Noam Chomsky: Language and Other Cognitive Processes

[@jonkeskitalo5977]

I love how calm and steady he is. A mind totally secure

[@bobbykotick1163]

Jon Keskitalo its a shame he is wrong about almost everything

[@TheGoodChap]

I'm slightly curious as to where you're coming from with that but also afraid to hear what you'll say since I suspect I already know...

[@bobbykotick1163]

I have a first class honours degree in linguistics from the 5th best university in the United Kingdom. All his theories have been superseded by superior theories. I am happy to link you some references if you are interested in learning more, or perhaps you are a tourist.

[@bobbykotick1163]

@Yuri L give me one of chomsky's basic tenets and ill tell you why its wrong

[@amoramor105]

@@bobbykotick1163 can u say the names of better theories of language?

[@RedlinebikerPW]

One of the best Chomsky lines I've ever heard at 1:10:46. "A baby donkey, named... Sylvester." With excellent hand waving motion to go with it.

[@mortengreaves1]

He is just so clever, I find his ideas so radical in their complexity and scope and yet he is able to communicate it a way where we can follow him and it seems perfectly logical...the guy is a true genius

[@nicholasdedless4881]

This may seem a bit extreme but I think you could make a case that Chomsky is right up there with Einstein in terms of intellectual impact on the world. His ideas in linguistics, philosophy, and computer science are incredibly influential and are becoming more influential every day as people like Steven Pinker do more research.The foundation for a lot of computer science (e.g. compilers) is the Chomsky hierarchy of language. I think a reason he isn't recognize more for his scientific achievements is that his political views are so controversial.

[@LaylaVaughan]

Nicholas Dedless Einstein had some pretty radical politics too, at least, by the American standards of his time period. He was quite the advocate of socialism. I have this neat book of Einstein's writings called Ideas and Opinions and it has an essay called "Why Socialism?" in it. Not that I agree or disagree (not anyone's business), but he certainly was not silent on his politics.

[@nicholasdedless4881]

Brandon Vaughan I agree. I heard someone talking on Michio Kaku's Explorations program about Einstein's politics and he really was pretty far to the left. It's why the FBI kept a file on him. I think the extent of Einstein's actual political views has been played down, actually it's similar to the way MLK's views are distilled when presented in the main stream media.

[@bobbykotick1163]

He seems intelligent but his fundamental beleifs about language are wrong

[@bobbykotick1163]

Agnes Gaweda his influence stopped around 1985-1990, since then all empirical evidence has pointed to his fundamental beliefs being wrong.

[@yechielgordon6847]

I am happy to find Noam Chomsky's talk on language presented here by WGBH. At the same time, it is interesting that WGBH Boston can never locate Professor Chomsky when it is time to discuss US foreign policy, about which he has published dozens of books and written hundreds of articles for academic journals and newspapers.

[@fabiengerard8142]

Too touchy?

[@latinsoundssouls]

Ah fantastic, I think he's beginning to profess that the purpose or function of language is not primarily communication but thought, or rather sytems / heirarchical systems of thought, well worth listening to, Im a lay person but this talk sets the secene well (30 mins in)

[@itssanti]

One thing that pours doubts on what Chomsky suggests is that there was a study that seems to indicate that language may be part of a complex of cognitive processes. It was the case of a man that lost his capacity to speak, but not to read nor the capacity to utter sounds and understand spoken words, yet when he was told to sing what he was reading the man with moderate success made himself understood with some difficulty. That may be a cue certifying the theory that language could not be as modular as Chomsky thinks but part of complex cognitive processes.

[@stevenhines5550]

In the sentence after he called it modular he said it was integrated.

[@stoyanfurdzhev]

The generation of the generative cognitive generators. What about the ungenerated components of reality and the advancement of the postmodern interpretation of the later?

[@tookie36]

Omg I can hear him. Thank the senses

[@Xavyer13]

Great talk

[@smsreferat]

Hi! Do you have a transcript of your video?

[@fabiengerard8142]

Skip to the additional section below the 'description' of this vidéo.

[@Yatukih_001]

Thanks for the upload.

