• yesterday
This lecture examines the influential debate between philosophers Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, focusing on themes of human nature, justice, and power. It begins with Chomsky's argument for an innate biological basis for language acquisition, exploring how humans develop complex linguistic abilities despite limited input. In contrast, Foucault challenges the very concept of human nature, questioning its definitional clarity and arguing that it serves more as a reflection of evolving knowledge than a concrete scientific truth. The discussion oscillates between their contrasting views, dissecting the relationship between language, knowledge, and cognition while critiquing the disconnect between philosophical inquiry and its relevance to society. Ultimately, the lecture calls for clearer definitions in philosophical discussions and emphasizes the responsibility of intellectuals to address the practical needs of the public they serve.

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Transcript
00:00:00All right, this is a little project I've had on my plate for a while. I've got a little bit of
00:00:04time today. I thought I would do it. So this is a famous debate from the 1970s between Noam Chomsky
00:00:11and Michel Foucault. And human nature justice versus power, this is a debate. And these are
00:00:17two people who take money from the government. In many ways, Michel a little bit more than Noam.
00:00:24And they take taxpayer money. They take state privileges. And of course, in return for this,
00:00:32you would think that they would feel a certain obligation to provide value in return to help
00:00:43society in this issue. So I have not listened to this. I have not read it. I'm going in blind
00:00:56because I'm going in from the point of view of the mindset of a general purpose layman,
00:01:04an intelligent layman who is looking to get value out of these heavily coddled and protected and
00:01:11coercively subsidized intellectuals. Are you providing value to society as a whole?
00:01:19So to frame it, Franz Elders, the moderator, says, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the third debate
00:01:25of the International Philosophers Project. Tonight's debaters are Michel Foucault of the
00:01:29Collège de France and Mr. Noam Chomsky of the MIT. Both philosophers have points in common
00:01:34and points of difference. Ooh, big brain stuff. He says, perhaps the best way to compare both
00:01:38philosophers would be to see them as tunnelists through a mountain working at opposite sides of
00:01:42the same mountain with different tools without even knowing if they are working in each other's
00:01:45direction. I don't know what the hell that means. Perhaps the best way to compare both philosophers
00:01:52would be to imagine that they're tunnelers. What does that mean? But both are doing their
00:01:56jobs with quite new ideas, digging as profoundly as possible with an equal commitment in philosophy
00:02:01as in politics. Enough reasons, it seems to me, for us to expect a fascinating debate about
00:02:06philosophy and about politics. I intend therefore not to lose any time and to start off with a
00:02:11central perennial question, the question of human nature. All studies of man, from history to
00:02:16linguistics and psychology, are faced with the question of whether, in the last instance, we
00:02:19are the product of all kinds of external factors, or if in spite of our differences we have something
00:02:25we could call a common human nature by which we can recognize each other as human beings.
00:02:32Okay, so that's interesting, obviously. Now, the first thing that I would do, and in fact the first
00:02:38thing that I have done, when faced with these kinds of questions, if we say, okay, what is
00:02:43common in human nature? Well, it would be to look at nature versus nurture,
00:02:55to look at twin studies. There have been millions of twins studied to figure out shared environment,
00:03:04which is just siblings. There are, of course, fraternal twins, there are identical twins,
00:03:10and there are twins raised in the same environment, there are twins raised in complementary,
00:03:14i.e. similar environments, and then there are twins raised in completely different or opposite
00:03:18environments. And so we do have a lot of information, and this has been around for a long
00:03:23time. So when you're talking about nature versus nurture, what is innate to humanity and what is
00:03:34environmental, the first thing you would do is look at twin studies, and of course you would
00:03:37look at IQ studies. IQ studies are very powerful when it comes to the role of genetics in intelligence,
00:03:47which is enormous, overwhelming, and then the role of intelligence in life success as a whole,
00:03:56which is enormous and overwhelming, right? So genetics is by far the biggest single factor
00:04:01in determining intelligence, and intelligence is about the most significant factor in determining
00:04:07life success, and so on, right? So these would be twin studies, tease out or do their best to
00:04:13tease out the best we can do, nature versus nurture, so we would start with that. All right,
00:04:20so he says, the moderator says, so my first question to you, Mr. Chomsky, because you often
00:04:24employ the concept of human nature, in which connection you even to use terms like innate
00:04:29ideas and innate structures, which argument can you derive from linguistics to give such a central
00:04:34position to this concept of human nature? All right, Noam Chomsky, well, let me begin in a
