[lbo-talk] More on Kenneally

[ravi]

On Jul 11, 2009, at 11:14 AM, Chuck Grimes wrote:
> So far what Kenneally is presenting is the intellectual history of a
> change in social and biological sciences, that amonted to a return to
> basic questions that had been abandoned by an earlier generation.
>
> The basic plot is that Chompsky and Gould as reigning intellectuals of
> their era, dodged the obvious question about how did humans and their
> psycho-social organization, culture and languages evolve from some
> prior animal society?
> Their graduate students went back to these questions that had been
> previously off the table. That's the general plot, so far. Kenneally
> was interested in this question as a grad student. Where did language
> come from, but it was officially banned in linguistics.
>

I don't think it was "banned", but yes, just as with certain  
explanations for K-T extinction and Lamarckism, it was frowned upon,  
indeed driven by Chomsky's lack of interest or faith in it. But this  
has all been well known for a long time... check any EvoLang  
discussion... and Chomsky himself has noted (in true open-minded  
fashion) that evolutionary explanations of language have reached  
further than he had expected.

I don't think Chomsky "dodged the obvious question" (or "basic  
questions" as you write in the previous paragraph), at all. It is some  
sort of hyper-Dobzhkanskyish adaptationist commitment that would give  
meaning to your underlying notion that "culture and languages evolve  
from some prior animal society". To stretch my point: should poets be  
worried about the "basic" and "obvious" question of the evolutionary  
history of the iambic pentameter?

Did (and does) Chomsky think that language was an adaptation? He does  
not. He lays out a few reasons why and he also (IIRC) explains why he  
is not as interested in that question.


> Kenneally has her limits, but they are very common limits that many
> science and academic mentalities share. On the other hand, I had no
> idea that many sorts of questions about the origins of language,
> thought, culture, art I was interested as a student were pro-actively
> not discussed, and not studied. Answers to these kinds of questions
> were considered unknowable. There was in effect an intellectual ban on
> asking or answering them not just in the sciences, but humanities,
> philosophy, and art. This is why the structuralist like Levi-Strauss
> and Jean Piaget interested me so much. Right or wrong, at least they
> got started on some of these questions and provided some answers of
> their own.

I think the history is deeper. Chomsky's greatest contribution was  
that he departed from a holistic approach in the soft sciences to an  
intentionally minimalist programme with much smaller scope that  
yielded rich results.


> As page 75, this is the basic summary. Animal studies from
> Savage-Rimbough indicated primates think and understand limited
> language. These elements indicate an evolutionary basis for the
> development of human languages.

I am not sure what you mean by "evolutionary basis". If by that you  
mean simply that it’s a feature we inherited from a common ancestor  
(common with primates), sure, why not. No problem. On the other hand,  
if you mean that human language is an adaptation, then I fail to see  
how the above establishes that.


> Child studies in language acquisition
> from Pinker and Bloom indicate adaptive changes as a result of natural
> selection.

Can you give us pointers?

	--ravi