Talk:Noam Chomsky

Maybe I'm stupid :(

Okay maybe it's just me but the grammar/linguistical section is very hard to understand without prior knowledge of the subject. Perhaps it should be made simpler for the average encyclopedia browser. 130.88.186.26 (talk) 17:28, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

An excellent suggestion, however unlike a number of other sciences - biology, geology, paleontology, the various space related sciences, etc - not a lot of work has been done in bring linguistics down to a 'general science' level. LamontCranston (talk) 10:12, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Atheism

There were already discussions (1, 2 on Chomsky being labeled as an American atheist or Jewish atheist). I believe these categories are inaccurate about him. At most he can be categorized as an agnostic. Here is the full quote of his POV about a spiritual existence [3]:

When people ask me, as they sometimes do, 'Are you an atheist?' I can only respond that I can't answer because I don't know what it is they're asking me. When people say, 'Do you believe in God?' what do they mean by it? Do I believe in some spiritual force in the world? In a way, yes. People have thoughts, emotions. If you want to call that a spiritual force, okay. But unless there's some clarification of what we're supposed to believe in or disbelieve in, I can't answer. Does one believe in a single god? Not if you believe in the Old Testament. A lot of it's polytheistic; it becomes monotheistic later on. Take the First Commandment, which presupposes that there are in fact other gods. It says, 'You shall have no other gods before me: Well if there aren't any other gods you can't say that. And, yes, it's coming from a polytheistic period, a period when the god of the Jews was the war god and they were supposed to worship him above all other gods. And he was genocidal, as you'd expect a war god to be.

--Mohsen (talk) 20:39, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

It is illogical to assert: "if there aren't any other gods you can't say that." The commandment "You shall have no other gods before me" can very well refer to possible gods, not merely existent gods. Also, there is no evidence that the Jews were polytheistic. Unlike many other religions, they did not have war gods and food gods and weather gods and fertility gods, ad infinitum.Lestrade (talk) 17:53, 12 May 2009 (UTC)Lestrade

The paragraph Mohsen has cited as evidence that Chomsky should be categorized as an agnostic seems to better describe him as an ignostic does it not? Ignosticism, of course, is the theological position that every other theological position (including agnosticism) assumes too much about the concept of god and many other theological concepts. This seems like a more appropriate description. Jemoore31688 (talk) 17:57, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Characterizing him as an atheist works for practical means; he only contends being considered one because he feels that the concept of spirituality that atheism denies is so vaguely defined. If you read many of the interviews that he has participated in, you quickly notice that Professor Chomsky approaches religion from the pragmatic approach one would expect: considering the devout adherence to spiritual belief as a psychological phenomenon, and, ultimately, delusionsal. --Florida Is Hell (talk) 02:10, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Religious belief

What's his religious belief? Has he said something like "I am a...", something like "I'm a child of enlightenment" isn't a clear reference. Faro0485 (talk) 13:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Does it matter ? DocteurCosmos (talk) 13:17, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

No, it doesn't matter, because this is merely an encyclopedia that contains information about noted persons. Why would we want to know anything about those persons? Surely, it is of no interest to mention a person's religious belief. It is enough to know that he is a child of the enlightenment and not a child of romanticism or the progressive era.71.245.114.30 (talk) 17:12, 12 May 2009 (UTC)Lestrade

Faro0485, if you look slightly above, under the header "Atheism", a discussion of his religion is already underway. --Florida Is Hell (talk) 02:14, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Libertarian-socialism Oxymoron

Chomsky is identified as a Libertarian Socialist. This is an oxymoron - can't happen. A Libertarian is one who shaves government down to a bare minimum. A socialist seeks to exert control over all the citizens' lives. TaoLee (talk) 02:58, 28 May 2009 (UTC) May 27, 2009