00:04:42slightly technical way. A person who is interested in studying languages is faced with a very
00:04:46definite empirical problem. He's faced with an organism, a mature, let's say, adult speaker,
00:04:52who has somehow acquired an amazing range of abilities which enable him, in particular, to say
00:04:58what he means, to understand what people say to him, to do this in a fashion that I think is
00:05:02proper to call highly creative. That is, much of what a person says in his normal intercourse with
00:05:07others is novel. Much of what you hear is new. It doesn't bear any close resemblance to anything
00:05:12in your experience. It's not random novel behavior. Clearly, it's behavior which is, in some sense,
00:05:19which is very hard to characterize, appropriate to situations. In fact, it has many of the
00:05:23characteristics of what I think might very well be called creativity. Okay, so one of the problems
00:05:32that highly intelligent people, and of course, both these men are highly intelligent,
00:05:37one of the problems that highly intelligent people have, particularly if they come from
00:05:41highly intelligent families or middle class, upper middle class, and so on,
00:05:48is that the people who are surrounding them tend to be verbally acute and often creative and
00:05:56great communicators and so on. Whereas, if you've spent time around the lower classes, the less
00:06:03intelligent and so on, generally, what they come up with is kind of blindingly predictable and so
00:06:11on, right? And so, if you've been around a lot of creative people because you come from a very
00:06:15creative family or environment and you've spent your life among intellectuals and so on, then
00:06:22you don't have a wide view of human nature. It's kind of like the Algonquin Round Table,
00:06:31which is a very famous group of writers in the, I think, 20s and 30s would get together for these
00:06:37incredible dinners, or Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie and other people doing these amazing
00:06:43conversations. You'd say, wow, people are just so spontaneous and creative. But this is like a
00:06:48bunch of comedians hanging out together saying, well, human beings just have this innate capacity
00:06:53to generate hilarious jokes on the fly. And it's like, but no, that's your... If you were born to
00:07:00a highly musical family and you spend your time around highly musical people, say, well, people
00:07:04have this innate ability to be musical. And it's like, well, no, that's your environment. That's
00:07:09not... Anyway, so when he says much of what a person says in his normal intercourse with others
00:07:17is novel, it's very creative, but that's just not true for people as a whole. I mean, honestly,
00:07:26if you think this is true, fly out to Australia and hang out with the aborigines, right, with
00:07:33their communication skills, or go to some dive bar and chat with people and see how much novel
00:07:44and creative and intellectually sparkling stuff comes out. So this is a selection problem based
00:07:49upon proximity bias to creative people. All right. So Noam Chomsky went on to say,
00:07:54now the person who has acquired this intricate and highly articulated and organized collection
00:07:59of abilities, the collection of abilities that we call knowing a language, has been exposed to
00:08:03a certain experience. He has been presented in the course of his lifetime with a certain amount
00:08:07of data of direct experience with a language. Now this is a little confusing, and this is not to say
00:08:14that our good friend Mr. Chomsky, who I've actually read a number of books of his, and
00:08:21I have retained virtually nothing of anything that he's written.
00:08:25He did a whole column on politics, analysis of Middle East and so on, and I remember virtually
00:08:31nothing. Now, I just think because there aren't any particular valuable or useful general principles
00:08:35that come out of it, but I have retained virtually nothing of any of his speeches or any of the
00:08:44probably half dozen books or so. He's an interesting writer, he's a good writer,
00:08:48enjoyable to listen to, but I get nothing out of it in the long run. And I'm not saying that's
00:08:51the fault of his, I'm just saying that's my particular experience. All right, so when he says
00:08:58the collection of abilities we call knowing a language, he's been exposed to a certain experience
00:09:03presented in the course of his lifetime with a certain amount of data of direct experience with
00:09:06a language. Okay, so is exposed to a certain experience, is that exposed to the teaching
00:09:15of language or is that exposed to things in the world? When he says he's presented in the course
00:09:21of his lifetime with a certain amount of data of direct experience with a language,
00:09:25so is he saying that the information and data and empiricism that he's talking about,
00:09:32which has to come in through the senses, right? Experience is senses, presented with data,
00:09:38that means coming in from the outside. So I'm not sure if Noam Chomsky is talking about we're
00:09:45exposed to language and that's the data and experience, or we're exposed to the real world
00:09:49which language describes and there's correlation between the two that is important. And again,
00:09:53this is not a limitation of his, I just I would prefer that be defined up front. All right,
00:09:58so Noam goes on to say we can investigate the data that's available to this person.
