Noam Chomsky on Linguistic Theories and the Evolution of Language (Part 3) | Closer To Truth Chats

Closer To Truth is proud to present this four-part miniseries with distinguished theoretical linguist, analytic philosopher, and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky. In Part 3, Chomsky discusses linguistic theories for human sentience and cognition (most notably a Universal Grammar), the evolution of language, and the mystery of consciousness.
Noam Chomsky is a distinguished theoretical linguist, analytic philosopher, cognitive scientist, political critic, social activist, and public intellectual. Called "the father of modern linguistics”, Chomsky helped bring about the cognitive revolution in the human sciences. At 94, he is one of the most cited living scholars. He is Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT and Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona.
Watch Part 1: • Noam Chomsky's Reflect...
Watch Part 2: • Noam Chomsky on Theori...
Register for free at closertotruth.com for subscriber-only exclusives: closertotruth.com/register/
Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and produced and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[@CloserToTruthTV]

Watch Part 1: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jnrcqJuorpuLqpo Part 2: kzbin.info/www/bejne/e2WumX5poNCnma8

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

the claim by Professor Chomsky that we don't have awareness of our enteric nervous system basically, except for a stomach ache, is the exact opposite of nonwestern meditation focus. Actually Wim Hof has proven that we can have great awareness of our enteric nervous system - by his training and teaching of nonwestern breathing techniques called "tummo" tibetan yoga breathing. My first vid upload has the training details. thanks

[@Alamak2070]

Poverty of stimulus (lack of speech input) is Chomsky's most empirically substantiated aspect of UG. It keeps standing the test of time.

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

Chomsky does consider music to be a viable model for the origins of language. Called "Musilanguage." See Professor Jerome Lewis' talk, "How Language Evolved from Singing" thanks

[@robertrodger3609]

Damn, from someone who watches virtually all interviews with Prof. Chomsky, this was simply wonderful. Thank you for that.

[@notanemoprog]

Amen

[@michaelcorenzwit8118]

Wonderful post. Chomsky is among the most intelligent and insightful people I’ve experienced in my 79 years. His ability to make understandable his deeply complex knowledge reminds me of Linus Pauling, the winner of the Noble Prize two times in different areas. Both have made profound contributions in both their scientific work and in championing peace and leading communicating to the world in a logical, scientific and moral way. Both have been my life long inspirations and heroes. I hope that the world listens to their voices and respects their contributions.

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

what books of Noam Chomsky have you read?

[@gregorious123]

Have you seen Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? Documentary film about Chomsky. Another fantastic insight into Chomsky`s thinking

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

@@gregorious123 I didn't think he would answer. People love to have these verbose comments on how great Chomsky is when the people haven't even really studied Noam Chomsky's work. Hilarious. It takes quite a bit of time and effort to read his books.

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

@@gregorious123 Wow - I haven't see this film! Thanks so much. It has new info from Chomsky that I had never heard before. Or read about. thanks

[@psicologiajoseh]

Oh, there is a part 4! Such a wonderful surprise! That filled me with joy.

[@chipkyle5428]

Every animal including children on our 5th generation farm understood my Grandfather’s word for “Stop what you’re doing!” It was a growled “Oghaaaaht!” Mules, horses, cows, dogs; we ALL knew what that warning meant and we all stopped what we were doing immediately. My sons use the same communication today and it is still understood.

[@tyranmcgrath6871]

Haha

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

BBC News: Humans share elements of a common language with other apes, understanding many gestures that wild chimps and bonobos use to communicate. That is the conclusion of a video-based study in which volunteers translated ape gestures. It was carried out by researchers at St Andrews University. It suggests the last common ancestor we shared with chimps used similar gestures, and that these may have been a "starting point" for our language. The findings are published in the scientific journal PLOS Biology. Lead researcher, Dr Kirsty Graham from St Andrews University explained that this gesture-based way of communicating is shared by other species of great apes, including gorillas and orangutans. "Human infants use some of these same gestures, too," she told BBC News. "So we already had a suspicion that this was a shared gesturing ability that might have been present in our last shared ancestor. "We're quite confident now that our ancestors would have started off gesturing, and that this was co-opted into [our] language." This study was part of an ongoing scientific mission to understand this language origin story by carefully studying communication in our closest ape cousins.

[@davidantonacci9525]

Apart from wondering what your point is, in what language does oghaaaaht mean stop? Surely it's not your grandfather's own personal(made up) language, is it? Why didn't you think to tell us this already(those of us who don't know) rather than leaving us all wondering?

[@tobaidi]

Another superb episode! We are loosing these amazing giant thinkers that are able to translate their ideas and theories into accessible knowledge without the fluffy big words with no meanings that we have been seeing in the world of research these days. The world needs more of Chomsky!

[@mourdebars]

Looking forward for Part 5.

[@notanemoprog]

At 28:25 is an amazing statement of the actual "hard problem" in Chomsky's view - not the so-called _Hard Problem of Consciousness_ but the Hard Problem of Matter 🤓 And earlier starting at 19:30 is an AMAZING short intro to what the Theory of Evolution actually says and how evolution actually proceeds Another great episode!

[@notanemoprog]

@@user-jo1gy3kx3j No

[@mikel4879]

Notan E • The so-called "hard problem" is erroneous. You don't absolutely need to understand exactly how the matter is structured in this case. You need to understand only the fundamental causal process. If a big piece of ice falls from the roof of a house in the winter and hit you on the head, you don't absolutely need to understand the hydrogen and oxigen that create the dangerous ice. You only need to understand the highly practical and simplified fundamental causal process of "ice hitting your head".

