Chomsky expands on a lot of topics discussed in this video in the talk called "The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding". Here's a link to the talk: ruclips.net/video/D5in5EdjhD0/видео.html
My attempt to summarize: The main idea is that we do need additional systems of analysis and this is in keeping with our science forming capacity. We cannot only operate under our system of common sense experience, since many realities are counter-intuitive (perhaps the majority). As an example he points out that we tend to think there must be mechanical universe when Newton clearly showed there is not. He then acknowledges that 'Mysterianism' (recognition that there are things we cannot comprehend) is in fact not a capitulation just an obvious axiom, but we still need to develop systems, primarily from our scientific capacities to make sense of the world. But that does not mean the world is intelligible - just that we can develop intelligible theories. In regards to semantics, we do need different words and terms to develop an organized system of reference, even though they seem alien to our common language. Chomsky is rationalizing their necessity need and showing that mixing them can be futile. He uses the example of water and H20 to show that the futility of trying to develop one common reference. We don't tell a waiter to give us a cup of H2O but neither will a chemist substitute 'water' in her formulas for H2O. Essentially he is saying that as democratic as it may seem to bridge the gap between scientific systems and common experience as the questioner suggests, it may be denying the scientific capacity in us to develop theories that have a shared system of reference.
So, basically, in the effort to make shared reference system to bridge the gap, one may end up limiting the means with which fields of science investigate their studied phenomena. A term for water as "water" has practical use when in communication or when it's technical synonym is not necessary for scientific analysis, but as "H2O" you aid it in analytical usage for chemistry. That seems a lot like the argument Jerry Fodor for the Disunity of Science, but narrowed down to the context of language in the Mind and as externalized.
This is really profound. Far more profound than what they're teaching me in my philosophy major. It's sort of depressing that most philosophers misunderstand these concepts because in order to make heads or tails of these problems I have to go off and do the research all on my own. I will seize these problems by the throat all the same--they will not bend and crush me completely!
It is indescribably disheartening if not will to live defeating, lack of curiosity, intelligence, and common sense, in the majority of citizens in this world. A Human Race all but handed the absolutely easiest access to, some of, if not The Greatest Minds of all time, available with the push of a few buttons, would be so eye rollingly unaware, and complacent, of just what is going on. Contently enslved to an absolutely meaningless existence based on imaginary monetary value. I find Noam an absolutely priceless treasure. The pure gold his mind has passed into mine is invaluable and I cannot imagine my life without Noam.
Comrade, If you are interested in research in chomskiyan philosophy and cog science contact me on facebook. Message me here : facebook.com/chomskyindia/ , i 'll contact you.
I am left to wonder how Chomsky would respond to the real fruits of meditation provided by Buddhist Samatha, Vipassana, and Sati techniques/disciplines.
“Sargonist” (a reference to the RUclipsr?), and your pfp is Bowie with his fingers in his ears... 😂 I like. That’s a great photo, and, if I’m understanding it, great symbolism.. ✌🏼
He must be happy man because he inquire, make sense of the world.... People who have quest for & acquire knowledge, wisdom and understanding are one of the happiest people on earth.
What about the "waves", like electromagnetic waves etc, that is not part of the mechanical conception ? If not, where do waves fit ? Isn't 'action at a distance' problem is intelligible through 'mechanism' of waves ?
I agree that there is a significant limit to introspection when trying to learn about the mind, but some things can only be learned introspectively, not from the outside. You cannot make a lifelong blind person know what colors really look like without them experiencing it themselves internally, no matter how good of an external science and vocabulary you have. 5:30 As Chomsky says here 7:15 "I think, therefore I am"
Yes, this might be one of the few rare, almost negligible occasions that I take exception to what Prof. Chomsky is saying not entirely though and only to the limited extent that I actually can claim to have comprehended him. Introspection is attached to Faculty of Reason, Reason is the basis of Ethics and moral responsibility, ideas that bear heavily on Chomsky's political work, if not necessarily his scientific research. Self criticism has been a very integral part of western philosophy, classicism onwards, I'm just not comfortable rejecting it as wholeheartedly as Chomsky seems to me to be doing Studying things to the outside ALSO require a proper connection between self observation and external stimuli, so.. I'm just not convinced by it all yet Nonetheless, Long Live Prof. Chomsky
I recently had an online conversation with my mother about a quote from Wittgenstein: "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language." I posed the following question to her: "Is the bewitchment of which Wittgenstein speaks perhaps related to that which Socrates "knows that he doesn't know?" After a lengthy discussion (mainly my attempt to connect Wittgenstein's quote to Socrates through Chomsky's movie "Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?") She reposted the quote in German: "Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache.“ I read, speak, and understand German well enough to respond to the meaning of the quote. My immediate response to my mother, however, (she tries to act like she understands German better than she actually does so I was admittedly being a bit of a smart ass) was "Bless you!" To which she immediately responded with a laughing emoticon. Did you the reader immediately see humor in my response to my mother? If so, how, specifically, did you come to find it funny? And how did language relate to this particular humorous interaction?