00:10:02Having done so in principle, we're faced with a reasonably clear and well delineated scientific
00:10:06problem, namely that of accounting for the gap between the really quite small quantity of data,
00:10:12small and rather degenerate in quality that's presented to the child,
00:10:15and the very highly articulated, highly systematic,
00:10:19profoundly organized resulting knowledge that he has somehow derived from these data.
00:10:25So I don't know what that means.
00:10:32He has, so he is he saying that there's a magical alchemy or furnace within the brain
00:10:41that creates brilliant articulation out of a very limited exposure to language,
00:10:50right? In other words, let's say that you were raised by some fairly dunderheaded single mom,
00:10:55right? And there've been studies that like single moms expose their kids to like 600 words a day,
00:11:00whereas in more middle class and upper middle class families, it's thousands and thousands.
00:11:04So let's say that you're, you just get very little exposure to language,
00:11:09but you end up with these dazzling array of abilities. Is that what he's saying? Well,
00:11:14that might be the case, of course, if you are exposed to not a lot of verbal language,
00:11:18but you read a huge amount, because you are born perhaps to less intelligent
00:11:24parents, but you yourself are highly intelligent, then you're going to be able to extract a lot
00:11:31more out of the limited data you're given. And then you'll go and pursue more because you'll be
00:11:34really into reading or, you know, maybe in the past, really, there wasn't an option to listen
00:11:39to speeches. You just basically had to read them. And, but now you could pursue great speeches on
00:11:45online or something like that. So when he's saying, well, there's a small quantity of data,
00:11:50small and rather degenerate in quality that's presented to the child.
00:11:55Now, I assume he's not talking about sense data in terms of like, I see a tree,
00:11:59but he's talking about language instruction, and the very hard, highly articulated blah, blah,
00:12:03blah, that he somehow derives from these data. Now, again, this is a bias. This is Noam Chomsky's
00:12:10around really brilliant people. I mean, he's a Jewish intellectual. I assume that he's around
00:12:15really brilliant people growing up and so on. And so, yeah, he's around scintillating minds,
00:12:22high verbal IQ, probably in the 130 plus range. And so is this people in general, or it's just
00:12:28the brilliant people that he grew up with? All right. Furthermore, we notice that varying
00:12:33individuals, he says, with very varied experience in a particular language, nevertheless, arrive
00:12:37at systems which are very much congruent to one another. The systems that two speakers of English
00:12:42arrive at on the basis of their very different experiences are congruent in the sense that
00:12:47over an overwhelming range, what one of them says, the other can understand.
00:12:51Ah, that's interesting insofar as if I pointed a tree, another English speaker is going to
00:13:00recognize that as a tree. Okay. Yay. It's not the most important aspect of language.
00:13:05It's not unimportant, but when people say equality, nobody knows what the other person is talking
00:13:13about often, right? Because is it equality of opportunity or is it equality of outcome?
00:13:17When people talk about wealth, are they talking about material wealth or spiritual wealth?
00:13:22When people talk about violence, are they talking about the general initiation of the use of force
00:13:29or are they talking about only private criminal violence and so on?
00:13:38Well, it's hard to say. When people are talking about freedom,
00:13:45are they talking about freedom from the consequences of bad decisions or are they
00:13:49talking about freedom from coercion? So I think that when people talk about Trump,
00:13:58you know, the perceptions, I mean, this is a Scott Adams reference, right? The same
00:14:05movie, different screens, right? Or same screen, different movies, right? Same screens, different
00:14:09movies. And what's interesting is that he's not defining his terms here.
