Definition of Consciousness: 2nd Poll

[untermensche]

Here is a video where 80 something Chomsky eviscerates so-called working "linguists". I'm sure they all have PhD's.

It is a great video to understand the power of mass delusion.

 

[Copernicus]

Untermensche, that video and our side discussion on Chomsky really takes us off-topic and deserves a thread of its own. I think that the "poverty of stimulus" topic is an interesting one, but it is Christmas morning in Hong Kong for me. I'm about to embark on a 3-day journey to get home, so I'll have to postpone listening to Chomsky's lecture until then, after which I will be happy to give my thoughts. Just the first 5 minutes got my ire up a little when he made the breezily inaccurate claim that the entire field of linguistics is a branch of cognitive science. But he has been saying that since the 1960s at least. I just wish he would pause to give some thought to how much of his own profession he dismisses out of hand with such a sweeping generalization.

 

[untermensche]

Untermensche, that video and our side discussion on Chomsky really takes us off-topic and deserves a thread of its own. I think that the "poverty of stimulus" topic is an interesting one, but it is Christmas morning in Hong Kong for me. I'm about to embark on a 3-day journey to get home, so I'll have to postpone listening to Chomsky's lecture until then, after which I will be happy to give my thoughts. Just the first 5 minutes got my ire up a little when he made the breezily inaccurate claim that the entire field of linguistics is a branch of cognitive science. But he has been saying that since the 1960s at least. I just wish he would pause to give some thought to how much of his own profession he dismisses out of hand with such a sweeping generalization.

It is much more than a lecture.

It has to be watched in it's entirety so enjoy yourself and watch it at your leisure at some other time.

But it has to be watched intently because Chomsky destroys many bad ideas.

It is far from merely a lecture on the poverty of stimulus.

 

[Copernicus]

If he was able to destroy some of your bad ideas, then he will have succeeded where the rest of us have failed.

 

[untermensche]

If he was able to destroy some of your bad ideas, then he will have succeeded where the rest of us have failed.

I really have no ideas on the matter.

I know what Chomsky believes and why he believes it.

He has been a great mentor and teacher for me for over 30 years.

That is all.

 

[fromderinside]

Whose idea was it to have flypaper in this place. The topic is the survey on consciousness. Nostalgic rantings of some dried up remains of a political hack on his take on linguistics the topic is not.

 

[untermensche]

Whose idea was it to have flypaper in this place. The topic is the survey on consciousness. Nostalgic rantings of some dried up remains of a political hack on his take on linguistics the topic is not.

This is a bad opinion devoid of any evidence of any understanding of Chomsky's work.

You will not watch the video. You cannot do it.

You cannot have something real to have to argue against.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I just posted the entire post for those two. More to the point, You've been hurling abuse at me constantly since I dared to point out that you were wrong.

If you do not want abuse do not post my words free of context.

It is despicable.

When you finally see the context things happen in you might get some more lessons on Chomsky.

You were attacking people not ideas. I’ve quoted you doing it and got a gratifyingly guilty response. I’m still curious about this as you seem to be ignoring the question and ignoring things is your tell. If you can’t respond, realise it destroys your position or makes you uncomfortable, you ignore it. I confess, it’s how I know you are not stupid but are dishonest: you know what to pretend didn’t happen. If you were merely stupid you wouldn’t know what to blank. In reality, you blank reasonably accurately.

With this in mind, you seem to be, once again, ignoring the fact that having stated your position, I have quoted Chomsky stating precisely the opposite.

And you haven’t told me if you behave like this in real life.

If I want the right number of aspirin, I’ll call you. If I want to know about Chomsky, I’ll listen to the chap with the doctorate and a lifetime of experience teaching and researching in the field.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I’d love to see how anyone can build a theory of consciousness on a language of thought model of cognition that doesn’t end up in a Chinese Room or denying consciousness.

 

[untermensche]

I just posted the entire post for those two. More to the point, You've been hurling abuse at me constantly since I dared to point out that you were wrong.

If you do not want abuse do not post my words free of context.

It is despicable.

When you finally see the context things happen in you might get some more lessons on Chomsky.

