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Noam Chomsky

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54

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2023-06-14

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2023-06-14

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1

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1. “Rousseau is a very mixed character. He's not a systematic thinker. You can find all sorts of things. So if you look at the Second discourse on inequality, it's highly libertarian, deriving from basically Cartesian principles about the uniqueness of uncreativity of human thought and language onto a fairly libertarian conception of social organization. That's one Rousseau. You can always also find very different one.”

   2023-06-14 · Conversations with Tyler · Noam Chomsky on Language, Left Libertarianism, and Progress · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Unboundedly many new thoughts in her minds and even to convey, be able to convey to others who have no access to our minds, their innermost workings. Galileo himself thought the alphabet was the most spectacular of human inventions because it provided a means to carry out this miracle. Humboldt's formulation was the language enables language and thought which were always pretty much identified language enables what he called infinite use of finite means. We have finite system we make unbounded use of it. Those conceptions weren't very well understood until the mid-20th century with the development of the theory of computation by Kurt Gurdle, Ellen Touring, other great mathematicians in 1930s and 40s, but now the concept of finite means that provide infinite scope is quite well understood. In fact, everyone has it in their laptop by now.”

   2023-06-14 · Conversations with Tyler · Noam Chomsky on Language, Left Libertarianism, and Progress · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Well, Leibniz pointed out that Plato's theory of reminiscence was basically correct, but it had to be purged of the error of reminiscence. In other words, not an earlier life, but rather something intrinsic to our nature. Leibniz couldn't have proceeded as we can today, but now we would say something that has evolved and has become intrinsic to our nature. For people like Humboldt, what was crucial to our nature was what is sometimes called the instinct for freedom, basic fundamental human property should lie at the basis of our Social and economic reasoning. And it's also the critical property of human language and thought, as was recognized in the early scientific revolution, Galileo. Five minutes. A little later, people like Humboldt in the romantic area, the fundamental property of human language is this. A unique capacity to create”

   2023-06-14 · Conversations with Tyler · Noam Chomsky on Language, Left Libertarianism, and Progress · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Fadhumbold was, first of all, a great linguist who recognized some fundamental principles of language which were rare at the time and are only beginning to be understood. But in the social and political domain, he was. Was not only the founder of the modern research university, but also one of the founders of classical liberalism. His fundamental principle, as he said, it's actually an epigram for John Stewart Mills on liberty is that the fundamental right of every person is to be free from external illegitimate constraints free to inquire, create, pursue, people to pursue their own interests and concerns without arbitrary authority of any sort restricting and limiting them.”

   2023-06-14 · Conversations with Tyler · Noam Chomsky on Language, Left Libertarianism, and Progress · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source