[@travisfitzwater8093]

I think I finally realized the secondary reason for sleep: it allows for the re-setting of an amygdala which has been kicked into the electrical storm condition. You know the sayings: "sleep on it"; "sleep it off"; or, "you'll feel better in the morning ." Sorry for the inaproposity of this random interpolation. Remember: you can't interpolate New York dice into a Chicago craps game. ;)

[@Davemac1116]

Incredible to think that out of all the billions of species throughout Earth's history, humans only (that we're aware of) evolved this thought/language capability. In other words, intelligence as we understand the word in terms of civilisation. Perhaps in the Universe intelligence civilisations are very rare, if we use our only known analogy.

[@alikarimi-langroodi5402]

Chomsky, one of the first people I noticed has a lot for me to learn, some forty years ago. From his teachings I became interested in consciousness, the process that only exists in human we can do research on sensibly. Unlike Roger Penrose thinking, who looks into the biology of the brain, micro-tubal, for the physics of consciousness, Chomsky, rightly, thinks of consciousness as a process in cognition - not in atoms.

[@drummerschild6487]

Why does he say that the quandary about the word "rabbit"'s reference (in Quine) is just the standard problem of induction?

[@onkarvigy]

According to NLP neural networks experts, the key difference between human brain and NLP by AI systems is that the brain uses very less power(something like 3 milli watts) for a task AI systems use mega watts of power!! This huge power generates lot of heat generating huge signal noise that results in huge loss of signals. Therefore AI systems need lot of data and training than human brain. The belief seems to be that we have got the right algorithms. It is just that our current technology of memory and signal processing is not at the level of human brain.

[@kyberuserid]

Impressions: - Chomsky has the sniffles - The Gallilean Challenge is unlikely to be taken up by the relevant collective - Struck by the change of characterization of the primary mutant from fortunate to unfortunate

[@windokeluanda]

Important learning points!

[@travisfitzwater8093]

Maybe the bees who don't exhibit identifiable visual communicative behavior (think "the waggle dance" exhibited by some bee species and the fact that bees without that mechanism seem to do about as well as those who do) communicate via some form of telepathy. This almost seems an inescapable conclusion. Note: I don't know.

[@fabiengerard8142]

And what about the ants?!?

[@EnnoiaBlog]

People also use analog acoustic expression when they unconsciously compress words to indicate meaning, Shintel said. “For example, in describing the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert McNamara said it brought the superpowers “thisclose” to a nuclear war.” By running together “this close” in speaking, McNamara conveyed the proximity to war. This message depends on continuous variation of acoustic properties of speech that go beyond specific choice of words and linguistic structure.”

[@Ollie9402]

I don't understand why he thinks the referential explanation for learning words is clearly false.Does anyone know? Maybe it's because we have lots of words for things we can't point at? Nevermind it s what he says around 1:10

[@nicholasdedless4881]

Ollie9402 There are two different although related issues. One is the referential theory of meaning which is a philosophical approach that Chomsky disagrees with and the other is the referential theory for learning words. In both cases though I think the arguments against them are roughly the same and you hit on it, there are lots of words that have no references in the outside world. Also, the evidence for how children learn language is not consistent with the referential explanation. In that view its a stimulus response model where a child sees a cow and then hears the word cow and makes the association. That just isn't the way children learn language. Note, this isn't saying that there aren't important correlations between learning a language and making associations with our experience of the real world, obviously there are, just that to equate "learning word X" with "associating X with the thing it refers to in the world" or "meaning of X" equals "thing X refers to" those have all kinds of problems which he goes into in some of his books and they aren't consistent with how children learn the majority of language.

[@nicholasdedless4881]

Ollie9402 I just came across a paper that really goes into the issues about reference. It is Referential Semantics for I-Language by Peter Ludlow. It is in the book Chomsky and His Critics and in that book there is also a reply to Ludlow's essay by Chomsky. It is pretty deep stuff, the kind I can spend an hour reading a few pages but very interesting... well interesting if you are a nerd and into this kind of stuff ;-)

[@jwkelley]

@@nicholasdedless4881 kzbin.info/www/bejne/bH-beYyadtqIkNU

[@nicholasdedless4881]

I would like to know more about the overwhelming evidence for saltation that he speaks of. Whenever I hear Dawkins speak on the topic, and I think Dawkins represents mainstream biology here, he is very down on the concept. The point Chomsky makes at around 20:00 about "changing a fly into an elephant" is I think very misleading. Yes, you CAN by making just the right tweaks but the chances that something that has such enormous effects on the resulting phenotype are going to result in something that can even survive let alone be better adapted are incredibly small. The more extreme the change (I think Dawkins would argue) the less likely it is to not just be a freakish mutation and the odds of it being a useful adaptation get extremely small. This is one of the few questions I disagree with Chomsky on.

