B. wrote:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20060605/011651.html
Arash wrote of Steven Pinker and Ray Jackendoff:
"What really suprised me though was their stance on why Chomsky keeps clinging to this half-baked spandrelist hypothesis. They basically concluded that it came down to a deep conflict with his particular anarchist view of humanity, a conviction that 'lies at the root of Chomsky’s belief system: a conception of human nature that spans his disparate writings in linguistics and in *politics*.
“'This view of human nature may be the hidden variable that accounts for Chomsky’s otherwise disparate beliefs. In the political arena, Chomsky’s “anarcho-syndicalism” assumes that humans are equipped with a spontaneous tendency to cooperate and to engage in productive, creative work for its own sake . In the linguistic arena, Chomsky posits a system for productive, creative generation of an infinite number of sentences, a system which allows for the expression of thought for its own sake but is not designed for (and not even particularly good at) the practical function of communication.”
I find the idea that Chomsky's linguistic theories are passed through political and ideological filters to be very unconvincing. Many years back, looking for an excuse to write Chomsky, I was reading Robert M. Cutler's work on Bakunin (http://www.robertcutler.org/bakunin/basic/intro.html), an anarchist that Chomsky often cites approvingly. Lo and behold, therein I found passages by Bakunin on linguistic theory, of all things. Seizing the opportunity, I wrote Chomsky for his take on the matter. Basically, Chomsky adamantly disagreed with what Bakunin had to say about language (I can't recall what Bakunin's point was, but Chomsky thought it was hogwash). I don't think Chomsky would follow some linguistic line because it's "what anarchists are supposed to think" or because he needs a theory to be a certain way so he can reconcile, Lysenko-like, scientific data with "his anarcho-syndicalism" the way Pinker and the unfortunately-named Jackendoff suggest.
My response:
Let me say right up front I don’t endorse this perspective, I think it is just as reasonable to understand Chomsky’s preference for a non-selectionist account as an outgrowth of assumptions made in his Minimalist Program. But what does make me sit up and take notice is that these two eminent figures in linguistics, both of whom have worked with Chomsky and vigorously defended the core insights of universal grammar for a number of years, have decided that this view of Chomsky’s personal philosophical beliefs speaks better to their experience with his aversion toward theories of the language faculty that involve natural selection
I want to point out though that the way you’ve described Pinker and Jackendoff’s position is a complete mischaracterization, they never say that Chomsky’s theorizing in linguistics is bound by “what anarchists are supposed to think,” or that he has some compulsion to make sure his thinking conforms to every musing of the anarchist philosophers he identifies with politically. What they claim is that Chomsky’s ideas on the function of language derive from his particular conception of human nature. His perspective is anarchist only in the sense that it is constituted by aspects of human nature emphasized in anarchist philosophy, but the view itself isn’t dependent on the validity of all the anarchist thought that has revolved around these aspects. And Chomsky finds recognition of these aspects not only in explicitly anarchist philosophy but also in philosophical observations made by Marx, Kant, Rousseau, and others.
I’d like to add that Pinker and Jackendoff don’t offer their take on Chomsky’s motivations as any kind of refutation to his non-selectionist account of language origins, but to point out how Chomsky’s nearly contradictory shift in views might be less of a non-sequitur than it otherwise seems to be. It’s worth reading the entire section of the paper concerning this, “Has Chomsky Changed his Fundamental Vision of Language?,” before coming to a judgment.
Arash