Noam Chomsky
Linguist who studies language and mind as natural objects, and finds the question "can machines think?" empty.
Life
Noam Chomsky (born 1928), an American linguist at MIT, renewed the study of language with generative grammar (Syntactic Structures, 1957). He argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language and that the creative use of language marks the human mind. He treats the mind as an object of natural science and finds the question whether machines think to be empty.
Main works
Proposes a formal generative grammar to describe the sentences of a language.
Argues that language is specific to the human species and that its use is creative and innovative.
Essays that also treat the study of mind and the sense of questions such as "do machines think?".
In his own words
« These are questions of decision, not fact; decision as to whether to adopt a certain metaphoric extension of common usage. »
« The normal use of language is innovative, in the sense that much of what we say in the course of normal language use is entirely new, not a repetition of anything that we have heard before »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceHe holds that the mind comes equipped with innate structures for language and thought, in the tradition of the rationalists rather than the empiricists.
Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics (1966)
He argues that, like any animal, humans have biological cognitive limits, so some questions may stay beyond our understanding.
Chomsky, The Mysteries of Nature - How Deeply Hidden? (2009)
He says the mind-body problem has lost its sense since Newton, so the mind should be studied as part of nature.
Chomsky, New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind (2000), ch. 4
The free, creative use of language shows that we act freely, though how this works remains a mystery to science.
Chomsky, Language and Problems of Knowledge (1988)
Holds that there is a fixed human nature, with creativity and a drive for freedom, which grounds his hope for just societies.
Chomsky and Foucault, Human Nature: Justice versus Power (debate, 1971)