Talk:Noam Chomsky

New Pic of NC

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Noam_Chomsky_Jorge_Majfud_April_2016.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.126.69.135 (talk) 00:20, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Comparison with Skinner

This is not a debating point but just a request for clarification. Skinner had a functional approach to language, Chomsky a causal one -- he explains language as the result of an antecedent brain structure, while Skinner explained language use as the result of consequent reinforcement. These approaches are not antithetical -- I'm sure Chomsky wouldn't argue that the differences in the language use of English-speakers and Cantonese-speakers were due to differences in brain structure rather than differences in learning experience. I don't think, either, that Skinner would have disagreed with the statement that language is "unlike modes of communication used by any other animal species". I believe Skinner actually assumed an innate language ability. Maybe this issue could be fleshed out a bit. John FitzGerald (talk)

@John FitzGerald: Skinner believed that language was entirely learned behavior, with no innate component. Chomsky, on the other hand, argues that children's rapid mastery of language cannot be explained by exposure to linguistic stimuli alone, and must be supplemented by an innate linguistic capacity (see 'poverty of the stimulus' argument). With respect to the differences in language use of English speakers and Cantonese speakers, Chomsky would argue that these are merely different utilizations of a common language faculty (think of how a pocket multi-tool can be used in various different ways). This article does a good job of explaining Chomsky's theory, emphasis mine:

"Language, then, does not arise from the social/cultural environment, although the environment provides the stuff or input it works on. That input is “impoverished”; it can’t account for the creativity of language performance, which has its source not in the empirical world, but in an innate ability that is more powerful than the stimuli it utilizes and plays with. It follows that if you want to understand language, you shouldn’t look to linguistic behavior but to the internal mechanism — the Universal Grammar — of which particular linguistic behaviors are a non-exhaustive expression. (The capacity exceeds the empirical resources it might deploy.)" (Note that here the phrase "Universal Grammar" is used to refer to the general language faculty, rather than to the theoretical feature(s) that all languages have in common.)

You can read Chomsky's "The Case Against B.F. Skinner" and/or "A Review of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior" if you want more info. Vrrajkum (talk) 22:05, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the extensive and helpful reply. Could you cite a passage from Skinner in which he says that language is entirely learned behaviour? I haven't read Verbal Behavior in over 40 years, but I expect he would say rather that language acquisition can be explained without recourse to anything other than learning principles (a belief I've never shared, by the way). Anyway, my point was that the two analyses are not comparable, ergo not antithetical. Chomsky explains the effects of antecedent conditions on language, Skinner the effects of consequences. You can debate which is more important, but ultimately that's a statistical question that could conceivably be answered effectively. Not only is there no antithesis, but I also don't know why one would want to consider them antithetical -- is Chomsky denying that learning plays a role in language acquisition? Is he claiming people in the same family speak different languages because of idiosyncratic ways in which their Universal Grammar "works on input from the environment? The passage you quote seems to imply that, but I suspect that's not what Chomsky intended. I grew up in southern Ontario and I have a southern Ontario accent, my cousin grew up in Norfolk and has a Norfolk accent, while my cousins in Mexico speak Spanish -- that seems an important effect of learning to me. Of course, this may be a question of priority. In the sense in which the article seems to be using "understand", I can see that the assertion that you can only understand language through an internal mechanism could quite easily be correct. As for understanding a specific language, though, Skinner's approach is a hell of a lot faster. As you may have guessed, I'm thrilled with neither Chomsky nor Skinner, and I appreciate your help.John FitzGerald (talk)

Oh -- I forgot an ignorant question: have any of the brain mechanisms underlying Universal Grammar been identified, as they have been for reading? John FitzGerald (talk)

@Vrrajkum: Here's an article for you. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223153/

It seems Chomsky was not arguing that his analysis was antithetical to Skinner's, but that Skinner's analysis was not a scientific analysis, which is certainly a better issue to raise.

Here's another link, to Verbal Behavior. https://books.google.ca/books?id=v4CeAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT1&ots=9e-ZLv35yl&dq=skinner%20verbal%20behavior%20innate&lr&pg=PT29#v=onepage&q=skinner%20verbal%20behavior%20innate&f=true

In chapter 1, under "Traditional Formulations", Skinner writes about the difficulties of attributing speech to internal activity or structures (chiefly because they can't be identified). This was written before Chomsky's analysis was well known, but I'd say it's still true today. In the appendix "The Verbal Community" he notes that there is no evidence that speech arises in the absence of verbal stimulation. Neither of these assertions implies that there is no neural structure underlying speech, just that searching for neural structure is not likely to be fruitful. Chomsky's underlying structure seems to me like a very vague explanatory fiction so far. John FitzGerald (talk)

Analytic philosophy?

