Noam Chomsky: A Philosophic Overview

by Justin Leiber

From the back "It is the book that I would recommend to people who ask me what I'm up to. In fact, I think it is a good general introduction to recent work in linguistics, particularly valuable because of the way this work is placed in the setting of questions and issues in psychology and philosophy." —Noam Chomsky

Genres: Linguistics, Philosophy

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Andrés · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for those who have become ideologically fixated on empirical / behavioural science in the humanities. Not only is this a book for people interested in how language works, it is far more importantly a powerful book for those who have come to believe that much of what passes for science in the behaviour / humanistic fields has been plagued with a false science that has managed to turn empiricism into a mind numbing ideology. For many readers, NC:APO has the potential to be a transformational book in that it provides the solid analysis that supports making the leap from the flaccid so-called truths that behaviourism has provided us with to a resurgence of the scientific attitude of 18th & 19th century rationalism. That rationalism, unlike today's mask of rationalism, does not pretend that their philosophy can explain things beyond what it can.

Chomsky's argument applies to other fields, such as economics and psychology. For example, the behaviourist B.F. Skinner's is mentioned several times in unflattering terms. (In the book of his interviews with Mitsou Ronat Language and Responsibility , he goes so far as to say, paraphrased, that as far as he knows behaviourism has contributed nothing of meaningful scientific value.)

Empiricism, perhaps especially in fields like linguistics, economics and psychology, act as if all behaviours and characteristics of the human species and the individuals within it, can be explained by stimulus/response theories. The book begins with Leiber succinctly recapping the history of how Chomsky, with the ease of a knife cutting through water, revolutionized linguistics and proved irrevocably that empirical behaviourism is completely inadequate to explain not only the acquisition of language but also its comprehension. Leiber describes Chomsky's argument that, since the sentences of a language that can be created are infinite, that the behavioural linguistic practice of cataloguing them so as to fully describe a language is fruitless. Chomsky extends that argument by pointing out that most sentences that human's comprehend in their lives they will not have ever seen or heard before. He then convincingly argues that the rules of grammar allow for sentences to be constructed that are incomprehensible, whereas sentences are easily created that don't properly follow the rules of grammar but which can be perfectly comprehensible. All of these are extremely strong indictments of some of behaviourism's fundamental tenets of human understanding of language and understanding.

Chomsky's pragmatic rationalism may be most pointedly observed when he describes the real world experience that children learn language before they know the so-called rules of grammar. That repeatedly observed behaviour, from a behavioural model of language acquisition, would ostensibly be unheard of. Chomsky also observes with pragmatic rationalism, that children's language acquisition is largely independent of the oftentimes horrible language usage and training that parents provide. He also suggests with pragmatic rationalism that one might even be able to argue that in extreme cases the acquisition of language skills would appear to be independent of any significant language training because the training skills or environment are so poor that that the child's language acquisition would seem to occur despite their language training behaviour.

The final nail in the behaviourist's coffin, as it pertains to linguistics anyway, is that when the rationale of the behaviourists' practices were questioned vigorously, it was revealed that behavioural linguistic practices were largely preconfigured by the human behaviour and/or psychological bias and preconceptions of those formulating the 'science.'

Rationalistically, as opposed to empirically, Chomsky posits that there is something in the human being that promotes language acquisition independent of race and strict behaviourism. He called it universal grammar.

And this gave me one of the greatest of finds, discoveries, epiphanies, joys I have experienced from reading a book in long time: in exactly the same way, with a nearly identical conceptualization, Chomsky proposes a description of language that is nearly identical to the methods and rational behind Jung's formulation of the Collective Unconscious. YES! My intuitive prompt, from several years ago, that there was something similar in the philosophy of these two ostensibly disparate thinkers has been beautifully, elegantly, and delightfully affirmed. I wonder, is it just a coincidence that these two thinkers that I highly respect are both ignored or denigrated by our society's political and education leaders?

This commonality is even more strongly affirmed with the idea of a 'deep structure,' which Chomsky posits provides the fundamentals of language. Its description reminds me of Jung's descriptions of the common imagery and symbolism of myth, dreams as an expression of the collective unconscious. And when the problem of how to constrain a universal grammar to create only meaningful sentences was discussed, I am again reminded of Jung's theories about the problem of constraining (not Jung's word) the symbols to being meaningful. A very amusing formulation of that problem is the anecdote attributed to Sigmund Freud: sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.

This is a brilliant and very important book.

For this review complemented by images and extended quotations, please visit my blog: 2012.03.13 — Noam Chomsky: A Philosophic Review by Justin Leiber.

That I came across it by accident — I extend a heartfelt Thank you to J&L @ Renaissance Books for catching this one for me without my asking!

[B R · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good read but containing nothing original, though I guess that’s kind of the point of an intellectual biography… His exposition of Chomsky’s work in the theory of syntax, and the subsequent revolution in the way in which language is studied is pretty good: begins (essentially) by talking the inadequacy of finite state automata (no memory): basic idea is to show that there are infinitely many palindromic sentences (to be more precise there is analogue construction to S -> a (S) a; S -> b (S) b in the English language!) in English but no finite automaton can recognise exactly this set; then provides a *heuristic* proof that even the more powerful context free grammars (now have recursion and some level of memory: equivalent to push down automata in computer science lingo) are also incapable of capturing the grammatical subtleties of English (natural language more generally), though the reasoning here is closer to an inference to the best explanation. He introduces what’s called a transformational grammar and show how this provides a far simpler account of how one can generate complex sentences of English (this was one of the most exciting and tantalising parts of the book for me: just enough detail to get you thinking, but little enough to convince you that there is a vast but invisible world lying in your very midst!).
The rest of the book is about the implications of this part of Chomsky’s work for the age-old debate between Rationalists (of whom Chomsky is a somewhat mutated descendant) and the Empiricists (the behaviourists of our day, think B. F. Skinner and operant conditioning). The upshot I supposed, is that the view of the behaviourist as regards language (it’s all simple conditioning) is probably wrong, and that human language is a far more creative process than many had thought, and perhaps we humans are just an innately creative species more generally.
The last section tries to link Chomsky’s linguistic work, and philosophical views, with his work and views in politics.
It’s definitely a good intro to Chomsky’s work but it's probably no substitute for the real deal (read this because I've always been fascinated by Chomsky's work and now I can happily say that I have *some* level of understanding).

[Gregor Erbach · Rating 3 out of 5]

the book that got me me interested in structural linguistics