thank you for delurking. It is always a pleasure to hear new voices, and especially in this case, from someone who has worked in the field.
On Jun 9, 2009, at 10:39 AM, Aaron Stark wrote:
<...>
> On the other hand, Michael Albert's 2007 memoir "Remembering Tomorrow"
> might shed some light on Chomsky's "interaction style" and the roots
> of the perception mentioned above, both in politics and in
> linguistics. Albert has very graciously serialized several parts of
> his memoir for free on the http://www.zcommunications.org site. Having
> known Chomsky personally and politically for decades, Michael Albert
> writes the following about Chomsky's political interaction style (all
> quotes from Ch 5, and available here
> http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17753 ):
>
> "Noam says what is on his mind, sometimes at a cost. Indeed, bad
> comes with good. Noam's death grip on the truth can interfere, at
> times, with other virtues, such as sensitivity to the impact words may
> have on others. Assessing someone in Noam's position, my tendency is
> to think truth-telling should take precedence over sensitivity, though
> others might disagree, and it certainly isn't one size fits all. "
Albert knows Chomsky, but I am surprised by the above. His dialogues/ debates with Foucault, Trivers, Lewontin, even Dershowitz, points to a person who is not only careful with his analysis but also sensitive enough to not personalise the argument (in most cases, except when facing Dershowitz, whose style is nothing more than personal attack). Chomsky, unlike Paul Krugman who starts staring down at his feet and muttering, does not back off when challenged or bullied (except in one rare case where Buckley got him on the defensive).
I do think Chomsky has a very Ockham's Razor attitude towards truth, and sometimes his insistence that things have to make sense to him is at best naive e.g: his comments during the pomo wars. Even in that case, it is worthwhile to note, Chomsky's position was milder than most.
W.r.t "civility", setting aside the use of words like "stupid" (which seem contentless), Chomsky embodies a style of debate or discussion that is civil in a very special sense (IMHO): his tendency to eschew motive-mongering and psycho-analysis as the foundation of his argument. One example of the contrast between his style and that of his detractors is Michael Berube's attempt at critiquing Chomsky which I, and others, had commented on here a few years ago. No doubt, there are styles that are more productive than Chomsky's, but I think he falls on the positive side of that scale, especially in comparison to what passes for analysis on the Internets and the blogistan (and I don't mean dudes Twittering to each other, but big ticket sites).
--ravi