[@lqacwaz1]

Nicholas Dedless recently Dawkins also said that linguistic ability (language-acquiring-oegan) is probably one of those rare successful saltations - it is on youtube but I forgot to bookmark it ... thing is, with language evolution the window we have available is incredbly small in evolutionary terms.

[@nicholasdedless4881]

lqacwaz1 Interesting. I'll keep my eye out for the Dawkins quote. On a side note, as much as I mostly agree with Dawkins on atheism it kind of saddens me that -- unlike Chomsky -- Dawkins seems to have essentially given up on his scientific work except for communicating evolution over creationism and other issues related to his atheism crusade. Back to the question, I'm willing to concede that -- to the extent we can even provide a meaningful answer at all -- the hypothesis that language was a saltation is more credible than the gradualistic hypothesis. Note that in recent papers Chomsky essentially says that making any hypothesis about language evolution is little more than speculation given the paucity of evidence we have on the topic. But that is different than the claim Chomsky makes here, which I still think is questionable (I'm harping on it because it is so rare for me to find something he says that IS perhaps debatable) which is that MOST adaptations are saltations. That latter claim is I think highly debatable.

[@lqacwaz1]

Nicholas Dedless you might find this interesting too: Ms Oksana Boyko of Russia Today in conversation with Dawkins: rt.com/shows/worlds-apart-oksana-boyko/190352-religion-isis-violencia-politics/

[@nicholasdedless4881]

lqacwaz1 Thanks for that. I've seen an excerpt from that interview on KZbin but haven't seen the whole thing which is quite longer so will definitely watch that. Even in the brief excerpt I saw I was impressed with the woman doing the interview and how she asked good questions... quite different than the fluff that people like Dawkins usually get.

[@lqacwaz1]

Nicholas Dedless the meaty part is in the second half, roughly! Please bookmark it and see the whole thing sometime...

[@oldernu1250]

The study of actual science of perception and comparative or evolutionary neurobiology is hard work. He avoids much of it.

[@GlassesAndCoffeeMugs]

I studied computer science in college and took some linguistics courses. Before Chomsky, there was no field of linguistics and the distinction between "syntax" and "semantics" did not exist. These are all concepts that later heavily influenced the creation of programming languages as well as sub-fields like discrete structures. What's remarkable about Chomsky isn't that he delves into the specifics of neurobiology or perception, it's that he gave us a logical framework upon which multiple fields have benefited heavily from. Look up "Chomsky Hierarchy" or read the Wikipedia page on syntax in programming. When you create a programming language you have to ask questions like "What is logic *really*" and "What is language", which is a topic Chomsky has no competition on.

[@pulkitsharma4927]

Why is generative syntax(GB and Minimalist Program) and Generative Phonology(including lexical and optimality theory) not actual science and not hard work comparatively?

[@EnnoiaBlog]

(cont.) What I find remarkable is that my kitten is now grown up. And if he happens to be in my bedroom when the door is closed, he doesn't go to the door and cry to be let out. He goes to the corner of the room, stares up at the upper corner of the ceiling, and cries to be let out. This is a type of language, I dare say to Mr. Chomsky. And it's a language my cat developed directly due to his interaction with me at such a young and developmental age.

[@thebigaindowski1812]

That’s a type of communication. Like a hand signal. Not exactly “a language”

[@DJJonPattrsn22]

EnnoiaBlog re:cat story. Would you please walk me through the conceptual sequence which brought you to the conclusion that your cat's behavior is a form/type of language? I must be missing some crucial point because I'm having a hard time classifying the behavior you described as anything more than merely a conditionally learned technique for rudimentary communication. But language is so much more than communication (re: video time index circa 24-25 minutes). Certainly more than simple, basic communication... So, in your mind, what exactly is your cat doing that raises that behavior from basic communication to the level of language? Thank you!

