some sort of "universal grammar", an abstract essence common to all languages. This is of course very different from blank-slate, functionalist viewpoints. "No one finds it outlandish to ask the question: What genetic information accounts for the growth of arms instead of wings? Why should it be shocking to raise similar questions with regard to the brain and mental faculties? ... Nobody would suggest that a group of cells decides that perhaps it would be a good idea to become a heart because such an organ is necessary to pump blood. If this group of cells becomes a heart, it is due to the information present in the genetic code, which determines the structure of the organism." (pp. 84-86). "Looking at the history of human intellectual endeavor from this point of view, we find curious things, surprising things. In mathematics certain areas seem to correspond to exceptional human aptitudes: number theory, spatial intuition. Pursuit of these intuitions determined the main line of progress in mathematics, until the end of the nineteenth century, at least. Apparently our mind is capable of handling the abstract properties of number systems, abstract geometry, and the mathematics of the continuum. These are not the absolute limits, but it is probable that we are confined to certain branches of science and mathematics." (pp. 67-68). "I should also mention work on the history and philosophy of science ... This work ... has gone well beyond the often artificial models of verification and falsification, which were prevalent for a long time and which exercised a dubious influence on the 'soft sciences,' as the latter did not rest on the foundations of a healthy intellectual tradition that could guide their development. It is useful, in my opinion, for people working in these fields to become familiar with the ways in which the natural sciences have been able to progress; in particular, to recognize how, at critical moments of their development, they have been guided by a radical idealization, a concern for depth of insight and explanatory power rather that by a concern to accommodate 'all the facts' ..., even at times disregarding apparent counterexamples in the hope ... that subsequent insights would explain them." (p. 73).