Peter Wilkin (auth.)'s Noam Chomsky: On Power, Knowledge and Human Nature PDF

By Peter Wilkin (auth.)

ISBN-10: 0230375049

ISBN-13: 9780230375048

ISBN-10: 1349398667

ISBN-13: 9781349398669

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Extra info for Noam Chomsky: On Power, Knowledge and Human Nature

Sample text

By this is meant a proposition that refers to the state of the world at any given time and which can be evaluated and refuted empirically, as opposed to the pragmatic version of truth which sees truth ultimately as whatever the participants in a conversation say that it is. If there are no objective grounds for the judgements, beliefs and values that we adhere to, then Orwell's Problem would appear to be an inescapable Chomsky's Methodological Naturalism 43 fact of human existence. Knowledge about the state of the world cannot provide us with the means for emancipation as our beliefs and judgements are not reflections of how the world really is, instead they reflect the languagegame orform of life that we have been brought up in and therefore they cannot be called into question by reference to an independent world.

Neither Chomsky nor contemporary realists follow precisely in Peirce's footsteps and instead, I would argue, have developed a significantly modified version of retroduction. ' What necessary and causal relations and mechanisms must exist in order to generate particular outcomes, recognising that these outcomes will not be invariant outside the ideal conditions of the laboratory? Further, what necessary powers or qualities must these mechanisms have in order to generate the outcomes that they do?

In what way is it trivial? Although Chomsky's Post-Cartesianism leads him to recognise that there are no absolute certainties or truths in science or knowledge generally, this does not mean that we are forced to adopt the position of Quine and Rorty, which is one of radical scepticism, or as they see it, pragmatism. On the contrary, for Chomsky not all theories are equally plausible or empirically persuasive. We can and do use rational means to assess theories in qualitative terms. For example, with regard to Quine's discussion of the case of the anthropologist, the tribesperson and the rabbit, Chomsky has this to say, the thesis of indeterminacy does not seem implausible; rather it seems obvious.

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Noam Chomsky: On Power, Knowledge and Human Nature by Peter Wilkin (auth.)


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