tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post5604177653050519539..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Methodological sadismNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-72457164115016139292023-06-05T18:40:06.645-07:002023-06-05T18:40:06.645-07:00your exploration of methodological sadism resonate...your exploration of methodological sadism resonated with me, and the mention of <a href="https://www.frugalishness.com/promotions/eastside-discount-nursery" rel="nofollow">eastside discount nursery</a> as a metaphorical oasis added an intriguing layer of connection.Ashlee Rolfsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11066073147667336746noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-70791508670229850192023-06-05T18:38:12.952-07:002023-06-05T18:38:12.952-07:00Thank you to the author for sharing their insights...Thank you to the author for sharing their insights, and to the readers for their participation in the ongoing conversation sparked by this thought-provoking piece. <a href="https://www.aintpayingfull.com/promotions/lane-bryant-$15-off-$15-coupon-code" rel="nofollow">Lane bryant $15 off $15 coupon code</a>. It's an excellent opportunity to snag a bargain and update your wardrobe while staying within your budget.Barbara Nimmohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01515250792415879927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-19467719733986005412018-04-25T12:31:26.569-07:002018-04-25T12:31:26.569-07:00From AB: "Newtonian gravity was ultimately th...From AB: "Newtonian gravity was ultimately thrown out, but not merely in the face of data that threatened it. That wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until a viable alternative theory arrived, in the form of Einstein’s general relativity, that the scientific community entertained the notion that Newton might have missed a trick."<br /><br />The discoveries of Generative Linguistics are numerous and nearly every paper I have ever read in that field involves comparing the empirical predictions of (at least) 2 hypotheses. So, I'm quite puzzled at what you (Steve P) could possibly be so exercised about. If you have an alternative theory that covers the core phenomena that have been adduced by generative linguistics, let's see it.<br /><br />As for the relevance of Generative Linguistics to language acquisition, I issued a challenge on this blog some years ago (http://facultyoflanguage.blogspot.com/2014/11/theres-no-poverty-of-stimulus-pish.html) inviting Poverty of the Stimulus skeptics to provide an account of a relatively straightforward case and am still waiting for serious engagement. Until I get that engagement, it seems reasonable to take your anxieties about falsifiability as a smokescreen for some other issue (like just not liking the ideas or some such).Jeff Lidzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02662307721892528218noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-79268165588154919382018-04-10T10:25:56.345-07:002018-04-10T10:25:56.345-07:00"... trying to demarcate science from non-sci..."... trying to demarcate science from non-science is a mugs game . . . ."<br /><br />This, from the end of the second paragraph of Norbert's post is basically correct, but there is something else nearby that is, arguably, less of mug's game. <br /><br />At least, Massimo Pigliucci & Maarten Boudry have so argued, in the 2013 book they edited "Philosophy of pseudoscience: Reconsidering the demarcation problem". <br /><br />As Boudry points out in his contribution (pp.31f) there are--of course, this is philosophy, after all!--Distinctions To Be Made. The most relevant here are those "between science and pseudoscience . . . [and between] science and "nonscience in general" (note, if you care, that these are layered distinctions, so to speak). <br /><br />The point of the book is that it is both important, and, so they claim, possible to make the science vs pseudoscience distinction, though it won't look like what you thought it looked like, unless you were paying close attention to a topic (viz., demarcation) that has been mostly put on the shelf for 30+ years. And, in fairness, the book also has historical and sociological studies of pseudoscience. <br /><br />None of this, I suppose I ought to add, should give aid or succor to practitioners of MS; rather the opposite, I might in fact expect.<br /><br />--RCRob Chametzkyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04943531685307739334noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-25788392848923599542018-04-10T07:07:28.041-07:002018-04-10T07:07:28.041-07:00(Apologies for the deleted posts.)
