Thoughts on language
The idea of creating an infinite number of things with finite resources is interesting - that's essentially how the mind works, I think. It also reminds me of Jorge Luis Borges' story, The Library of Babel, in which an indefinite, and perhaps infinite number of texts reside, produced using only the letters of the Roman alphabet.
I'm getting to "know" Chomsky a bit better, and I like his writing. He is, as far as I can tell, primarily a linguist, and analyses a number of phenomena through the notion of human language (he differentiates between this concept and actual specific languages). He talks quite clearly about the disconnect between the signifier and the signified - or rather, he hints at the vast network of mental objects that we have created through language which don't have a "real-world" equivalent. This is what theorists talk about when they say that there is no real world as denoted by language, or as mediated through the human experience *stares pointedly at Alan Sokal*
I was reading a Neurophilosophy post yesterday how song learning in birds has a strong genetic basis, and may have a universal grammar, which may be similar as far as human language is concerned. As I was reading it, I was thinking to myself that it reminds me of Chomsky, and sure enough, further into the article the author of the post quoted NC on "human language". I don't fully agree with the hypothesis (some good points in the comments), I agree that the drive to communicate/to language may be biologically encoded, but that doesn't mean a "universal structure of human language" is too. Also, I have no idea how similar songbird language centres are to human ones.
I'm getting to "know" Chomsky a bit better, and I like his writing. He is, as far as I can tell, primarily a linguist, and analyses a number of phenomena through the notion of human language (he differentiates between this concept and actual specific languages). He talks quite clearly about the disconnect between the signifier and the signified - or rather, he hints at the vast network of mental objects that we have created through language which don't have a "real-world" equivalent. This is what theorists talk about when they say that there is no real world as denoted by language, or as mediated through the human experience *stares pointedly at Alan Sokal*
I was reading a Neurophilosophy post yesterday how song learning in birds has a strong genetic basis, and may have a universal grammar, which may be similar as far as human language is concerned. As I was reading it, I was thinking to myself that it reminds me of Chomsky, and sure enough, further into the article the author of the post quoted NC on "human language". I don't fully agree with the hypothesis (some good points in the comments), I agree that the drive to communicate/to language may be biologically encoded, but that doesn't mean a "universal structure of human language" is too. Also, I have no idea how similar songbird language centres are to human ones.