[@mikel4879]

Phoenix • Let's say that you don't have a brain in your head and a lion attacks you. Evidently, you can't move any of your muscles in this case 😏 Now, you have a brain in your head, but you can't see, smell and hear at all, so you again don't use any muscle...😏 Now you have a brain, eyes, smell and hearing, and the lion attacks you. Now the moment you see the danger your brain is stimulated right away ( = it is "told" = it is "informed" right away ) and as a consequence your brain gives command to muscles to spring very fast into action. So, as you see, a different part of your body tells the brain about the danger, etc, so the eyes represent a cause to the effect taking place later in your brain. 🤔😏

[@michaelbloom658]

Free wills not an illusion, we know more than we know anything that we can make choices. Ya we don’t understand how matter can have that property but it ain’t an illusion. You can choose to lift your finger right now or not

[@simonhibbs887]

​@@michaelbloom658 When philosophers and scientists discuss free will, they use language in particular technical ways because there are different ways to think about free will. What we are discussing is a particular traditional definition of free will in philosophy, which is that when we make a choice that we have the freedom to do otherwise. That is taken to mean that conscious choices made without coercion are not determined purely by physical processes, because if they were then that means that given a particular physical brain state and sensory inputs, only one choice would be possible. People who "believe in free will" claim that this is not true because they want to believe that we always have the ability to decide otherwise (without that choice being random). Determinists like me believe that this particular definition of free will is incoherent because for a decision to truly be mine, it must be determined by my personality, experiences, skills, memory, etc and that if those faculties of my mind and brain don't determine a choice, then it's not my choice. So we "deny free will" in that technical sense. I think free will according to that standard definition is an illusion, and that real free will is simply the ability of a conscious agent to make decisions without undue external influence.

[@alexanderpeca7080]

When I first heard Noam stating that human language evolved not for communication but for thought, hence leaving Biologists scratching their heads, I thought: this is the most Chomskyan thing, pissing off ppl with novel ideas. All these years it has been amazing to experience our modern Socrates.

[@chel3SEY]

Good interviewer. He lets his guest speak and just listens.

[@paddydiddles4415]

Thoughts can clearly exist without language. Translation of thoughts into language occurs later. Gestural language and protolanguage must have preceded oral language, and progressed through a sequence of evolutionary stages

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

BBC news: Humans share elements of a common language with other apes, understanding many gestures that wild chimps and bonobos use to communicate. That is the conclusion of a video-based study in which volunteers translated ape gestures. It was carried out by researchers at St Andrews University. It suggests the last common ancestor we shared with chimps used similar gestures, and that these may have been a "starting point" for our language. The findings are published in the scientific journal PLOS Biology. Lead researcher, Dr Kirsty Graham from St Andrews University explained that this gesture-based way of communicating is shared by other species of great apes, including gorillas and orangutans. "Human infants use some of these same gestures, too," she told BBC News. "So we already had a suspicion that this was a shared gesturing ability that might have been present in our last shared ancestor. "We're quite confident now that our ancestors would have started off gesturing, and that this was co-opted into [our] language." This study was part of an ongoing scientific mission to understand this language origin story by carefully studying communication in our closest ape cousins.

[@addammadd]

The problem is that if you say that, you’re contradicting the worlds most cited scientist. You aren’t wrong, but that’s only if you define right and wrong on the basis of popular consensus or not. Noam has made a career out of being the most correct man in the room and it’s been a long one. I’m sorry to inform you that your opinion, although entirely valid, falsifiable and relevant, cannot possibly stand up to the discursive formation that is this man’s doxa.

[@Kostly]

Linguistics is the only thing we have to describe the world to each other. To lesser degrees, we have non-verbal cues. All of it adds up to a very strong grasp on the physical world.

[@ktheodor3968]

Chomsky's response to the mind-body problem is a cop-out and a half.

[@elizabethblakley2876]

Wonderful conversation !

[@jareknowak8712]

World needs more people like Chomsky.

[@jonnmostovoy2406]

no

[@SirClerihew]

Please no

[@notanemoprog]

Sadly you can't clone such minds. Once in a century occurrence, so we can only hope that the 21st century replacement is in the works!

[@valq10]

Chomsky: "Galen Strawson, a very good young philosopher". Me: *Googles Strawson's age* Google: 71 years old. It's like how Treebeard always greets his wizard friend as 'young master Gandalf'.

[@psicologiajoseh]

I would love to see Chomsky's reaction to the Relational Frame Theory stance. RFT researchers believe they are vindicating Skinner after he "lost" the debate with Chomsky about language being learn or innate. Skinner proposed that language is learned. When refuted by Chomsky, this would give rise to the current hegemony of the cognitive sciences. Now, RFT researchers say they have the evidence to show that Skinner was right after all. Language is learned not through associations, as Skinner would say, but through "relations". And according to them, it is that ability to make relations that makes us human. If Chomsky would respond and continue the debate, it would be very valuable for the history of science in general and very interesting!

[@themanwhosoldtheworld5350]

Alright!!! part 3!!!

[@thomasnicodemou5160]

It’s always refreshing to hear Chomsky’s take on so many profound issues- and almost always disagreeing with all other philosophers and scientists.

[@jakkritphanomchit]

He's still a material reductionist, so he's mainstream in the philosophy of mind

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

@@jakkritphanomchit Mathematical Principles, "the concept of matter disappeared." Chomsky is critiquing materialists.

[@jakkritphanomchit]

@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885 yes i realised that later as well

[@nyworker]

Dear Dr Chomsky, On what it's like to see red. Just remember that the visual system responds to light but does not respond at the speed of light. Rather it processes in the sound domain, like any other sense of feeling. The dysfunctional brain can actually perceive red when it hears sounds or smells etc. But a normal visual system is just another system of precise "feels" that is responding in the biological time domain. Now why red is red? Are these just precise electrochemical responses in the visual conscious areas distributed throughout the brain? I would tend to think so.

