[Buddha-l] S. Pinker (linguist, cognitive psychologist)

[Peter D. Junger]

"Bruce G. Seidner Ph.D." writes:

: Lots of folks have taken on Chomsky-like idealism. One of my favorites was 
: Herbert Terrace who debunked the claims of "nurturing" an ape to use 
: American Sign Language in the case of Nim Chimpsky.

I am afraid that the Nim Chimpsky project was an effort to prove
Chomsky wrong.  Chompsly's major linguistic postition, as I understand
it, is that all human beings have an inherent language faculty that
is not shared with other species and that is the same in all human
beings.

Nor would Chomsky be happy with having his position referred to as
idealism.  He claims that he is a dualist and traces his intellectual
ancestors to Descartes and  the school of Port Royale.  Or at least
he once claimed that and I am quite sure that he is no more capable
of admitting that he was wrong than is the President of the United
States.  But then he---like most people---is much less likely to be
wrong than is the president of the United States.

--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
 EMAIL: junger at samsara.law.cwru.edu    URL:  http://samsara.law.cwru.edu