[@EnnoiaBlog]

You are using too rigid of a designator for 'language'. There are different kinds of languages of different complexities. There's sign language which is actually rather advanced. Or there's simple 'body language'. All communication uses a shared language, otherwise communication would not be possible -- it would just be gibberish or unintelligible. I am simply saying that the cat and I have come up with a (usually non-verbal, but not always) shared language which works for us. I can tell what my cat wants as well, not just by his body action but also his verbal utterances. People act like cats only say "Meow" without any variance at all. I think most cat owners would beg to differ. The key here is WORDS. What are words? They're symbols that point to (associate) something else -- they're referants that point to referents (as most philosophers agree). How is that consensus arrived at? Typically though one-on-one behavior, and then later on through group schooling. My cat may lack the ability to utter English words. But that doesn't mean that he lacks the ability to utter or otherwise produce symbols that point to an internal state within the cat -- e.g. 'I am hungry, feed me', 'Let me out of the room', or 'I am very happy to see you". That's communication. That's language. It's just not English, and not exactly in sentence form. One thing that English provides as an advanced language is the ability to differentiate between past, present, and future. I do tend to agree that my cat cannot hope to communicate anything about the past or the future -- he's stuck, as it were, in the 'eternal now'. He would have a very difficult time learning to associate an utterance or 'body language' with something like "Please feed me in 3 hours." That may be forever outside of his comprehension as well. A matter of curiosity, however -- what if I had taught my kitten a few basics that were reproducable with his vocal system? I tend to think he would still be mimicing those basic sounds today if I remembered the association we agreed on when he was first learning and associating, and kept reinforcing it through positive reinforcement.

[@nicholasdedless4881]

EnnoiaBlog Chomsky addressed the issue of many kinds of languages in some of his very early and most influential work. He defined the Chomsky hierarchy of languages which also ended up being intensely relevant to computer science as well as linguistics. The hierarchy defines various kinds of languages in a formal mathematical sense and also shows mathematically that some types of languages (e.g. human natural language) are more complex than others (e.g. computer languages like Java). The kinds of languages you are talking about in regard to your cat are the simplest kinds of languages in the hierarchy. They can be modeled by the less powerful formalisms such as Finite State Automata. Human language is the most complex on the hierarchy and can only be modeled by a Turing machine.

[@EnnoiaBlog]

Nicholas Dedless Thanks, Nicholas. That still reads to me as a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind.

[@nicholasdedless4881]

EnnoiaBlog I'm not sure what you mean by that. Whether something is a matter of "degree" or "kind" seems to me to be mostly a question of how you choose to define and measure it. But to the extent that it is even a sensible question to ask I can't think of many things that are MORE of a "difference in kind" than two things that are mathematically and provably different. That is the case for the difference between an FSA (what it takes to interpret animal languages like your cat) and a Turing machine (what it takes to interpret human language).

[@EnnoiaBlog]

Nicholas Dedless ``But to the extent that it is even a sensible question to ask I can't think of many things that are MORE of a "difference in kind" than two things that are mathematically and provably different.`` That is a limitation on your part, not mine. Of course differences in degree can be proved mathematically. That doesn't automatically change it to a difference in kind. And yes, I am aware of the FSA theory. And I think that anyone who has had an intelligent animal like a cat will know that the cat can think in simple forms. If you take the 6th kitten away from a mother cat, leaving only 5 -- she will know that kitten is missing. It is irrelevant that she doesn't know that it's '5' instead of '6'. She has an obvious ability to count. Our entire history and philosophy of science is strewn with this stubborn belief that humans are special. We were so sure of it that we even believed the rest of the Universe revolved around us. And every time we insist on it, it gets eventually proved wrong. I happen to think the same is true of language. It's difficult to break free of Descartes' hold on our thinking. But we have come a long way from thinking of them as little more than alarm clocks. Descartes made that argument, and it was popular at the time. An animal in pain isn't really in pain, he said -- because to be in pain requires a soul. Only we humans had those, of course. They are like those wind up mechanical alarm clocks, essentially. Do we assume those are in pain when they are ringing and making lots of noise? Anyhow, you can see where that leads to. And I simply reject it outright. We should not think of ourselves as so separate from nature and the other animals. It really has bad outcomes.

