THE HANDSTAND

JANUARY 2006

Noam Chomsky, his lecture on Linguistics.

We're very good at recognizing language sounds, and language skill is essentially a pattern recognition capability.Pattern recognition is the essence of what intelligence is.Ray Kurzweill

Noam Chomsky has kindly sent me an e-mail with amendments to errors in my notes which I have reproduced in tables by those underlined, JB,editor


Noam Chomsky spent five days here in Ireland, gave four lectures, with none of which did he stint the time, and various interviews, RTE etc.His fourth lecture at the O'Reilly Theatre, UCD was on his academic subject, linguistics, and was packed out as were all his other lectures. Perhaps five thousand people all told heard his lectures here in Dublin, Ireland.

The final lecture was the only one I attended and a synopsis follows which will ofcourse be of no interest to other than the average reader as it comprised the History of Linguistic study and conclusions of which we can confidentally be aware if we are going to create a social plan here in Ireland to combat the mess that threatens, environmental catastrophe no less than social catastrophe if we allow racialism to continue to expand here.Chomsky, in his seventies has an enviable energy and commitment to his audiences ; he arrived and spoke initially with a hoarse voice that betrayed the pressure of four days of continuous meetings, lectures etc., but he soon settled into his stride. Having been greeted here by the media in full flush with insults from Shane Hegarty of the Irish Times and Richard Dejevan of the Sunday Tribune it may be assumed that the audience was quite well primed to reach for the attack at question time. In this last lecture the moderator said that no political questions should be broached as this lecture was purely an academic matter. However Noam Chomsky himself broke this ban at question time subsequent to the enquiry : "is fundamental human action related exclusively to human nature?" His reply was that it is not possible to demonstrate that, though some principles of our nature comply with that idea. However, he continued, research into strange intuitive judgements where someone has purposively damaged another person indicate that holding back from such judgements and doing nothing can result in exactly the same harmful result to another human being. Doubtless many in his audience reading the anti-war material on the Internet have often seen the quotation that knowing something of evil and doing nothing about it is reprehensible. Accusations against Chomsky have in fact been that he advocates evidence and blame, but does nothing about it... In a letter to the Irish Times Conor McCarthy observes: 'Mr. Hegarty suggests that Chomsky is not good at "providing answers" to the problems he raises, but as an anarchist Chomsky would rightly say that it is not his role to provide answers.'

The Lecture
Chomsky sketched the history of research into language that had laid dormant until the l7th Century when the Research sciences began to frame their interest in the subject under the two headings of pure language itself and secondly its development in forms of justice. This ofcourse comprised under various headings, studies into symbolism, social practices and principles of a general moral nature.

The Cartesians developed an examination of the creative urge to express thought.

Newton took the machine out of man and demonstrated how man indeed found the world unintelligible.

These themes came down all through time to the propositions of Bertrand Russel with his version of mind as a seperate from the body. Chomsky recounted the anecdote of the blind physicist who knew all the principles of physics but was unable to know the blue colour of the sky.

The collective capacity of understanding was developed over time in our history such as the properties on which knowledge rests and the possible memory of ancient faculties from the far past. Stimuli for these enquiries resting on unique mental enquiries within individuals who discovered the creative elements in thought. And this seemed to follow man's analysis of his various internal states of mind and his interest in other creatures.

This expanded into man's understanding of the nature of concepts and dictated his refined experience of grammar. Also this built up knowledge in a consistent framework and was confronted with the problem of beliefs grounded in natural instincts that sought explanations for strange phenomena of every kind. From this morality evolved, founded on general principles, that was contrasted by the lively field of empirical problems and their solutions, that were on a par with nature as Reaction and other responses. Gradually from the 17thCentury on a scientific analysis of language study evolved.

He discussed the symbolic nature of mental activity and how children clearly understood how an problem could be symbolically represented as an idea that associated seemingly unequivocal matters in a coherent manner. Also that their acquisition of language involves not just the few years of a life time, but the hundreds of thousands of years of the evolution of the neurological organization. Chomsky believes that any one individual can make a leap forward in that evolution by what he called "re-wiring" his brain and that this benefit is handed on not only to his intimates and family but to mankind in general, becoming a genetic innovation.

He spoke briefly of biological studies that have been proliferating in recent years, for it is the mind that develops from its prime generation through living experiences that creates individual forms of understanding. Social studies contribute strongly to this. Memory networks provide a fascinating study and Bertrand Russel felt that the natural sciences seek to discover the world as it is, and that objects give man concepts, functional programmes and form the historic past of mankind and also the individual. Darwin had concluded in his book "The Origin of the Species" - from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.

