Chomsky -- Put up or blah blah

bill fancher fancher at pacbell.net
Tue Mar 28 11:21:07 PST 2000


on 3/28/00 9:29 AM, Scott Martens at smartens at moncourrier.com wrote:


> Chomsky played a part in killing behaviourism, but a lot of other people were
> involved. To his credit, Chomsky has never claimed that he slayed Skinner's
> beast. His review of "Verbal Behaviour" was seminal in linguistics, but it
> played little role elsewhere.

Chomsky's review played a much larger role everywhere than it should have, given that it consists mostly of slander, misinterpretations and misunderstandings.


> Chomsky's followers have difficulty claiming much empirical basis for GG and
> haven't made any real progress in understanding the functioning of human
> language on this basis.

He has the unique distinction of having stymied progress not just in his own field, but several others, including Psychology and Artificial Intelligence.

-- bill

"Those who so triumphantly announce the death of behaviorism are announcing their own escape from the canons of scientific method." - B.F. Skinner



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