Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of
modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive
science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and
commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of
philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research, to
which he has contributed for over half a century. In clear, precise,
and nontechnical language, Chomsky elaborates on fifty years of
scientific development in the study of language, sketching how his own
work has implications for the origins of language, the close relations
that language bears to thought, and its eventual biological basis.
He expounds and criticizes many alternative theories, such as those
that emphasize the social, the communicative, and the referential
aspects of language. Chomsky reviews how new discoveries about language
overcome what seemed to be highly problematic assumptions in the past.
He also investigates the apparent scope and limits of human cognitive
capacities and what the human mind can seriously investigate, in the
light of history of science and philosophical reflection and current
understanding.
Moving from language and mind to society and
politics, he concludes with a searching exploration and philosophical
defense of a position he describes as "libertarian socialism," tracing
its links to anarchism and the ideas of John Dewey and even to the ideas
of Marx and Mill, demonstrating its conceptual growth out of our
historical past and urgent relation to matters of the present.
What Kind of Creatures Are We? - Noam Chomsky
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