[lbo-talk] Re: Chomsky on sociobiology

Luke Weiger lweiger at umich.edu
Tue Jun 6 12:20:13 PDT 2006


What Arash writes below is correct. I hasten to add, though, that Pinker et al. are right--if Chomsky's view of our capacity for language is correct (and most everyone agrees it's roughly right), then the evolutionary explanation of its origin will involve adaptation after adaptation. Given that Chomsky isn't reflexively hostile to evolutionary psychology, I'm puzzled that he doesn't see this.

-- Luke

Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 13:29:36 -0500 (CDT) From: "Arash" <arash at riseup.net> Subject: [lbo-talk] Re: Chomsky on sociobiology To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Message-ID: <1402.arash.1149618576.squirrel at mail.riseup.net> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1

In response to this thread:

Michael wrote, "This comment startled me a bit. I don't know how precisely defined the word 'sociobiology' is, but you'd have to understand it pretty broadly to cover Chomsky's view of the language faculty."

Psychology is the study of the mind. "Sociobiology" or "evolutionary psychology" (the latter was just supposed to be a PC term for the former) is the study of how and why the mind evolved--so, you see, it's a pretty broad term. How we came to have such a sophisticated capacity for language is a question of great interest to EPers, most of whom would agree with Chomsky.

Arash:

Sociobiologists/evolutionary pscyhologists are interested in Chomsky's ideas, but I don't think that makes his work sociobiology, it would probably be termed cognitive science or psychology instead. He is primarily interested in mapping out what he sees as the algorithms underlying the language faculty, the specific combinatoric system that generates a practically unlimited number of sentences from a closed set of elements, "the infinite use of finite media." The ev psych focus of explaining what evolutionary events could have brought about the human capability for language, that really doesn't pertain to most of the work Chomsky has done. In fact, he is very sceptical of evolutionary explanations of human language, even of the notion that language confers any advantage in evoluionary terms. Many psychologists and linguists disagree with him on this stance, recently there has been a running debate in few academic journals with psychologist Steven Pinker and linguist Ray Jackendoff on one side arguing for language as an adaption and Chomsky and some associates on the other arguing for a spandrel/exapation intrepretation of the human language ability.

Where Chomsky's views do coincide with evolutionary psychology is on the idea that human behaviors traditionally thought of as cultural products may be better explained as being the results of specific genetic instructions. His readiness to accept genetic explanations for behavior sets him apart from many other left-leaning scientist, and I think that has made him much more open than them to the ev psych approach. Apparently, when Gould and Lewtonin's Sociobiology Study Group tried to enlist Chomsky for his support he declined because he didn't share their views on the variability of human nature (and perhaps he was put off G&L's character assassination attempts by associating E.O. Wilson with eugenics and social darwinism, who knows?). Chomsky does endorse the ev psych approach as Luke's quote makes clear, but still he is generally pretty averse to examining language in the context of evolution.

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Message: 5 Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 14:48:16 -0400 From: "Jerry Monaco" <monacojerry at gmail.com> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Chomsky on sociobiology To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Message-ID: <b4d7776e0606061148x48ae118bk6d0806f7b5e64cdc at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

On 6/6/06, Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com> wrote:
>
> I wasn't commenting on Chomsky's particular theory of language, about
> which, you're right, I know practically nothing.

Now that I have got you to admit that you know practically nothing about the biolinguistic research program in language maybe I can someday get you to admit that you know practically nothing about the research program that takes sociobiology as a premise.

For instance most (possibly all) vertebrate species that take a relatively long-time from birth to maturation seem to show certain similar characteristics. One of those characteristics is cooperation in raising children. Many sociobiologists propose that there is a relationship between the length of maturation and cooperative parenting. If there is no cooperative parenting then of necessity the length of time from birth to maturity will be short. If the length of time between birth and maturity is long-enough to tax the energy or threaten the survival of mother and infant then there must be cooperative parenting. It is true of all other species. Why shouldn't it be true of the hominid line?

This is a sociobiological hypothesis. It is argued through cross-species analysis and through looking at other primates. I don't want to go into the intricate details and evidence for this hypothesis. I think it is certainly a good hypothesis. The hypothesis is narrow and their is good evidence for it.

Do you reject the hypothesis simply because it is part of the sociobiological project? Do you reject it because it somehow does not match your views of "self-determination"? If you do reject it, is it because you have examined the evidence and found it lacking?


> 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.

Ted, I have asked you before to please explain to me what you mean by determination and self-determination and how it can at all be applied to the issues that we are talking about in these threads. I think that the evidence is good that I-language is a biological faculty in an analogous way that vision is a biological faculty. What does this have to do with determination or self-determination? In what sense is vision "determined" or "self-determined" and what would have to do with the biological system of vision?

I think that it is a good hypothesis that the extended length of hominid childhood necessitated cooperative parenting and a high level of food sharing among early hominid food groups. It also seems a reasonable hypothesis that homo sapiens are the biological descendants of these hominids and have thus inherited many of their capacities. This hypothesis neither denies nor accepts what you call self-determination. It maybe a "sociobiological" necessity for hominid hunter gatherers to cooperate in parenting in order to survive. It maybe in "harmony" with our general tendencies if modern humans similarly cooperate in child rearing. There may be a whole host of biochemical triggers that increase our tendency to cooperate in such projects. (For instance see Fleming, Corter, Stallings, Steiner, "Testosterone and prolactin are associated with emotional response to infant cries in new fathers," showing that their are profound chemical changes among fathers who stay close to their new children and arguing that these chemical changes may help to induce care-taking among fathers.)

But even if all this is true it does not tell us how we choose to cooperate or even if we might choose to commit a form of group suicide instead. Or to put it more poetically, if what Auden once said is true "we must love one another or die", it does not tell us how to love one another or if we will choose to die instead.


> 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
>

Just by the way.... Chomsky does not speak about "ordinary language" in any philosophical sense. He doesn't think there can be a theory of what philosophers call ordinary language. Which is why your use of Whitehead was off the mark, in the case of discussing Chomsky.

Jerry

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Message: 6 Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 18:50:37 +0000 From: "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com> Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Liberalism and preemptive evil To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Message-ID: <BAY114-F2281B0A21B73D536A223C6C8950 at phx.gbl> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed


>From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
>
>... I think you got it all backwards, Carl ... thinking that thwarting
>liberal Democrats would thwart US
>imperialism is tantamount to believing that stopping the Titanic band
>playing would stop the sinking ...
>why not sitting down, relaxing, and enjoying the music before darkness
>swallows it all?

You may be right, but I think I'll mosey over to the ship's bar and see if there's any jazz there. I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my last time afloat listening to the Democrats' fife-and-drum corps play military marches.

Carl

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