Here it is, our regular Friday diet of suggested readings for the weekend:
Chomsky’s theory of language dying by many small empirical cuts, as it often happens in science.
What does it feel like when we die?
The complexities of raising geniuses.
Medical vs religious “miracles.”
On the weird notion of panpsychism (commentary coming soon…).
Crackpots are just as curious as real scientists, but they don’t have the means to succeed.
Hoping that the whole idea of cultural appropriation is a passing fad.
Do yourself a favor, don’t trust research funded by the food industry. Or any industry, really.
Footnotes to Plato 
Daniel, my M.Div. wasn’t from fly-by-night Baptists. We discussed generative grammar and other current issues in linguistics in multiple exegetical classes, early 1990s.
(Note to Michael: #Credentialism! 🙂 )
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Would “victim competition,” Dan, apply to the occupiers of the nation of Palestine, too?
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Synred wrote:
“There were no people here before them.”
Maybe, maybe not.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0903_030903_bajaskull.html
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socratic: Because I respect Massimo, I am not going to take your bait on Israel. Pick a fight with someone else.
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socratic: you also misinterpreted my point, in saying when I studied linguistics. It was simply to show that Chomsky’s influence on the curriculum was very strong, even quite recently.
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That’s answer enough; I mentioned BDS three-four posts ago. And, it’s simply a question; not even a rhetorical one.
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Dan,
Either way the appellation ‘native’ is not unreasonable and is in common use. Either way Indians were here long before Europeans, blacks or modern Asians were. Aboriginal is less appropriate as they were not mostly living in a hunter-gather state even in North America.
If pacific islanders or Australians where about as late as couple hundred years ago, DNA should be able to tell us. It’s not clear that Australians had the sailing skills to get so far 14K years ago. Easter island was settled only about 1000 years ago. Of course some of them might have reached America and been absorbed or driven off.
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synred: I think you’re forgetting what we’re talking about. I don’t care whether people call American Indians “Native Americans.” It’s others who care that I and others call them “American Indians.”
This is a one-way imperative, man. I may think the term “native” more political than descriptive, but I’m not out trying to make people stop talking a certain way.
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Dan,
Of course it’s political. That’s the point. To lay claim to what was taken by ‘politics by other means.’ Nothing wrong with that! Let’s just be glad they don’t resort to the ‘other means’ anymore. They were pretty good at it, but were outnumbered and defeated by ‘war of attrition.’ and biological warfare [a].
I would guess the Lakota would settle for considerable less than the return of the western half of SD. Perhaps just the interest on the gold taken out of Homestake and a share of the gate at Mt. Rushmore?
I don’t see why people object to ‘politics’. That’s how conflicting claims get worked out. ‘Politics’ is not a dirty word or shouldn’t be.
That said, it a waste time and effort pursuing pyrrhic victories like getting a second rate football team to change its name.
[a] My college ROTC instructor said the tactics of Crazy Horse and Geronimo were still studied at West Point.
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I’m with ’em on South Dakota.
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McCarthy was also ‘in power’. I am no expert on the US Constitution but I don’t think that a President can knock the Senate flat even if he wanted to.
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He couldn’t get rid of him, but he could have come out against him and destroyed him politically and pulled his ‘teeth.’ A speech by Eisenhower could have ‘knocked him flat’ political as was finally done by the army lawyer at the hearings, but it could have been done a lot sooner by Ike saving a lot of people from harassment and even losing there jobs.
That McCarthy was “in power” — a Senator no less — makes it worse not better. He could get people fired not just prevent them form giving a speech. In these other cases we’re talking a few guys a with ‘card board signs’ and a few weak knee’d college administers. Not remotely in the same class. Get a grip people! It’s not the end of civilization or even The University.
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I think the “offense” thing was even more absurd 30-40 years ago than it is now, if anything.
I remember reading a prominent left wing activist in the early 80’s saying that we shouldn’t use the term ‘paederast’ since it was offensive to ‘men who love boys’.
