Does an ‘individual’ word have meaning…?

Yeah, I did, sho nuff. In logic, it's called the "law of identity," but the idea is that everything is identical to itself. A thing may, or may not, be identical to other things also, but that's a question of fact, not law.

In the case we're talking about, the water is still the same water, even if it is poured into a different glass. There're probably some 30 year-olds who don't quite get that, but, still....

Where'd ya get that? Nothing seems identical to me?

Well, like I done said:

Water is not water, red is not red, a is not a. Water is in fact subject to it's environment, red is in fact subject to it's environment and "A" is left to perception.

It's hard to argue with the claim that 5 = 5.

That said, you may get a lot of people who dispute that 5 = 3 + 2, because, for example, they're not the "same thing."

Them kind aint real quick on the uptake, but....

Well, go right on ahead with your bad self, then, eh? As I said at the outset, this is a fundamental principle of all logical thought.

You are, of course, free to be as illogical as you want.

Well.. number is interesting. and it is a matter of perspective. for instance. for 1 to be it is relationship with 0 but in observing we suddenly have 2, 0+1=2. But I understand the context you're coming from.

Ya think? Like if there was a (one) dog on my front porch, he couldn't exist if there weren't also no dogs? You think dogs give a rat's ass about numbers, or non-dogs? This mutt don't care nuthin about that. He just wants a hand-out, the damn bum. He aint gittin nuthin.

Well.. that's your front porch and the conditions that exist under your control. Maybe not the same for someone else's front porch with (one) dog on it.

Yeah, maybe not. So?

Is there some point you are trying to make here?

You stated things are identical to itself and I simply didn't understand that... and still don't.

Can't see how your answer relates to my question, but leaving that aside....

Just about any five year old understands it, but, then again, you probably aint 5, eh? So it's not the "same thing."

And, for the record, I didn't say a thing is identical to itself (although I agree that it is). I said that it is a fundamental precept of logical thought to hold that it is.

You are free to claim that the same water is different because it's now in a different glass. You can claim that no thing ever has, let alone retains, any "identity" because it's surroundings make it what it is.

You can reject all laws of logic and advocate a strictly mystical metaphysics, if you want.

But such things cannot possibly be rationally debated. I guess that's rather convenient, for some.

Under those circumstances, everything is "true" and nothing is "true." There are no rules, no standards for judgment, no limits, no rational restraints. You cannot possibly be wrong about any wild-ass claim you want to make. Nice to never be wrong, I guess, but.....

We're not excluded to a box. Expressions of anything are incomplete.

Is your "expression" about what is "incomplete" itself complete, ya figure?

How can it be? There must be a reason for "other?"

So then, I guess you're saying that some "expressions" are in fact complete, eh?

You are quoting out of context. So let me give the context by transcribing that part of the interview!
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Excerpt of interview of Noam Chomsky interviewed by Al Page.

Al Page (interviewer): Words are endlessly fascinating I think because it is amazing how somebody can walk in a room, hear a few words and walk out crying or angry or this whole series of emotions simply because of a few words. Does not that constantly amaze you?

Noam Chomsky: It is not just words again. It can be a fleeting picture. Let’s say a caricature, you see a few lines, and it brings to your mind a person and a situation, may be a tragic situation or a comical situation or whatever. The human mind is a very marvelous thing. It’s got an extremely intricate and complex structure which at least at a scientific level we understand very little about. But what you are pointing to is a central part of it. Little hints here and there succeeding in evoking in us very rich experience and interpretation. And what’s more, it’s done surprisingly uniformly for different people, and it’s of course done without any training or very minimal training that we would not know how to train people to do this. So somehow it must be that the only logical possibility is either Angels or Acts of God. It is something rooted in our nature. Qualitatively speaking these phenomenon are very much like physical growth. The nutrition that is given to an organism, to an embryo, is not what determines that it is going to be a human or a bird. What determines that it’s going to be a human or a bird is something about its internal structure. And what determines that we are going to be the kind of creature that can speak, that can interpret a sign or lines or something as evoking an emotional experience; that is something in our nature. But it's so far beyond what we even know how to study that you can only wave your hands at it.
(End of excerpt)
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What is “so far beyond what we even know how to study” is our very nature! He was saying that we can only acknowledge our nature with science, and that nature is: that our language is like our anatomy or physiology, i.e. they are innate! Our language is like one of our organs, for example the skin. We cannot go beyond that in science because, as everyone knows, science needs to rest on empirical observations and facts. And beyond the fact of our very nature which is innate, science cannot go. No fact/empirical observation=no science! That is what he was saying.

Now many other scientists and philosophers before Chomsky have expressed similar views. For example Aristotle and Wittgenstein and also Plato’s Socrates and Averroes.
Wittgenstein: “Man possesses the ability to construct languages capable of expressing every sense, without having any idea how each word has meaning or what its meaning is-just as people speak without knowing how the individual sounds are produced.
Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated than it.” [Tractatus 4.002]




Here too, that is quoted out of context. Let me again give the context by transcribing that part of the interview.

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Excerpt of interview of Noam Chomsky interviewed by Al Page.

Al Page (interviewer): How should parents react with respect to exposing their children to language? Should they expose them to all aspects of language? Or should they just simply let them develop any way they develop?