Could someone point me to a source for the statement that one of Chomsky's fields was analytic philosophy? Thanks. Gravuritas (talk) 07:10, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

@Gravuritas: https://chomsky.info/2004____/ Vrrajkum (talk) 05:52, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

The Noam Chomsky Reading List

Hello, The Noam Chomsky Reading List uses references, taken from the notes and bibliographies in some of Chomsky's important works, to create book lists. The site catalogs 1,069 books, from 2,281 references in 17 works by Noam Chomsky.

I wondered if a link might be added to the website in the external links section as this is a useful tool for Chomsky fans that want to learn about his influences and that want to explore his major sources too.

www.chomskylist.com

The site has been shared twice on Chomsky's official facebook page, was linked to on his official website, and is a permanent link in the navigation section of the Chomsky subreddit. Chomsky has also visited the site and said, "Interesting list. And a fair number of surprises."

Readers might find The Top 100 Books Referenced by Noam Chomsky page the most interesting.

http://www.chomskylist.com/top100.php — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.170.185.6 (talk) 11:26, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

While I was sympathetic to adding this, I have several issues:

1. This basically looks like an advertisement for Amazon, as anyone who explores the lists will see.

2. There's not much info about the algorithm they use to agglomerate the lists, or who runs the website.

3. As far as the Chomsky endorsement goes, doesn't that effectively make the link an advertisement for him, or the website?

4. There are single-sentence descriptions of each of the books in the list, so the informational value here is questionable.

5. The external links section is of considerable length as it is, and it seems likely that quite a few of these would be better :served either being incorporated into the article, or perhaps removed if they are redundant, as some appear to be.

I think we should try to make the article more concise, and don't really see how this will help. <> Alt lys er svunnet hen (talk) 04:13, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello, thanks for your consideration.

1. I use amazon associates to gain access to book descriptions and images legally. E.g., I like the modern library list of 100 best nonfiction books but it's a pain having to copy and paste titles into amazon to find out more. Better to have a link to more information for the user. Although there is a referral fee when visitors from my site buy on amazon, it nowhere near covers the actual cost of running the website. The website exists because I thought it was interesting and fun to spend 500 hours building it – painstakingly going through books to add references to a database – and I thought it would be fun to share the results.

2. I expect no one would be interested In more details about the algorithm that makes only one of the lists. But, as it states, that one list is a merging of the other lists available on the website. You can look at these other lists as they are unaltered. Originally, I thought that I'd do the Top 100 with the books that had the most references, but that was problematic. In On Anarchism Noam uses references to a select few books more than usual. So the top 10 largely became books on the Spanish Civil War. It seemed more interesting to combine lists; for example, merging the most referenced with the books used in more than one of Chomsky's texts (if Chomsky continues to reference a book in all of his books it's more interesting to me than a book he only references say 10 times in one book, the former has lasted and remained relevant over time). I have “manipulated” the data for the “best 100 books” to make a more interesting list for people, but only through favouring one list over another in the merge, but a more serious user can ignore that by looking at the original lists.

3. I don't think the website is useful as an advert for Chomsky. Some use it to criticise Chomsky: e.g. a book on Cambodia that some find controversial ranks high on the list. These critics can then use the site to find which chapters in which books he references that text, to find out what he says. The site only works for people that already want to find out more about Chomsky. I don't think it encourages people one way or the other about whether they should have an interest in Chomsky. It presumes they already have an interest. It would be quite dull without an interest. It might even be quite dull to all but hardcore Chomsky enthusiasts.

4. Even if there were no descriptions of the books I still think the information is useful. It depends if you want some idea of Chomsky's sources or not. Personally, I found this very useful for expanding my educational reading list. The categories section is also useful as you can quickly find all Chomsky's references to the Kurds, or to Japan, or to Anarchist books. Or if you want to know if Chomsky has referenced an author you can search the authors page. If he has used the author you'll find which books and where the references appear in Chomsky's works. I admit, the site is only useful to certain die-hard Chomsky fans. Also, it depends if you are in the UK or USA. The UK amazon often doesn't provide descriptions on the book pages, whereas US users will see them. The link to Amazon also provides a quick way to get to a description and to user comments. I should perhaps add goodreads links too.