[@قتقبتقتقيت]

The language's it englobe all the processes cognitives the thought is the golden and the translation of the language the meaning that for exemple when we explain our thinking we using the pancal in our hand and we written her we have a lot of the processes cognitives the meaning we translated our thinking with the language's it we don't have language we created to explain our cognitives . all the respect to our professor, the father of the linguistic moderne. the human leroning and explain his cognitives or transforme his cognitives with this language's.

[@LaylaVaughan]

He says saltation is widely accepted amongst evolutionary biologists, but I cannot find any evidence for this. Help, anyone?

[@UKsebstack]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltation_(biology) check the sources as well

[@hopefullife5145]

Mr. Brandon, if Chomsky said something that you haven't been able to discover yet, suggests that you ought to be more vigilant to find it out.

[@leahcim3360]

read anything by Stephen J Gould or Niles Elderige -- the postulators of the "Punctuated Equilibrium" refinement to the thoery of Evolution.

[@chandrashekharupadhyaya6530]

Excellent🙏

[@jasonwilliams1519]

I enjoy this skill course.

[@loshelechos1269]

Does anyone have the text of this video?

[@fabiengerard8142]

Skip to the additional section below the 'Description' of the present video.

[@walterorue884]

I cant believe there are TedTalks with millions of views and this is not.

[@celindakibria1695]

TedTalks are timed and to the point.

[@fabiengerard8142]

That's, alas, why this miserable world of ours is getting even worse one day after the other nowadays. The consumerist society f***ed us all up, I'm afraid. 🙄

[@gahandhigs124]

7:00

[@jenb6412]

That comment about how so much of our language use is internal... It reminds me of something I heard about the language you know affects your perception and/or cognition of the world around you.

[@LQ0701]

That's the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis, initiated and argued for by Sapir and Whorf and hence the commonly known Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It nevertheless remains a controversial hypothesis. You can check with those key words I just mention

[@abiemogul2204]

If you made an effort to listen, you are not so stupid.

[@EnnoiaBlog]

A little story about my cat... A true story... When I got him, he was probably too young to have even been removed from his mother. But I bottle-fed him, and kept him near 24/7 for a couple weeks. But when I slept, I put the kitten in a box for fear that he might snuggle up next to me and be smothered in my sleep. The kitten would stand in the corner of the box and cry to be let out after he awoke and was hungry.

[@thearchive26788]

3 strikes and you're out. Seems fair at first glance, but I do have a forgiving nature. Teaching requires care and you never had the intention to teach in the 1st place, if you quit easy.

[@stevenhines5550]

He makes Dennett and Quine and Minsky sound stupid.

[@Lurch0000]

i wish i could filter out this subject matter, from chomsky talks about american foreign policy.... this is why he is an undisputed supermind... isnt it possible this is more important to the u2b audience then his thoughts on the new world order?

[@benjaminjiin8432]

Do an anagram of new world order. Maybe what he is doing by talking about the NWO is just the natural evolution of this build of thought. Or he practices what he preaches. So if you have reached the stage of human cultural (maybe) evolution as say Galileo did questioning the state supremacy regarding previously unexamined norms is natural. Maybe as natural as language. Thank you Noam you are a gift.

[@jestermoon]

Take A Moment Climbing up towards the shoulders of this giant is, well, steep. Communication is innate in all aspects of nature. Song poetry and pictures painting is Communication. As can be said to be the writing on the wall. We live in the moment locating the least dangerous path to follow. When we stop talking about life as it is rather than what we wish it were, up pop gods. Am I off the mark? Let me know. Stay Safe and Stay Free

[@luizhenriquemoraismazzucco4526]

interessant

[@bris1tol]