(1)These conjectures have been reframed by modern researches and it has become clear that there is no moral project innate to the human mind. The latest research seems to indicate that language is finite and forms a highly restrictive framework and makes variations on what Chomsky called "the snowflake principle." As we know snowflakes are created in totally unique and countless forms from strict parameters.

I think that has to be seriously qualified.  I've always assumed, for reasons not unlike those of David Hume's, which I quoted, that there must be an innate moral faculty.  And recent empirical research, to which I alluded (e.g., on causing harm directly or indirectly, which you cited), is giving some evidence as to what this innate moral faculty is.  It is true, of course, that the innate moral faculty allows of many variants, but in that respect it is just like language, the visual system, and in fact every other component of biological organisms.Noam Chomsky

Research in the 17th and 18th Centuries merely scratched the surface of knowledge of the formation of concepts. Physical and mental changes and their affects on the mind were studied as the medical world became aware of them; it was queried if chemical changes were occurring in the brain. Imagination was set as a contrast to formal analysis, where notions of mental vegetation were encountered. Research continued investigating mental capacities of every kind, fiction, intelligence, moral apathy, children's behaviour and children's literature. The use of symbols to construct relations and the construction of systems - however language in Chomsky's opinion does not submit to such ideas. (2)Mankind has an essential reliance on communication and this only, he believes, accounts for the emergence of mental development.

Noam Chomsky comments:Again I think qualifications are necessary.  The structure, use, and probable evolution of language suggest rather strongly that communication is a secondary aspect, and that the primary aspect is formulation of thought (in the broadest sense).  That doesn't change the fact that interaction is fundamental to human nature.  To take one familiar illustration, which I may have mentioned, we all know that it's very uncomfortable to be in the same room with someone and not talk to them, whether or not it is real communication in any serious sense.

By the 1950s all sorts of mental ambiguities were being investigated, math and social computation for society's well being or survival. It is thought the phonetic alphabet originated in these needs to solve communication by simple sentences. Competitive features and emotional structures of anger etc have come under research, including the fundamental generative procedures that yield interpretation and use elementary grammar. Mark Baker i n his book "Atoms of Language" examines two quite diverse languages: English and Mohawk. He shows how these languages are in fact practically identical that lead him to conclude that there is really only one language and one organisation of language.

(3)Chomsky referred to an error that he believes he has made with reference to the symbolism of the object. He had concluded that the merging of objects in language occurred in two ways. One: 2 objects merging and making a new object and Two: 2 objects merging with one object becoming internal within the other. In the displacement property of language when something is named which can be referred to by another form thereafter, he had thought in the past that this was a fault in understanding language.He has now concluded, however, that the object is always free.

The error is a little different.  It has to do with the ubiquitous "displacement property" of language -- e.g., if I ask "what did John eat," I (and you) understand that "what" is the object of "eat," just as in "John ate apples" or "who thought that John ate what".  But it is displaced from the position where it receives the semantic role of object of "eat".  My earlier error was to believe that this was a strange property of human language, a deviation from perfect design that required explanation.  But that turns out to be incorrect.  The operation of "displacement" with its peculiar properties, some of which I mentioned, "comes free," in the sense that a perfectly designed language would have this property.NChomsky

He refers again to Darwin who wrote that each simple manifestation evolves to beauty and particulars that develop case by case that accounts for differences within species that differ without apparent limits. In language however it is thought, alone, which under substantial motivation creates concepts, assumptions and reactions. Such definitions contest fixed theory with elaborate language methods determined by values set on the memory store of principles. In the 1970s research clarified these evolutionary theories and moved on to conjecture re. the imagination if the mind was capable of formulating correct theories. and considered the features that contrast this believed fact that language formation throughout history was one language with one meaning. Thus in the 1980s we were brought to the organising principles of languages and the conservation of the languages world wide that were slipping into oblivion. Also the revelation of brain activity as an electrical faculty in combination and contrast to a purely chemical organ, as had been assumed till then.

Ending his lecture on a light note he said - we can now enquire if the mind is optimally designed to satisfy the accumulation of experience, and its project : that of the will to Understand the world, and the life we have. The displacement property, referred to above would seem to reduce the complexity of the memory store. 1 x 2 in our minds = 2 - though in the external world it would seem sometimes that 1 x 2 = 5 ! Nowadays we understand that spoken language is accompanied by signs that confirm its meaning, body language, gesture. In the role of productive thought, symbolising and the use of images are used in almost infinite combinations for planning .Systems seem to confirm that thought is asymmetrical, and that seeking satisfaction is a natural process.

Jocelyn Braddell.