Back in those days ‘oppression’ was a big thing. You could ‘oppress’ someone in those days without even knowing how. In fact not knowing how you just oppressed someone made it worse.
All of which tended to take the real oppression that went on.
We used to say woe betide us all if they ever got any real power. Little did we kniw.
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… take attention away from the real oppression…
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Hi Eric,
As a rule of thumb, of every 10,000 crackpots who believe their ideas are being dismissed for that reason (and they always do), in 9999 cases the truth is that their ideas quite obviously have no merit.
To the thread in general:
“Native” = born there (nothing more).
The word for “originating there” in a longer-term sense is indigenous.
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Coel,
You paint with quite a broad brush if you mean to imply that my ideas “quite obviously have no merit.” Need I remind you that we happen to be extremely well aligned ideologically? Thus I presumably have our shared ideas right, though the rest is “obviously wrong”? But if true, why would I not hear specific challenges from you regarding those ideas? That’s why we come to Massimo’s isn’t it? To test each other’s ideas? You’re one of the central reasons that I enjoy this place, as sensible as they come, and yet I don’t hear from you (except for an odd “own goal” situation such as this one). Have I wronged you or something like that?
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Oh wow. And now I’ve just gone through the panpsychism article. So this movement is actually strengthening? Doesn’t this suggest that perhaps things may be a bit worse than we’d like to hope? If I know Massimo, he’s not going to come out and say “Hey let’s just roll with this. There’s a fundamental difference between hard and soft science, so there’s no need to get agitated.”
Give ’em hell Massimo!
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Aboriginal does not mean or imply “hunter gatherer” in fact it comes from the ancient Roman word for the original inhabitants of Rome.
The Australian Aborigines were mostly not hunter gatherers either.
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The correct rule on names is “You can call me anything you want, just don’t call me late for dinner.”
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As far as the cultural appropriation article goes, it’s still hard for me to imagine that this is a true movement to reckon with. Perhaps it’s just some humorous cases of crackpottery, which thus make the news. It would seem that the vast majority of Hawaiians enjoy the spread of their culture, as do Mexicans, as to the Irish, as do the French. Jamaica? Ya mon! How about American black culture? In recent years this has become quite mainstream. I suspect that the vast majority of black Americans approve.
One thing that I wouldn’t call “cultural appropriation,” however, would be to use a culture’s symbols for purposes of derision. This happens as well sometimes, but let’s not use the same term for it.
Then as for naming a sports team after a given culture, well that could go either way. If they were called “The drunk Irish” rather than “fighting,” well that could be trouble! Regardless, I think I understand why many American Indians would rather not have their culture be used as mascots.
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Actually, on the Lakota/Dakota, their “ancient claim” to the Black Hills isn’t such. They started being in numbers on the west side of the middle/upper Missouri River only at about the same time Lewis and Clark were moving up the river. They’d been pushed out of Wisconsin and the eastern half of Minnesota by the Chippewa and others who’d gotten guns from the French.
The Black Hills were sacred to the Arapaho and Northern Cheyenne before the Sioux got there.
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I’m surprised Dan isn’t more critical of Chomsky’s linguistics, for being scientistic. Chomsky thinks linguistics (and for that matter psychology) can have the same sort of formulaic deep laws that physics has. Not only is he mistaken about that, but this way of thinking leads him into conceptual confusions and consequent vagueness and ambiguity in the formulation of his ideas.
Chomsky claims that his generative grammars are not just models of the patterns of linguistic utterances. They are supposed to be models of a person’s knowledge of the grammar of their language. But he’s vague about the relationship between the model and the reality. Does he mean that our knowledge of grammar is stored as a symbolic code isomorphic to the generative grammar? That’s what most of his critics seem to assume and reject. But is that what he really has in mind? The trouble is it’s hard to think of any alternative interpretation, and as far as I know Chomsky hasn’t given one.
Chomsky also wants to exclude from linguistics any consideration of language as a communal activity (“E-language”), something which I would expect to be anathema to Dan (as it is to most of his critics).