Could mandarin have suggested to Leibniz his universal language ? Mandarin is fascinating. Chinese mandarin is usually written in dual characters, the first of which is usually called the radical. Each of these characters has a sound. So mandarin is based on sound rather than an alphabet. In my retirement I teach english (ESL) to chinese immigrants but unfortunately am too old to learn mandarin, although I know a few phrases. If you look at the mandarin part of a mandarin-english dictionary, you will find that the words are grouped in terms of the radicals, which typically convey the mother of the meaning. And our minds I believe use sounds perhaps insteasd of symbols to think. Children when learning to read in english can be seen to read the sounds as their lips move. So sound seems to be the language of mind, other than images. Mandarin characters are also written in moderbn pin yin, which tells how to speak the sounds of words. from www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/mandarin1/4537 Understanding radicals Every Chinese character has a radical or is itself a radical. There are 214 radicals today. Some of them are under debate to be removed. For example, 女 is the character for woman. It is also the radical for many female things: 姐姐 = little sister, 妈妈 = mamma, etc. Radicals are used to tell something about the meaning of the character, such as is made of metal, is tall, etc. Radicals are also used to look up characters in a dictionary. To find a character you look for the radical in a radical list. When you have found your radical you count the remaining number of strokes in the character. With this information it is now possible to find the character. So the mandarin part of a mandarin-english dictionary is roughly like a thesaurus, although there are a number of misfits. Leibniz was at least acquainted with mandarin so he must have noticed this structure and perhaps it gave him the idea of combining characters to form associated thoughts. This combining of characters is used in the Yi Jing (I Ching) to synthesize new metaphors by combining trigrams. For example, the woman trigram on top of the mountain shows woman in a high state of praise and as I recall it means modesty. And man trigram on top of a woman trigram means stagnation, while a woman trigram on top of a man trigram means something like extacy ! I would think ( and it may already have been done) that a search engine based on the radicals, maybe in pinyin should be much faster than western methods, because mandarin is already highly organized. Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (retired, 2000). See my Leibniz site: [e-mail]/RogerClough For personal messages use [e-mail]

[@benjaminjiin8432]

Roger Clough, I have noticed similar via the study of kanji. Like your refrence to metal. I have found that if you have an orthodox jewish education or libiral kabalistic parents then study kanji or chinese characters english becomes more interesting. Lets please talk some more i would love to compare notes with you. [e-mail] 505-913-1058

[@قتقبتقتقيت]

The langues they are clé of science because when you spoke you leron and in the sem time you give auther leron with langue it way to konw of leron science and in the past all civilisation they kip for us information like Irak and égypte for exemple they kip for us science the langues réserve for us historique .and the communication whit purpose mean communication of iidés communication of brain to brain mean logique and for purpose it way to richeness the langues and brain.

[@fabiengerard8142]

🙏🏻🙏🏽🙏

[@luizhenriquemoraismazzucco4526]

hmmm

[@azapura]

wow at 50min amazing

[@nasser7126]

Believe u me, it is all theoretical. What is the difference between him and a novice teacher of a foreign language who has no knowledge of these theories. In other words, what has he made to make acquiring a foreign language easier. Show me practical "talks"!

[@jwkelley]

His ideas are part of almost any applied linguistic course and incorporated into many models of Second Language Aquisition. While his ideas are not fully accepted they are not fully dismissed either. The general feeling now i get is UG has a lot of influence on syntax, other parts of the language being governed by other general learning mechanisms. Still though SLA is not really a field that is concrete in its beliefs.

[@schweens]

just a simple example - programming languages were developed based on Chomsky's theory on languages. that alone should speak volumes. no pun intended.

[@haru9369]

his hiccups are kind of cute!

[@asaidweeman28]

Smoke DMT you will understand where language comes from.

[@bobbykotick1163]

A SAID WEE MAN or get a degree in linguistics

[@9000ck]

you will think you understand where language came from and you will be convinced by these thoughts, but you most likely will not be objectively right. You might be happier though, so who am I to disagree except you might also make yourself psychotic and become a danger to yourself and others in which case DMT is not a good idea. However, I'm generally in favour of free choice, so go for your life.

[@Samsara_is_dukkha]

Chomsky is very clever. Nonetheless, his philosophical take pretty much excludes everyone from the East. It jumps from Plato and Aristotle to Galileo then to Newton after whom almost everyone mentioned is Anglo-Saxon. Listening to this lecture, one would conclude that Eastern philosophy never existed and never contributed anything. Eastern philosophers from Buddha to Krishnamurti, from Lao Zi to Feng Youlan or Tsang Lap Chuen never explored and understood anything about the mind and the nature of thought. Really? Seriously?

