Actually I'm fairly new here and haven't picked up on all this. I feel sort of like I've ambled into a barful of regulars, see a fight break out, and don't know if it's going to end with everyone laughing and buying another round or with everyone pulling out the tire irons...
----Original Message Follows---- From: Adam Pressler <adampopulist at yahoo.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: Race Math & Language Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 22:03:46 -0800 (PST)
--- Gregory Geboski <ggeboski at hotmail.com> wrote:
> not that comfortable with it), I suggest you try to
> read Chomsky, or Pinker,
What gave you the idea I haven't read Chomsky or Pinker? Actually, I was gonna start tonight but then "Friends" came on tv. Mathew Perry is just so damn funny...
> "Math as a language" and other overarching cognitive
> roles for the language
> function: A real trap. Chomsky's program posits
> nothing beyond the language
> function as language commonly defined--the
> traditional grammatical
> categories (now turned inside out!), sound, words,
> sentences, syntax,
> etc.--although it may have interesting implications
> for other cognitive
> domains.
All well taken. And your posts have been very thought provoking.
I have been, without knowing it, arguing a soft form of the S-W for years. I am also intrigured by the language-organ because it appeals to my understanding of how consciousness develops. It also seems to run counter to the mechanical view of the brain as some sort of big database to be filled with information by parents, teachers, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
However conscousness develops, it is still somehow makes our minds more than just a set of collected synapses. As such it allows us to be more than a machine, and to be more than a rational actor within the framework of society. It allows us hope to change our reality and the imagination to do it.
I'm not sure what there is to say any more on this topic. Unless someone else can discuss any the relationship between math and language (or I find time to get to a researh library), it seems you and I have reached as far as we can go on this thread. Besides, you know the keg's floating when Kelly and Yoshie start pickin fights again.
Adam
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