Patrick Dolan :: I don't speak German, but I listen to a lot of German opera. The language seems very expressively strong but on the harsh-side. There also seems to be lots of "hissing" that sounds like sneezing ! My brother studied German & said it was a language that was "good for eliminating mucus" ... so when you wrote to your mother :: "Bless you !" ... I thought whatever she wrote in German, there must have been a lot of "hissing" & "sneezing" ... ?
What it's like to be me? Simple enough. It's like falling down the stairs, drowning, eating an avocado and suffering from anal pruritis all at the same time.
If words aren't references for concrete objects and relationships in the world, how come we are apparently so good at using them to convey truths about the world? For example, if I say _"The bank lowered interest rates, after which it burned down and moved across the street",_ how come when you hear this your first response isn't _"That's meaningless"?_ Why would you say it's meaningless? The word "bank" appears only once in the sentence and apparently refers to a conscious object that got destroyed by fire, and then somehow still existed and consciously decided to change its location. Objects like that do not exist. So how come your initial response is not to say that there are no such things and ask for clarification, but rather to understand immediately the intended usual meaning? It's a puzzle.
Really interesting, I appreciate his perspective on any matter, though I can’t say I agree with him on the new mysterian position. I definitely fall more into the Dennett and Deutsch camp on this, though I wouldn’t say I 100% agree with them either. I think it’s certainly the case that there are aspects of the universe and/or “reality”, that we will never understand, but I don’t think that this is because we just won’t be able to understand them on principle. Rather, the only reason we won’t understand them, is because we will always be limited by the tools that we use for research, both those that we create for measuring, and by the tool between our ears. Which of these is more limiting? I think it’s the later. Even without the modern equipment, many great scientists/natural philosophers were able to accurately describe and/or understand aspects of the natural world simply using mathematics and the tools between their ears, which were in some sense superior to those around them. As useful as new measuring devices are for research, and “unweaving the rainbow”, we don’t necessarily need new devices to do so, we simply need a mind that thinks about some data in a way that uncovers some new/unrecognized information, and leads to a new discovery/understanding/theory/etc regarding something we once thought, or at least the mysterian once though, was indescribable/unexplainable/etc. My biggest issue, why I don’t agree 100% with the “Dennetts”, and the reason why I think there’s value in what the “Chomskys” are saying, is the issue of how are brain/mind evolved, what it evolved for, and therefore why it will always (?) be limited in its capacity to understand some aspects of “reality”. As many have pointed out, we didn’t evolve to understand the most complicated physical aspects of subatomic (etc) functions of the universe, and this is inherently limiting. If this is the underlying core to the point a new mysterian is making (which I think may very well be the case with Chomsky, as he’s a scientist, not just a philosopher), then I certainly sympathize more with that person. However, those who fall back on the mysterian position based on metaphysics, or some other notion of the “mystery” being inaccessible for reasons other than our lack of proper tools (again, both devices and brains), do a real disservice to the advancement and understanding of science as far as I’m concerned. Some of the mysterian camp sounds far to similar to the theologian or religious apologist for my taste. Anyway, Chomsky mentions Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist who may be the most outspoken against the mysterians, and who’s written quite a bit on the topic. If anyone is interested in hearing that position, in arguably its most hardline form, I recommend reading some of his work, particularly on consciousness. As far as Noam’s position, while I don’t completely agree with him, I really love these videos where he’s talking science and non-political philosophy. It’s a nice change from the overwhelming majority of vids I find, which are geopolitical, and absolutely fantastic, but he has more to offer, and I want to see/hear more of it. Thanks!✌🏼
"If this is the underlying core to the point a new mysterian is making (which I think may very well be the case with Chomsky, as he’s a scientist, not just a philosopher), then I certainly sympathize more with that person. " It is. There's another talk around here by him where he goes into detail, and he specifically references how biology through evolution must place limits on us, and that those limits don't just magically disappear when you get to our cognitive aspects. This is further built on by automata theory, which shows that mechanical limitations will strictly limit the kinds of languages (patterns) the computational machine can recognise, regardless of how much memory or processing speed you give them. If the brain is a biological computational machine then it's effectively the null hypothesis that our cognitive abilities, and hence our ability to understand the world, will have very strict limits. The talk is the ghost and the machine and the limits of understanding.
Nikola Demitri You say many scientists have made considerable insight into understanding the natural world with some mathematics and the thing between our ears, but this is just a meaningless statement in regard to what you’re trying to defend; everything is intelligible to us. This is simply not the case. „Many“ is a very misleading term in the way that you’re using it. Those scientists you’re referring to are anything far from the many, especially in relation to the entire population. They are in the minuscule minority. Comparing the amount of people who have ever lived to those who have made meaningful scientific contributions immediately shows you how rare such people are. Secondly, and more importantly, we are just biological organisms in the same sense as other biological organisms with certain biological limits. If you don’t think so, then you believe we’re angles (as Chomsky puts it). The fact that you’re basing your claim primarily on the fact we have a brain is, is like basing it on the fact that we have feet, or arms, or whatever; that’s not a reason, it’s just an observation. Nothing, looking through human history, suggests we can even remotely understand anything, much less everything.
Maybe we can if by some occurrence we can vastly increase our intelligence with computers or whatever but meh i didn't understand what chomsky was saying tbh so i dunno guys
He's wrong about names. There are many systems for nomenclature but since there are many it doesn't mean names are bound to ANY name system. If a name is a tag then "H2O" is a word if you wish it so. The fact people know what you are explaining then the name worked.