[@alvodin6197]

You must be on the spectrum.

[@Person4649Person]

We don't know what "consciousness" is if you disregard the subjective. It doesn't come down to "not knowing what matter is", it comes down to assuming matter has no cognitive or informative aspect. As Chris Langan describes, the subjective and objective mutually define and refine each other.

[@markward3981]

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

might consciousness be subject that uses cognition?

[@arochie]

Whats the name of the historian of philosophy he mentions in 34:00?

[@notanemoprog]

Udo Thiel

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

can evolution happen both through cognitive adaptation and phenomenal selection?

[@nyworker]

Bernardo Kastrup will simply tell us that matter is what we perceive in OUR consciousness. Physicists tell us that all "matter" reduces down to fields, strings, quanta...

[@mikel4879]

nyworker • Many times the human intuition based on reality is much better than the mathematical representations the scientists artificially concoct, representations that are mostly erroneous.

[@nyworker]

@@mikel4879 Any honest scientist thinks it starts with a hunch, insight, thought you wake up with...In other words science is a creative endeavor. Only today's institutional science runs by strict rules of review and acceptance by committee. Then they brainwash the public "to follow the science".

[@tonyatkinson2210]

@@mikel4879 physics tells us that it’s the other way round . You mind makes representations of reality that just that: representations. Think of how you perceive the hardness of a table when you knock on it ? Yet we know the table is mostly empty space .

[@divertissementmonas]

@@tonyatkinson2210 Which are you going to trust more in everyday life, your perception of a solid object or the physicists theory? Ha Ha "yet we know" to move out of the way if a solid object is moving towards us!

[@tonyatkinson2210]

@@divertissementmonas no way am I going to trust my perceptions . Our perceptions are rudimentary . They bear nothing to the reality we can measure . A table is mostly empty space . An atom is 99.9% empty. and everything is made up of atoms. We feel things as solid because when we touch them we feel something pushing back against our hand; our hand doesn’t just pass through. As it turns out, that “something pushing back” that we feel is an electrical repulsion caused when the (negatively charged) electrons orbiting the atoms in our hand come close to the (negatively charged) electrons orbiting the atoms in the object we’re touching. Negative charges repel other negative charges, and the strength of the repulsion is higher the closer the negative charges are to each other. The strength of that electrical repulsion over very small distances is what stops you from pushing the atoms in you hand through the empty space in the atoms in something else, and we’ve learned to associate that feeling of our hand being stopped as an object’s “being solid.”. No airline objects are truly solid . Our perceptions are wrong .

[@robreinhart4284]

What is the name of that philosopher he mentions who writes on the history on consciousness? Utu Teal?

[@notanemoprog]

Udo Thiel

[@simonhibbs887]

Udo Thiel

[@stephenzhao5809]

5:03 some disruptive change takes place Mother Nature figures out the simplest way of reconstructing the system accommodating that disruption that seems to be what happened with language as soon as teh disruption took place the system was created in the simplest possible terms that yields automatically such things as structural structure preservation the other kinds of phenomena I've been describing it must also be the explanantion for the meanings of words but there it's mysterious we don't know how just that it happened but don't know how uh well what does that tell us about human cognition tells us that probably a very substantial language is a core part of huma cognition it's language that constructs thoughts that's where thughts come from, any kind of thought that we can comprehend at least is simply basically language it's what langage produces so that's a core part of our nature. 6:15 that's what distinguish us from other species. thought and language and these core parts of our nature seem to be quite substantially simply built into our nature shared by all humans uh developing through triggering by environmenatl stimuli can lead to what looked a very different outcomes but as soon as we look more deeply we find that these are surface variations based on fundamental similarities 6:55

[@mikel4879]

Stephen Z • Not "thought and language", but consciousness which = the level of the language. All the animals 'think', evidently in their own way, but, again, all of them think! But not all of them have a full and complex language. Etc.

[@geoffreynhill2833]

An extraordinary discovery regarding how babies learn language! 🤔 (In the Beginning were words?) Do watch & listen carefully!🌈🦉

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

is blood circulation regulated by brain? if so, how does the brain manage blood circulation?

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

might language have phenomenal conscious characteristics?

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

might language connect or relate to external consciousness or mind?

[@tyranmcgrath6871]

Definitely!

[@markward3981]

31:00 when Chomsky says , 'we don't know what matter is' . He lost me . Any please elaborate or explain. Thanks. I thought 💭 I thought science was clear on that .

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

what does language do in brain to produce thought?

[@tyranmcgrath6871]

Every word or combination of words has your own unique thought attached to it.

[@MegaDonaldification]

Chomsky is a true Boss

[@spheriscope]

Noam says engineers can design better spines. They can't make the ones nature does though. Yet. Can't even make a leaf or a blade of grass from elementary materials. From scratch. Reminds me of the story of the saint who, in order the be declared as such, was required to perform miracles. And the one who plucked a leaf from a tree declaring that no one could put it back on. I stopped listening after having that thought so I'll go back and play it again and listen. It is a fascinating conversation.

[@tonyatkinson2210]

Nature doesn’t make good sounds . Our birth canal is way too small . most non-human primates give birth unassisted with relatively little difficulty compared to us .

[@spheriscope]

@@tonyatkinson2210 Why is that I wonder? Think I heard some idea that it maybe had to do with walking upright? The universe takes the path of least resistance? Life seems more complicated. Maybe seems to defy that? Does evolution not learn and adapt?

[@spheriscope]

Maybe Noam is doing that professorial don't contradict so I can make my point thing but I think other animals have languge too and potential to equal or surpass our own.

[@tonyatkinson2210]

@@spheriscope evolution makes do . It traded off a wide birth canal so we could walk upright . It’s not survival of the fittest , it’s survival of the fit enough . Unfortunately in our case, that results in high levels of maternal mortality .