5. I agree, but I think this link is of more value than most. Also there's no link to Chomsky's essay The Responsibility of Intellectuals, which is his most important and defining piece of writing, while there are plenty of links to other less worthwhile articles and interviews. Also I'd ditch the interview videos and perhaps add the movie (available on youtube) Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media instead. I'd also ditch the goodreads link. If chomskylist is an advert for amazon, goodreads is more so and is actually owned by amazon. I actually think goodreads is great, but any user of goodreads will already know about his page, and any non-user won't be interested. And goodreads is book centred anyway, author pages don't matter too much. --19th October 2016 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.188.91 (talk) 13:44, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

One issue raised in other discussions about Goodreads (which should probably be removed from the article per Other Spam Exists) relates to your website - that it may used for self-promotion. The [Links] section is (IMO) already approaching WP:BOOKSPAM, and several of these external links should be integrated into the article or removed. Whether or not Chomsky himself endorsed your website is largely irrelevant - of course Chomsky has a financial incentive to support websites that might help him sell books. You appear to have a conflict of interest as the owner/operator of the site, and at least some financial interest involved by sending readers to Amazon through this Wikipedia article. Another editor would have add this material if it is found to have redeeming informational value to the reader, but I still personally don't support adding the link under EL Advertising guidelines. Here's why:

It is still not clear to me why the books on the Top 100 references list are so different from the first 100 entries on the Total References list of 1025 books under "More Lists". I understand why you modified the list, but this raises questions about reliability because there is no way to verify why certain sources are listed higher or lower, or whether the process of deciding which of his works are "most important" was based on some kind of source, or instead arbitrary. Amazon and Goodreads are not reliable sources. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the 17 books you classified as "most important" likely correlate with Chomsky's top-selling books on Amazon. By omitting all of his work on linguistics, it gives the impression that his most important works have been about politics... which would be a very biased and demonstrably false idea for this Wikipedia article to suggest, even by proxy in an EL section.

Also in the future, please sign your posts by adding four tildes (~) at the end of your comment. <> Alt lys er svunnet hen (talk) 00:21, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello again, I can see that even official site with affiliate links are to be considered spam. My site certainly has plenty of affiliate links so I understand why it won't be included. I apologise for taking up your time. I admire all the work done on wikipedia. Just to answer a few of your interesting criticisms I've written the following. I'll change the site to add information on the "algorithm" and add a bit about how I chose the Chomsky texts. You're right that it may be useful to others. What information about myself were you looking for on the site?

How the top 100 list is created

Select all books excluding any Chomsky has written Find total references to each book from all of Chomsky's books (see references list) Find author for each book Get author score (number of authors books referenced by Chomsky) Find how many of chomsky's books the book in question has appeared in (see multiple books list)

$total_score=$row[reference_score]+(6*$row[bibliographic_score])+(6*$row[author_score]);

E.g.,

Bernard Fall, Last Reflections on War $total_score=$row[reference_score]+(6*$row[bibliographic_score])+(6*$row[author_score]); $total_score= 8 + (6 x 7) + (6 x 3) = 68

Marx, Capital v1 $total_score=$row[reference_score]+(6*$row[bibliographic_score])+(6*$row[author_score]); $total_score= 4 + (6 x 2) + (6 x 8) = 62

Broue, Revolution and Civil War in Spain $total_score=$row[reference_score]+(6*$row[bibliographic_score])+(6*$row[author_score]); $total_score= 13 + (6 x 1) + (6 x 1) = 25

You can see that the third book has the lowest score even though it has the highest number of references. However, the other two books were referenced in more than one book by Chomsky and their author has a higher score, as more of his works are referenced by Chomsky. Therefore, these other two books have overall higher scores and rank higher on the Top 100 list. But as you can see with the first two, the total references still make a difference to the ranking.

Only include top scoring book for each author. Each author gets one book on the list.

Why did I choose those particular 17 works by Chomsky as sources.