I love this guy; he really thinks like I work, Iove it really... my only challenge with Chomsky is that he has not deliberately established a community of actives through the creation of institutions that take forward his thinking in the practical world so that his reflections are less reactionary, or rather more leading as a result of advancements within those would-be institutions. i fear that it is only upon his death that we will experience his Tupacism, which essentially is when like Jesus followers did, people will begin to bow down to him, his works and become the scattered Chomskyists who come to form the Chomsky church...
I was thinking the other day that Chomsky has done much more for humans than Jesus Christ, even if he existed, with the only exception - he's failed to promise everyone an eternal life in his father's kingdom :) Well, if he had, we would definitely have something like the Chomsky Church. The church part doesn't come for free, it takes a promise of an internal life I guess or something alone those lines.
Funny you should say that Thulani Nxumalo. I have worried about being in excessive agreement with him, as I do my best to be a critical thinker. Yet I am sure that if he had a cult, I would join it.
Now that's worth listening to more than once. Kind of sad Chemistry has no cool, refreshing water - just h2o. But the diffraction patterns seem kind of cool and refreshing - when xrays dance on the lattices of h2o's made crystalline.
I've often struggled with Chomsky's (convenient) use of the notion of "capacity", which among other things undergirds his theory of our innate language faculty. Most humans can be taught to use a yo-yo, but I don't think that means we have an innate yo-yo capacity. More seriously, Chomsky argues that a human child placed into any culture will learn to understand and speak the language s/he hears. Moreover, there are profound structural similarities shared by all human languages. But any young child placed into any culture will also learn and start playing the games of that culture, and there are profound similarities shared by almost all human child games. Does this mean that we have an innate "gaming facility"? If not, then why not? If so, then what is so revolutionary about the concept of universal grammar? The fact that there might be structural constraints on how languages operate and that that evolution has created massive survival value in preparing us to learn the languages of our parents is no more a breakthrough than recognizing that there are constraints on, and universal aspects of, our physicality.
You're missing a key bit there - that children learn language without having to be explicitly taught. With minimal instruction and scant input, they can parse the speech stream and infer rules in *exactly* the right way: That already differentiates it from yo-yoing, or other kinds of gameplay where rules need to be made explicit. And it was a breakthrough at the time. Intuitive as it may seem to us today, the idea that the mind is in fact innately subject to (quite) specific constraints was relatively fresh. You say this should no more shock us than the idea of physical constraints, but this was not always understood.
@@index3876 Really? There are countless activities - even complex ones - whose rules and workings can be inferred by simply watching with no interaction at all!
The question, which was unduly rambling. Could have been much easier answered. The lack of subjective realisation in Chomsky is a commonality amongst embroiling onsefl in objective/scientific based concepts. thus the last person you see is yourself. Whilst most people do not involve themselves in personal understanding it is not true to suppose that this is therefore not intelligible and does not allow introspection, it is a foible of personal philosophical enquiry at the cost of subjective experience and thus isolation...of meaningful connections. Thus I would not concur. Nice fella thou.
Saul Kripke's (a philosopher and mathematician) puzzles, they're about paradoxes of reference and belief, so for example, the names Clark Kent and Superman refer to the same individual being, so logically it should seem to follow that anything which is true of Clark Kent is also true of Superman. However, on the other hand, if, for instance, Lois Lane believes that Superman can fly, it doesn't necessarily mean that Lois Lane believes Clark Kent can fly. So the names Superman, Clark Kent must have some additional semantic properties beyond just meaning the thing to which they both happen to refer.
Every being perceives the world in a manner corresponding to its state. We should not expect a purely objective answer to ourselves. Even if we could attain it, it would be entirely useless. We can more or less accurately and frequently align and accustom ourselves to reality, but to attempt to understand it entirely apart from our condition and perception is obviously absurd and pointless. Knowledge is the union of subject and object and there is no getting around it. Reality is nothing else.
We can construct theories that have good predictive power on how reality works, but yeah having complete understanding and comprehension of the world and even ourselves is impossible unfortunately.
the bank is both a physical space and an organisation, therefore it is capable of burning down and then moving across the street, what's the mystery here? 'to move' doesn't necessarily refer to a physical object moving through space. It's a simple feature of the English language.
Elsewhere, Chomsky talks about "psychic persistence" - the notion that when the handsome prince is turned into a frog, somehow _on the inside_ it's still human, still handsome, and still has authority in court, even though empiricaly it's none of these things. Thus the bank, even though it's made of different material, in a different place, and staffed by different people, is still in this mysterious sense "the same". It's a solution to the Ship of Theseus problem.
I also cannot see what he talks about. Especially as a linguist he should be aware of homonymy and polysemy as different concepts with the same form. The meaning of such sentences is conveyed through more or less conventionalised (syntactic) constructions. He is right about the bloomfield misconception and also about newton and hume. Saying that we are not able to think about the "thing itself" is not enough in my opinion.