[@tonyatkinson2210]

@@spheriscope which animals ? Whales maybe ?

[@TheTroofSayer]

I have rather extensive thoughts on this topic, given it revolves around my own research. This is rather lengthy post, but I figure that some among us might find it helpful for their own research. My focus, in my own work, has been principally on the works of semiotician CS Peirce and linguist-semiotician Thomas Sebeok, and it occurs to me with this episode that I don't recall Noam Chomsky's contributions to linguistics being mentioned in the same breath. I thus conclude a major fork in the fundamentals of the two semiotic/linguistic streams. Sebeok is recognized for the insight that apes can never learn language because they lack the physiology on which language depends (for example, in the 1979 book, Speaking Of Apes). Writing for The New York Times, Anahad O'Connor (Jan 2, 2002) summarizes Sebeok's thesis as follows: He argued that apes could not learn language because they lacked the body parts for language, like a larynx or vocal cords, and that they were unable to pass language on to their offspring.'' Dr. Sebeok (pronounced see-bee-AWK) showed that nonhuman animals need both the anatomy and nature for learning language,'' said Dr. Marcel Danesi, a professor of semiotics at the University of Toronto, who has also written extensively in the field. ''His work demonstrated that if language were a genetic endowment in apes, then we could just teach them and they would pass it on.'' The Sebeoks also argued that language experiments with the animals were unsuccessful because the researchers had not taken into account signals or cues from the trainers, like facial expressions. They also argued that animals did not have the intellect to pick up the human sign language and were instead taught a signal system less complex than human language. Sebeok's thesis ties in perfectly with my own "bodies wire neuroplastic brains" thesis. It makes sense, doesn't it? If bodies wire neuroplastic, DNA-entangled brains, then it makes perfect sense that bodies with hands and vocal apparatus will be predisposed to language in ways that animals not thus equipped won't be. But I digress. So why have Chomsky's contributions in linguistics and semiotics not appeared in the same sort of context as Peirce or Sebeok? From what we can glean from this interview today, it seems that he is not factoring in the top-down direction of causation. This first hint, at 25:30, is what appears to be a bias towards bottom-up causation, where he says "Small changes in the brain might have provided the principle of what's called recursive generation..." Similar is again suggested at 26:41, for example, regarding his reference to natural selection. Natural selection provides a linear narrative (deterministic, reductionist), as distinct to a contextual narrative that comes from the top down, from culture and from imitating behavior. Standard evolution theory does not, generally, factor in this top-down direction of causation that impacts on things like sexual selection and group behavior. Chomsky is dead right about the importance of language and culture, and in that, we are both in full agreement. But without factoring in top-down causation, he also seems to omit other vital parameters, such as motivation and association (semiotics of CS Peirce). What is the meaning of red? Association, which Chomsky does not discuss here, would otherwise provide compelling clues. The meaning of red is context dependent. Its redness on an area or an object, like a sheet of paper or a painted box, can be explored in terms of not-red... as in "blue, not-red" or "black, not-red". What does red mean as a traffic light? What does it mean as a warning? All this comes down to association, associating contexts and meaning. At 37:19 Chomsky mentions Thomas Nagel's book What It's Like To Be A Bat, inferring that it would be very difficult to work out what it's like to be a bat. I have to disagree with Chomsky here. Again, from my own thesis, "bodies wire neuroplastic DNA-entangled brains", it shouldn't be all that difficult to imagine what it might be like to be a bat. What you've got to do is change your direction of causation. What it's like to be a bat doesn't come from the brain, it comes from the body and how the body is predisposed to engaging with the environment. As I commented previously on CTT, if you want to work out what it's like to be a dog, or a fish, or a bird, or your opposite sex... or... a bat: "Consider not the brain, but the body that wires it." I wholly agree with other points that Chomsky raises, when he talks about the difficulties of doing research in the cognitive sciences. For example at 10:58 "You can't do invasive experiments with humans." I've commented before on CTT about feral children (e.g., Viktor of Aveyron, raised by wolves, Genie Wiley, raised in isolation). Indeed, imagine the things we might learn by conducting the forbidden experiment... by raising humans, from birth, in isolation or among animals. As at 10:58 Chomsky says, however, "You can't do invasive experiments with humans." Yup, have to agree there, the forbidden experiment is not an option. If the forbidden experiment is not an option, what other avenues are there for exploring the nature of things? Tough question. As we learn more and more how animals are not all that cognitively different to us, I'm getting increasingly uncomfortable with the horrors that we put animals through in the interests of our own priorities. There has to be a better way.

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

is language physically represented in brain?

[@jakkritphanomchit]

I think chomsky's materialist reductionism is getting in the way of deeper insight

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

does human brain have more capacity for phenomenal consciousness than animals, in contrast to more cognitive capacity?

[@jamesruscheinski8602]

could thoughts be carried throughout body by blood circulation?

[@tantzer6113]

Galen Strawson is 71 years old. It's understandable, however, why Chomsky could refer to him as a "very good, young philosopher."

[@notanemoprog]

LMAO

[@anwaypradhan6591]

Language is the means and mediums of communication by the virtue of which you exhibit your opinions, your thoughts, your ideas, your views, your philosophies, your culture and even your thoughts towards people around and even towards the masses. Even a painting can be a Language, a sketch can be a Language and a sound can be a Language. Music, art and culture can even be considered as language for communications towards the masses. With respect to development of structure of our brain, our thought building capacity and ability enhances, our way of analyzing and viewing the world also changes and matures with respect to development of brain, so as our language evolves.