You were attacking people not ideas. I’ve quoted you doing it and got a gratifyingly guilty response. I’m still curious about this as you seem to be ignoring the question and ignoring things is your tell. If you can’t respond, realise it destroys your position or makes you uncomfortable, you ignore it. I confess, it’s how I know you are not stupid but are dishonest: you know what to pretend didn’t happen. If you were merely stupid you wouldn’t know what to blank. In reality, you blank reasonably accurately.

With this in mind, you seem to be, once again, ignoring the fact that having stated your position, I have quoted Chomsky stating precisely the opposite.

And you haven’t told me if you behave like this in real life.

If I want the right number of aspirin, I’ll call you. If I want to know about Chomsky, I’ll listen to the chap with the doctorate and a lifetime of experience teaching and researching in the field.

I have no fucking guilt.

I attacked behavior that you completely ignore.

Your criticism is completely devoid of any context. In that it is dishonest and dispicable.

It is a form of harassment.

 

[Subsymbolic]

It would be nice if you responded to post 218. I assume you saw the force of it as you have studiously ignored it and changed the subject.

 

[untermensche]

I gave you a video to watch.

It is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen a person in their eighties do.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I gave you a video to watch.

It is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen a person in their eighties do.

Well that is very kind of you, but, it would be nice if you responded to post 218. I assume you saw the force of it as you are still studiously ignoring it and changing the subject.

As I already pointed out, I don't rate Chomsky at all. I don't think LOT accounts of even language are remotely interesting or feasible and any credibility for his theories was lost when the first connectionist system made the past tense 'ED' overgeneralisation error while training.

I find his increasingly desperate attempts to pretend he is relevant a bit sad. However, even he doesn't think a single mutation...

 

[untermensche]

I am not interested at all in post #218.

It stimulates no thoughts.

I posted a video and in it Chomsky schools some "linguists" about what they are doing.

 

[Copernicus]

In Beijing now and flying back to the US today. I thought I'd get a chance to review some of the video, but China blocks YouTube and quite a few other internet services.

FTR, I look forward to seeing the video, but not because of unter's claims about its content. I am just curious to see if Chomsky has anything new to say about his "poverty of stimulus" argument, which (AFAICT) has varied little since the 1960s. Basically, the core of the argument has been that healthy infants acquire language so quickly and thoroughly that they must come equipped with a considerable amount of genetically programmed language. Metaphorically, it is like turning on a radio and tuning it to the right station. Language is largely "acquired", not "learned". What is learned is basically vocabulary. The structural aspects are already in place.

If you study the complexity of phrasal and lexical structure, then the rapidity of language acquisition in infants is impressive. However, even more impressive is the uniform schedule of maturation in the linguistic behavior of children. Different children learn at different rates, but they tend to acquire the same linguistic capabilities in relatively predictable stages. As children grow older, this type of learning tends to decay and drop off precipitously with the onset of puberty. At that point, strategies for acquiring a new language take on a decidedly different character, and the ability to natively master a foreign language simply disappears.

What seems to interest untermensche (for the purposes of this discussion anyway) is his perception of the abuse that Chomsky hurls at us other linguists out there for not completely accepting the details of his version of generative linguistic theory. (After all, Chomsky is the progenitor of generative linguistic theory.) But one really needs to have a more general background in linguistics to appreciate the other perspectives out there. Having never had to study the subject matter, untermensche is woefully ill-equipped for that, and his confidence in his own ability to understand the issues seems largely grounded in the dunning-kruger effect that afflicts so many of us internet dilettantes when we step outside of our areas of core competence.

 

[untermensche]

Chomsky does not abuse any people.

He shows some people the logical errors of their thinking.

Poverty of stimulus is pretty much what you say but that is just the title.

What Chomsky mainly does here is discuss the actual work of some people in the field of linguistics.

He reviews a paper and discusses the errors in the thinking contained within it.

The questioning at the end is impressive.

 

[beero1000]

Ugh, that question/answer segment was so painful. Rude, condescending, and he wouldn't let anyone actually get a point out without interrupting to talk about how obviously dumb everyone else is. Apparently, he wasn't even addressing the actual points because he wouldn't wait to hear the full question without jumping in to answer what he thought they were going to ask.

I can see how he's untermensche's hero.

 

[Copernicus]

Chomsky does not abuse any people.

He shows some people the logical errors of their thinking.

Poverty of stimulus is pretty much what you say but that is just the title.

What Chomsky mainly does here is discuss the actual work of some people in the field of linguistics.

