[lbo-talk] Noam on intellectuals

[Arash]

The Cartesian label, depending on the context, may also refer to how
certain ideas of generative grammar were anticipated by Enlightment
thinkers working in a Cartesian framework, e.g. the original deep/surface
structure distinction made in the Port Royal Grammar which derives from
dualist conception.  He wrote a book tracing the philosophical history of
this perspective called "Cartesian Linguistics,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_linguistics

Arash

andie nachgeborenen wrote:

Anyway, the point is that what makes him Cartesian (he
thinks) is his commitment to innate ideas. Although as
a matter of fact he's really committed to innate
capacities, which are not ideas in the sense that
Descartes meant. And since the thinks these capacities
are genetically based, if that's a materialist or
physicist explanation (although he thinks that's not a
coherent notion), then he's committed to a
non-dualistic, materialist version of the doctrine of
innate ideas. Actually I think he's about as Cartesian
as Rawls is Kantian -- not very.