All experienced things involve, in one way or another, physical objects moving through space. Time and being is nothing else. The phrase, 'to move,' along with its limitless applications, exists and has indefinite utility for that reason. Even to imagine a 'thing itself,' apart from human perception, is not only impossible, but would be entirely useless. Every being perceives reality according to its own state, however deeply and accurately it understands that state. There is no objective reality or knowledge. Reality and knowledge is the union of subject and object by definition. There is absolutely no getting around this ever. The question is only the immediate frequency and accuracy of the union. Objective knowledge per se is impossible, let alone a definite language to describe it. Irrespective of speculation or analysis, that is what is. Aspiring otherwise is merely beating your head against a brick-wall.
I loved Professor Chomsky analogy of 'Water' and 'H2O' but another question arises in my mind that in H2O 'H' and 'O' are also borrowed from the alphabet. Doesn't it just dismisses the chemistry representation of water? I guess it gives a better representation and probably the only best one our minds are able to comprehend.
The lowest common denominator that provides all possible perspective for each individual is the four basic temperaments first outlined by Hippocrates. We all possess all four temperaments in varying amounts and order of predominance. If you master this knowledge, you will be blown away as you discover the root causes of religious and political beliefs Example . this milktoast resurgence of weak leftist people can exist under present conditions with such prevalence like we haven't seen before is the result of a phlegmatic dominant cycle further strengthened by the emergence of a super weapon called the personal computer .now the shy weak antiphysical fearful gender confused, material perspective limitations has a voice like they never had before
I didn't hear the question about 2 systems very well and I'm still listening to Chomsky's answer but I want to give my answer. I think this may be consistent (mostly) with what Chomsky thinks. That is that the naïve mapping we do in logic and philosophy of language classes is seldom appropriate for actual sentences. Which doesn't mean that there isn't a possible mapping from a sentence in English and a sentence in some formal Language of Thought. Rather that there is what used to be called "Deep Structure" is seldom a 1:1 correspondence between a noun and an object in the real world. So to take the sentence "The bank moved to the other side of the road after burning down". The deep structure (which could be represented in a logical language like FOL) is something like "The financial institution that had a building at this location built a new building on the other side of the road that offered the same services as the original building after the first building burned down". The fact that we fill in so much information just based on context is known to AI researchers (which I'm one of) as the problem of common sense reasoning and IMO we are as far from solving that problem as ever in spite of the surface level progress that seems to be demonstrated by various deep learning (Machine Learning) programs from Google and other systems. Those systems can seem to come close to common sense understanding for short sentences and trivial discourse but they have no semantic representation of the objects (here I mean "object" in the most general way, not necessarily a physical object) in the sentence which will eventually be demonstrated with any significant discourse that goes beyond simple statements and topics. Rather, the ML systems are based on analysis of terabytes of data and sophisticated algorithms in Linear Algebra and it is clear from the way children learn (the Poverty of Stimulus argument) that massive probabilistic learning is not the way humans learn or use language. I did ask Chomsky whether he believed in a Language of Thought in the Fodor sense (as most people know Fodor first coined the term and Chomsky thinks highly of Fodor although they also disagree on some issues) and he said something like "No, unless it is the Logical Form of the sentence" (where Logical Form was one of the categories of X-Bar theory which we were studying in the class at that point). I wanted to ask a follow up question but I had been hogging the mic too much as it was already.
A simple answer to his question : whatever we think is bullshit, non of it is true and we are at the mercy of universe and its powers. Just be greatful that the universe does what it does in perfect/imperfect order and all this bullshit you stress yourself about is literally just part of existence. It never ends, will never end and is always getting better always more perfect more beautiful. Enjoy the fact that you realize you exist and you are part of this marvelous affair. It's madness that is life
Chomsky expands on a lot of topics discussed in this video in the talk called "The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding". Here's a link to the talk: ruclips.net/video/D5in5EdjhD0/видео.html
My attempt to summarize:
The main idea is that we do need additional systems of analysis and this is in keeping with our science forming capacity. We cannot only operate under our system of common sense experience, since many realities are counter-intuitive (perhaps the majority). As an example he points out that we tend to think there must be mechanical universe when Newton clearly showed there is not. He then acknowledges that 'Mysterianism' (recognition that there are things we cannot comprehend) is in fact not a capitulation just an obvious axiom, but we still need to develop systems, primarily from our scientific capacities to make sense of the world. But that does not mean the world is intelligible - just that we can develop intelligible theories.
In regards to semantics, we do need different words and terms to develop an organized system of reference, even though they seem alien to our common language. Chomsky is rationalizing their necessity need and showing that mixing them can be futile. He uses the example of water and H20 to show that the futility of trying to develop one common reference. We don't tell a waiter to give us a cup of H2O but neither will a chemist substitute 'water' in her formulas for H2O.
Essentially he is saying that as democratic as it may seem to bridge the gap between scientific systems and common experience as the questioner suggests, it may be denying the scientific capacity in us to develop theories that have a shared system of reference.
So, basically, in the effort to make shared reference system to bridge the gap, one may end up limiting the means with which fields of science investigate their studied phenomena. A term for water as "water" has practical use when in communication or when it's technical synonym is not necessary for scientific analysis, but as "H2O" you aid it in analytical usage for chemistry.
That seems a lot like the argument Jerry Fodor for the Disunity of Science, but narrowed down to the context of language in the Mind and as externalized.
thanks for the summary!