He reviews a paper and discusses the errors in the thinking contained within it.

The questioning at the end is impressive.

Oh, but you don't know Noam. I've attended a few of his lectures before and had brief interactions with him at wine&cheese receptions afterwards. He tends to be far more polite to non-linguists who ask naïve questions, because he doesn't feel threatened by them. He can be quite nasty with those who challenge him on more substantive grounds.

Here's an example of what I mean. Back in the 1980s, he was invited to debate his former student, Jerrold Katz (a linguistic philosopher), at Columbia University, where I was a member of the Linguistics faculty. I knew Jerry pretty well but Chomsky not very well. BTW, Chomsky was always pleasant to me on the few occasions that I talked to him. The debate topic was over whether Generative Linguistics was inherently platonist in its approach to language, with Jerry arguing (as he had done previously in print) that it was. That really steamed Chomsky, who sees himself as something of a cognitive psychologist. So, after Jerry gave the opening salvo, Chomsky got up and claimed that he was misrepresented. Jerry interrupted him (which had been SOP for Chomsky's first generation grad students) and called out that he was wrong. Chomsky denied it, so Jerry asked him to bet $5 on it, claiming that he would show him the passage. Chomsky accepted the bet, and continued his remarks. Jerry sat behind him furiously leafing through Chomsky's latest book. He then jumped up and approached Chomsky with his book. He pointed out the passage, and Chomsky shook his head. After the debate, I asked Chomsky if Jerry had won the bet. He replied with a terse "No". I asked Jerry, and he said he didn't know, because Chomsky was then refusing to talk to him. Academic spats can be such fun. Smart people love to attack each other's intelligence.

 

[untermensche]

Ugh, that question/answer segment was so painful. Rude, condescending, and he wouldn't let anyone actually get a point out without interrupting to talk about how obviously dumb everyone else is. Apparently, he wasn't even addressing the actual points because he wouldn't wait to hear the full question without jumping in to answer what he thought they were going to ask.

I can see how he's untermensche's hero.

It is a shame you only have some nebulous and undefined negative feelings and nothing objective to say.

This is not commentary of any kind.

 

[untermensche]

Chomsky does not abuse any people.

He shows some people the logical errors of their thinking.

Poverty of stimulus is pretty much what you say but that is just the title.

What Chomsky mainly does here is discuss the actual work of some people in the field of linguistics.

He reviews a paper and discusses the errors in the thinking contained within it.

The questioning at the end is impressive.

Oh, but you don't know Noam. I've attended a few of his lectures before and had brief interactions with him at wine&cheese receptions afterwards. He tends to be far more polite to non-linguists who ask naïve questions, because he doesn't feel threatened by them. He can be quite nasty with those who challenge him on more substantive grounds.

Here's an example of what I mean. Back in the 1980s, he was invited to debate his former student, Jerrold Katz (a linguistic philosopher), at Columbia University, where I was a member of the Linguistics faculty. I knew Jerry pretty well but Chomsky not very well. BTW, Chomsky was always pleasant to me on the few occasions that I talked to him. The debate topic was over whether Generative Linguistics was inherently platonist in its approach to language, with Jerry arguing (as he had done previously in print) that it was. That really steamed Chomsky, who sees himself as something of a cognitive psychologist. So, after Jerry gave the opening salvo, Chomsky got up and claimed that he was misrepresented. Jerry interrupted him (which had been SOP for Chomsky's first generation grad students) and called out that he was wrong. Chomsky denied it, so Jerry asked him to bet $5 on it, claiming that he would show him the passage. Chomsky accepted the bet, and continued his remarks. Jerry sat behind him furiously leafing through Chomsky's latest book. He then jumped up and approached Chomsky with his book. He pointed out the passage, and Chomsky shook his head. After the debate, I asked Chomsky if Jerry had won the bet. He replied with a terse "No". I asked Jerry, and he said he didn't know, because Chomsky was then refusing to talk to him. Academic spats can be such fun. Smart people love to attack each other's intelligence.

I suspect I would have seen the exchange differently.

I do not know what you mean by saying the language capacity, a computational system of the brain, like the visual capacity, is platonic. Is the visual capacity platonic?

Chomsky does not feel threatened by anybody in that video.

He tries to show some people the insanity of what they are doing. With rational argument after rational argument.

He is trying to keep the field relevant.