00:14:20And he's not saying whether the data that you're getting is material reality or
00:14:30verbal instruction on language, right? Okay. So at an overwhelming range, what one of them
00:14:36says the other can understand, that is true in general when we're talking about sense data,
00:14:41but it's not true in general when we're talking about concepts.
00:14:46The concept of salvation to a Christian is very powerful. The concept of salvation
00:14:51to an atheist is not. Even the word God can mean things. Arguments about the printed word,
00:14:59you know, spare the rod, spoil the child, is taken by some Christians to mean you should
00:15:03beat your children. And to other Christians, it says you should instruct your children, right? So
00:15:08in terms of morals and essentials, there is massively wide divergence. To a communist,
00:15:17a free market trade is exploitation. To a free marketer,
00:15:23coercive control of the means of production is violence and theft.
00:15:26So it's pretty hard to, for some people, discipline means self-discipline. To other
00:15:34people, discipline means hitting children, right? So anyway. So he goes on, he says,
00:15:39furthermore, even more remarkable, we notice in a wide variety of languages, the fact that all
00:15:43have been studied seriously. In fact, all that have been studied seriously, there are remarkable
00:15:47limitations on the kinds of systems that emerge from very different kinds of experience to which
00:15:52people are exposed. So what does this mean? Even more remarkable, we notice that in a wide variety
00:16:00of languages, in fact, all that have been studied seriously, there are remarkable limitations on the
00:16:05kind of systems that emerge from the very different kinds of experiences to which people are exposed.
00:16:11Again, I don't know. Noam, are you talking about sense data of the material world or are you
00:16:16talking about sense data of language instruction? I mean, these two are widely different, right?
00:16:22I mean, most languages, the word for mama starts with an M because that's the first
00:16:28phoneme that most babies can articulate. So it's quite common, right?
00:16:34There are remarkable limitations on the kind of systems that emerge. So I don't
00:16:38really know what this means. And maybe he's assuming familiarity with his work on linguistics,
00:16:42which is what he's sort of famous for, but which I don't think has sustained itself very well with
00:16:47the empirical data over time. All right. So he says, there is only one possible explanation,
00:16:52which I have to give in a rather schematic fashion for this remarkable phenomenon,
00:16:56namely the assumption that the individual himself contributes a good deal, an overwhelming part,
00:17:00in fact, of the general schematic structure and perhaps even of the specific content of
00:17:05the knowledge that he ultimately derives from this very scattered and limited experience.
00:17:08Okay. So he's had a page.
00:17:19He's had a page.
00:17:24And what is he talking about?
00:17:31And so the reason this bothers me is because society pours millions of dollars into these
00:17:36intellectuals and they come back with undefined, vague bafflegab that speaks only to the other
00:17:47intellectuals who studied their work. And I think this is pillaging. I think this is a form of
00:17:53exploitation of the workers, right? That the workers, right? Because, you know, these guys
00:17:57are often lefties, right? And the workers are people who slave away with manual labor often
00:18:03in order to provide all of the money pillaged by the intellectuals. So just maybe provide some
00:18:09freaking benefit back to the people you're taking money from. And it's hard to even know, and I
00:18:20understand language pretty well, and I've done shows on the philosophy of language and the
00:18:25development of language, and I don't know what he's talking about. All right. So let's go on.
00:18:33Noam says, a person who knows a language has acquired that knowledge because he approached
00:18:38the learning experience with a very explicit and detailed
00:18:41schematism that tells him what kind of language it is that he is being exposed to.
00:18:48What? A person who knows a language has acquired that knowledge because he approached the learning
00:18:52experience with a very explicit and detailed schematism that tells him what kind of language
00:18:56it is that he's being exposed to. Okay, so is he saying that a person knows language
00:19:07because he has a schema in his mind, but, I mean, you learn a language because you were taught a
00:19:14language by others. All right. He says, that is, to put it rather loosely, the child must begin
00:19:20with the knowledge, certainly not with the knowledge that he's hearing English or Dutch
00:19:24or French or something else, but he does start with the knowledge that he's hearing a human
00:19:28language of a very narrow and explicit type that permits a very small range of variation.
