Noam Chomsky on Innate Principles and Dualism

every time I hear about your assertion that certain principles of language are innate I can't get over my response that that seems an explanation of sorts of last resort and I keep wanting to think to think to say instead that we have not yet figured out how we can extract those principles from experience and that's a common reaction and I think it's an interesting fact that people have that reaction so it's very in fact what you're saying is very characteristic and it's an interesting fact about the intellectual culture which goes back hundreds of years and notice that you have I assume we would have a very different reaction to say let me ask you the following question suppose that as far as I'm aware nobody knows anything about the biological factors involved in puberty okay I suppose that somebody comes along and says and also as far as I'm aware every embryo in every developmental biologist assumes that puberty is basically programmed I mean it'll happen it will happen can be affected by the nutritional level or something and so on suppose somebody came along and said well that's an explanation of last resort it really results from peer pressure but we just haven't figured it out I mean it really results when the fact that you know these young people ten years old see their friends going through puberty and everyone else that's why they're doing okay well you know that's conceivable now the point is when you make that proposal every day last now the question is what's the difference why do we think it's ridiculous in one case and plausible in the other case as far as you know the evidence is about the same in fact the evidence for a rate structure is probably better for things above the neck because there were not in total ignorance you actually have some four strong proposals about the innate principles and some explanatory force to them too so that estándares de sciences at least we have more reason to believe in the innate principles of both the neck and below the neck and in fact they also did in 17th century the one case that I even mentioned if you go through it about the Cardin Hume is an example of that you know there were some phenomena around every agreed on the phenomena there was very strong evidence by the criteria the science Sciences to take the Karp's solution that it's you need that's why it happens nevertheless the long-term consequences were acceptance of Joan's solution with its self refutation that we don't have the concept of a straight line now I think that reflects that same strange intuition that people have above the neck we insist that everything's got to be experienced below the neck were quite willing to accept the idea that everything is the way in a rational person would think if you have things that happen without information that must be coming from inside and I think the question is why the dualism well if there were any rational support for it you could look at that argument but there isn't any what it comes down to is exactly the feeling that you expressed and that's the standard opinion so we have to ask a question about irrational attitudes why this particular irrational attitude that's what it is and you could have various speculations about it not my extra Frank opinion is that it's a reflection of a kind of something which also showed up in traditional dualism so I mean as humans it's very natural to think of people as having a mind and a body which are separate to connect them you know traditional mind-body dualism was very common sensical I think it's probably is the way we think about people that's why we would regard someone as being the same person if their body underwent oh you know what we call their body Wonderland all sorts of changes that we will think of them as a different person if you write coded their brains and they had somebody else's memories and language and so on okay that's just the way we look at people and it's very hard to get out of it just like it's very hard to look at the Sun setting and to tell to tell yourself it's not setting the Earth's turning I mean you sort of know that at some level but there's no way for you to look at that and stop seeing it as the Sun setting you can't and I think when we look at people it's extremely hard for us to look at them and not see them as Minds inside bodies well traditional dualism metaphysical dualism collapsed for scientific reasons but that doesn't mean we can get out of our skins we still look at people this way and I think we're as replaced traditional dualism is a kind of an epistemological dualism which comes out pretty much like this it says below the neck I mean that metaphorically like you know on the things that people call physical we're willing to pursue the methods of Sciences and if they lead us to conclude that things are internally programmed will accept it above the neck we're going to be completely irrational we're going to insist on what we would never dream of in the case of things that are fall on our side of the intuitive boundary physical and I think that's probably correct I don't see any other way of explaining this strange phenomenon for the last hundred just over 100 years that the very that even that the very same kind of evidence in fact even better evidence than that which would make us laugh about puberty and peer pressure has made people think we can't do that in the case of metal activity there's another explanation no but I think we're in the domain of trying to account for irrational human beliefs

Channel: Chomsky's Philosophy

Views: 23,414

Rating: 4.9322033 out of 5

Keywords: mind-body problem, human nature, Chomsky, dualism, David Hume, René Descartes, Descartes, Noam Chomsky, Philosophy, Philosophy of mind, Linguistics

Id: CPgDALpS-7k

Length: 5min 29sec (329 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2016