Thanks very much for your posting Ted. It was nice to have the opportunity to read those passages you cited again. I do disagree with some of your interpretations of them, and would enjoy getting to the bottom of them, however, this is really not the place to do it. I think what would be more productive for the purposes of this list is to try to establish that Chomsky's views on these matters do ultimately provide the basis for a kind of "philosophy" in the general sense which Yoshie and others were discussing on another thread. I quite agree with her negative take on the underlying reasons for appeal of "Nietzsche, Heidegger, Lacan, etc., incidentally.
The only really satisfactory attempt I know to establish a connection between Chomsky's epistemology and politics is Harry Bracken "Some Reflections on our Sceptical Crisis" in Reuland and Abraham (eds), Knowledge and Language, vol 1, From Orwell's Problem to Plato's Problem. (I'd be happy to send you xerox of this if you send me your address off list.)
Sorry not to provide the sort of detailed response your posting requires and (worse) to throw the ball back in your court, but as you might have noticed, some of the less sympathetic characters on this list have decided to stop ignoring my posts for the moment and have gotten their knives out.
John