cultural imperialism

ravi gadfly at home.com
Thu Nov 15 15:34:12 PST 2001


Charles Jannuzi wrote:


>>at least from a philosophical perspective, >it seems a bit of a stretch to
>>relate chomsky to empiricism (innate >structures and so on...). there is an
>>interesting book: challenges to >empiricism, with an essay by chomsky
>>outlining some of his ideas, if i remember >right...
>>
>
> Exactly. Strict empiricism runs into all sorts of problems in linguistics,
> cognitive sciences and even social sciences (which is why sociologits and
> economystics dislike Chomsky after they read his philosophy of science).

>

i get the dislike part, but i am intrigued by your use of the word "mystics", in a way associating it with empiricism. historically, hasnt it been the empiricists and positivists who have accused the platonists and idealists of mysticism? well there is rationalism or realism, i guess (though it seems to me that rationalism is not a philosophical position), but this just random speculation on my part. i write to add that i took a look at the chomsky piece i mentioned, which is i think a transcript of a symposium on innate structures, and it deals mainly with

the reasoning behind his conclusion that one requires innate structures

to explain language acquisition skills as seen in human beings, especially given the constraints of time and creativity. hilary putnam has an interesting response to this notion, which is also to be found in the same volume ("challenges to empiricism"). fwiw.

--ravi

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- man is said to be a rational animal. i do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. more often i have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the 2nd degree. -- alasdair macintyre.



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