This is really profound. Far more profound than what they're teaching me in my philosophy major. It's sort of depressing that most philosophers misunderstand these concepts because in order to make heads or tails of these problems I have to go off and do the research all on my own. I will seize these problems by the throat all the same--they will not bend and crush me completely!
It is indescribably disheartening if not will to live defeating, lack of curiosity, intelligence, and common sense, in the majority of citizens in this world. A Human Race all but handed the absolutely easiest access to, some of, if not The Greatest Minds of all time, available with the push of a few buttons, would be so eye rollingly unaware, and complacent, of just what is going on. Contently enslved to an absolutely meaningless existence based on imaginary monetary value. I find Noam an absolutely priceless treasure. The pure gold his mind has passed into mine is invaluable and I cannot imagine my life without Noam.
Comrade, If you are interested in research in chomskiyan philosophy and cog science contact me on facebook. Message me here : facebook.com/chomskyindia/ , i 'll contact you.
***** Me?
***** philosophy post grad student. Working within Chomskyian framework
+Aviana Y the same as saarthak tomar but an undergrad.
"What is it like to be a bat?"
Why, it's batty, of course!
I love the grin of the woman in the middle. She's just fascinated by Chomsky's answer towards the end.
I am left to wonder how Chomsky would respond to the real fruits of meditation provided by Buddhist Samatha, Vipassana, and Sati techniques/disciplines.
Very good question !
A beautiful mind. Thank you, Professor.
The expression on the woman on the middle... I wouldn't blame her. If I were on her place I would be just like this **o**
it must be awesome to be Chomsky that's what it must be like to be Noam
Can that which is awesome understand awesome? Can you find Waldo in a picture of hundred waldos?
Yes awesome recognizes awesome
“Sargonist” (a reference to the RUclipsr?), and your pfp is Bowie with his fingers in his ears... 😂 I like. That’s a great photo, and, if I’m understanding it, great symbolism.. ✌🏼
Imagine how much he is aware of his own lacking of knowlegde...
Can Waldo find himself?
He must be happy man because he inquire, make sense of the world.... People who have quest for & acquire knowledge, wisdom and understanding are one of the happiest people on earth.
What about the "waves", like electromagnetic waves etc, that is not part of the mechanical conception ? If not, where do waves fit ? Isn't 'action at a distance' problem is intelligible through 'mechanism' of waves ?
forget action at a distance, double slit experiment show waves aren't intelligible
I agree that there is a significant limit to introspection when trying to learn about the mind, but some things can only be learned introspectively, not from the outside.
You cannot make a lifelong blind person know what colors really look like without them experiencing it themselves internally, no matter how good of an external science and vocabulary you have.
5:30 As Chomsky says here
7:15 "I think, therefore I am"
Yes, this might be one of the few rare, almost negligible occasions that I take exception to what Prof. Chomsky is saying not entirely though and only to the limited extent that I actually can claim to have comprehended him.
Introspection is attached to Faculty of Reason, Reason is the basis of Ethics and moral responsibility, ideas that bear heavily on Chomsky's political work, if not necessarily his scientific research.
Self criticism has been a very integral part of western philosophy, classicism onwards,
I'm just not comfortable rejecting it as wholeheartedly as Chomsky seems to me to be doing
Studying things to the outside ALSO require a proper connection between self observation and external stimuli, so.. I'm just not convinced by it all yet
Nonetheless,
Long Live Prof. Chomsky
I recently had an online conversation with my mother about a quote from Wittgenstein: "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language." I posed the following question to her: "Is the bewitchment of which Wittgenstein speaks perhaps related to that which Socrates "knows that he doesn't know?" After a lengthy discussion (mainly my attempt to connect Wittgenstein's quote to Socrates through Chomsky's movie "Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?") She reposted the quote in German: "Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen
die Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache.“ I read, speak, and understand German well enough to respond to the meaning of the quote. My immediate response to my mother, however, (she tries to act like she understands German better than she actually does so I was admittedly being a bit of a smart ass) was "Bless you!" To which she immediately responded with a laughing emoticon. Did you the reader immediately see humor in my response to my mother? If so, how, specifically, did you come to find it funny? And how did language relate to this particular humorous interaction?
Patrick Dolan :: I don't speak German, but I listen to a lot of German opera. The language seems very expressively strong but on the harsh-side. There also seems to be lots of "hissing" that sounds like sneezing ! My brother studied German & said it was a language that was "good for eliminating mucus" ... so when you wrote to your mother :: "Bless you !" ... I thought whatever she wrote in German, there must have been a lot of "hissing" & "sneezing" ... ?
Are you still Interessted in Chomsky's thought?
always
im positive the woman in the middle is high
What it's like to be me? Simple enough. It's like falling down the stairs, drowning, eating an avocado and suffering from anal pruritis all at the same time.
I took a risk and googled "anal pruritis". It wasn't so bad.
@@laskieg Very courageous of you. I piggy-backed on your courage.
Can someone please summarise the question at the start?
Uhm...
If words aren't references for concrete objects and relationships in the world, how come we are apparently so good at using them to convey truths about the world?