Chomsky is for small government (libertarian), and believes that the workers themselves (not a state or government) should have mastery over production (socialist). It's only an oxymoron if you go with a Leninist definition of socialism. Chomsky denies this definition, and denies that socialism is about replacing the bourgeois with another elite ruling class. He maintains that the central essence of socialism is putting mastery over production in the hands of the producers. There is no contradiction given his definitions. CABlankenship (talk) 04:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, it's not Chomsky's invention, but a well-established political term. See, for example, the WP article, Libertarian socialism. Pinkville (talk) 11:09, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Well explained in Alison Edgley's paper : "Chomsky's Political Critique: Essentialism and Political Theory", Contemporary Political Theory (2005) 4. DocteurCosmos (talk) 14:47, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

He also explains it here [4]

Likeminas (talk) 14:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Describing a right wing leaning person as a Libertarian is the real oxymoron that many American Libertarians dont seem to realise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.47.29.240 (talk) 21:43, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

This requires defining libertarian as Objectivist or Classic Liberal, and defining Socialist as Leninist. Chomsky, as well as most outside the United States, refute this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Apconig (talk • contribs) 00:23, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

People are still responding to this trolling I see. LamontCranston (talk) 03:06, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

'A socialist seeks to exert control over all the citizens' lives.' Lul wut. Someone needs to take politics 101. --79.64.234.155 (talk) 02:00, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

generative power

I'm more asking for this to be looked into. Not thinking it should be one way or another.
"He also established the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages in terms of their generative power."
It might be said that generative power is not a property of formal languages, but of classes of rule systems (generative grammars). So, I think maybe something in that sentence might get changed eventually. 72.255.48.121 (talk) 10:17, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Genocide denial claims by Marko Attila Hoare

Has anyone seen Marko Attila Hoare's claims that Chomsky is a denier of the Srebrenica genocide committed by the Serbian military/paramilitary? Here's the blog post: http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2005/12/chomskys-genocidal-denial.html I'll have to say, though, that I'm highly skeptical of Hoare's claims, as he slanderously called Omadeon, an anti-nationalist Greek blogger, an... "extreme nationalist" merely because of his skepticism towards Hoare's pro-Gruevsky postings. Elp gr (talk) 15:25, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Pointless to dispute it if not more sources are used. One example - the blog tries to connect Chomsky to David Irving, who was arrested in Austria (and I happen to live in Austria, and I got "first hand information" more than I guess quite many other people in the i.e. US press. It is really stupid to try to connect Irving with Chomsky, that doesn't compare AT ALL. Irving is one of those guys who constantly tries to deny certain issues like mass murder committed under the Nazi dictatorship - these guys will try EVERY way around a specific law which prohibits them from praising the Nazi dictatorship. Chomsky never denied this. It is really shameful for that blog to try to put both on the same scale. Irving can be compared to guys more reaily like John Gudenus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gudenus - to try to put him into perspective of Chomsky is really just stupid of that blogger. The blog even tries to put words into Chomsky's words like "[...]hundreds of thousands of Bosnian citizens in the 1990s, whose rights Chomsky has never got round to championing.". I am sorry but this blogspot article is just bullshit, and I dont think such a frantic personal attack should not be analyzed further at all. 80.108.103.172 (talk) 11:43, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Analysis on East Timor and Indonesean Invasion

Why does the article not cover anything of what Noam said (or his books etc..) during the invasion of Indonesia? There are multiple sources for that. The article mentions Noam's critical analysis of/during Vietnam, but not the compared example of East Timor vs. Cambodia (and the role of the US press) 80.108.103.172 (talk) 11:46, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

It might be helpful of you to add something along those lines - though it should necessarily be succinct because there are so many ideas to cover here. I think his struggle on behalf of oppressed East Timorese in the face of widespread deceit and ignorance is one of the highlights of his activist legacy. His views on East Timor are covered in more depth in Politics of Noam Chomsky. BernardL (talk) 01:26, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Interest in Power

Doesn't anyone thing that it is strange for an academic "linguist" to lose interest in his subject and to talk about nothing but matters of political and military power? Shouldn't it be noted that Chomsky's concerns are totally unrelated to his supposed field of competence? It seems that he has judged "linguistics" to be irrelevant and not worthy of further consideration. (I place linguistics in quotes because it may not be generally considered to be an objective, scientific area of research.) Lestrade (talk) 13:26, 5 September 2009 (UTC)Lestrade

