I was going to leave a similar comment, you've done much better at expressing my own objections to the OP. I've tried to upvote you but I don't have very much karma (not sure that that matters?). Sorry to see this sort of thing happen on HN too :(
It would be great if the people who are downvoting you would tackle any of your bullet points.
We are certainly descended from animals, but we are also wildly unique from anything else we've ever seen in the biological world, past or present, mostly due to our cognitive capacities for art, science, morality, math, language, you name it.
Our capacity for language (and its core property of digital infinity) alone, as pointed out by Chomsky, doesn't seem to have an analogue anywhere in the biological world down to perhaps the level of DNA.
That's a great puzzle and mystery, we shouldn't run away from it but rather we should embrace it with humility and awe.
Where does Chomsky claim this? As far as I know, he has never claimed any particular part of the brain is responsible for language.
The claim of Chomsky's UG is that there is a genetic component to the language faculty of humans. That's pretty much a truism given that we can speak and our closest biological relatives can't. Presumably this cashes out somewhere in our brain.
There's evidence that certain regions of the brain are involved in Language (Broca & Wernicke's areas) given evidence from brain injuries and their effect on language.
He does posit an LAD (language acquisition device) but this is a logical/theoretical construct, to aid in theory building. It seems very likely that we have this given the universality of language in our species and our ability to learn the language of our own culture. The LAD though has not been claimed to be physically located somewhere in our brains by Chomsky (again afaik). Though presumably if we have it, it is fairly likely to be somewhere within our skulls.
This isn't true at all. Chomsky created a paradigm shift in linguistics. For that alone he deserves great credit. In fact, his review of BF Skinner's Verbal Behaviour [1] was enough to break new ground and help start the cognitive revolution.
You may or may not think Generative Grammar (or his more recent Minimalist program) is correct, but it's certainly not KNOWN to be wrong, and has yielded some insights. Has it changed over the years, of course, that's normal science. New data is found, new explanations are posited.
Further, Chomsky is still heavily and actively involved in linguistics. See his Feb 4th 2021 presentation [2] to eminent linguistics researchers in the field.
I'm not sure where this kind of comment comes from?
I'd like to read more about that, could you give a source?
From my own readings, I thought that there is very good evidence adults don't bother to correct children in a lot of cases, and that children ignore the corrections completely anyway. They also don't seem to make the kinds of mistakes that you'd expect.
A great summary of some of some research I've been reading on this is the paper [1]. Also Steven Pinker's early work [2] is fascinating and easy reading.
I would love to bring myself up to date though, if these things have changed lately. Any help appreciated.
While The Economist has some redeeming factors and is often worth reading, it should be noted that it is not the objective dispassionate newspaper it claims to be. The Financial Times is far more honest about its commitments.
It is one of the main journals of the liberal business elite and has a fairly awful (and fascinating) anti labour history. It cloaks itself in a casual Oxbridge patina of disinterested expertise, but at its core, it radically advocates for liberal international capital, deregulation and privatisation. Neoliberalism to use a modern polysyllabic word.
Its stance towards the Irish famine should give one a taste of its beliefs, and they haven't changed much in 170 years or so... There have been some wonderful articles written on this publication, and I'd urge anyone to take a look at the publication from another angle.
Dude, you basically called Russell a racist and when you got called out on it, you didn't retract.
Please have the decency to retract or provide some kind of source for your claims. I don't recall anything I've read of Russell showing any element of racism or sympathy towards it.
It would be great if the people who are downvoting you would tackle any of your bullet points.
We are certainly descended from animals, but we are also wildly unique from anything else we've ever seen in the biological world, past or present, mostly due to our cognitive capacities for art, science, morality, math, language, you name it.
Our capacity for language (and its core property of digital infinity) alone, as pointed out by Chomsky, doesn't seem to have an analogue anywhere in the biological world down to perhaps the level of DNA.
That's a great puzzle and mystery, we shouldn't run away from it but rather we should embrace it with humility and awe.