Sure, I am down with that, but the discussion is a bit different here, isn't it? We are wondering if, as Chomsky thinks, there is something like a specialised organ, in the brain (Chomsky usually refers to only the "mind", but has mentioned "brain" in some occasions), that caters to the language capacity. Chomsky thinks so.
> I know it's an ingrained element of common sense in our society
> (e.g., the debates about whether or not people are "born"
> homosexual). Psychologists played this Nature vs. Nurture game for
> decades, and what researchers invariably found was that the answer
> to the question "Is it Nature or Nurture?" was "yes".
Yes, but that is the same as saying that the answer to the question "Is it Nature and Nurture" is also "yes".
The sidebars on Chilean resistance to arsenic etc seems to miss that point. Speaking within bounds of some sort of mild realism, we know an organ exists and carries out this or than function. The heart pumps blood. The stomach digests food. etc. As Michael Smith writes, often this is carried to some ridiculous reductionist level, which then serves as fodder for libertarian fantasies. But should you replace the heart with some other device, or find some human being whose body somehow manages to pump blood without a heart, that does not negate that the heart, when it is around, pumps blood.
--ravi