00:19:36Well, but he starts with the knowledge, children start with imitative knowledge,
00:19:41right? They just imitate the sounds that their parents make, right? And it is because he begins
00:19:48with that highly organized and very restrictive schematism that he is able to make the huge leap
00:19:52from scattered and degenerate data to highly organized knowledge. And furthermore, I should
00:19:58add that we can go to, we can go a certain distance, I think a rather long distance,
00:20:03towards presenting the properties of this system of knowledge that I would call innate language
00:20:07or instinctive knowledge that the child brings to language learning. And also we can go a long
00:20:12way towards describing the system that is mentally represented when he has acquired
00:20:16this knowledge. Yeah, human beings have an instinct for language. Yeah, I mean it's well
00:20:22known that if you miss the language window, which is sort of, I don't know, 18 months or two to like
00:20:27eight or nine or something like that, like kids raised by wolves, if you miss that language window
00:20:34it's very hard for you to learn language. And also we know that subtleties of particular kinds of
00:20:38language are lost often on non-native speakers, right? So the sort of the famous inability of
00:20:47some Asian speaking people to not be able to say the word L, right? That they speak R, right?
00:20:56Well, that's important, right? That it's hard to hear particular different tones in Mandarin
00:21:01or Japanese. You don't hear the difference from the outside, but you understand the difference
00:21:06from the inside. And it seems to be the case that everybody who grows up speaking those kinds of
00:21:12languages, they can hear those differences and people who don't have to work very very hard
00:21:21to hear those differences. And one of the things that I think is obviously true, well maybe it's
00:21:31not obviously true, but one of the things that is true is that, for instance, what is considered to
00:21:38be romantic in a particular language is that which is used to woo women and therefore those
00:21:48who are sensitive to that particular form of language, they tend to reproduce the mental
00:21:55structures most compatible with that kind of language. So, I mean, I had somebody I knew
00:22:01many years ago who visited from England and he's been talking about how he would go to pubs and
00:22:07just go up to women and say, what is it you're pulled? Which means come and have sex with me.
00:22:12And he would say nine times out of 10 or maybe 19 times out of 20, he would get a no or a slap or
00:22:18ew. But then one time he would get a woman who would go with him, right? I assume the victim of
00:22:21child abuse, it was all pretty vile and gross. So let's just say that that was a very common thing.
00:22:28So then the most reproduction would occur with those who were the most forward and
00:22:35non-romantic as possible, right? Like when I came to Canada, I was in grade eight for a while,
00:22:41then I was put in grade six when we moved to Toronto, and in grade six the Canadian boys
00:22:46chased the girls around and punched them in the groin, which is something I would never have
00:22:50dreamed of doing in a zillion years, would be completely impossible in England, unthinkable
00:22:55really in England, but was common in Canada or at least where I was. So that's a whole different
00:23:02thing. And so when you move cultures in England, it's sensitivity, it's a good sense of humor,
00:23:09it's wooing, it's language-based. In Canada, it was, are you good at hockey and punching girls
00:23:15in the groin? Because the boy who led this was very popular with the girls. I mean,
00:23:20it's incomprehensible to me, but that's just a sort of switch. So language is reproduced
00:23:29by those with the best affinity to approaches to wooing, reproducing particular kinds of brains.
