Article View: sci.cognitive
Article #503Re: Language versus concept
From: J.A.Legris
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2007 03:16
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2007 03:16
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On Sep 6, 10:55 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sep 6, 2:32 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote: > > > What do you think of Chomskysreviewofskinnersverbalbehavior? Does the > > "refutation" by the person with a Q in his name hold any water? > > I agree with whoever said Chomsky hadn't read the book. I think he may > have turned all the pages but his bile blinded him. I have never > bothered to see how he was refuted by Q or anybody else. > > I see the controversy as religious. The question being free will. The > idea that man has no free will is an old one but before the > enlightenment there was no clear idea about what that meant. In the > enlightenment good enough machines were being built that a philosopher > could suggest that man was a machine. > > What Skinner did, and I think this is tremendous advance in > philosophy, is to provide a plausible mechanism for this to be true. > He may well have been wrong - but he cannot be proven wrong by > anything uncovered yet. > > So Skinner set out to destroy the idea of free will, did an excellent > job of it and felt happy with the outcome. For his own psychological > and religious reasons he did not value "free will". To Chomsky this > was offensive beyond all labels. Blasphemy would have been too weak a > word. > > So Chomsky set out to destroy Skinner. After a life time of listening > to Chomsky his arguments sound like cliches - back then they were new > and striking. So Skinner was pretty much destroyed - except among a > small band of true believers. > > I don't think this particular argument says much about linguistics or > psychology. It is a religious dispute. Neither Skinner's Verbal Behaviour nor Chomsky's review of it mentions free will. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_Behavior http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1967----.htm -- Joe
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X-Google-Thread: 10681a,6765d491d60f275b X-Google-Thread: 10a20a,6765d491d60f275b X-Google-Thread: 1045ed,6765d491d60f275b X-Google-Attributes: gid10681a,gid10a20a,gid1045ed,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: "J.A.Legris" <jalegris@sympatico.ca> Newsgroups: sci.cognitive,sci.lang,bionet.neuroscience Subject: Re: Language versus concept Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:16:52 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 45 Message-ID: <1189135012.915073.43620@o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com> References: <46dd9a82$0$17749$ed362ca5@nr2.newsreader.com> <1188931581.502395.126760@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com> <46ddb0b2$0$17776$ed362ca5@nr2.newsreader.com> <18p60ktavb7jh.m6pv31je6a1g$.dlg@40tude.net> <1188962874.711693.93360@r29g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <7onlzv12ejod$.21q9et8hy7e5$.dlg@40tude.net> <1188993040.304358.76210@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com> <46dea513$0$7564$ed362ca5@nr2.newsreader.com> <1188997353.596408.308130@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> <46debe7a$0$7581$ed362ca5@nr2.newsreader.com> <1189008547.960271.125140@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com> <46e04c16$1$7581$ed362ca5@nr2.newsreader.com> <1189110942.304838.295860@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <1189113237.251323.213520@o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com> <1189114345.935428.231760@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> <1189133753.250909.293400@r29g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 70.48.3.154 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1189135013 9359 127.0.0.1 (7 Sep 2007 03:16:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 03:16:53 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <1189133753.250909.293400@r29g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/419.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/419.3,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com; posting-host=70.48.3.154; posting-account=ps2QrAMAAAA6_jCuRt2JEIpn5Otqf_w0