Foucault - Chomsky #1
A transcript of the debate is available here:
http://criminyjicket.tripod.com/chomfouc.html
Elders starts right off asking about "human nature" ... is there such a thing? He asks Chomsky to start off and explain what kind of thing it might be if, in fact, there is a "human nature".
In my parlence we are talking about natural kinds. Is "human nature" a natural kind, or will it pick out one thing for one peoples at one time and another thing for another peoples at another time and on and on?
Chomsky starts off suggesting that something like linguistic schematics would be a part of human nature, and he seems to indicate a belief that many (presumably "social" abilities) might be combined to make up something we might call human nature.
Foucault begins by looking at it from another perspective. He suggests that "human nature" as a kind is something akin to "life" in biology, an "epistemological indicator" that fixes the domain of diologue and research/questions within fields of study.
As i mentioned above ... the question restated in my language of philosophical speech is ... "Is 'human naute' a natrual kind?" It could also, however, be a question about the provability, one way or the other, about such a question.
The direction i take on this question is to pretty much conceed the point to Foucault, but to not give up Chomsky-esque projects (where i mean the linguistics project, not the definition of human nature project). Daniel Dennet out at Tufts U. would categorize this as a "stance". A stance is essentially a noted assumption that one does not even attempt to prove, but just assumes it to be true in order to see what results experiments based on the assumption provide. Something like the use of the theory of "evolutionary theory" in neuroscience theory and research is a paradigm case of 'the stance'. It doesn't so much matter whether it is true or not, so long as it yields results. In the case of neuroscience ... the assumption that we are evolutionary creatures led to looking at speech and speech recognition capabilities not just as higher order functions, but as a few higher-order tricks in the newer parts of the brain used in conjunction with many mechanisms already in use in the older parts of our brains. The results of this approach have yielded large dividends (see something like Lieberman's "Human Language and our Reptilian Brains if interested). Emotion studies have also been working under this stance with some positive results.
Now, positive results do not mean the theory is true. The Romans built mighty fine bridges and buildings with a physical theory about such structures that we would consider to be very wrong (Aristoteleon science).
Dennet likes to explain 'the stance' as a human cognition tool in terms of playing a computer chess game. There are many stances you can take in reguards to the computer and the chess program, the most effective of which is that it is an opponent trying to beat you at chess. That is very much a wrong assumption ... it is a program of on and off switches and a hardware base of on and off electrical pulses with no real motivation at all and no knowledge that what it is doing is playing chess, more or less hoping to win, it is a program. Now, you could take the 'true' stance and try to beat the computer at the level of electronic pulses, figuring out the pattern and constructing another pattern to defeat it that way, but just pretending it is a chess player is much easier.
(Of course, the computer is designed to make that case true ... so we must be careful about how we use this system.)
Another example might be something like Newton's 2nd law of motion (f=ma) ... that velocity only changes if a force is applied ... that is ... as opposed to Aristotle who thought there had to be a force to create velocity and if the force stops, the object will move to a state of rest. Now, this law was relatively new even at his time (though he was not the first to state it). Just a couple generations before in Descartes' time pretty much everyone still assumed the opposite to be true, following Aristotle, that things tried to move to a state of rest, unless something kept them going as they were. Now, neither assumption is provable, though the latter seems to be more likely re-inforced by observations here on the planet earth, but the switch to the 2nd law of motion paid huge dividends for the physical theories that assumed it and we still call it a law today, though there has never been an experiment, per se, conducted on its truth or falsity. (It's not clear how the 1st law of motion, inertia, could be tested wither.)
Anyway ... In terms of how Chomsky is doing linguistics there does seem to be a notion a 'human nature' in roughly the terms he describes. Without that assumption it is hard to imagine how the field of linguistics could proceed ... and it does seem to be proceeding. With the newest results from neuroscience it will likley proceed further. It is still a very young science, though, and will probably need to practically start over several (more) times before it looks anything like a hard physical science. I want Chomsky and the linguists to keep the assumption ... it seems the most likely to bear fruit.
The discussion reminds me of the movement from Kant through Hegel on to Marx about how much or how little our basic perceptions of the world might change ... very little for Kant, Hegel's view of history has some semblence to paradigm theory which allows for some changes, and Marx seems to suggest that even the most fundamental ways that human's interact with the world can change. The Chomsky - Foucault discussion appears to fall within the Marxist end of this question. The question at hand will be how 'open' are the alternate views ... Chomsky claiming that there are hardwired limitations, and Foucault saying maybe not ... but that is for later on in the discussion.
I'll end it at this for today ... i doubt that there is any 'principled' natural kind we might call "human nature", but it is likley a very useful fiction.
http://criminyjicket.tripod.com/chomfouc.html
Elders starts right off asking about "human nature" ... is there such a thing? He asks Chomsky to start off and explain what kind of thing it might be if, in fact, there is a "human nature".
