Jerry Monaco wrote:
> 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.
I wasn't commenting on Chomsky's particular theory of language, about which, you're right, I know practically nothing.
I was commenting on the idea of explaining language within a sociobiological framework which, it was suggested, Chomsky would endorse. I don't know if this is true. (My understanding is that Chomsky interprets Marx's idea of "species-being" in a way that makes it consistent with sociobiology. As I pointed out earlier, I think this is mistaken. In fact, as the text I quoted shows, Marx means by "conscious species-being" a being capable of self-determination in the sense I've been elaborating.)
The reason arguments defending sociobiological conceptions of our thinking are self-contradictory is that they're inconsistent with the idea of our thinking as self-determined. An "argument" offers reasonable grounds, e.g. textual evidence, for choosing to believe something, e.g. that Marx's idea of "conscious species being" isn't compatible with sociobiology. So attempting to persuade people with argument that their ideas are determined in a way that prevents them from being changed by argument is self-contradictory.
The beginning point I made about language repeats Whitehead's argument in response to criticism of his idea of "internal relations" as inconsistent with the subject/predicate structure of ordinary language.
Ted