I want to make 4 points.
(1) On science.
Doyle Saylor wrote:
> 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.
I'm not at all anti-science. I am quite vigorously anti-reductionist and anti-positivist, which represent respectively a practice and a theory of science which I believe is fundamentally mistaken. They take PART of science, and misrepesent it as the WHOLE.
(2) On brain "pre-wiring" for language (for example).
> 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.
I don't buy the formal rule/connectionist dichotomny as an accurate map of what our choices are. I think there's a lot of room for us to learn about HOW language is innately "pre-wired". Why shouldn't a connectionist model have something to tell us about how its done? Those connections aren't being made in a vacuum.
I don't really want to debate this, not because I'm close-minded, but because it's way off-topic. I do still mean to read Deacon's book, so I guess I'll get a full-blown exposure to the counter-argument there.
When Doyle says:
> Actually all that matters here is that a neural network
> does not need a rule before hand, it learns from external experience.
This is certainly true of the pure theoretic model and constructs based on it. But there's no reason to suppose such a sharp dichtomy in real nature. Nueral network types are assuming a dichotomy with "rule-based" systems, but Chomsky's BROAD insight--the only thing I concerned myself with--requires no such commitment to a "rule-based" system.
(3) The Error of Reviving Skinner.
> 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.
Behaviourism was notoriously hostile to biology, indeed to all forms of explanations grounded in the real physical world. Context was irrelevent according to Skinner. (I did a year in a totally gung-ho Skinnerian psych department. I KNOW how rigid and doctrinaire they were.) I'm not saying there's nothing to be learned from Skinner (his opposition to punishment, for example). I am saying that there's much more to be learned from his closest critics.
(4) Why this all might matter.
The relationship of Marxism in particular and critical thought in general to science and reason remains a matter of primary importance. False images of science and reason, used to valorize OR reject pose a real danger to any long-term radical project, EVERY BIT AS MUCH as false images of Marxism and critical thought.
This was, for me, the underlying reason that I jumped in. But it's becoming increasingly remote as the thread's continued. Hence, it's time to move on.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"