In short, I think Chomsky’s ideas are highly antithetical to a Wittgensteinian view of language, and I’m surprised Dan isn’t more hostile to them.
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Well put, Richard … goes beyond my thoughts expressed here, but it’s certainly ideas I could be sympathetic to, and connect to my earlier comment about my perceived “saltationism” in Chomsky.
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To follow up on my comments, and on Richard’s observation … certainly, let’s say that early H. sapiens and old H. heidelbergensis, or H. neanderthalis and H. denisoviensis, with the massive regular movements of Hominims compared to other mammalians, move into each others’ territory. Let’s say both of the interacting species have “proto-language,” short of today’s language, but well past whatever H. erectus had.
They’re certainly swapping phonemes and linguistic ideas along with swapping genes. And, of course, they’re being creative, on a small scale, with language within their bands.
And, per my “eddies and swirls” this process is as recursive in some ways as recursive sentences are today.
Plus, on a true ev psych done right, the hominid brain is evolving through all of this.
So, in that sense, it’s arguable that Chomsky is simplistic and incomplete as part of being wrong. Oh, it was a nice try, and there may be insights that are usable for future studies, but really?
It’s probably time to move on.
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Richard,
I don’t agree with many of Chomsky’s ideas but trying to find deep laws in psychology isn’t scientistic. It maybe misguided (it’s not) or not possible (possibly) but we won’t know until the investigation shows us one way or another. Chomsky’s UG never was a bit contender along these lines nor does UG failing at this proves there are no deeper principles.
Imad
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Here is something that just came out on language and it shared sounds:
https://www.mpg.de/10731041/language-sound-meaning-coincidence
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“We stole their land”
This trope could only be based on the idea that whoever inhabits a land first owns it. I think the world will be a better place when no parcel of land anywhere is designated as belonging to a specific race or blood lineage. Looking at it like “we stole their land” is the most racist way to look at it. The non-racist way to look at it is they are us and we are they and this land belongs to none more than the other because there is no “other.”
As I have said before, I do not identify with or have any loyalty to any nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. We are all Homo sapiens and we ought to work together and share this world equally. That would be best I think. But alas I live in a world where people are still so primitive and tribal that they still use phrases like “we stole their land” with the division between “we” and “they” being bloodline only. Both born in the same land, but bloodline, and bloodline only, makes a “we” and a “they.”
“We stole their land” is how racists, who ignorantly think they are anti-racists, talk. White guilt is racist. Real anti-racists are people like me who do not separate “we” and “they” according to bloodline.
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Per Michael’s link:
1. Over 2/3 of languages is still less than 3/4
2. More importantly, individual morphemes aren’t grammar.
The most relevant thing to Chomsky, IMO, is the last item in the piece, that the search for an “original language” is becoming more difficult.
That alone would be a bit of an issue for at least proving Chomsky.
However, per what I’ve said above, I believe more and more that the entire idea of searching for an “original language” is misguided. Beyond all the sharing between different bands and groups, it’s a demarcation/boundary issue, with a nod to our host.
Where does proto-language stop and language begin?
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Imad I agree with that entirely. And don’t get me wrong — I’m not “dancing on Chomsky’s grave.” Scientists obviously must attempt the sorts of things that he has. Win or lose, progress does seem to occur, and this was obviously an ambitious project. It may be that a universal grammar could be fabricated, but surely there are plenty of interesting things that humanity will never figure out. (Regarding this “language gene” however? Well to me that one does seem pretty far fetched. Right Massimo?)
If there is to be a funeral, my remaining question is, will it be a clean one, or instead will there be great mounds of messy residue that continues to be believed? Surely a century from now philosophers won’t be talking about the ill effects of “the pseudoscience of Chomsky,” anything like what Freud left us with. Well hopefully anyway.
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richardwein: I have only been speaking of its influence and continued relevance. I haven’t said anything about my personal view of Chomsky’s linguistics. Personally, I think virtually everything interesting there is to know is at the sociolinguistic level of description.
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