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http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2007/10/fodor_on_natural_selection.php Chomsky did this by arguing that biology (indeed chemistry and physics) might/would/should adapt to psychology/linguistics and not vice versa. Fodor argued that "levels" of science needn't reduce at all (a position currently very popular in philosophy of science); so psychological explanations need not be consistent with biological explanations. It's interesting that his arguments here appear to rely on movement between the supposed "levels" of scientific explanation.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/tom-bethell-on-noam-chomskys-dissent-from-darwin/
chomsky “Every native speaker of a natural language is capable of producing and understanding infinitely many sentences that he has never heard or spoken before.”
A recent book, Chomsky Notebook [Columbia U Press, 2010], updates some of the linguist’s views on Darwin. He says, for example, that the claim that natural selection leads us “to the truth” about the world is “quite unconvincing.” Natural selection is unproblematic, he continues, but only as long as we recognize how little we are saying when we repeat the slogan: “organisms could not survive long enough to reproduce if they were so poorly adapted to their environment that they could not survive long enough to reproduce. This is undoubtedly true but not very informative.” [p. 103] To put it mildly. Chomsky here rephrases, in language that is if anything less polite than usual, the old accusation of tautology leveled against Darwin’s claim that natural selection means that “the fittest” survive; fitness being defined in terms of survival. Jean Bricmont, a professor in France, said to Chomsky in the same Notebook:
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http://failinggracefully.com/?p=853
http://masonmade.com/my_blog/page_4.html
http://masonmade.com/blog/my_conversation_with_noam_chomsky.html
"..He's become sort of infamous for supposedly saying that language does not seem to be a product of natural selection, or that there's no evidence that human language is a product of natural selection...."
"..Chomsky also pointed out how there's basically no evidence for natural selection of human language, because we don't have recordings from back then, or fossils showing soft tissue, so we can't really say much about it. He said that most scientists observe organisms' traits and seeing how they're well fitted to their environments and lifestyles and then make the leap to assuming that natural selection is responsible for this...."
Mujin wrote:
> 2. Since his initial expression of doubt, Chomsky has changed his position
> several times. In light of recent discoveries in human neurobiology and
> neurolinguistics, Chomsky is no longer expressing doubt - in fact he is
> actively exploring the possible evolutionay history of language. See this
> paper from 2002:
>
> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5598/1569
> NEUROSCIENCE:
You are quoting from a peer reviewed journal dated 2007. Below I am quoting from a blog post date April 2007. For Chomsky to get past the secular priests guarding their citadel of materialism he can't exactly hand in a paper with the title: Natural selection is linguistic gargoyle. If we read between the lines from Fodor, Prof. Skell to Chomsky they are basically saying that NS is a semantic impossibility. Remember what happened to Popper, the materialist gestapo went after an old man until he "repented". Like all people Chomsky is human, he is probably afraid of the materialist tigers on the prowl ready to disembowel anybody who threatens their materialist superstitions. YEC like me and materialists have to play by the same rules of language. Language comes first and then everything else wether YEC, ID or materialism.
http://masonmade.com/blog/my_conversation_with_noam_chomsky.html
"..He's become sort of infamous for supposedly saying that language does not seem to be a product of natural selection, or that there's no evidence that human language is a product of natural selection...."
"..Chomsky also pointed out how there's basically no evidence for natural selection of human language, because we don't have recordings from back then, or fossils showing soft tissue, so we can't really say much about it. He said that most scientists observe organisms' traits and seeing how they're well fitted to their environments and lifestyles and then make the leap to assuming that natural selection is responsible for this...."
"...I asked him whether I understood correctly, that his criticisms of people inferring that language is a product of natural selection also apply to pretty much any trait of any organism. He said that's right. Then I asked him whether he thought that most researchers, when they talk about natural selection having effects, are being sloppy. He said, "extremely sloppy..."
"....When asked about what role natural selection may have played in the development or evolution of language, he said that the more we learn about evolution, the more we find that the mutations and random variations that are viable and helpful are highly constrained by physical and chemical law. So evolution and natural selection are not synonymous. Natural selection is one process that helps direct evolution—which is simply the change over time of a group of organisms—but physical and chemical laws also channel evolution..."
selection all about survival[]
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/f19fbfb9b97835d1/3d03a29174f87f38#3d03a29174f87f38 UC <uraniumcommit...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Why doesn't Wallace get more credit for discovering evolutuion? > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace#Flat_earth_wager
Several reasons. One, and he acknowledged this until the end of his life, Darwin got priority. Second, he held a much more restricted view of evolution than Darwin - selection was all about survival. Darwin recognised that it was what we now clal fitness - reproductive payoffs - that counted. Third, he moved to become a spiritualist because he couldn't account for human intelligence purely by the action of selection, which was all that he thought was active in evolution. Finally, his social position as the son of a worker meant that he had less access to scientific reputation than Darwin did.
Links[]
* http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1750951 * AppealToAbstractAuthorityAneverEndingFallacyByMaterialists
http://failinggracefully.com/?p=853
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/tom-bethell-on-noam-chomskys-dissent-from-darwin/ Tom Bethell on Noam Chomsky’s dissent from Darwin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfSyWRvoYfw Philosphy of mind