More On Chomsky, Nativism, and Politics
Thursday, March 30, 2006 at 11:48AM “Himbly” wrote (March 25): “Please enlighten me on this. I cannot see how UG is at all connected to right wing politics.” And on the same question, “Hua Lin” wrote (March 29): “This is the first time I have heard someone articulate a connection between the political right-left and the linguistic two extremes. I personally don’t see why one HAS to make a connection; that is, I believe one can be politically left but linguistically right, or vice versa.”
I was writing about Chomsky and theories of language learning and specifically the question of how a very young child is able to speak within months in complex but grammatically-correct utterances, many of which are original verbal creations the child has never heard before. Prior to Chomsky’s ground-breaking work, the general belief was that all children somehow “learn” to speak correctly from “motherese” and that this learning process more or less follows the stimulus-response model laid out by behavioural psychologists such as B.F. Skinner whose work was orthodoxy in the 1950-1960 period and is still an article of faith for some social scientists. This model rested on the assumption made famous by the philosopher John Locke that the mind is a “blank slate,” like a school blackboard on which experience writes. What we know is learned via memorization of repeated experiences for which we are socially rewarded or punished and then it is reproduced (if rewarded), or “extinguished” (if punished), by the learner. The concept of mind underlying this has come to be called the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) and it has been under attack at least since Chomsky’s famous demolition of Skinner’s theory in 1959. I believe one of the reasons the SSSM ideal is still holding on, however, is because many who get involved in the softer fields such as sociology and psychology do so because they have “progressive” ideals. Many of them were, and are, nice people who have a hunger to change the world and to teach others how to do so. Many of them see themselves not primarily as social scientists, but as social scientists with a moral mission. In much of the radical political literature surrounding their “scientific” work they actually refer to themselves as “change agents,” and this is especially prevalent in educational literature because they believe, as Abraham Lincoln once said, that “the philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.” For this reason it has always been important for them to vigorously defend the idea that humans are not like animals, driven entirely by instinct. Rather, while we obviously do have some instincts, and those are easy to encourage or discourage, we have a lot more: we are a species that has a vast capacity to learn, and the simple logic of their progressive learning theory is that you cannot learn a lot (or teach very much) if the human brain is already hard-wired or otherwise biologically set up to STOP people from behaving in specific ways. That is how the SSSM model became associated with the left-wing. Indeed, it is a model of the brain that is required by progressive political theory and ambition.
What outraged and challenged the political left in 1957 when Chomsky first published his new linguistic theory, and what has caused a lot of resistance since to the newer “cognitive psychology” that sprang from it was that this clearly brilliant thinker was arguing persuasively that the human mind is NOT empty like a blank slate; language in the infant child “grows” naturally like teeth grow at a certain age; it is NOT something that is a result primarily of learning. Drop any normal kid of the right age in a speaking community and he or she will learn to speak with high grammatical competence in no time flat, and may never have gone to school for a single day! For all the progressivist blank-slaters, the battle-lines were drawn and the political implications were clear at once. Chomsky was charged with supporting “nativism” (considered a dirty word by the left) and linked to all sorts of demons who believe in biological innateness and fixed human characteristics. The worry was that those who followed Chomsky’s theory could easily argue that intelligence is innate and cannot be altered, even by excellent teaching! Teachers did not like that notion, so they called it a “right-wing” theory. Well, it is true that great conservative philosophers from Aristotle, to Aquinas, to Burke and onward have always said that man has a “natural” sociability, a “natural” intelligence, a “natural” capacity to learn, to communicate, to love, and so on, and that many of the differences between men will also inevitably be natural. And they warned us not to fool around with what is natural, except socially to encourage what is naturally good (like love) and discourage what is naturally bad (like hostility). Natural differences between us may be augmented or altered by learning and experience to some small degree, they said, but our job is not to change human nature holus bolus, because it cannot be changed; it is to recognize, accommodate, honour, cherish and preserve the best of human nature in our collective form of life. At any rate, that is why I commented that it is strange to see Chomsky, who is a radical leftist in politics promoting a conservative view of mind. I don't think Chomsky sees this as a conflict, because he argues that our sociability is also natural, and therefore in a better world without capitalists, etc, we would all be loving socialists like him. But it seems to me that from the point of view of how the mind works, he is arguing against himself, because all of human experience shows us that socialism doesn't work without extremes of compulsion; which is to say, it is not natural.
Reader Comments (1)
A few points. You mentioned 'the left's' recoil in horror at Chomsky's nativism. You say, "The worry was that those who followed Chomsky’s theory could easily argue that intelligence is innate and cannot be altered, even by excellent teaching!"
I think what's important here is that Chomsky has pointed out that Universal Grammar (or our innate capacity for language) is a UNIVERSAL thing...meaning that ~everyone~ reaches the same level of competency. Across the board. All humans (barring unusual circumstances). The only differences here are between humans and other species. Yes, some of us are better speakers, listeners, writers, etc...but that's not what he's talking about. That stuff is interest, talent, whatever you want to call it. So, when you compare it to intelligence, as you do, it would only mean that we have 'intelligence'...not that some people are innately more intelligent than others. Besides, really...when you study modular theories of the mind, the word 'intelligence' is kinda vague. Language is a component of cognition...just as memory, or perception are. That's the sort of things that modularists (Chomsky and others) are saying are innate...not the degree of any of these attributes.
Secondly, Chomsky isn't a socialist socialist..he's described as a libertarian socialist, which is different. He's critical of some branches of socialism. He speaks out against oppression of either side.
Socialism, in some degrees, has been quite successful, now that you mention it. Countries all over the world use social programs to the benefit of their citizens.
Personally, I think it's a bit unimaginitive to pigeonhole someone like you have. Besides, even Chomsky has reigned himself in a bit with the UG thing...and he's not even the most nativist linguist out there.