I was reading Chuck Grimes posting and really enjoyed it this morning. Paul Rosenberg Wednesday Aug 12, 98 writes: "Yes I have a problem with reductionism.
IMHO, reductionism is an ideology (classically in science) analogous to fundamentalism (classically in religion)."
Doyle I don't have a problem with reductionism. I associate it with persons engaged in scientific research, and it is a basic method. I find it absurb to equate the method with fundamentalism in religion. Since reductionism is so-closely associated with the scientific community I get the point you are being critical of science. That is to say you use the term ideology about science. I think this useage is vague and imprecise. But that is beside the point of brain structures.
Doyle I'm not a structuralist. I would gather your point about structuralist is that they are reductionists, or practicing scientism. At any rate structuralism has little to do with the brain structures debate.
Doyle In regard to Steven Pinker, Paul writes: Paul "He's much more than that, and his book, *How The Mind Works* is simply the most recent, most comprehensive on the subject. As a scientist writing a popular work on such a broad subject he consulted as a peer with a broad network of frontline researchers."
Doyle I like popularizers. Stephen Jay Gould is a great influence upon my understanding of the work of science. Steven Pinker is a very able advocate of the innate language module. The Chomskyan position is to say the brain has an innate rule governing the grammar of human language. I don't understand from your remarks if you believe there is an innate rule governing syntax in the human brain. I will copy your relevent remarks here so others can examine them and make it clear or as you say "spell it out to me" what you actually believe.
Paul "I spelled out what I meant via my reference to Chomsky: the CAPACITY for language is innate, not language per se." Aug 12, 98
Paul "While one can debate quite a bit about Chomsky's contribution, one thing is faily clear -- that the brain IS "pre-wired" for language. The production of language VASTLY exceedes the amount of input given. The language input does NOT shape the brain for language, but rather interacts with the inherint capacity which has done the vast majority of shaping as the end-result of tens of millions of years of evolution." Aug 12, 98
Doyle I really can't tell from this whether you believe there is a formal rule embedded in the brain "structure" which the genetic code prescribes and we all have in order to use language.
Paul Don't tell me where to look, show me what you mean. From the pre-pub info it didn't seem that Deacon's book was proposing a contradictory explanation to Chomsky's. It seemed quite compatible with _The Prehistory of the Mind_. If I'm mistaken, please explain how.
Doyle I don't know what the pre-pub info says about the Deacon book. I just read it because of my interest in functional modularity, and language. Deacon proposes a connectionist view of the mind. In other words that there is no inherited grammar rule in the mind from our ancestors. His book is a readable attempt to show how the mind could create language without having rules in the first place. What I like about the hypotheses asserted is that they could be tested and shown true or false. Chomskys position is a valid hypothesis, but doesn't seem to fit with what is known about neural networks. Rather like the debate between steady state physical cosmology, and big bang cosmology. Gradually the facts seem to lead us to believe that the big bang theory better explains the evidence gathered.
Doyle Deacon asserts a number of intriguing ideas about language. He proposes that bonobos chimpanzees could have the ability to make a language. In other words they have they basic prerequisites to make language which innatist take great pains to try to refute concerning apes. In using the neural network as a basis for learning, Deacon proposes that learning a language fits the underdeveloped neural networks of the child, or chimpanzee child, and is part of the reason that the lengthy attempts to train chimpanzees to use sign language didn't seem to create a sense of syntax in the chimpanzees. Actually all that matters here is that a neural network does not need a rule before hand, it learns from external experience. This eleminates the need to have a grammar rule in the present day human being. Shows how a relationship develops between learning and the brain. It is a major problem to postulate a rule occuring in apes ten million years ago that anticipates the language we have. Deacon proposes that language evolves. All this fits behaviorism to a tee. Hence connectionist have been reviving interest in Skinner.
Doyle Chomsky wrote a famous attack upon Skinner in the mid fifties. The gist of the attack is that we could examine consciousness directly through logical examinations of the formal structure of language. Skinner and other behaviorist hewed to the line that the brain was 'unknowable', and better to examine externals than to speculate about quasi religious minds. Chomsky advanced the science a great deal, but his hypothesis about an innate grammar is not supported by research in the brain.
Doyle There are some amazing things about the optic track, i.e. the magnocellular, and parvonuclear channels in vision. These have a remarkable co-incident history with the evolutionary rise of humans. Functional modularity it seems to me accounts for what we think of the syntax of grammar. And in particular it seems to me the magno-cellular, and parvonuclear channels are the sources of the elementary grammatical divisions of noun, and verb phrases. regards, Doyle Saylor