Could you give me you definition of a priori reason.
Are you arguing as a rationalist against empiricism?
There are some ornery critturs here .
???????????????????please explain??????????????
What’s purely philosophical? That we have a priori reasons for speaking? I was referring to your quote:
There’s certainly some hardwiring going on in the brain that can account for this (most likely Wernicke’s area), and this is what Chomsky showed, but maybe it’s not what you mean by “a priori”. Now that I know you’re a Kantian, I’m guessing that, for you, the underpinnings of a priori understandings are more than “hardwired” psychological elements that could be accounted for by biology or genetics, but are apprehensions of basic truths, implanted in us by a force no less powerful than God. Is this right?
I’m not sure what this has to do with Chomsky’s idea. I don’t think he ever denied there could be a distinction between thoughts and language, or that learning a new language changes your thoughts, beliefs, perspectives, etc. His argument was about the relation between the structure of language and the brain–that we learn the rules of language using a far more expedient neurological system than that for standard conditioning/learning.
What do you mean by “original”? You did say:
I take this to mean that one already knows, quite automatically, that Kant was right, even before he wrote the CPR. Are you saying this is something like that “intuitive” thought that you described above, the kind of thought one can’t quite put into words (and Kant did)?
Chomsky’s argument is purely philosophical, not neurological.
I’m not familiar with Chomsky being involved with neurolinguistics. Again, the wiki I showed you before linked to his opposition referring to empirical evidence instead.
It has to do with reference to natural language in general. Chomsky still asserted that natural language existed such that thoughts have a natural hierarchy from how they’re expressed once transformed or generated into native languages.
The problem is you can’t really prove a thought independent grammar. The argument that’s made is how all the languages in the world have similar grammars, so natural language must exist, but that’s inductive reasoning. It only looks at the languages which are known to exist. That’s like studying the numbers of winning lottery tickets and saying there’s a pattern among lotteries - it ignores all the losers that just don’t appear to exist.
Well anything can be put in words. The problem is putting it into conventions that are compatible with native language…
…but yea, you realize (or at least I realized that) Kant is automatically right very fast. The problems people have with understanding him are: he repeats himself a lot, and he isn’t very practical (until his second critique).
Anyway, by original, I mean that literally deontology is about having a duty to the origination of schematics. He’s quintessentially anti-consequentialist which means he’s focusing on the means, not the ends.
Rotflmao, really read the opposition to the OP, without naming names, someone is having fun.
Irrationalists don’t vocalize words. They vocalize noise. And sometimes people surmise that we understand each other randomly.
To an irrationalist, there’s no difference between sensible, intelligible communication and random, verbose bleating.
Let’s call this “word spew” from now on.
Here’s a new poem I made for you, Daktoria:
First I ate some word stew.
Then I vomited some word spew.
Do you like it?
Daktoria, if you want to talk about anything within the scientific framework of physics that most scientist currently use, then I’m not going to argue. But, what does the word “meaning” have to do with scientific work? That is an existential term or just an ideal as you say.
That’s why I put the word reason in quotation marks. We agree on at least that much.
I wouldn’t say science is meaningful. Meaning comes from ideal values, not real facts, but science involves studying facts. Value comes from applying science to some endeavor which reflects who we are.
I might say the means of scientific investigation are (literally) meaningful, but that’s because they involve the rational scientific method to formulate experimental design. Theory is meaningful because theory requires abstractly imagining ideas which are not yet concretely proven reality.
Not yet? When can they ever be proven?
He wasn’t AFAIK. But there is some neurolinguistic evidence that supports Chomsky’s claims (there’s a whole section before the one you linked me to called “For the argument”). We have a part of the brain called Wernicke’s area whose function is to process language so that we understand it. No other animal has this.
Can you restate that for me?
What are you saying? That if a language develops somewhere in the world that doesn’t conform to the “standard grammar,” its existence will be unknown?
I’m also a bit confused as to what a “natural language” has to do with the point I’m making. Maybe Chomsky spoke for this, but all I’m saying is that we are equipped with special neural systems for learning and identifying the proper rules of grammer of the language we find ourselves emmersed in (which gets back to the point about understanding the rules of language a priori). This doesn’t mean there’s any “natural language” or “universal grammer”. A community can structure and develop its language and grammar however it wants. It must conform to a set of rules, however, if it is to function effectively, and our brains seem particularly geared towards picking up on those rules quite acutely compared to learning other kinds of things.
So by “original” you mean he goes back to the origins?
That depends on what you mean by “standard”.
If by standard, you mean conventional socializing, then yes. Substandard grammar will be outsocialized, so the language will fall out of use.
If by standard, you mean some transcendental ideal, then no. Heck, it’s possible that transcendental ideals are substandard grammar because imperfect, practical, approximate grammar requires less discipline to use.
Your point before was, “I don’t think he ever denied there could be a distinction between thoughts and language, or that learning a new language changes your thoughts, beliefs, perspectives, etc.” Natural language requires them to be one and the same because we’re talking about an ability before native language is realized. That is people need to have beliefs in alignment in order to appreciate the value of words in alignment before words are actually aligned.
Yes. He’s talking about the categorical origination of thought. He’s not talking about the hypothetical consequences of thought. Hypothetical imperatives follow categorical imperatives, not the other way around.
(I know what you meant before by “novel”, but I’m saying Kant wasn’t trying to create anything novel. He was literally trying to dig deep into what’s original of reason.)
Well, we’ve reached the limit of my knowledge on Chomsky, so I’ll take your word that he thought language and thought are the same. I disagree though. I think what you just said shows they are not the same. You can have thought aligned before you have language aligned, so they are not the same.
But let me see if I understand this: in order for language to express thought, the logic of thought (which is universal?) must somehow be represented in language–hence grammar. Is that the reasoning behind a “natural language”? Behind Chomsky’s argument?
If that’s the case, again I don’t agree. Typically, a whole sentence expresses a single thought. I forget who said this, but some wise person once said “Our thoughts are sentence sized”. And since the rules of logic regulate entire systems of thought (i.e. the exist “between” thoughts), they cannot be represented by grammar which regulates the relations between words within single sentences.
Now you got it. 
The purpose of the irrationalist is to confuse and stall, not to make progress.
Making progress is rational.
Thus the irrationalist simply mixes anything he wants into a string of words that give the appearance of having enough meaning to capture attention (thus stalling) or to mislead (confuse). An irrationalist is a “minion of the Abyss” or a “bedeviler”. To them, “progress” is destruction or nihilism, not construction.
+1