Until recently, the 94-year-old Chomsky was active in the public sphere, continuing to speak out and talk to the public.
The new book Who We Are is a compilation of Choms' interdisciplinary research advances and changes in thinking over the past fifty years, covering linguistic theories, cognitive sciences, philosophy of science, history of science, ethics, and political philosophy. In his book, he mainly explores four questions: What is language? What are the limitations of human understanding? What is the common good we should strive for? What are the mysteries of nature?
Similar to the past, Chomsky is not in a hurry to give answers, but rather explores the different textures of these fundamental questions, critically reviewing how new discoveries about language in the history of science and philosophy challenge and subvert our conceptual understanding of ourselves and society, and thus expound his latest thinking on the origin of language, the close relationship between language and thinking, and its biological basis. Finally, he turned his attention to the social and political spheres, philosophically exploring and defending the position of "libetarian socialism", reaffirming his understanding of "what the world should be."
"Language ability is not only a tool of the human mind, but it is also likely to be an important source of our thoughts." Chomsky once said this in an interview with C.J. Polychroniou. It is also in this sense that the concern with language is precisely to explore the most ancient and fundamental question about human beings—what kind of creatures are we.
The following is an excerpt from Who We Are: Chomsky's Treatise on Language and Beyond, "What Can We Understand?" One chapter. Due to the limitation of space, there are significant deletions compared with the original text, and the subtitles are prepared by the extractors.
Who We Are: Chomsky on Language and Beyond, by Noam Chomsky, translated by Yu Dong/Guo Wei, I think | Guangxi Normal University Press, March 2022.
Original author | [Beauty] Noam Chomsky
Excerpts | Qingqingzi
Questions and Mysteries:
Innate structure determines our cognitive abilities and their limits
Owen Flanagan coined a new concept called "Neo-Mysticism," defining it as "a postmodernist position that pierces the heart of scientism." The concept asserts that "we can never fully interpret consciousness". The term is now used in a much broader range, dealing with many issues such as the scope and attributes of interpretation within reach of the human intellect. I will give this term a broader meaning. In my opinion, the meaning of this term should be richer.
I am considered one of the main culprits to provoke this peculiar postmodern heresy, but I would rather rename it: axiom. Forty years ago, I had this idea when I asked the difference between a question and a mystery. The former is within our cognitive range, the latter is not. To borrow charles Sanders Pearce's discussion of the term abductive reasoning, the human brain is a biological system that provides it with a limited set of "acceptable assumptions." These assumptions are the basis of human scientific inquiry, and reasoning accordingly is also the basis of cognitive ability in the ordinary sense. From a simple logical point of view, the system must exclude other assumptions and ideas because we simply cannot understand them, or because the hierarchy is too high and in fact beyond our reach. A very differently structured brain may be able to understand, but Pierce may not think so. Universal generative grammar plays a similar role in language, and its basic observations apply to all biological capacity considerations.
Reasoning and the Logic of All Things, by Charles Sanders Pears, translated by Zhang Liuhua, Fudan University Press, September 2019.
Peirce's reasoning of retrospective reasoning is sometimes hailed as the reasoning that can obtain the best explanation, and although it is not mature enough, its significance goes far beyond the concept itself. Crucially, Pearse's insistence on the "acceptable hypothesis" is limited and very limited, a prerequisite for "imagining the right theory". His main concern here is the growth of scientific knowledge, but this is also suitable for the acquisition of common sense understanding, especially for language.
This should be appropriate even for the problems we are capable of constructing; innate structure dictates that we can ask a rich variety of questions that can be expressed, as well as questions that cannot be asked, and that questions may be possible for the brains of some different species. I also quote some of Hume's similar views. He recognized that, like the "beasts," "much of human knowledge" depended on "a series of natural instincts" that "originated in the original hand of nature"—in our words, the gift of genetics. Therefore, it can be seen that the above conclusions are similar.
It seems to me that these are self-evident axioms. Then, if we are biological organisms and not angels, our cognitive functions should be similar to what is commonly called "physical ability", so we should also study cognitive functions exactly as we study other systems of the body.