[@worldnotworld]

The case of the man "Chris" is especially interesting. He is missing the capacity to "solve puzzles" in the abstract, while maintaining the ability effortlessly to "suck up" knowledge of grammar. Doesn't this call into question NC's equation of human thought with the faculty of human language?

[@Alamak2070]

Actually it supports NCs view that the language faculty is largely independent from the general or other forms of cognition.

[@worldnotworld]

@@Alamak2070 That's true, but only if human "puzzle solving" is not particularly aided by KoL, which doesn't seem to be the case, as human beings are far better problem-solvers than other creatures - a fact surely related to our having language and our capacity for abstract thought. What sort of "thought" the language faculty actually enables needs to be far better understood. I suspect that acquisition of language-specific grammar might remain be untouched while the capacity to do anything with the ensuing conceptual structures is somehow disabled. Must look into these cases...

[@antoninoioio]

It would have been nice to see Robert dish out more debate against Chomsky on certain points.

[@captaingrub2228]

Robert never does that. I've watched tons of his videos and he's invariably the sycophant (there's something to be said for that, to get a good interview).

[@divertissementmonas]

What points did you have in mind?

[@antoninoioio]

@@divertissementmonas well, everything... in the normal Closer to Truth episodes Robert give summary and counterpoint to what the guests say and ultimately makes his own opinion about their ideas clear; in this interview that was disappointingly absent throughout, and especially so at the end when Chomsky basically disregards the problem of consciousness and says "consciousness is what we know the most about, what we don't know is what matter is", an absurd statement coming from a scientist

[@divertissementmonas]

@@antoninoioio I don't see Chomsky as a scientist. It is interesting that you do. I think he meant that we are all aware that we are consious beings. This is something that is self evident. And 'matter' is a mysterious substance according to physicists themselves whom I would regard as scientists in the traditional understanding of the term.

[@antoninoioio]

@@divertissementmonas Chomsky is first and foremost a scientist. PhD in linguistics = scientist. Beyond that, being aware of something isn't the same as understanding it. We are aware of consciousness and we are aware of matter. We understand neither of them.

[@Kostly]

Every student should be subjected to Baraka.

[@Neilgs]

Language does not construct thought. Language organizes thought in a particular pattern of common interpersonal co-affective signal exchanges. It would be the analogous to saying that Language constructs consciousness/thought and without it there is no presence of consciousness/mind with respect to communicative reciprocal interactive co-affective exchanges of understanding and meaning. That is patently absurd.

[@notanemoprog]

At 19:30 the amazing part about Natural Selection transcribed: First of all we should notice that the common phrase that you repeated "communication is the function of language" is _totally meaningless_ organic systems don't have a function, they have _many_ functions so what's the function of the spine? is it to help us stand up? is it to accumulate calcium? is it to develop white blood cells? is it as a casing for nerves? actually it's all of those things when Natur- let's go back to Evolution again first A disruption takes place a mutation symbiosis some other thing many things then comes the Reconstruction stage nature tries to make the best of whatever happened if it was a mutation try to organize the new system in the best possible way then comes the winnowing stage where among the things that have been created the more adaptable ones survive = natural selection but at the second stage nature hasn't the slightest idea what the functions are going to be doesn't care about them is just finding the best design based on what's around now that often leads to highly dysfunctional systems because it may be that the best thing is not well designed for functions we'd like it to carry out so for example during this last year I've discovered that ears are highly dysfunctional for wearing masks when you have glasses and a hearing aid it's a horrible pain in the neck nature Made a terrible mistake and should have had different kind of ears well same is true of the spine and any engineer could engineer a better system than the spine but the way it developed over time this is the best that could be done so talk about communication being the function of language it's first of all meaningless okay because the language just developed it's used for many functions for thinking for reflection for many kinds of actions among the Mark is communication but the idea that's hidden behind it is what you said that language somehow evolved from animal communication systems the evidence is overwhelming that that's not the case it takes even just what I've just suggested discuss the brief things I've discussed like structure dependence there's nothing remotely like it in any animal system take the meanings of words the meaning of River House tree anything nothing remotely like it in animal communication in fact an animal symbolic systems the symbols actually do have associations with non-linguistic entities so if you look at the cries of a monkey various cries of say a perfect monkey they'll be a cry that is made when leaves start moving in a certain way and this and in a tree and all the other monkeys run away and we interpret that as a warning signal what the monkey's doing we don't know but it's interpreted as a warning signal maybe there's an eagle up there or the monkeys run away a hormonal change can lead to a call that basically means I'm hungry you know again what's going on the animal's mind we don't know but all animal communication systems the symbols seem to be 1-1 associated with extra mental uh entities say that a physicist could detect human language has nothing like that totally different the structural principles the rules of combination not even the remotest analog in other organisms

[@esorse]

The fact a bird who has the technological capacity to build a nest and us are subject to Darwin's theory of evolution, supports the technical possibility of a linguistic relationship.

[@moo1388]

Our world would be a much better place if parents would talk to their children as though there are people and not invalids. Save the baby talk for play

[@moo1388]

right. animal children understand their parents language MUCH faster than human children. That is due to lack of education for human parents which our species used to have knowledge of but it's been lost

[@missh1774]

I have wondered how childhood language acquisition would effect societal choices as an adult. Wait...matter is not all molecules? Then my version is as good a guess as anyone's. Matter is an artist's clay, wood, stone and metal work. 31:50 that's like when an image is hidden in your email and the computer generated note describes it as two insecure people. It turns out to be a clipart of two happy children hugging.

[@aaronrobertcattell8859]

think words come from the need for a warning to a predator word are sound at base animals make sounds to just because you to not not there word there sounds does not mean they are not talking in a simple way ?