Noam Chomsky: I suspect there is little parents can do to change the course of language development. Again let me say I am not speaking about this from any expertise. I do not have any more expertise than personal experience. There is nothing in linguistic theory which gives answers to these questions.
(End of excerpt)
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The quote that you took from the interview, was Chomsky replying to a specific question of the interviewer. In a nutshell, he was merely saying that he is not an expert in counselling parents on how to raise their kids, and linguistic theory as well has no advice to give parents on how to raise their kids! That’s all he was saying by that statement. But after that proviso of him, he proceeds by exposing the facts of empirical observation which demonstrate conclusively that language is innate. Let me continue the transcription.

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Excerpt of interview of Noam Chomsky interviewed by Al Page.

Noam Chomsky: But experience suffices to indicate, and I know cases that you can create an environment in which a 5 year old will sound like a college professor. It’s kind of comical, and [the child] will start to use big words and complicated sentences and so on. I suspect you are probably harming the 5 year old, but it is possible to do that. Children can be moulded.

On the other hand, if you just leave alone, they are going to pick up the language of their culture. Typically they will pick up the language of their peers. There are exceptions, but quite typically children will learn the language they heard in the streets. So take me: my father spoke with a Ukrainian accent and my mother spoke with a mixed New York-Lithuanian accent and I spoke urban Philadelphia because that’s what the kids were speaking in the streets. And undoubtedly, if you really took my speech pattern and so on aside, you will find influences from the parents and the uncles and so on, but overwhelmingly you will pick up the peer culture.

Why this happens? Nobody knows. But there is something about human children that gets them to grow the language that’s roughly that of their peers. It is a very rich system. (…) They [the children] don’t try, they cannot prevent themselves from doing it, and they cannot make it happen. The parents can enrich [that]. Anyone who has a two year old, knows that the kid is running around all over the place and trying to find out what the name of everything is. [The child asking:] what’s that, what’s that, what’s that! Then you [the parents] can help them and you can read to the children and show them pictures, and they are all fascinated with it.

There are periods of very rapid language growth [in children], where you just cannot satiate the curiosity fast enough. (Al page interjects: “it’s amazing” and Noam responds and continues) It is unbelievable in fact. What actually happens is really astonishing. Forget the structure of language which is complicated enough, but just take vocabulary acquisition, the simplest part. At peak periods of acquisition of vocabulary, i.e. learning new words, children are picking them up at may be the rate of 1 an hour or something. Which means that they are essentially learning a new word on one exposure!

Al Page interjects: And the adults grow into adult education and die trying to learn a new language!

Noam Chomsky: But if you think what it means to learn a word on one exposure…! The way to understand how amazing an achievement this is, is to try to define a word. Suppose you have an organism that was not equipped to learn the words of human language and you really had to teach it those words by training. First you will have to define a word. What is the meaning of table, for instance? Nobody can do that.

Al Page interjects: You will have to define the definition you are using to define the word!

Noam Chomsky: But you see, what we call a definition are not definitions; they are just hints. If you take the Oxford English dictionary, the one you read with a magnifying glass. And they give you a long detail thing which they call a definition of a word. In fact, it is very far from the definition of a word. It is a few hints that a person who already knows the concept can use to understand what is going on. But remember that the child is picking that up, not from the Oxford dictionary with its whole array of hints. But the child is picking that up from seeing it used once or twice. Now that can only mean one thing, it can only mean that the concept itself, in all of its richness and complexities, is somehow sitting there, waiting to have a sound associated with it. Now it cannot be quite true but something very much like that is probably true. That’s why, you and I, will have essentially the same concept of table, and the same concept of person, and nation, and all sorts of things; and not complicated things, I mean really simple things like person for instance, or thing. We all have that, even though we all have very limited experience, because basically we started with those concepts.
(End of interview)
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When the whole context is given, Chomsky is very clear in his exposition that language is innate.




If empirical evidence and many years of studying these empirical observations is not scientific research for you, then please do tell as I am interested to know what you understand by “scientific research”?

How do you gather that? I don't see myself as autonomous or anything else for that matter as autonomous nor any constructs as autonomous.

1. Congratulations on your devotion and your extensive efforts in transcribing all of that.

2. I heard all of that, but if you think his expression of lack of scientific knowledge was LIMITED to the sentence he stated them in, I think you are completely mistaken. Note that he explicitly limits his claims to deductive logic, not empirical observation.

3. Like I said, he said, he claims that: "it can only mean that the concept itself, in all of its richness and complexities, is somehow sitting there, waiting to have a sound associated with it. Now it cannot be quite true but something very much like that is probably true

4. He never really claims that "language" is innate, just the capacity to understand it.

5. Assuming his philosophical speculations are correct, then he is proving the only real point that I was making to begin with, to wit: You must be able to "think," i.e. understand concepts, BEFORE you can learn a language. According to Chomsky, anyone claiming that you are only capable of thinking AFTER you have learned a language would be wrong.

6. There is much more to "science" than empirical observations, eh? Chomsky himself says his "experience" gives him no expertise. And he denies that there are any "scientific" answers to questions pertaining to the origin of language or the mechanisms which enable it.