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Noam Chomsky Speaks At West Point

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The report said that he believes just war theory is not sufficiently explained. I emailed Chomsky a link to The Objective Standard's article "Just War Theory vs American Self Defence" by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein, and linked to the audio lecture by the same name. I'll let you guys know if he responds, but I didn't pose any questions so he probably won't.

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Those on the Left who have opposed Noam Chomsky's loyalty to zionism, but still trusted him as an "anti-imperialist intellectual", would have to find for him a new excuse if they would still insist on trusting this zionist bourgeois intellectual.

Is this "uruknet" a humor site? It's getting more and more difficult to distinguish leftists from comedians these days... ;):):D

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The report said that he believes just war theory is not sufficiently explained. I emailed Chomsky a link to The Objective Standard's article "Just War Theory vs American Self Defence" by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein, and linked to the audio lecture by the same name. I'll let you guys know if he responds, but I didn't pose any questions so he probably won't.

I get the impression that Chomsky gets inundated with stuff like that, given his prominence and all the people gunning for him. I doubt he'll respond for the simple reason that if he responded to people like you it would be a full-time job in itself.

I do know that Chomsky is not a pacificist, he does believe that violence is legitimate in proper circumstances against proper targets.

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What's he like in person? I always picture this black aura of evil hanging around him.
He's a perfectly normal, likeable person. I disagee with his politics (and I'm not a major fan of his current syntactic theory), but he's not really different from your typical famous intellectual. Comparison to bin Laden or Hussein is totally inappropriate.
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I wasn't trying to compare him to them, so I apologize if it came off that way. But I've read accounts by people who have personally met Bin Laden, and they say he is a very soft-spoken, polite man. Soldiers who speak with Saddam often report that he's a just a typical nice guy, in person.

I was just making the point that evil people often don't seem evil, in person.

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  • 1 month later...

"I wasn't trying to compare him to them...I was just making the point that evil people often don't seem evil, in person."

Perhaps because brandishing a person "evil" purely because they disagree with you is a broad generalization and tarnishes the integrity your argument?

I don't agree with Chomsky on all points but the man obviously can back up everything he says with extremely well-researched, reasoned arguments -- he's been doing it for fifty years. He doesn't just go around indicting people because they hold different opinions from him! Quite the contrary, actually. The very fact that he was invited and chose to accept the invitation to speak at West Point speaks volumes about the organizers at West Point and Chomsky himself. I identify as a leftist, I suppose, but good lord that doesn't mean all people in history who are on the right are -- by definition, because they disagree with me -- "evil" or "morons".

Sheesh!

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Perhaps because brandishing a person "evil" purely because they disagree with you is a broad generalization and tarnishes the integrity your argument?
I assume you mean "branding", as opposed to brandishing (which one does with a weapon, for instance). I don't think Moose was claiming that Chomsky is evil because he disagrees with Chomsky, I think that was an independent eveluation, based on other facts. Chomsky is wrong because he is wrong, not because he disagrees with me. Or to put it this way, because he diagrees with me, and because I am right, then he is wrong. And furthermore his political theories are evil.
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Please keep us updated on his thoughts on Yaron's piece!

He told me he would read it but did not give any feedback. I also did not request any feedback, seeing as how he indicated he is very busy.

Chomsky's philosophy has been dealt with by Ayn Rand herself in "The Stimulus and the Response." I believe that Deborah Knapp, an Objectivist intellectual, has also cast doubt on Chomsky's theory about language acquisition/innateness.

Moose, think of Chomsky as one of the "Witch Doctors" and Bin Ladin as an "Attila." I can't remember where Ayn Rand elaborated on this. If anyone knows, please post.

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Chomsky's philosophy has been dealt with by Ayn Rand herself in "The Stimulus and the Response." I believe that Deborah Knapp, an Objectivist intellectual, has also cast doubt on Chomsky's theory about language acquisition/innateness.

Moose, think of Chomsky as one of the "Witch Doctors" and Bin Ladin as an "Attila." I can't remember where Ayn Rand elaborated on this. If anyone knows, please post.

Chomsky isnt mentioned in that article, and given that its a prolonged attack on a position he opposed, I'm not sure why it would deal with his philosophy. What is the basis for your claim that he is a "witch-doctor"?

Edited by Hal
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He told me he would read it but did not give any feedback. I also did not request any feedback, seeing as how he indicated he is very busy.

Chomsky's philosophy has been dealt with by Ayn Rand herself in "The Stimulus and the Response." I believe that Deborah Knapp, an Objectivist intellectual, has also cast doubt on Chomsky's theory about language acquisition/innateness.

Moose, think of Chomsky as one of the "Witch Doctors" and Bin Ladin as an "Attila." I can't remember where Ayn Rand elaborated on this. If anyone knows, please post.

I think Chomsky should be given some credit for the end of BF Skinner and Behaviorism. Whether his particular theory works is neither here nor there. The way the scientific method works means that most every theory is built on the few good bits and pieces of older otherwise failed theories.

One particular good that comes out of Chomsky's approach is that words actually *mean* something, and language communicates something, whereas with Skinner we just learned to grunt based on positive feedback, and words don't really mean anything beyond getting that sort of feedback.

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I think Chomsky should be given some credit for the end of BF Skinner and Behaviorism. Whether his particular theory works is neither here nor there.
He absolutely deserves huge credit for sinking behaviorism, although the ship is afloat again with a new paint job. But whether his theory works (really, "is correct") is the essential question. There is no serious question that given the known facts of language acquisition and the possible explanations known at the time, his argument for UG was solid-looking, yet basically irresponsible. We now know more than we did then, and things are not as solid as they once seemed.

The basic logical flaw in his argument is that it goes through only by dint of other people's unimaginativeness, not because of the overwhelming evidence in support of the theory. That is, we didn't embrace the idea of UG because there is so much evidence for it that we are certain that it's true, but rather we simply couldn't say "Hmmm, interesting problem... I really dunno". So we gave in to the philosophically corrupt principle of accepting uncertain conclusions when there is no better theory on the market.

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  • 2 months later...

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