[@dsa513]

Apparently not. For example, if you look at ERP component studies related to language use they are not found in humans, in the same way as nervous systems found in other animals that communicate using other systems of communication

[@clemsonalum98]

Although I disagree politically I've always enjoyed Chomsky and find his linguistics talks fascinating and his politics to be reasoned and informed, unlike most of the modern left.

[@notanemoprog]

Same.

[@maldini3434albertini]

His anarchist politics are a reflection of his truth seeking… basically calls it truthism.

[@billykiliz]

Noam Chomsky is a renowned linguist, philosopher, and political activist who has made significant contributions to the fields of language and politics. Unfortunately, if the population knew, people would need somebody to explain. So, it doesn’t matter.

[@tyranmcgrath6871]

Nice ChatGPT

[@sentient3906]

Kuhn should interview Eckhart Tolle - that would be a big one

[@moo1388]

Human language sound as much gibberish as a bird language sound to a human. Noam just said it himself. We only regularly use certain words that is our main communication sounds many words are lost or Considered unnecessary. animals have rid themselves of the unnecessary words/ I figure it's called evolution. Animals are significantly farther along the evolution chain than us humans by far. just because we can't understand the words they say does not mean they don't have language. Please be as smart as you think you are and stop thinking you're smarter than other species

[@PPitambarP]

👍🍀

[@danielryan9076]

Chicken or the egg......

[@stoneysdead689]

Damn- Noam is starting to show his age- so am I, all my heroes are getting older and passing away. Jeff Beck, David Crosby, John Prine, Christine McVie, Chrsitopher Hitchens, etc., etc.- all gone, and the ones that are left are getting too old to do it anymore. At least my academic heroes like Noam can hang in there a little longer- academia isn't as tough as playing music or something like that, I guess. I was bemoaning a band I listened to the other day saying they would no longer tour but someone was like "Man, the drummer is like 65 now." LOL- I hadn't even thought about it- I think about myself aging but not the bands I listened to. In my head they're still 20 something and ready to rock.

[@mikecummings6593]

I would like to express your feelings into words my friend here they are TIME. SUCKS. 😄❤

[@JorJorIvanovitch]

Universal grammar has been shown to be problematic, in that there is no evidence for Chomsky's theory. That is the prevailing position of contemporary linguistics. Chomsky's theory is roughly 50 years old and hasn't found empirical evidence to substantiate it.

[@jonathanhook2229]

Totally agree. Chomsky is making things up when he says, "complex words are learned with almost maybe one or two presentations somehow" and "from the earliest testable age on through life we ignore a hundred percent of what we hear and use only abstract structures that our mind creates". Studies have shown that hearing children raised by deaf parents have very poor language skills. These children need to be retrained to reach their developmental milestones. We clearly have an innate language capacity, but it is very clearly activated by a learning environment.

[@JorJorIvanovitch]

@@jonathanhook2229 agreed. Even abstractions are erected in some cases by our interactive experience with the world...including prior encounters with other abstractions. Different languages will sometimes have more numerous, and precise, words for "hand" or "arm" depending on what one is doing or using the hand or arm for. It was useful for such cultures to create separate words (like why people invent acronyms) to conceptualize a lot of specific context information within a word.

[@jonathanhook2229]

@@JorJorIvanovitch great points. Favorite linguistic theories?

[@dsa513]

​@@jonathanhook2229 Chomsky talks about cognition as an innate structure because he uses a computational model for language use and production. This is only possible if the brain has some 'processing' unit, which is not the brain, but the LAD-language acquisition device. He's not arguing that the transformational rules of generative grammar are produced by this LAD. Under this rationale, whether the child with deaf-mute learns to speak or not is irrelevant to the theory

[@jonathanhook2229]

@@dsa513 ​ @DS A I appreciate your comment and that's a good point about why his theory requires a LAD. I think Chomsky takes it way further than that including here. The trouble with Chomksy is his reckless arrogance when he speaks about these issues. He repeatedly lies about competitor theories (like Skinner's verbal behavior or behaviorism in general). He called Daniel Ehrman an idiot in the press for suggesting that Pirahan doesn't follow the rules of universal grammar. Meanwhile, no one has ever seen this UG that now (as last I read) only refers to recursion. Recursion! It is so trite it makes one giggle. And it's exactly this blundering rhetoric that makes statements like "complex words are learned with almost maybe one or two presentations somehow" closer to statements of faith in timeless Platonic forms than a comment on the rapid appearance of speech in children. This is actually kind of where I've always seen the gap between the cognitivists and the behavioirsts. When I read them carefully, neither seem to disagree about the existence of innate structures; they just had different emphases. The Cognitivsts are interested in the structure of language and how this informs its appearance and the behaviorists are interested in how that learning takes place. It really is the classic debate between rationalism and empiricism, induction and deduction. One presupposes structure and looks for clues whereas the other collects clues and builds toward the structure.

[@tarnopol]

To be overly glib just for laughs, Chomsky’s science stems from the poverty of stimulus whereas his politics stem from the stimulus of poverty.

[@captaingrub2228]

For those of you fawning over a "modern day Socrates": I actually knew him personally - he called Venezuela a "model for other South American countries" and he was an early denialist/apologist for the Khmer Rouge. What he said about the complete interchangeability of proclivities and aptitudes once culture is removed is patently false. Forget about differences as being normative (that one thing is better or worse) but rather think of differences as merely descriptive and normatively neutral. Of course the boundaries are permeable and there's tons of crossover but genetics is a wildly underestimated factor. Even ones political leanings (which we would normally assume is 100% cultural) is actually hard wired to some extent. His politics are downright misguided and "immoral". He should go jump in a lake.