For example, if I say _"The bank lowered interest rates, after which it burned down and moved across the street",_ how come when you hear this your first response isn't _"That's meaningless"?_ Why would you say it's meaningless? The word "bank" appears only once in the sentence and apparently refers to a conscious object that got destroyed by fire, and then somehow still existed and consciously decided to change its location. Objects like that do not exist. So how come your initial response is not to say that there are no such things and ask for clarification, but rather to understand immediately the intended usual meaning? It's a puzzle.
Professor Noam Chomsky.... Wise and kidness... wonderful 👍😊
If anybody is curious, yes that's me in the thumbnail ;)
YOUR FACE! OMFG
You win again, Lucas Lemos. You always do
Gaining Understanding
AAAAAH I WON! I knew it!
Where is the thumbnail art/your photo from?
Chomsky firing shots at Kripke.
Do you have discord or anything?
its sad the see them all using single use water bottles
Did this guy think before he asked his question?
What is the difference between any intelligible world and intelligible theory?
That beautiful redhead under the ira sign. Priceless
He loves knowledge
my head hurts
I know what you mean. Listening to Chomsky is mental exercise.
But usually worth the effort.
Why does every Chomsky video have gastly audio?
Referring to the beginning, Noam looked bored out of his mind listening to the guy ramble on. I thought you must be really boring to bore Chomsky.
Captions could stand some improvement
The end of concepts is not the end of understanding.
Really interesting, I appreciate his perspective on any matter, though I can’t say I agree with him on the new mysterian position. I definitely fall more into the Dennett and Deutsch camp on this, though I wouldn’t say I 100% agree with them either. I think it’s certainly the case that there are aspects of the universe and/or “reality”, that we will never understand, but I don’t think that this is because we just won’t be able to understand them on principle. Rather, the only reason we won’t understand them, is because we will always be limited by the tools that we use for research, both those that we create for measuring, and by the tool between our ears. Which of these is more limiting? I think it’s the later.
Even without the modern equipment, many great scientists/natural philosophers were able to accurately describe and/or understand aspects of the natural world simply using mathematics and the tools between their ears, which were in some sense superior to those around them. As useful as new measuring devices are for research, and “unweaving the rainbow”, we don’t necessarily need new devices to do so, we simply need a mind that thinks about some data in a way that uncovers some new/unrecognized information, and leads to a new discovery/understanding/theory/etc regarding something we once thought, or at least the mysterian once though, was indescribable/unexplainable/etc.
My biggest issue, why I don’t agree 100% with the “Dennetts”, and the reason why I think there’s value in what the “Chomskys” are saying, is the issue of how are brain/mind evolved, what it evolved for, and therefore why it will always (?) be limited in its capacity to understand some aspects of “reality”. As many have pointed out, we didn’t evolve to understand the most complicated physical aspects of subatomic (etc) functions of the universe, and this is inherently limiting. If this is the underlying core to the point a new mysterian is making (which I think may very well be the case with Chomsky, as he’s a scientist, not just a philosopher), then I certainly sympathize more with that person. However, those who fall back on the mysterian position based on metaphysics, or some other notion of the “mystery” being inaccessible for reasons other than our lack of proper tools (again, both devices and brains), do a real disservice to the advancement and understanding of science as far as I’m concerned. Some of the mysterian camp sounds far to similar to the theologian or religious apologist for my taste.
Anyway, Chomsky mentions Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist who may be the most outspoken against the mysterians, and who’s written quite a bit on the topic. If anyone is interested in hearing that position, in arguably its most hardline form, I recommend reading some of his work, particularly on consciousness.
As far as Noam’s position, while I don’t completely agree with him, I really love these videos where he’s talking science and non-political philosophy. It’s a nice change from the overwhelming majority of vids I find, which are geopolitical, and absolutely fantastic, but he has more to offer, and I want to see/hear more of it. Thanks!✌🏼
"If this is the underlying core to the point a new mysterian is making (which I think may very well be the case with Chomsky, as he’s a scientist, not just a philosopher), then I certainly sympathize more with that person. "
It is. There's another talk around here by him where he goes into detail, and he specifically references how biology through evolution must place limits on us, and that those limits don't just magically disappear when you get to our cognitive aspects. This is further built on by automata theory, which shows that mechanical limitations will strictly limit the kinds of languages (patterns) the computational machine can recognise, regardless of how much memory or processing speed you give them. If the brain is a biological computational machine then it's effectively the null hypothesis that our cognitive abilities, and hence our ability to understand the world, will have very strict limits.
The talk is the ghost and the machine and the limits of understanding.
Nikola Demitri You say many scientists have made considerable insight into understanding the natural world with some mathematics and the thing between our ears, but this is just a meaningless statement in regard to what you’re trying to defend; everything is intelligible to us.
This is simply not the case. „Many“ is a very misleading term in the way that you’re using it. Those scientists you’re referring to are anything far from the many, especially in relation to the entire population. They are in the minuscule minority. Comparing the amount of people who have ever lived to those who have made meaningful scientific contributions immediately shows you how rare such people are.
Secondly, and more importantly, we are just biological organisms in the same sense as other biological organisms with certain biological limits. If you don’t think so, then you believe we’re angles (as Chomsky puts it). The fact that you’re basing your claim primarily on the fact we have a brain is, is like basing it on the fact that we have feet, or arms, or whatever; that’s not a reason, it’s just an observation. Nothing, looking through human history, suggests we can even remotely understand anything, much less everything.