Let's take the digestive system as an example. Vertebrates have a "second brain," the "gut brain," a "separate site of neural integration and processing." The evolution of the gut brain has always been synchronized with the brain brain. It has become "a vibrant, modern data processing center that allows us to accomplish extremely important but less enjoyable tasks without having to think about it." If you are lucky, you can complete the task "efficiently without realizing it". The intestines may also suffer from "their own neurosis.". Studies have now reported that the intestines are also susceptible to brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and autism. It has its own sensory sensors and regulatory devices that accept specific tasks imposed by the organs with which it interacts, excluding tasks from other organs.
Stills from the documentary "Heaven and Earth Xuanhuang".
There is no doubt that the "first hand of nature" determines what the gut brain can and cannot do. That is to say, the intestinal brain has its "problems" that can be solved, and there are also "mysteries" beyond its ability. Scope and limitation are interrelated: there is no dispute that the structural qualities of the scope are also set limits. In the case of the gut brain, no one has discussed the somewhat vague "gift hypothesis" because there are no such hypotheses in the field of research other than the various different views on what is the genetic component. When this hypothesis is used in linguistic matters, it is often blamed and never defended. Over the years, the genetic makeup of the gut brain, as it is for other fields, people are still not fully understood, but there is no complaint about it. The study of the gut brain is based on the intrinsic, and the key to the functioning of the digestive system lies in the external matter associated with it, elsewhere in the organism or outside the body, but no philosophical criticism is based on this fact. The nature of internal systems and their interactions with the outside is studied, and philosophical confusion is not involved here.
Some ideas similar to the gut brain problem have made the study of the first brain and its abilities, especially human language, difficult. It seems to me that this illustration reflects a strange tendency to distinguish the psychological aspects of the human organism from the so-called physical aspects. This is a methodological dualism that is far more harmful than the descartes metaphysics of dualism, which is a respectable scientific hypothesis. Newton's theory showed that one of Cartesian entities, the body, did not exist, which at least in a Cartesian sense dissolved the mind-body problem, thereby abandoning the early mechanistic philosophy of modern science and proving the dichotomy of Cartesian metaphysics wrong. This makes it an open question of what "physical" and "physical" should mean. In contrast, methodological dualism doesn't seem to have anything to admire. If we abandon it, it's hard to see why the study of the first brain, especially brain cognition, should be fundamentally different from the study of the gut brain or any part of the body. If it can be said, then contrary to popular belief, mysticism and immanence are mere axioms in many forms.
The practice of replacing "God" with "nature",
A path has been opened for scientific inquiry
For a variety of different reasons, many elites feel guilty about accepting the axioms of mysticism. I think Bertrand Russell is one of them. Ninety years ago, he adopted Hume's view that "the highest (deterministic) is my own perception," so that we can see the various structures of the mind as an effort to understand perception. Whether this is a reflective structure of common sense understanding, or a more rigorous and scientific effort, it reveals to us that perception is "given" as a building block from external data and the structure of thought. C.I. Lewis had an interesting discussion of these topics shortly after Russell.
A Study of Human Reason, by David Hume, translated by Lü Daji, The Commercial Press, August 1999.
As Hume put it, we must adhere to the "Newtonian philosophy" and "be to a certain extent skeptical and to admit our ignorance in areas beyond the limits of human capacity." For Hume, Newtonian philosophy actually covered everything beyond the appearance of things. We must "avoid tirades involving the true nature and operation of appearances." Imagination is "a magical ability of the soul ... It cannot be explained by the best efforts of human beings to understand." It is imagination that leads us to believe that we are feeling externally continuous things, including the mind or self. Contrary to the views of Dr. Johnson, G.E. Moore, and other respectable figures, Hume's reasoning seems to me to be worthy of respect.
