Even basic familiarity with Chomsky’s linguistics will confirm that: (a) his linguistics does not involve any empirical data or empirical research and his approach to linguistics is based on expert intuitive judgement of the grammatical correctness of artificial sentences; and (b) he is openly hostile to the role of biological and evolutionary explanations. I think people rush to defend him because he’s a nativist and because he’s widely supposed to have caused the demise of behaviourism. It is, however, possible to be both a nativist and a critic of behaviourism and be wrong about almost everything else.
Let me put it as simply as possible: Chomsky makes a series of claims about language but Chomsky has never done any empirical research, does not rely on empirical data and does not cite empirical research to support his theses. I’ve read much of his published work on the subject and am not using second or third hand sources for these claims. If you can supply counter-evidence I would be interested to see it. It would surely not be difficult to find an example of him using empirical research to back up his claims if that was something he was open to. (Chomsky is fond of biological and scientific analogies, as you can see in the video posted, but that’s another matter entirely.) Failing that, what, exactly, sets him apart from the philosophers who rely on intuition and thought experiments and have no time for empirical results that are widely (and rightly) criticised on Less Wrong?
Even basic familiarity with Chomsky’s linguistics will confirm that: (a) his linguistics does not involve any empirical data or empirical research and his approach to linguistics is based on expert intuitive judgement of the grammatical correctness of artificial sentences; and (b) he is openly hostile to the role of biological and evolutionary explanations. I think people rush to defend him because he’s a nativist and because he’s widely supposed to have caused the demise of behaviourism. It is, however, possible to be both a nativist and a critic of behaviourism and be wrong about almost everything else.
Let me put it as simply as possible: Chomsky makes a series of claims about language but Chomsky has never done any empirical research, does not rely on empirical data and does not cite empirical research to support his theses. I’ve read much of his published work on the subject and am not using second or third hand sources for these claims. If you can supply counter-evidence I would be interested to see it. It would surely not be difficult to find an example of him using empirical research to back up his claims if that was something he was open to. (Chomsky is fond of biological and scientific analogies, as you can see in the video posted, but that’s another matter entirely.) Failing that, what, exactly, sets him apart from the philosophers who rely on intuition and thought experiments and have no time for empirical results that are widely (and rightly) criticised on Less Wrong?