Use a big & small balloon.
Maybe we can if by some occurrence we can vastly increase our intelligence with computers or whatever but meh i didn't understand what chomsky was saying tbh so i dunno guys
He's wrong about names. There are many systems for nomenclature but since there are many it doesn't mean names are bound to ANY name system. If a name is a tag then "H2O" is a word if you wish it so. The fact people know what you are explaining then the name worked.
so difficult to follow. makes me feel dumb af
noam - blessings -your poetry gives me strength
I love this guy; he really thinks like I work, Iove it really... my only challenge with Chomsky is that he has not deliberately established a community of actives through the creation of institutions that take forward his thinking in the practical world so that his reflections are less reactionary, or rather more leading as a result of advancements within those would-be institutions. i fear that it is only upon his death that we will experience his Tupacism, which essentially is when like Jesus followers did, people will begin to bow down to him, his works and become the scattered Chomskyists who come to form the Chomsky church...
I was thinking the other day that Chomsky has done much more for humans than Jesus Christ, even if he existed, with the only exception - he's failed to promise everyone an eternal life in his father's kingdom :) Well, if he had, we would definitely have something like the Chomsky Church. The church part doesn't come for free, it takes a promise of an internal life I guess or something alone those lines.
Funny you should say that Thulani Nxumalo. I have worried about being in excessive agreement with him, as I do my best to be a critical thinker. Yet I am sure that if he had a cult, I would join it.
I question and question and question Chomsky, but he has the replies. Chomsky promises eternity by giving a new meaning to 'meaning'.
Now that's worth listening to more than once. Kind of sad Chemistry has no cool, refreshing water - just h2o. But the diffraction patterns seem kind of cool and refreshing - when xrays dance on the lattices of h2o's made crystalline.
❤️🇵🇹❤️
I wish spanish subtitles,plis
Cool beans!
Unmm uhh umm
Accumulated knowledge still more to fathom
Thanks Noam.
We just tell ourselves stories to stay sane. That’s all.
Fuhget about it. It's water to a fish.
the lady in the middle is like her own show
I've often struggled with Chomsky's (convenient) use of the notion of "capacity", which among other things undergirds his theory of our innate language faculty. Most humans can be taught to use a yo-yo, but I don't think that means we have an innate yo-yo capacity. More seriously, Chomsky argues that a human child placed into any culture will learn to understand and speak the language s/he hears. Moreover, there are profound structural similarities shared by all human languages. But any young child placed into any culture will also learn and start playing the games of that culture, and there are profound similarities shared by almost all human child games. Does this mean that we have an innate "gaming facility"? If not, then why not? If so, then what is so revolutionary about the concept of universal grammar? The fact that there might be structural constraints on how languages operate and that that evolution has created massive survival value in preparing us to learn the languages of our parents is no more a breakthrough than recognizing that there are constraints on, and universal aspects of, our physicality.
You're missing a key bit there - that children learn language without having to be explicitly taught. With minimal instruction and scant input, they can parse the speech stream and infer rules in *exactly* the right way: That already differentiates it from yo-yoing, or other kinds of gameplay where rules need to be made explicit.
And it was a breakthrough at the time. Intuitive as it may seem to us today, the idea that the mind is in fact innately subject to (quite) specific constraints was relatively fresh. You say this should no more shock us than the idea of physical constraints, but this was not always understood.
@@index3876 Really? There are countless activities - even complex ones - whose rules and workings can be inferred by simply watching with no interaction at all!
Basics in place although
Thank you for putting the sources in your descriptions
Look after one another and home
The question, which was unduly rambling. Could have been much easier answered. The lack of subjective realisation in Chomsky is a commonality amongst embroiling onsefl in objective/scientific based concepts. thus the last person you see is yourself. Whilst most people do not involve themselves in personal understanding it is not true to suppose that this is therefore not intelligible and does not allow introspection, it is a foible of personal philosophical enquiry at the cost of subjective experience and thus isolation...of meaningful connections. Thus I would not concur. Nice fella thou.
Found deepak’s burner account
Dang. Confusing language...confused thinking. So I don't agree with you.
Only in his lifetime
So much too know
what puzzles (at 5:29) did he say?
Saul Kripke's (a philosopher and mathematician) puzzles, they're about paradoxes of reference and belief, so for example, the names Clark Kent and Superman refer to the same individual being, so logically it should seem to follow that anything which is true of Clark Kent is also true of Superman. However, on the other hand, if, for instance, Lois Lane believes that Superman can fly, it doesn't necessarily mean that Lois Lane believes Clark Kent can fly. So the names Superman, Clark Kent must have some additional semantic properties beyond just meaning the thing to which they both happen to refer.
Thanks for the explanation William! I was also wondering what he meant there.
Every being perceives the world in a manner corresponding to its state. We should not expect a purely objective answer to ourselves. Even if we could attain it, it would be entirely useless. We can more or less accurately and frequently align and accustom ourselves to reality, but to attempt to understand it entirely apart from our condition and perception is obviously absurd and pointless. Knowledge is the union of subject and object and there is no getting around it. Reality is nothing else.
