[lbo-talk] Re: Chomsky on sociobiology

Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Tue Jun 6 14:14:37 PDT 2006


On Tue, 6 Jun 2006 15:20:13 -0400 "Luke Weiger" <lweiger at umich.edu> writes:
> 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.

Chomsky's views concerning the evolution of human linguistic capacity have always been a mystery to me. As I understand it, Stephen Jay Gould concurred with Chomsky in terms of arguing that human linguistic capacity was not the product of adaptive evolution. Instead, he seemed to think it to be a spandrel, that is, it was a more or less accidental byproduct of the evolution of the human central nervous system. Chomksy, in turn, then announced that he concurred with Gould's views on evolution.

Steven Pinker, on the other hand, embraced Chomsky's psycholinguistics but rejected Chomsky's contention that the evolution of linguistic capacity was not understandable in adaptationist terms. In the evolution debates, Pinker weighed in on Richard Dawkins' side against Gould, and he argued that the type of gene-centered Darwinism that was championed by Dawkins (and people like John Maynard Smith, George WIlliams, and William Hamilton) could be used to understand the evolutionary development of human linguistic capacity. So Pinker has contended that Chomskyian psycholinguistics is compatible with sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, even if Chomsky doesn't agree with 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.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> 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
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> 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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