[@worldnotworld]

I'm sure you'd say the same about Socrates' political views... they are rarely to modern man's liking! But yes: as for politics, Chomsky's a terribly mixed bag, at best. His idealization of a basically uniform genetics across peoples is a sort of determinist's equivalent of the "blank slate" theory of mind he otherwise properly rejects. Still, most of his linguistics, and his philosophy of language and mind in general, is indubitably brilliant and unique. One need not (and should not) fawn over him to acknowledge that. (I know him personally too, btw.)

[@captaingrub2228]

@@worldnotworld I was in the firewood business in the early 90's on lower Cape Cod. I had the privilege of speaking with him privately, about philosophy when I delivered firewood to his house (at the time I was a philosophy student).. He chatted me up about philosophy on his back deck over-looking a pond in the woods in Wellfleet. At that same time he spoke at my school and I saw that as well. I know he's right about the hard-wired grammar, I just tease about how he's not correct about politics from my perspective. Do you actually know him or was that you just mocking me? I do agree with what you said.

[@worldnotworld]

@@captaingrub2228 No, I'm not mocking you. His name cosigns my PhD; we remain in contact, and I continue to publish work in the field of generative grammar. I'm not a close friend, but we still have chats (he gave me a few rides home from MIT back in my student days!). One remarkable thing about him is this: he'll talk to anyone about anything. Earnestly. He does not care much about credentials. I've met many people - pro- and con- - who've wanted to speak with him but never thought they could approach him. My reply: "Nonsense! Just make an appointment with his secretary: he _will_ meet you!" - and it always happens. Downside: he sometimes overwhelms his audience with his own strength, precisely because he doesn't care about credentials. He'll inadvertently knock you down all too fast, forgetting how much your idea might mean to you. His politics have always been a mess; at least he did his best to follow the money, and with that he was often on the money. That makes his recent comments concerning the status of the "unvaxxed" all the more confounding, indeed beyond the pale - here's the man famous for following the corporate/state money, and suddenly he, of all people, is sucking up to state-subsidized big-pharma? - Highly disillusioning, morally questionable, and personally offensive. What sorts of things did you two talk about on the Wellfleet porch?

[@captaingrub2228]

@@worldnotworld We talked about Nietzsche, the Apollo space program and libertarianism (as it was in 92). I'm sure he barely remembers but it meant a lot to me. I was disappointed by his views at the time. Maybe we talked for a half hour twice.

[@worldnotworld]

@@captaingrub2228 Interesting. As a student of his for my PhD I met with him every four or five weeks or so. Whenever I wasn't prepared I'd bring up Palestine and this would set him off for most of the hour (not that I was up on the politics)... I still find his "follow the money" / "follow the propaganda" work of the 1980's of great import, but he's surely stuck in some serious moral conundrums. Buckley gets at them in the famous _Firing Line_ interview. And I have to say, I was waiting for Chomsky to call it like it is in this Covid insanity - follow the money and special interests - I mean, this is his schtick after all - and yet here he is uncritical of big pharma, saying things like "Keep the unvaxxed at home - how will they feed themselves? - that's their problem." Horrific stuff.

[@jarrodyuki7081]

latin greek sanskrit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! pie language..........................

[@susiefairfield7218]

You cannot evolve faster than your language because the language defines the culture of meaning. So if there's a way to accelerate the evolution of language then this is real consciousness expansion and it's a permanent thing.- Terrence McKenna 🍄

[@jareknowak8712]

First you have to discover new objects, ideas, only later you can give them a name.

[@mikel4879]

Jarek N • You cannot "discover" any of them at all if you don't "give" them ( = it they don't "get" ) first a "meaning" in your brain.

[@mikel4879]

Susie F • Correct. "Evolve" in this case being the level of real consciousness in the brain.

[@philosphorus]

"The world is made of language." Terence mckenna (Undoubtedly influenced by chomsky)

[@nasirfazal5440]

Apes don't have language, don't they thoughs,they do.

[@Neilgs]

It is embarrassing how not up to date he remains! The One for One symbol correspondence to certain cries of primate or use of symbols like Nim Chimsky (in the 70's) has nothing to do with the profound linguistic capacities of use of language in the most abstract fashion and more ever to create novel combinations to express non-one for one correspondence. Enter the world of Sue Savage Rambaugh and Bonobos going back to the 1990's. It 's embarrassing!

[@itsjusttoolate]

And this us why the Bible says God spoke us into existence the breath of life, we are a product of God's mind the one source which is also why there are symbology on the back of a "one" dollar bill. The secret societies hold all the knowledge of the bible, they receive 33 degrees for a reason.

[@mikel4879]

Like any human, albeit a smarter one, Noam can be wrong here, and he is. Never try to use philosophy in understanding the real process of Consciousness. If you use it, you'll be left completely confused. The level of consciousness cannot be disentangled from language. It gives only the impression that it is, but in reality it isn't. The main reason is this: consciousness is the real "echo" process of the "meaning" of language. Without the creation of the real material aggregated scaffolding to echo the sound, the language cannot be created. Many animals on Earth communicate with each other in their own specie, have primitive fragments of their own proto-language, and that is exactly their own real level of consciousness in their brains. As I said before, in order to create full Artificial Consciousness in a machine, you don't absolutely need to understand exactly, in the utmost detail, how the nature has done it in the human brain. You just need to understand the fundamental process, the main real functional correlation between the cause and effect, because nature has created many redundant steps in this real natural causal chain ( with what was "at hand" at different evolutionary steps ), redundant steps that can be totally skipped in order to create the same main functionalities. When you understand correctly the simplicity of the fundamental process, the implementation of the full Artificial Consciousness in a machine can be done quickly, immediately and totally. The explanations with the "red color", what you "feel" about it, the "complex structure up there", "two nervous systems" ( by the way, fundamentally it is only one, not two!😏 ), etc, is pure rubbish, pure wasted time for nothing. "Subconscious" ( = "unconscious" ) state is not what you say it is, because it is a real brain structure that's fully part of the same real material "conscious" scaffolding ( what's the fundamental difference between, for example, a headache and a stomachache as a main causal process? Aaaaa...none?!? 😏 ). Etc, etc, etc.

