Let me say that here Ted shows no familiarity with the biolinguistic hypothesis at all. In short I am not sure he knows anything about research in this area. He confuses the biolinguistic basis for the language faculty with semantic and logical views of argument as if they were one and the same thing. Even a passing glance at Chomsky, Jackendorf, Pinker, James McGilvray, Neil Smith (who often don't agree with each other) would show him that a statement such as "Attempting to defend the idea with argument is self-contradictory; it's attempting to persuade people that they aren't open to persuasion by argument." Theories of universal grammar have nothing to do with theories of rhetoric, persuasion, or other ways in which we may choose to use language. In the same way computational theories of vision have nothing to do with trying to convince people that Monet's water lilies are beautiful. The statement here is so astoundingly wrong headed that it is hard to understand why he makes it.
To say that "language is our creature" because other wise it would be what Marx called fetishism is not an argument but simply dogmatism. For Chomsky the subject/predicate form does not entail anything about the universe or anything else outside the brain. In fact the subject/predicate form is merely an artifact of the way that we talk about language in our culture and has very little to do with Chomsky's attempt at a scientific concept of I-language. What Chomsky calls the Language Faculty is a structure or a module of the brain/mind in the same way that vision is. I-language is individual, internal, and intensional, and there is a need for environmental triggers in order to initiate its growth, but the very notion that Ted can talk of Chomsky's view of language the way he does just shows that he rejects Chomsky's view of language without even knowing what Chomsky says.
If Chomsky is correct in his basic premise, (and the evidence is overwhelming that he is, though the question of whether one can build a theory from universal grammar is still open), then there is also a difference between the "language faculty" and the use of language, in any cultural or social context. When Ted speaks of persuasion etc. he says nothing about I-language and how it is shaped, he is only speaking about the everyday use of language in particular, psychological, cultural, and social contexts. Something that Chomsky repeatedly says we know very little about and which Chomsky says his theoretical program says nothing about.
This is the kind of mistake Ted makes again and again. Just because vision is a faculty of brain/mind and evolved in the course of our biological evolution, says very little about what we see, what we want to see or what we choose to see; for example why I move my eyes to see the book beside my desk or the little "folder" in the corner of my screen. There is a faculty of vision which is biological but that faculty of vision does not "determine" how we "choose" to use our vision.
There is not particular, logical, ontological, or physical reason to look at vision or the language faculty in any other way. There is no particular logical, ontological, physical or "Marxist" reason to look at language in any different way than we look at vision. At leas to look at language and vision in similar ways is a very good starting assumption. If Ted's reasons for looking at the vision faculty or the language faculty in any other way are simply because it doesn't conform with his notions of Marx or ontology then he is simply imposing his a priori philosophical views on rational investigation. He offers know reasoning or evidence that language is not biologically based. He simply states that to think so is a form of fetishism.
Ted do you also think that vision is not biologically based, not based on genetics, etc., did not evolve in the course of evolution?
Which brings up the point about Chomsky's views of the language faculty and its relation to sociobiological hypotheses. Chomsky's views that what we study when we study the language faculty is internal, individual, and intensional is certainly a non-sociobiological view of language. In fact it is a view of language that looks at its "social" development as a form of communication as a behavioral accident to the actual mind/brain structure. Before I explain I just want the list to note that one does not have to accept this last view of language as a consequence of the biolinguistic research program, but it does help to understand why Chomsky's view of language are not sociobiological to realize that he doesn't even think that the mind/brain basis of language developed as a form of communication. He hypothesizes that the language faculty developed internal to the mind/brain and was possibly a way to organize thought.
In other words Michael Smith is correct in his statements, but he doesn't go far enough. There is currently a debate between Chomsky, Hauser, Fitch, et. al. and Pinker, Jackendorf, et. al. on the biological evolution of language. All of these debates are insider debates and it is not necessary for this list to be concerned with them to any degree. (At the end of this email I will provide the URLs for the pdf files.) But the crux of the matter is as follows. Chomsky's views are in some way against the ideas that S.J. Gould once labeled as "orthodox adaptationism." (Gould was speaking of Dennett and Dawkins, in this case.) For Chomsky language is not primarily social at all. Whatever communication abilities that language gave to the human species were for him spandrels to other developments that have mostly to do with the structure of the brain and thinking. Chomsky contends that the "language faculty" probably facilitated thought and conceptualization and it probably did so even before the ability to actually communicate those complex conceptualizations were available, i.e. before the vocal chords were developed to facilitate communication. Sociobiological explanations are often, if not always, adaptationist in their thrust, and they always deal with how such adaptations are exhibited in behavior. Chomsky's view of language is not "adpatationist" in this way, and the developments in the brain/mind that eventually led to what we in our everyday world call language, did not necessarily have any external behavioral "use" when they first mutated.
Which again brings us back to Ted's statements. He doesn't seem to realize that the terms for the language faculty that Chomsky uses are not those that we use to designate languages such as "Italian", "German," or "!'O!Kung". For Chomsky what ever social differences these languages show or how ever they are used is not the crux of the matter. He is studying the underlying mental ability that all languages have in common. Ted seems to reject such study out of hand.
It just doesn't conform to his philosophy. I just don't get this.
Jerry Monaco
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/publications/languagespeech/HauserChomskyFitch.pdf
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/papers/pinker_jackendoff.pdf
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Emnkylab/publications/languagespeech/EvolLangFac_Cognition.pdf