Initially, I began by using every Chomsky book I had, which was a lot of books. But I was careful to reduce duplication, as many books of essays contain the same essays and therefore duplicate references. Later, I used a full biography of Chomsky's political works to try and ensure that there was some kind of balance over the decades, trying to ensure that works from every era were included. I also used my knowledge of Chomsky's oeuvre to include most of the classics. I found “hidden” classics during the process of creating the lists; for example, of all his books Chomsky references Deterring Democracy the most, so I made sure to include this work. Some were chosen to ensure that particular, relevant topics were covered, such as anarchism or the Middle East. There are still at least two or three others I'd like to include when I have free time: Fateful Triangle, New Mandarins, and Understanding Power. There are more modern works than older ones because I suspect the modern sources will be of more use / interest to readers, so I concentrated my efforts there. 86.164.188.91 (talk) 16:44, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Not a waste of time at all! WP policy actually does allow sites like this in EL sections if they're found to have redeeming informational value. Lets say you flipped the script on your site and made a repository of authors/books that cited Chomsky's work - they would be almost entirely about language and linguistics, not politics. If your standards for inclusion were A) Chomsky books that you own, & B) Chomsky books/sources that you feel are more interesting/useful/relevant to readers - then these would be arbitrary standards. While his political/philosophy works are likely more interesting for 90% of the readers who come to this article, even if you used all of them we would still be misleading people because Chomsky has written about a lot more than politics. I certainly don't expect you to go and revamp your site to include all of his groundbreaking work in linguistics, because that clearly isn't what you were going for. However, if you make the changes you described above, it is possible that the site could be added so long as the wikilink clearly states that it is based on a selection of his political work. I think we should both sit back for a while and let other editors chime in about this. <> Alt lys er svunnet hen (talk) 14:07, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Third Opinion

A third opinion has been requested. It appears that the question is whether to include a particular commercial reading list by and about Chomsky. If that is the question, then I don't see a good argument for it, and it would be against the non-promotional nature of Wikipedia. I am removing the question. If that wasn't the question, please post a new question that is more clearly stated. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:36, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 November 2016

In the line "Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist." I would remove "political activist" and change it to "anarcho-syndicalist". His views aren't that of being an "activist" for the current political and economic system but of something more radical. Please make the change as it is quite a substantive difference.

2601:282:200:83A0:FD:47E8:D864:5A4B (talk) 07:00, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Not done: as you have not cited reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to, or changed in, any article. - Arjayay (talk) 08:29, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Genocide denial

The sentence on genocide denial is not appropriate without any source according to WP:ALIVE, so I am removing it pursuant to that page: "Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced – whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable – should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." Codster925 (talk) 09:11, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

@Codster925: Chomsky has been publicly accused of both Holocaust denial and denying the Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Sources are in section 2.2 Edward Herman and the Faurisson affair. Vrrajkum (talk) 22:25, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

@Codster925: The point deserves to be in the lead because the accusations have had a lasting negative impact on his career, and are frequently used as ammunition by critics of his political views & activism. Vrrajkum (talk) 23:28, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Inaccurate First Paragraph

Noam Chomsky is also a logician, mathematician, and philosopher of science. No exaggeration whatsoever. Those of you familiar with his work and lectures already know that I am right. Linguist91 (talk) 10:08, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

He is not trained in either of those disciplines and have not had a significant impact in them. You would need to show another source using those terms to describe him in order to convince me that they should be included.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 10:37, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Overly homogeneous presentation of his linguistic views and no mention of critics

The discussion of Chomsky's linguistic views starts right out with the bioprogramme. This is not something that was a feature of his thinking in the fifties. It would be more sensible to start off by talking about transformations. Also, the article seems to attribute the coignage of "deep structure" to him, whereas it was a term of coined by Hockett. Finally, in general the tone of the article is triumphant, making no mention of the many criticisms of his programme from Charles Hockett, Robert Hall, and Raimo Antilla in the old days to as recently as the devastating Scientific American article of this year. I stay my hand, because I am not eager to get sucked into a time wasting edit war, but this article has a long way to go before it is NPOV. Tibetologist (talk) 02:17, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

A critic of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict?

The intro reads: "...he remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, neoliberalism and contemporary state capitalism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict..."

While it is possible to be a critic of a conflict, should it say that he is a leading critic of Israel? Or a critic of Israeli policies towards Palestine/Palestinians? --Երևանցի ^talk 15:04, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 February 2017

I would like to add to the article the addition that Chomsky is teaching at the University of Arizona from January to March 2017, a class called "What Is Politics"

The source is here https://sbs.arizona.edu/news/noam-chomsky-teach-politics-course-spring Teaspoontom (talk) 17:24, 2 February 2017 (UTC)