I'll note as an aside that the whole ID controversy (on both sides) rests on a false identification of order-that-can't-be-accidental with conscious design, which is a modern (Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment) preconception that grows out of Christianity. (And was demolished by Hume even later.)
--- On Thu, 6/11/09, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
> From: ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Kenneally, some notes and background
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, June 11, 2009, 2:02 PM
> On Jun 11, 2009, at 1:20 PM, Michael
> Smith wrote:
> > On Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:45:43 -0400
> > ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org>
> wrote:
> >
> >> I too find the "poverty of input" argument too
> >> close to Intelligent Design proponents for
> comfort.
> >
> > I don't quite follow this -- how so?
> >
>
> If I understand it right, Chomsky and Co say that there
> just aren't enough inputs into the system (the system here
> being a child during say the ages of 8 months to 3 years, as
> she or he goes about acquiring language) too limited to
> account fully for the richness (and I am guessing accuracy)
> of the child's language capability.
>
> But it surely can't be the case that all the inputs to the
> child are well understood.
>
> At least until a few years ago, the argument from ID
> proponents was that the eye was just way too complex in
> structure to have just appeared in entirety to fulfil its
> function. The argument against this (until recently, AFAIK)
> was not to explicitly demonstrate that each stage of the
> development of the eye had a particular structure which
> served as an adaptation. Rather, it was generally offered
> that just because we do not know the developmental path of
> the eye does not imply that some unknown mechanism fashioned
> the eye to serve its purpose.
>
> Similarly, unless Chomsky and Fodor have actually listed
> all the inputs a child encounters, we can argue that their
> claim is not necessary simple because they perceive a
> complexity that is unexplained.
>
> Of course Chomsky is about as far away from an ID theorist
> as you can get, so my point is not that he believes in
> mystical magical things. But rather, I think that
> behavioural scientists may yet produce new insights into how
> the environment shapes a faculty in an organism, working on
> nothing beyond a basic, generalised capacity that the
> organism is endowed with.
>
> Carrol: the meat of the paragraph you quoted was not the
> "poverty of input" theses, but to list the various arguments
> that are available to buttress Chomsky's position. Poverty
> of input is one. The reducibility of the structure of all
> (most?) human languages to the UG is another. So on.
>
> --ravi
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>