Chomsky & Skinner (was RE: Freedom and equality?)

[Eric Beck]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

>Whether Chomsky's hypothesis of innate ideas is a blow for anarchism,
>however, is far from clear.  Why should we assume that the hypothesis
>of innate structures as the foundation of human language acquisition
>is less "authoritarian" & more "anarchistic" than the Skinnerian
>rejection of mentalism

First of all, Chomsky would probably discourage a linking of his
"hypothesis of innate ideas" (a philosophical/scientific speculation) with
his belief in anarchism (a political conviction).

Nonetheless, I think there is a way to think of Chomsky's theory of
language as anarchistic, though it's likely a problematic connection, and
one that I won't explain very well. According to anarchistic theory, humans
have an innate desire for liberty ("the human capacity for freedom" as
Chomsky calls it), but that liberty can't achieve form or expression unless
it has a community or society with which to interact. Similarly, from what
I understand of Chomsky's theory of language--which, I'll admit, isn't that
much--humans have an innate capability for language, but it doesn't find
form unless it makes outside contact. To quote your quoting of Chomsky,
"Knowledge of language is normally attained through brief exposure." The
exposure may be brief, but it is exposure. (This is all just an application
of Kant's space-time theory to different concepts.) Anyway, the key ideas
here are liberty and language. In Chomsky's theory, it would seem,
something that is innate (in this case, liberty and language) is de facto
nonauthoritarian; whether or not that thing becomes anarchistic (that is,
whether liberty becomes true freedom, and whether language becomes pure
expression) depends on the society that it comes to inhabit.


>On the other hand, one may interpret Chomsky as not a Cartesian
>dualist but a monist, since his "innate ideas" are understood as
>encoded in the brains.

But they still require outside stimulus to *become* ideas. Besides, Chomsky
has always recognized that he's following Descartes here, and I see no
reason to disagree with him.

Eric