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 (Skinner argues that mentalism platonically
invokes the "inner man" as the cause of behaviors: "The inner man is
regarded as driving the body very much as the man at the steering
wheel drives a car") & emphasis on the environment to account for our
morals & mores naturalistically?
To sum up, whether one views Chomsky as Cartesian dualist or
proto-biological reductionist, it is not clear why Chomsky's
linguistics should be regarded as a weapon for anarchist politics.
Yoshie ========== Hi Yoshie,
I do agree we are a long way from any clarity on the innate/enviro. spectrum regarding the development of perceptual/communicational repertoires among socially precocious mammals. I was just making a sophomoric aside, as indicated by my :-). Indeed the lack of consensus in cog. sci., philosophy of mind etc., say something quite powerful about the old adage that language is politics. Consent falls apart in the battle of descriptions.
Ian