00:23:35So if you have, let's say, in France, to woo a woman is sort of very flower,
00:23:42flowery, florid language and exaggerated analogies, and you are so beautiful that I cannot
00:23:48breathe, you know, this kind of stuff, right? And women respond to that and probably would
00:23:55not respond to the girls being punched in the groin. And so more florid language reproduces
00:24:02itself. And then that reinforces that, right? So if a man wooing a woman with florid language
00:24:11is the most sexually successful strategy, then women will respond to men with florid language,
00:24:17because then they will give birth to sons who will most likely inherit that capacity for florid
00:24:20language in a physical, genetic way, and therefore will be more successful. This is how culture kind
00:24:26of works. So, all right. So let's see, what else does he say here? And he says language,
00:24:41innate language or instinctive knowledge, yeah, for sure. So since language is a productive and
00:24:46organizing force, not only for men to organize hunting parties or war parties, you need a certain
00:24:53fluency in language. But if language is used to woo women, right? That's the old, what do we,
00:24:57why do we write poetry? To understand the human condition? No, to woo women, right? That's sort
00:25:02of the joke that Robin Williams' character makes in Dead Poets Society. And so language is used to
00:25:09woo women, language is used to make jokes, to make women laugh, language is used to plan and organize
00:25:14hunting parties and to plan and organize military expeditions, war and raids and so on. And so those
00:25:22who have the greatest facility for learning language the fastest will be the ones most
00:25:27likely to survive and reproduce, right? So whatever random scatter shots of genetics produce people
00:25:35who have the greatest facility to learn language as rapidly as possible and as accurately as
00:25:39possible. You can't learn it rapidly and inaccurately. So yeah, of course, I mean, this
00:25:43basic evolution, I don't know why this is considered a big insight, but basic evolution is, yeah,
00:25:48since language is such a massive evolutionary and reproductive advantage, those offspring who are
00:25:56born with the greatest capacity to accurately learn whatever is considered locally the most
00:26:01effective between men and the most romantic for women language, well, that is how it's going to
00:26:08be, right? So yeah, of course, right? So Noam goes on to say, I would claim then that this
00:26:13instinctive knowledge, if you like, this schematism that makes it possible to derive complex and
00:26:17intricate knowledge on the basis of very partial data, is one fundamental constituent of human
00:26:22nature. So he's saying that our capacity to learn language and to derive complex and intricate
00:26:33knowledge on the basis of very partial data, no, but that's a high IQ thing. So he's saying
00:26:39that people who can extrapolate from very limited data, huge amounts of complexity,
00:26:45well, that's a high IQ thing. Now, high IQ is certainly not human nature,
00:26:50because that would be to say that those who are high IQ are more human than those who are less IQ,
00:26:54which would be false. All are human beings, right? Now, there may be some people at the intellectually
00:26:59severely damaged or underperforming, right? People who have general cognitive limitations
00:27:07at the very low end of the IQ scale that may be denied human rights, because they don't have the
00:27:13capacity to process the consequences of their own actions or survive economically in the free market
00:27:17or anything like that. So we may say that, but they're still human beings, right? They're just
00:27:25human beings with limitations or damage to their brains that means that they can't fully exercise.
00:27:30They're still human beings, of course, right? We need to say that. So if we say that the ability
00:27:36to derive incredible complexity from limited data is human nature, then you're saying that
00:27:42higher IQ people are more human than lower IQ people, which is utterly false. Utterly false.
00:27:51I mean, that's like saying that it's human nature to sing beautifully. Well, no, that would mean
00:27:57that people who are tone deaf or bad singers are less human, or even the singers with a bad cold
00:28:03who can't sing well are less human. That's not right. Because there's lots of people. I mean,
00:28:10Noam says, the schematism that makes it possible to derive complex and intricate knowledge on the
00:28:15basis of very partial data is one fundamental constituent of human nature. Now, he could say,
00:28:21maybe what he's saying, if I understand again, and none of this is defined, so it's hard to say.
00:28:27Well, it's impossible to say. When things aren't defined, you're always doing some
00:28:30stab in the dark guesswork. But he could be saying, well, you know, you learn what a tree is,
00:28:36and then you can identify a tree, even if it looks quite different, right? So you identify a tree,
00:28:42you know, with oaks and elms or whatever it is, and then you see a palm tree, and you're like,
00:28:45oh, that's a tree. Maybe that's what he's saying. But, you know, a tall,
00:28:53a tall wooden trunk with leaves at the top. I mean, it's funny, because palm trees look actually
00:28:59more like, you know, children draw trees like lollipops, and you have the eternal challenge
00:29:03of leaves, right? And so in terms of a tree, a palm tree looks more like a child's drawing of a
00:29:11tree than most sort of Northern European trees would look like. Or if you look at, you say,
00:29:17well, it's a Christmas tree, like a pine tree is a tree, even though it has needles, not leaves.
00:29:23And even though you usually can't see the trunk, because the branches go all the way to the
00:29:27bottom, you still know that it's because it's very tall, right? So maybe that's what he's talking
00:29:31about. But it's really hard to say. I don't think he's talking about because he's not mentioned
00:29:35anything about raw sense data of things in the world. He's only talked about learning language.