> "Whe...(Apologies for the deleted posts.)<br /><br />> "When I see that (for instance) Tomasello has data on how children acquire language and Chomsky doesn't seem to..."<br /><br />You can't be serious. Norbert did not state this strongly enough: there is no shortage of acquisition work within the GG/Chomskyan enterprise, including syntax specifically. And I don't mean theory, I mean experiments and corpus studies.Kennethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05863906220463951191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-63162519944253373652018-04-10T07:04:50.373-07:002018-04-10T07:04:50.373-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Kennethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05863906220463951191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-22165047483822916692018-04-10T07:03:52.805-07:002018-04-10T07:03:52.805-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Kennethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05863906220463951191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-86106555305147422282018-04-09T19:42:21.438-07:002018-04-09T19:42:21.438-07:00I see thar close reading is not your thing. I symp...I see thar close reading is not your thing. I sympathize. Yes we test...ultimately. But there is a potentially very long period before testing matters. As a practical matter, it is open ended, or so the history tells us. So sure, look for data, think up theories, try to fit them to the facts, rinse repeat.<br /><br />in my case, I confess to more than a whiff. IMO, Chomsky has set the problem completely correctly. I don’t always buy the details, but completely buy the meta theory, the basic methodology and the stated problematic. You clearly do not. I have no idea why as you never say. What do you think he has gotten wrong? Maybe you think that Gs are not recursive? Or there is no Poverty of Stimulus problem? But if so, you ate wrong. I doubt I could convince you, but then again in this matter we are symmetrical as I doubt you could convince me. <br /><br />It is also false that Chomsky has been remote from acquistion or parsing or brain studies. Crain, Lidz, Yang, Gleitman, Gallistel, Friederici, Peoppel, Dehaene have all found ways of making more than tangential contact with his work and so deepen the program. Again, you likely disagree, but if so, I’d love to see a detailed argument. I think I once invited you to write a full throated defense of Tomasello, right? I even agreed to publish it. Do I recall correctly? If not here is an invite: make the criticism. I will give you room. Make the argument so we can all see where Chomsky screwed up. We will all find it instructive I am sure.<br /><br />Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-26754565920916359812018-04-09T18:14:30.368-07:002018-04-09T18:14:30.368-07:00I'm not sure what to say about all this; it fu...I'm not sure what to say about all this; it fundamentally misunderstands the scientific enterprise but suggests nothing that might take its place.<br /><br />Let's start with falsification. As I tell my introductory students, scientific hypotheses and theories need to be testable (the term I prefer). If they're not, then yes--they're castles in the air, you'll never know if they're true, and we should relegate them to mere philosophical maundering, or maybe a Star Trek episode.<br /><br />The whole bit about Newtonian physics actually supports the notion of testability. Here we've got a well-specified theory. Whoops--now we've got an observation, the orbit of Uranus, that doesn't fit. Now we've got two hypotheses: either (1) there's another planet out there, or (2) something's wrong with the theory. Upon testing, you find that the answer is (1). For the orbit of Mercury, the answer is (2), because we looked, and Vulcan doesn't exist. Newtonian physics was tested and found wanting. (You agree that Newtonian physics is false in an important way, right?) Testing the theory against reality taught us something. Now, it's an elementary misunderstanding to suggest that the *entire Newtonian theory* needs to be thrown in the trash; we just found out through empirical test that it has important constraints. <br /><br />None of this precludes the spinning of fantastic hypotheses or odd theories--they just have to be testable to be of any worth. In short, you can have a castle in the air, but empirical evidence helps build the pilings. Otherwise we'd have an infinite number of (untestable) theories, and they'd be accepted (or not) based on the rhetorical skill of the person promulgating them. <br /><br />Same for linguistics. I need some way to test *this* idea against *that* idea and see which one has support. If there's no way to do that, then the ideas are "not even wrong," as Pauli once said. It'd be like listening to Freud argue with Jung. (Incidentally, "untestable in principle" means something different from "untestable using current technology.") When I see that (for instance) Tomasello has data on how children acquire language and Chomsky doesn't seem to, I'm naturally drawn to Tomasello's views.<br /><br />One more point on linguistics, particularly of the Chomskyan sort. The whole enterprise has the whiff of guruism: Chomsky is always already right, except in a few cases where he didn't go far enough; anyone who disagrees with him just doesn't understand him (with an implication that they're too stupid to do so); his ideas are utterly transformative yet so elementary as to be truisms; yet somehow his theories shed no light on areas that would intuitively seem proximate and relevant (like child language acquisition, language disorders, learning more generally, etc., etc.). Oh, and pay no attention to the data behind the curtain; that won't tell you anything at all.<br />Steven P.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16074887598246037628noreply@blogger.com