[@josem.deteresa2282]

You point at the limits of his knowledge, which surely are real. However A. He doesn't deny that anyone could learn important things about the same problems, from a different tradition; and B. Can you enrich our perspective by explaining what relevant things you have learnt on the same subject matter, from the sages you mention?

[@Samsara_is_dukkha]

​@@josem.deteresa2282 Thanks for the comment. Regarding "A": if he does not deny it, then he should at the very least acknowledge Eastern as well as non Anglo-Saxon philosophers from time to time. I don't think there are actual "limits" to his knowledge as much as an enormous and well-cultivated blind spot in Western countries since the knowledge is freely available albeit consistently disregarded. And concerning B: I expect your request was meant as a tongue-in cheek joke. But for the sake of argument, I will just say that that, in general, the Eastern philosophical tradition has done far more exploring of subjective consciousness, the nature of thought and so on than anyone else for the last few thousand years. That being the case, it would be insane to expect anyone to provide a comprehensive summary of their findings on a KZbin comment board. I suggest you should do your own research that, if done seriously, would likely take you several lifetimes.

[@voutevelour4310]

"NOHAM

[@Neilgs]

Primates do NOT have the same motor capabilities, i.e. vocal apparatus as humans. Language is not a separate system native to humans. Bonobos exposed to humans are fully "conversational", not merely imitation of human trained signs, ALA Nim Chimpsky. See Sue Savage Runbaugh His arrogance blinds him to look at the data. Prior to ANY child using verbal language the precursors of affective non-verbal emotional reciprocity (emotional affective signalling) between parent and child serves as the FOUNDATION which then permits (or sets up the foundation) for symbolic representation, that is, from ALL or NOTHING primitive subcortical responses. The symbolic representation of the infant/toddler (or "free standing ideas" apart from ALL or NOTHING reactions) allows for "language proper" to occur.

[@KrausHyperOpera]

He didn't mention anything about the vocal apparatus. He mentioned their auditory and visual systems, and then mentioned their motor capacities generally right after talking about signing. Also, nobody denies that certain animals can be taught a system of communication like signing. That's not controversial. What's denied is that they ever acquire a grammar, or a set of syntactic principles for generating complex expressions from those basic signs. In that, the data is fairly overwhelmingly in Chomsky's favor. Most of those studies that favored the view that animals like Nim Chimpsky acquire a complex syntax are viewed pretty poorly in the literature nowadays, as they're largely believed to have cherry picked their data and been incredibly loose with their interpretations of the signing performed by the animals. Also, even though he didn't say it, there's some recent work indicating that many primate's are capable of approximating human speech, at least in some sense. It simply isn't the case that the reason they don't acquire a capacity for something like human speech is that they just lack the vocal tract for it. The problem is their mind (or brain if you'd like), not the mechanism available to them for articulating speech sounds.

[@bobbykotick1163]

Primate language is not symbolic

[@schweens]

Sign language is a good example that the faculty of language is different than the faculty of making a sound. Sign language was developed naturally by deaf kids. And it even has rhymes and poetry. Nim Chimsky was an experiment that ultimately proved that what Noam speculated held true. That is - structured languages are unique to humans. Please notice the word 'structured' here. This is different than other forms of animal communication. Such as bee's wiggle dance.

[@Neilgs]

@@schweens Sorry but you are talking 1970's stuff, where Noam is still stuck in. Bonobo language. (yes language) dyadic social-pragmatic communication/language, i.e., Kanzi under Sue Savage Rumbaugh is clear illustration beyind dispute (i.e. novel sentences, syntactical constructing of querying and commenting in past/future desired events or people desired but not present and asking through advanced lexigram where person is today as well as followed by reflecrive indicator of "I miss Bob" etc as well as receptive faculty of multistep nunanced directions queried, etc, places language faculty as not the sole domain of humans!

[@schweens]

​@@Neilgs My information is based on the lecture by the person who in fact worked with Nim Chimpsky, from this lecture video, and it does talk about the bonobo, Kanzi in some detail. kzbin.info/www/bejne/iXqygpqPZtmkqLc&ab_channel=Stanford The study in Kanzi concludes that while primates can learn to communicate with intricate words even abstracts and tenses as you pointed out, they don't have understand of the the structure(generative grammar) what makes language a language. Which is exactly what Chomsky talks about.