Jeeeezzzuuuusss, no wonder the pinkos never get anything useful done; they
seem to spend all their time philosophising about how many angels can dance
on the point of a pin! It must all scare the pants off the elective
dictatorship; as for me i think a re-read of "Animal Farm" by Orwell (the
schnozzle) is appropriate at this juncture in history.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Kerr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Saturday, 2 January 1999 10:37 AM
Subject: Re: Pinker: How the MInd Works
>[KL]
>What's wrong with Dennett's writing (style). I really like it!
>
>
>[BK]
>More seriously I ought to thank you for arguing that Dennett and Dawkins
>were onto something important. In particular I was influenced by Gould's
>criticisms of Dawkins and hadn't bothered to read him. 'Darwins Dangerous
>Idea' is good because the polemic is upfront but sometimes Dennett gets so
>involved in the details that I get bored with it. With Pinker its much more
>like a good novel that I just can't put down.
>
>
>[KL]
>Can you tell me (us) a bit more about him taking on "feminists" and
>"post-modernists"?
>
>[BK]
>btw the page references were just pages to start reading those sections
>One issue would be gender construction. Pinker argues that to a significant
>extent what some (feminists) argue as gender construction is not social
>construction at all but it is genetic. eg. he argues it adaptive for men to
>have insatiable sexual desire for mutliple partners but that its also
>adaptive for women to be much more selective. I just love the "men are
>slime" study he cites on pp. 467-9.
>
>His critique of post modernism is that gender, for instance, is
>deconstructed so that gender stereotyping is deflated. But in the process
>scientific reality is denied (57).
>eg. beauty is adaptive for women (483-87) not just a conspiracy against
>women.
>
>He critiques the "blank slate" idea that the division between biology and
>culture is fundamental and takes on some of the wishful thinking of the
left
>that has been dressed up as scientific ('Not in Our Genes' by Lewontin et
>al, Margaret Mead etc.) (45). Takes some swipes at Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao
>in the process (47). Still thinking about some of this.
>
>The way in which he tries to distinguish himself from the right wing is by
>arguing for a clear separation between science and ethics, eg. see page 55.
>
>[KL]
>I started reading "the Language Instinct" last year
>but didn't get finished. I am still inclined to take issue with the
>notion of language as an :"instinct" or an "organ" (Chomsky's word). I
>think that while we have an innate ability to learn language, we still
>do LEARN it.
>
>[BK]
>p. 18 The Language Instinct
>"Language ... develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort
>or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying
logic
>... is distinct from more general abilities to process information or
behave
>intelligently. For these reasons some cognitive scientists have described
>language as ... a mental organ ... But I prefer "instinct". It conveys the
>idea that people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders
>know how to spin webs."
>
>
>Whilst acknowledging Chomsky's pivotal role in our modern view of language,
>Pinker takes pot shots at Chomsky in "Language Instinct" :
>333,355,357,359: Chomsky skeptical that natural selection can explain human
>language (linked to Gould & Lewontins influence)
>52: Chomsky is a paper and pencil theoretician who wouldn't know Jabba the
>Hutt from the Cookie Monster.
>
>
>We don't learn to speak in the same sense that we learn to write. Minsky
>argues that learn is too vague a word for scientific use (from memory) and
>suggests a whole string of new words to describe different ways of
learning.
>
>-- Bill
>
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