[@notanemoprog]

Oh wow you did it, you proved Chomsky wrong

[@mikel4879]

Notan E • What's your problem, ignorant? Anybody can be wrong, and it's not a shame at all to be wrong. If you're wrong about something, you, at least, know for sure that you're not dead.

[@notanemoprog]

@@mikel4879 Oh wow you did it again

[@mikel4879]

Not an lntelig. • I'm sure your teeth are not fully grown. In order to truly understand what I mean, you should drink more milk...and have patience. In time your teeth will grow...😂

[@RootinrPootine]

Do you smell burnt toast right now?

[@Kenneth-ts7bp]

Language was divided at the Tower of Babel.

[@tonyatkinson2210]

Except all the evidence points the other way .

[@shaneharrington3655]

zZzZzZzzzz …just kidding. Sort of.

[@notanemoprog]

Yeah he should've done a little dance.

[@shaneharrington3655]

@@notanemoprog 😂 😂

[@moo1388]

Noam is ninety percent genius but to claim the wild animal kingdom species language not even remotely similar to human animal kingdom species language is absolutely ridiculous!!!!!!! Where do you think the human species which is the very last to evolve in the chain of evolution learned language from?????????? wtf????? !@@! He's lost fifty percent of his credibility to me

[@peterwilliamson2965]

Thoughts don’t necessarily come from language. Animals go through a thought process, but don’t speak a language. I see something as simple as a door, and I know what it is, but the word door doesn’t enter my head. The world-renowned linguist has made a mistake.

[@kallianpublico7517]

Animals posess consciousness and instincts, curiousity, and memory. They may posess desires or "cravings" and fears. But one thing they do not posess is "belief". In human beings there is something called "will". Will in humans is belief wedded to desire. Animals posess a "will" but their will does not involve belief and desire it usually involves basic instincts. Instincts of attachment to their mothers, fear, hunger, curiousity and so on. While animals make use of instincts and consciousness and its keen sensations to navigate the world, humans make use of this and another faculty. The other faculty that humans use is "self-consciousness" or the linguistic mind. While animals and humans both have perceptions and sensations only humans have "conceptions". The difference between percepts and concepts is what differentiates sensation from cognition (thought). An animal and a human can both feel the heat of the sun 🌞 but will an animal differentiate between the heat and the light from the sun? This is the mystery of perception and cognition: sensation and thought. It is only the human "self-consciousness" that is believed to differentiate it from animal consciousness. What is self-consciousness and how did it arise in humans? That is what linguistic theory is about. From primitive gestures and sounds to alphabets and numbers. The will of primates are fundamentally different from other animals. Similar in some ways to wolves, whales and other "pack" animals. After all the pack "communicates" with each other.

[@peterwilliamson2965]

@@kallianpublico7517 that may all be true, but I speak directly and literally. Thoughts are not made up from words. That’s my only point.

[@kallianpublico7517]

@@peterwilliamson2965 What do you mean by thought? Simple impressions such as smells and sights? I think that is exactly what you mean. Such impressions are memorable but how do they acquire the persistence that would qualify them as thoughts or as things to be thought about? Do bears "think" about salmon, or do they merely follow their instincts? Human beings think ahead, do bears? Dear? Do they plan? What qualifies the animals' will to be similar to the will of human beings if they "think" just as we do? Impressions aren't thoughts. Memories are. But ask yourself, is animal memory as persistent as human memory?

[@tonyatkinson2210]

@@kallianpublico7517 I think you’ve nailed it . The difference is abstract thought . This requires symbols . Animals don’t have symbols because these require language .

[@peterwilliamson2965]

@@kallianpublico7517 The Cambridge dictionary defines thought as " the act of thinking about or considering something, an idea or opinion, or a set of ideas about a particular subject". This could be a lion seeing people as easy prey. My only point it a thought isn't necessarily forming words in your head.

[@mikecummings6593]

Very overrated this mayonnaise

[@MishaTavkhelidze]

I know a lot of theoretical physicists, whom are complete idiots. Albeit, this dude isn't even a mathematician.

[@notanemoprog]

* sigh *

[@mikel4879]

Misha T • Correct 👍, with an observation: there's no 'whom' there. It is 'who'. 🙂

[@MishaTavkhelidze]

@@mikel4879 Right! But, please, pardon my Georgian soul.

[@damosuzuki4125]

He took graduate Abstract Algebra at Harvard.

[@mikel4879]

Misha T • I already did. I know, don't worry. You're OK.✌️🙂

[@Sidionian]

As much as I love Prime Chomsky, he's an old and useless Gate Keeper nowadays. Let the poor old geezer rest in peace already...

[@junanougues]

This "old geezer", as you say, has contributed to science on the same level of Newton, Darwin and Einstein. Completely transformed our knowledge of ourselves and our place in evolutionary biology as a language species, a living legend. He single handedly founded the field of linguistics and invented the methodology for how to go about researching it. He has made astonishing contributions to developmental psychology, including correcting and singlehandedly dethroning the fanatical delusions of behavioral psychology. And the implications and outcomes of his language research even influenced the civil rights movement. What articles have you contributed with in your lifetime that have helped science move forward?

[@AK-nw7tr]

Synesthesia see in color mb answer that question from their unique mutation what it feels like to see red. Ex: red feels like a needle. Painter w synethesia painted the feeling of acupuncture. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4286234/ Dia duit. Apprec the dialogue of scholars who synthesize knowledge wo getting too obscure w field specific language...thinking of Wittgenstein summing it's the prob of language and meaning.