We can construct theories that have good predictive power on how reality works, but yeah having complete understanding and comprehension of the world and even ourselves is impossible unfortunately.
Ishmael Forester is
Ahaaaa..........
Chomsky (the warrior)
Book worm with a photographic memory
the bank is both a physical space and an organisation, therefore it is capable of burning down and then moving across the street, what's the mystery here? 'to move' doesn't necessarily refer to a physical object moving through space. It's a simple feature of the English language.
that's the entire point of this. watch it again.
(I'm really not trying to sound like a smart ass)
Elsewhere, Chomsky talks about "psychic persistence" - the notion that when the handsome prince is turned into a frog, somehow _on the inside_ it's still human, still handsome, and still has authority in court, even though empiricaly it's none of these things. Thus the bank, even though it's made of different material, in a different place, and staffed by different people, is still in this mysterious sense "the same".
It's a solution to the Ship of Theseus problem.
I also cannot see what he talks about. Especially as a linguist he should be aware of homonymy and polysemy as different concepts with the same form. The meaning of such sentences is conveyed through more or less conventionalised (syntactic) constructions.
He is right about the bloomfield misconception and also about newton and hume.
Saying that we are not able to think about the "thing itself" is not enough in my opinion.
What's the title of the book?
All experienced things involve, in one way or another, physical objects moving through space. Time and being is nothing else. The phrase, 'to move,' along with its limitless applications, exists and has indefinite utility for that reason.
Even to imagine a 'thing itself,' apart from human perception, is not only impossible, but would be entirely useless. Every being perceives reality according to its own state, however deeply and accurately it understands that state. There is no objective reality or knowledge. Reality and knowledge is the union of subject and object by definition. There is absolutely no getting around this ever. The question is only the immediate frequency and accuracy of the union. Objective knowledge per se is impossible, let alone a definite language to describe it.
Irrespective of speculation or analysis, that is what is. Aspiring otherwise is merely beating your head against a brick-wall.
the first step is kind of easy : P
but non or less will trigger the next : D
I loved Professor Chomsky analogy of 'Water' and 'H2O' but another question arises in my mind that in H2O 'H' and 'O' are also borrowed from the alphabet. Doesn't it just dismisses the chemistry representation of water? I guess it gives a better representation and probably the only best one our minds are able to comprehend.
The lowest common denominator that provides all possible perspective for each individual is the four basic temperaments first outlined by Hippocrates.
We all possess all four temperaments in varying amounts and order of predominance.
If you master this knowledge, you will be blown away as you discover the root causes of religious and political beliefs
Example . this milktoast resurgence of weak leftist people can exist under present conditions with such prevalence like we haven't seen before is the result of a phlegmatic dominant cycle further strengthened by the emergence of a super weapon called the personal computer .now the shy weak antiphysical fearful gender confused, material perspective limitations has a voice like they never had before
I didn't hear the question about 2 systems very well and I'm still listening to Chomsky's answer but I want to give my answer. I think this may be consistent (mostly) with what Chomsky thinks. That is that the naïve mapping we do in logic and philosophy of language classes is seldom appropriate for actual sentences. Which doesn't mean that there isn't a possible mapping from a sentence in English and a sentence in some formal Language of Thought. Rather that there is what used to be called "Deep Structure" is seldom a 1:1 correspondence between a noun and an object in the real world. So to take the sentence "The bank moved to the other side of the road after burning down". The deep structure (which could be represented in a logical language like FOL) is something like "The financial institution that had a building at this location built a new building on the other side of the road that offered the same services as the original building after the first building burned down".
The fact that we fill in so much information just based on context is known to AI researchers (which I'm one of) as the problem of common sense reasoning and IMO we are as far from solving that problem as ever in spite of the surface level progress that seems to be demonstrated by various deep learning (Machine Learning) programs from Google and other systems. Those systems can seem to come close to common sense understanding for short sentences and trivial discourse but they have no semantic representation of the objects (here I mean "object" in the most general way, not necessarily a physical object) in the sentence which will eventually be demonstrated with any significant discourse that goes beyond simple statements and topics. Rather, the ML systems are based on analysis of terabytes of data and sophisticated algorithms in Linear Algebra and it is clear from the way children learn (the Poverty of Stimulus argument) that massive probabilistic learning is not the way humans learn or use language.
I did ask Chomsky whether he believed in a Language of Thought in the Fodor sense (as most people know Fodor first coined the term and Chomsky thinks highly of Fodor although they also disagree on some issues) and he said something like "No, unless it is the Logical Form of the sentence" (where Logical Form was one of the categories of X-Bar theory which we were studying in the class at that point). I wanted to ask a follow up question but I had been hogging the mic too much as it was already.
A simple answer to his question : whatever we think is bullshit, non of it is true and we are at the mercy of universe and its powers. Just be greatful that the universe does what it does in perfect/imperfect order and all this bullshit you stress yourself about is literally just part of existence. It never ends, will never end and is always getting better always more perfect more beautiful.
Enjoy the fact that you realize you exist and you are part of this marvelous affair.
It's madness that is life
If you take a psychedelic you an introspect your behaviors pretty deep. It takes you outside of your own ego