For those of you who claim to have a deep interest in Chomsky's ideas, where were you last month when I made the following posting on the thread "What *object* or *entity* does psychology study?"
"For those of you interested in Chomsky's take on this question (a question which he has spent a considerable fraction of his intellectual life addressing, incidentally) you might want to have a look at the essay "Language as a Natural Object" in the journal Mind from 1997, I believe. More technical but still very worth reading is Rules and Representations from 1980.
This raises the question as to why Chomsky's ideas on these subjects are virtually never cited when "leftists" concern themselves with larger issues relating to human psychology and human nature while those of Derrida, Lacan, et. al. whose politics (in comparison to Chomsky's at least) are dubious at best, are the coin of the realm in left circles these days. "
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This is one of any number of threads to which Chomsky's work on epistemology, language and cognition is directly relevant. It is also (I repeat) scrupulously ignored by those prolific posters who demonstrate a comprehensive familiarity with the work of Derrida, Lacan, Habermas, Adorno, Zizek, among other pomo icons.
I would be glad to cite the particular threads if anyone has doubts on this score. I will also present the results of a scanning of the last 15,000 postings to this list which very much demonstrate that Chomsky's status here is by no means so exalted as those who were taken aback by my response to Mr. Dorkin seem to believe.
Best,
John