Chomsky has argued that the mind-body problem can't actually be coherently stated because there is no noncircular account of what counts as "physical," thus nothing to oppose to "mental." That's not saying that everything is mental, but that the dichotomy is false. I'm not saying I agree, but the idea has a certain appeal and it is hard to give a noncircular account of what's "physical" or "material" or whatever you think that's opposed to "mental."
Chomsky's Cartesianism, self-described, derives from a different source -- Descartes' advocacy of "innate ideas," as opposed to the "blank slate" notion (that everything in the mind comes from experience) supposedly advocated by empiricists like Locke (who comes later), Berkeley,a nd Hume (much later). None of whom advocated a blank slate view.
But Chomsky sees his transformational grammar as a sort of innate idea, a structure to our language (all human language) that we come with without having to learn it from experience the way we learn to speak a particular language. (I am carefully avoiding the term "genetic" here, as Chomsky also does usually in this context.) That is why he calls himself "Cartesian."
--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
>
> It is the thesis that "Things mental,
> indeed minds, are emergent properties of brains,
> [though] these
> emergences are not regarded as irreducible but are
> produced by
> principles...we do not yet understand."
>
>
> ^^^^^
>
> CB: Key thing is the "s" in "brains",plural. Mind is
> an emergent property of
> a society of brains, not an individual brain. We do
> understand that
> principle.
>
>
>
> [lbo-talk]
>
> Jerry Monaco :
> Chomsky explaining his view on Mind/Body and by the
> way on his view of
> Cartesian dualism, etc. I think you misunderstand
> Chomsky here.
>
> -clip-
>
>
>
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