In my parlence we are talking about natural kinds. Is "human nature" a natural kind, or will it pick out one thing for one peoples at one time and another thing for another peoples at another time and on and on?
Chomsky starts off suggesting that something like linguistic schematics would be a part of human nature, and he seems to indicate a belief that many (presumably "social" abilities) might be combined to make up something we might call human nature.
Foucault begins by looking at it from another perspective. He suggests that "human nature" as a kind is something akin to "life" in biology, an "epistemological indicator" that fixes the domain of diologue and research/questions within fields of study.
As i mentioned above ... the question restated in my language of philosophical speech is ... "Is 'human naute' a natrual kind?" It could also, however, be a question about the provability, one way or the other, about such a question.
The direction i take on this question is to pretty much conceed the point to Foucault, but to not give up Chomsky-esque projects (where i mean the linguistics project, not the definition of human nature project). Daniel Dennet out at Tufts U. would categorize this as a "stance". A stance is essentially a noted assumption that one does not even attempt to prove, but just assumes it to be true in order to see what results experiments based on the assumption provide. Something like the use of the theory of "evolutionary theory" in neuroscience theory and research is a paradigm case of 'the stance'. It doesn't so much matter whether it is true or not, so long as it yields results. In the case of neuroscience ... the assumption that we are evolutionary creatures led to looking at speech and speech recognition capabilities not just as higher order functions, but as a few higher-order tricks in the newer parts of the brain used in conjunction with many mechanisms already in use in the older parts of our brains. The results of this approach have yielded large dividends (see something like Lieberman's "Human Language and our Reptilian Brains if interested). Emotion studies have also been working under this stance with some positive results.
Now, positive results do not mean the theory is true. The Romans built mighty fine bridges and buildings with a physical theory about such structures that we would consider to be very wrong (Aristoteleon science).
Dennet likes to explain 'the stance' as a human cognition tool in terms of playing a computer chess game. There are many stances you can take in reguards to the computer and the chess program, the most effective of which is that it is an opponent trying to beat you at chess. That is very much a wrong assumption ... it is a program of on and off switches and a hardware base of on and off electrical pulses with no real motivation at all and no knowledge that what it is doing is playing chess, more or less hoping to win, it is a program. Now, you could take the 'true' stance and try to beat the computer at the level of electronic pulses, figuring out the pattern and constructing another pattern to defeat it that way, but just pretending it is a chess player is much easier.
(Of course, the computer is designed to make that case true ... so we must be careful about how we use this system.)
Another example might be something like Newton's 2nd law of motion (f=ma) ... that velocity only changes if a force is applied ... that is ... as opposed to Aristotle who thought there had to be a force to create velocity and if the force stops, the object will move to a state of rest. Now, this law was relatively new even at his time (though he was not the first to state it). Just a couple generations before in Descartes' time pretty much everyone still assumed the opposite to be true, following Aristotle, that things tried to move to a state of rest, unless something kept them going as they were. Now, neither assumption is provable, though the latter seems to be more likely re-inforced by observations here on the planet earth, but the switch to the 2nd law of motion paid huge dividends for the physical theories that assumed it and we still call it a law today, though there has never been an experiment, per se, conducted on its truth or falsity. (It's not clear how the 1st law of motion, inertia, could be tested wither.)
Anyway ... In terms of how Chomsky is doing linguistics there does seem to be a notion a 'human nature' in roughly the terms he describes. Without that assumption it is hard to imagine how the field of linguistics could proceed ... and it does seem to be proceeding. With the newest results from neuroscience it will likley proceed further. It is still a very young science, though, and will probably need to practically start over several (more) times before it looks anything like a hard physical science. I want Chomsky and the linguists to keep the assumption ... it seems the most likely to bear fruit.
The discussion reminds me of the movement from Kant through Hegel on to Marx about how much or how little our basic perceptions of the world might change ... very little for Kant, Hegel's view of history has some semblence to paradigm theory which allows for some changes, and Marx seems to suggest that even the most fundamental ways that human's interact with the world can change. The Chomsky - Foucault discussion appears to fall within the Marxist end of this question. The question at hand will be how 'open' are the alternate views ... Chomsky claiming that there are hardwired limitations, and Foucault saying maybe not ... but that is for later on in the discussion.
I'll end it at this for today ... i doubt that there is any 'principled' natural kind we might call "human nature", but it is likley a very useful fiction.
posted by Thomas F. Schminke at 12:36 PM
1 Comments:
I do think, though, that rather than Foucault's ideas being antithetical to those of Chomsky, they are on completely different tracks altogether. I notice that most of the time Foucault didn't disagree per se, but he didn't find the question of human nature to be a starting point or stance on which to debate when talking about justice or power.
I agree that Chomsky's ideas "work" in the sense that his biological "natural kinds" tend to produce correct results within the system.
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