People at the time understood this very well. Locke writes that, on the one hand, we are "helplessly ignorant of the matter and its effects which we desire to know" and have not mastered the science of the body (which provides a true explanation), and on the other hand, having read "the incomparable writings of The Wise Man, Mr. Newton, that it would be too bold to conceive of limiting the power of God with my narrow ideas on this question." Although the gravitational pull between matter is "inconceivable to me," as Newton points out, we must acknowledge that God's power is sufficient to "give the body the power to manipulate and manipulate in a way that is beyond our understanding of ideas and beyond our interpretations based on our knowledge of matter." Thanks to Newton's research, we know, "God has done this."
Stills from the documentary "Salt of the Earth".
If the axioms of mysticism are acknowledged, then it cannot be judged by whether I understand them or not. Excluding theological considerations, we can express Locke's thought in a different way: he believes that there are some qualities of nature that are insoluble mysteries for human beings. Newton had no objection to this. He constantly sought to somehow avoid the "ridiculous" conclusion that objects could interact at a distance. He speculated that the ubiquitous God could be the "immaterial medium" that causes gravitational interactions. But without experimental proof, he rejected "false speculation," so he had to go this far. Newton's most prominent critic, Leibniz, argued that contactless interactions were "inconceivable," a view that Newton endorsed, but did not endorse, as Leibniz called an "irrational mystical quality." Newton believed that his principles were not mysterious, that "only their roots are mysterious". He hoped that these roots would be interpreted in physical terms, meaning mechanistic philosophy or similar terms. In failing to do so, Newton argues that if general principles could be summed up from phenomena and "reveal to us how the behavioral qualities of all tangible things conform to those obvious principles, it would be a great philosophical step, although the roots of these principles have not yet been discovered."
Andrew Janiac delved into Newton as a philosopher. He believes that Newton did not admit that there was no force and reaction force without contact, and there was a unique reason. He argues that Newton argues that his thinking cannot be adjusted through reflective experience, or through the development of the physical sciences, and that his "understanding of God's place in the material world has led his mind to form a metaphysical framework that corresponds to his mode of thinking." Furthermore, "if there is a possibility of divinity in the teleportation, i.e., god can exert some effect in the hypertherm state, then the omnipotence of God does not need to be explained according to the omnipotence of the divine nature, as Newton had previously explained."
Newton, Andrew Janiak, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.
Later adherents of Newtonianism rejected metaphysics and thus accepted the behavior of distance within the theoretical structure. The question of the inconceivable implications of those conclusions about the world are no longer considered, even though they have always troubled Newton himself and his contemporaries.
Thus, there are hidden limitations to the goals of scientific inquiry: from the criterion of true understanding in the early days of modern science, which is comprehensibility, to the much narrower goal of whether theories of the world are understandable. It seems to me that this should be an extremely important step in the history of human thought and exploration, far more so than is universally recognized, and it directly affects the scope of mysticism in a broad sense.
Locke came to the conclusion that just as God gave matter the incredible property of gravity, it is possible that he could have "replenished" matter with the capacity to think. The substitution of "nature" for "God" has brought a topic of conversation to scientific inquiry and opened up a path for scientific inquiry, along which one has continued to move forward, culminating in the conclusion that thinking is a property of certain forms of organized matter.
Language is changing,
But not evolutionary
The last decade of the 20th century is known as the "Decade of the Brain." Neuroscientist Vernon Muncastle wrote a preface to a collection of essays, commented on the findings of the anthology, and stated the leading theme of the anthology as a new biological thesis, namely, that "spiritual things, that is, mental things, are natural attributes of the brain, and (although) these attributes are caused by ... What we don't understand yet... principles lead to"—this reaffirms once again the views of the 18th century, and the language used is almost the same.
However, the phrase "we don't understand yet" should be noted. Consider Bertrand Russell's 1927 comment. The laws of chemistry, he said, "cannot yet be reduced to the laws of physics." Based on this fact, the scientific elite believes that chemistry is nothing more than a computational model that can predict the results of experiments, not real science. Russell's observation was correct, but it soon became apparent that he was too conservative. According to the understanding of physics at that time, the laws of chemistry could not be reduced to physical laws, but the revolution in quantum theory had brought about drastic changes in physics, and the physical processes were still one with the chemical processes that had not actually changed.
