ChomskyPragmatics

http://masonmade.com/my_blog/page_4.html

http://masonmade.com/blog/my_conversation_with_noam_chomsky.html

"..He's become sort of infamous for supposedly saying that language does not seem to be a product of natural selection, or that there's no evidence that human language is a product of natural selection...."

"..Chomsky also pointed out how there's basically no evidence for natural selection of human language, because we don't have recordings from back then, or fossils showing soft tissue, so we can't really say much about it. He said that most scientists observe organisms' traits and seeing how they're well fitted to their environments and lifestyles and then make the leap to assuming that natural selection is responsible for this...."

Mujin wrote: > backspace  wrote in > 2. Since his initial expression of doubt, Chomsky has changed his position > several times. In light of recent discoveries in human neurobiology and > neurolinguistics, Chomsky is no longer expressing doubt - in fact he is > actively exploring the possible evolutionay history of language. See this > paper from 2002: > > http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5598/1569 > NEUROSCIENCE:

You are quoting from a journal dated 2005. Below I am quoting from a blog post date April 2007. For Chomsky to get past the secular priests guarding their citadel of materialism he can't exactly hand in a paper with the title: Natural selection is linguistic gargoyle. If we read between the lines from Fodor, Prof. Skell to Chomsky they are basically saying that NS is a semantic impossibility. Remember what happened to Popper, the materialist gestapo went after an old man until he "repented". Like all people Chomsky is human, he is probably afraid of the materialist tigers on the prowl ready to disembowel anybody who threatens their materialist superstitions. YEC like me and materialists have to play by the same rules of language. Language comes first and then everything else wether YEC, ID or materialism.

http://masonmade.com/blog/my_conversation_with_noam_chomsky.html

"..He's become sort of infamous for supposedly saying that language does not seem to be a product of natural selection, or that there's no evidence that human language is a product of natural selection...."

"..Chomsky also pointed out how there's basically no evidence for natural selection of human language, because we don't have recordings from back then, or fossils showing soft tissue, so we can't really say much about it. He said that most scientists observe organisms' traits and seeing how they're well fitted to their environments and lifestyles and then make the leap to assuming that natural selection is responsible for this...."

"...I asked him whether I understood correctly, that his criticisms of people inferring that language is a product of natural selection also apply to pretty much any trait of any organism. He said that's right. Then I asked him whether he thought that most researchers, when they talk about natural selection having effects, are being sloppy. He said, "extremely sloppy..."

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