Understanding Noam Chomsky #13: Intentionality, Ontology, & The Galilean Method (with Georges Rey)

[@Daretoknow2020]

OUTLINE: 0:00​​​ - Introduction 0:40 - Background 6:04 - Representation of Language: Philosophical Issues in a Chomskyan Linguistics 8:23 - Intentionality & Linguistics 15:17 - Linguistic Ontology & "Intentional Inexistents” 22:24 - Representations & Psychology 25:18 - "Algebraic" interpretation 29:33 - Intentionality & Methodological Dualism 32:05 - Linguo-semantics 33:08 - Externalist VS Internalist Debate 39:19 - Platonist & Nominalist Alternatives 45:05 - The Galilean Method & Crucial Data 52:31 - Idealization 57:07 - I-Language & Superficialism 59:09 - Autonomy of Syntax 1:02:18 - Usage Based Linguistics 1:05:43 - Voice of Competence 1:14:20 - Innate & Learned 1:21:33 - Leibniz Problem & Learning about Modality 1:27:41 - “Quasi-Brute (Causal)” Process Nativism 1:37:54 - Explanatory Epistemology & Working Epistemology 1:42:25 - Mind/Body Problem

[@talercerullo8899]

This was one of my professors back in 2018. Great man and great mind.

[@haikohuvenaars]

Keep them coming Fabian!

[@SuramaInacio]

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[@nunoa.fernandes6541]

AWESOME!!!

[@dionysianapollomarx]

Being that I'm kinda confused, I just saw this last week. Did I somehow get quick access? Loved the discussion on intentionality. Wasn't aware Chomsky was totally against it.

[@Daretoknow2020]

Not sure how that happened, haha. Glad you liked the discussion :)!

[@nunoa.fernandes6541]

I don’t know that he’s totally against it so much as he thinks about it differently. I think it’s traditional reference (a “relationship” between words and things) that he’s totally against. Am I wrong?

[@dionysianapollomarx]

@@nunoa.fernandes6541 Rey says Chomsky dismisses intentionality altogether because he limits its definition to the refutation Quine made in Word and Object. Rey seems to have elaborated on it in this episode, if I remember correctly.

[@findbridge1790]

what about War and Peace? or the totality of western painting and sculpture? are we to take it that all this was done without intentionality? LOL or that there are no mental images

[@SchutzBoysband]

Is there some fundamental difference between "intentionality" and free will? I don't see one, and Chomsky definitely believes in free will and so he believes in "intentionality". If anything, I would assume Chomsky doesn't think intentionality is scientific because, as he might say, science is something PEOPLE do. Understanding free will is outside of our cognitive capacities, one of which is our "science forming capacity" (as he has called it), and therefore it's not scientific. Human beings cannot help but dichotomize the world into determinacy and randomness and free will - a.k.a. "intentionality" - lies outside that. It's the example Chomsky always uses to defend his so-called "mysterionism". Chomsky's statement about the rotating cube is perfectly understandable, hardly curious. There are no cubes, or circles, or triangles in the real world but we think of them all the time. The rotating cube in your head doesn't refer to anything because there are no cubes, anywhere, and you've never seen one ("Imperfect circles, cubes et al." don't count because that notion is contingent on the notion of a perfect one). The fact that words don't refer to things is the whole point of the Ship of Theseus story, as Chomsky has explained even in that movie Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? Chomsky would almost certainly say every triangle is a kunizsa triangle. The word triangle refers ONLY to a mental object therefore triangle doesn't refer to anything in the world. The world depicted in Flatland doesn't exist. It existed in the author's mind without a real world referent and can exist in yours if you read it. This is all so obvious idk how chomsky doesn't pull his hair out.

[@nunoa.fernandes6541]

Do plants have intentionality? They point towards the sun. I don’t believe they have freewill.

[@findbridge1790]

misuse of the concept of ontology

[@findbridge1790]

the idea of representation is bad, says too little and too much

[@findbridge1790]

Chomsky has no idea what meaning is. this cripples his whole project really