Philosophical Questions, by Portland Russell, translated by He Zhaowu, The Commercial Press, April 2007.
There is a lot to learn from neuroscience and philosophy of mind. Contemporary neuroscience can hardly be said to be as perfect as physics a century ago. In fact, in my opinion, there is still convincing criticism of its basic assumptions. It is generally accepted that the study of mind is neuroscience at an abstract level, and if we are talking about neuroscience today, this claim is likely to end up being as misleading as a similar claim about chemistry ninety years ago.
In modern society, there are people who equate thinking with consciousness in a variety of different ways, such as in Quinn's paper, following the rules either boils down to "conformity", just as planets conform to Kepler's law, or through conscious thinking reverts to "guidance". Or, like Searle's "principle of connection," it is asserted that the operation of the mind must be grasped in some way by conscious experience. This is a point that is difficult to express clearly and reasonably. These perceptions, whether considered experimental or as terminology provisions, preclude most of the discovered rules of observed language or perception.
We have reason to believe that what can touch consciousness, or even what is only possible, may be nothing more than a reflection of scattered incomprehensible mental processes that interact closely with fragments that sometimes do touch consciousness. Today's famous Libate experiment on how humans decide provides a lot of clear evidence in this regard. Although it seems to me that this series of experiments is wrong to take this series of experiments as evidence of freedom of consciousness. Many problems remain, including driven by personal responsibility, of course, without considering the impact of awareness and thinking on decision-making. There is also the problem with the possible limitations at the level of cognitive capacity.
Illustration of the Libette experiment.
If the fragments of mental processes that touch consciousness do interact closely with those that cannot touch consciousness, and this is clear at least in the use of language, then limiting the focus to conscious consciousness or the accessibility of consciousness is likely to seriously hinder the development of the science of mind. These are all interesting topics, but we don't have time to delve into them here.
So let's go back to mysticism in the broad sense, not to the question of consciousness. As I think, mystical consciousness should be regarded as an axiom. We can consider all kinds of mysteries. Some have far-reaching implications, including those mentioned above: those that may be eternal mysteries for humanity. But before returning to these questions, some narrower cases are worth considering: these cases may in principle be within our cognitive capacity, and there may be relevant empirical evidence, although we cannot obtain this evidence. There are also cases where experiments may answer good questions that we ask, but they cannot be done for ethical reasons.
So, with the help of invasive experiments with cats and monkeys, we have a lot of knowledge about the human visual nerve, but we can't understand language in the same way. There are no known homologies related to the study of language in the animal world, and similar experiments with humans are prohibited, although some of these obstacles may be eliminated in the future as new technologies emerge.
Stills from the documentary Making Consensus: Chomsky and the Media.
The evolution of cognition may be an example, especially the so-called "evolution of language", that is, the evolution of language ability, the function of language. Language is changing, but not evolved. Evolutionary biologist Richard Levantine repeatedly argued many years ago that we actually know nothing about these things. He concluded: "It would be interesting to know how cognition (whatever it means) is produced, transmitted, and changed." Unfortunately we can't understand, not so good luck. "We have no evidence of that. His conclusions were published in the MIT publication Of The Invitation to Cognitive Science, and editors like me found his conclusions convincing, even though his analysis was largely unappreciated and did not prevent the literature he considered "storytelling," particularly in the field of language.
Typical storytelling patterns don't even reveal the basic nature of representation. This is a prerequisite for any serious evolutionary study. Typical storytelling also constructs a story about communication (a different topic that may be more appealing), because the concept of evolution, if not otherwise, is at least a bit questionable, but it is traditional. A recent technical paper commented on what new results have been made since Levantine's accusations, and reaffirmed these results in the article, which I think is very reasonable, and I am one of the authors.
Original author | [Beauty] Noam Chomsky
Excerpts | Qingqingzi
Editor| Zhang Ting
Introduction Proofreader | Lucy