i think i read the pinker and bloom article(s). their main point seemed to be there were actually 2 language learning systems, which was a way to solve or get around the empiricist/innatist debate (like the selfish./altruistic debate). it turned out, surprisingly, that both systems exist (just as it turned out people surprisingly are both selfish and altuistic (cept me, and mother teresa who are saints, and take what we call donations or spiritual protection money). some things are inate and others learned!!! i think they showed this by discovering that children learning language make some errors, but not others. hence they were programmable, eg to become lbo subscribers.
i actually don't kbnow how this relates to evolution, but i think the idea is the innate system was more of a relic, while newer stuff shows the cognitive apparatus evolves. it wasn't a study however of dna change or morphology change.
i imagine in 10 minutes you can google to find out. there's a ton of this stuff on the web. i wonder if that is important, or whether instead dissing kennealy is where its at. i personally find pinker pretty appaling. but he fits well at MIT keeping the rock of solidarity of ideology with a smooth face. the fact that kenneally apparently devotes a chapter to him (and he is hc evo psych) is a bad sign; though she has exact opposities in their too (eg lieberman who is pretty hc anti-chomksyian). (i just read the amazon review---its all you really need these days, to be an expert---i actually have a university where you can pay and we'll give you a rigorous phD in amazon reviews---any field. ). also, apparently she leaves out alot better stuff though any book is finite.
www.axiomsandchoices.blogspot.com
--- On Mon, 7/13/09, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> From: ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] More on Kenneally
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Monday, July 13, 2009, 12:35 PM
> 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
>
>
>
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