Given that he's produced extremely important articles in the field as recently as 2006, and that he retired from MIT in 2002 (but continues to teach), I don't think that's an accurate statement. Grunge6910 (talk) 15:18, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

The link to "extremely important articles" doesn't work. Lestrade (talk) 18:04, 5 September 2009 (UTC)Lestrade

Hm, sorry about that. Go to his MIT faculty page and download the PDF Linguistics Articles for full citations. The article I was referring to (I can access it from my college campus) is is from Cognition in 2005 (could have sworn it was 2006). It's called "The Evolution of the Language Faculty: Clarifications and Implications," co-authored with Marc Hauser and W. Tecumseh Fitch. Another recent import article is from 2002, same three writers, called "The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?" in Science; this was the famous hypothesis that only recursion distinguishes human language. Both caused quite a splash in the linguistics community. He's remained quite active in linguistics. Grunge6910 (talk) 18:17, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm reminded a bit of Nietzsche's turn from research on linguistic philology to assertions regarding will to power.Lestrade (talk) 19:56, 5 September 2009 (UTC)Lestrade

Except Nietzsche abandoned philology. Chomsky hasn't abandoned linguistics; he's still its most important figure. Grunge6910 (talk) 21:06, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Here are some further considerations. Even when he was young (7) he was writing about political issues, this interest continued in his years as a university student. Then after the US invaded South Vietnam he entered the public sphere with the characteristic social/political analysis and activism that has not relented to this day. For several decades even as he was teaching and producing some of his major works in linguistics he was at the same time very active in politics. He has said that he would actually prefer to just stick to academic science but his conscience concerning social injustice obliges him to participate in politics, otherwise he could not look himself in the mirror each day. (He is far more similar to Bertrand Russell, by the way.)70.55.81.22 (talk) 22:20, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

"Doesn't anyone think that it is strange for an academic "linguist" to lose interest in his subject..?" - Why in the world should anyone have just one interest in life? There are estimates that people entering the workforce now will have 8-10 jobs by the time they are 40, so with 2 career fields, Chomskeys a bit behind.-- The Red Pen of Doom 23:02, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Plagiarism?

We have received an email at OTRS (OTRS:3637056) from someone who suggests that the sixth paragraph of the biography section has been taken from or used by David Horowitz's book "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America", at p.84 of the hardback version. The person is not connected with the book or the article, but it may be worth investigating. He has given his permission for me to place this notification here. Stifle (talk) 13:11, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Horowitz's book was published in 2006. The paragraph in question was edited to its present form on 9 July 2005, though the relevant facts were there much earlier. It would be difficult for a Wikipedia editor to plagiarise a book that had not yet been published, so I suspect that Wikipedia, not Horowitz, is the original source of this formulation. RolandR 14:58, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

A 2004 biography uses very similar phraseology in its second paragraph. See http://www.chomsky.info/bios/2004----.htm William Avery (talk) 15:44, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Muscle fibers

I pulled out the following bit:

In 1999, research done at the Grabscheid Clinical and Research Center for Voice Disorders at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City showed that slow tonic muscle fibers in the muscles of human vocal cords do not exist in other mammals, creating support and a possible explanation for Chomsky's theories.

The reason is that there is no way this factoid creates 'support and a possible explanation' for Chomsky's theories specifically. All that such a finding would seem to support is a specific anatomic adaption in humans for speaking language — which is something Chomsky has tended to downplay rather than highlight, due to his focus on language as a 'generative' system.

Hauser, Marc D., Noam Chomsky, and W. Tecumseh Fitch. 2002. The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve. Science 298: 1569-1579. Jackendoff, Ray, and Steven Pinker. 2005. The nature of the language faculty and its implications for evolution of language (Reply to Fitch, Hauser, and Chomsky). Cognition 97, no. 2: 211-225.

— mark ✎ 17:28, 29 September 2009 (UTC)