00:29:39So he's saying that you can derive complex and intricate knowledge on the basis of badly taught
00:29:44or limited language. And again, that's a high IQ thing. I mean, a low IQ person will end up with
00:29:51less language, even if they're taught in a sort of highly complex way. So somebody with an IQ of,
00:30:02say, 80, you can get Noam Chomsky to teach them language, and they'll end up with very little
00:30:07competence in the realm of language, where if you get somebody with an IQ of 130, and then they can
00:30:13be taught language by somebody with an IQ of 80 and end up with far more complex language because
00:30:17of their intelligence. So I don't know. And he's got no facts, no data, no studies, no brain, no IQ,
00:30:24no twins, nothing, right? All right. So he says, in this case, I think a fundamental constituent
00:30:33of human nature. Sorry, I need to go back a little bit. The schematism that makes it possible
00:30:38to derive complex and intricate knowledge on the basis of very partial data is one fundamental
00:30:42constituent of human nature. In this case, I think a fundamental constituent because of the role that
00:30:47language plays, not merely in communication, but also in expression of thought and interaction
00:30:52between persons. And I assume that in other domains of human intelligence, in other domains
00:30:57of human cognition and behavior, something of the same sort must be true. All right. Well,
00:31:02this collection, this mass of schematisms, innate organizing principles, which guides our social
00:31:06and intellectual and individual behavior, that's what I mean to refer to by the concept of human
00:31:10nature. Okay, so I thought that human nature was a part, like you've got the big, you've got,
00:31:20sorry, you've got the big circle called human nature and a small circle called language
00:31:24acquisition. But now he's saying that language acquisition, this mass of schematisms, not just
00:31:29in language, but in other domains of human intelligence, that human nature is these
00:31:37schematics that allow you to get great complexity out of limited information. Okay.
00:31:48Again, I don't know what this great complexity refers to. If you're talking human nature, it has
00:31:54to be something that's specific to human beings. I mean, the ability to recognize a tree is shared
00:31:59by a wide, by thousands and thousands of other species of creatures in the world. They all know
00:32:05what trees are. Orangutans climb trees. They know what trees are. Toucans nest in trees or
00:32:14eat fruit from trees. So bonobos, right? So creatures know what trees are, even though
00:32:20they don't have the concept or the language to describe it as a whole. All right.
00:32:26So he's saying that human nature is schematics built into people that allow for massive complexity
00:32:33from limited information. So you're taught a limited amount of language, but you end up with
00:32:38this massive complexity of language, and that's human nature. All right. Now that, of course,
00:32:46is related to IQ. So he's saying that lower IQ is less human, less human nature. All right.
00:32:53So then the moderator says, well, Mr. Foucault, when I think of your books, like The History of
00:32:58Madness and Words and Objects, I get the impression that you are working on a completely different
00:33:02level and with a totally opposite aim and goal. When I think of the word schematism in relation
00:33:07to human nature, I suppose you are trying to elaborate several periods with several
00:33:12schematisms. What do you say to this? Michel Foucault, well, if you don't mind,
00:33:15I will answer in French, blah, blah, blah. It is true that I mistrust the notion of human
00:33:19nature a little, and for the following reason. I believe that of the concepts or notion which
00:33:26a science can use, not all have the same degree of elaboration, and that in general,
00:33:32they have neither the same function or the same type of possible use in scientific discourse.
00:33:37Okay, excellent. What? I believe that if the concepts or notions which a science can use,
00:33:43not all have the same degree of elaboration,
00:33:46and that in general, they have neither the same function or the same type of possible use in
00:33:50scientific discourse. Okay, not sure what that means. Let's take the example of biology.
00:33:59You will find concepts with a classifying function, concepts with a differentiating function,
00:34:04and concepts with an analytical function. Some of them enable us to characterize objects,
00:34:10objects, for example, that of tissue. Others to isolate elements like that of hereditary,
00:34:17hereditary feature. Others to fix relations such as that of reflex. Yep, got it. There are,
00:34:23at the same time, elements which play a role in the discourse and in the internal rules of the
00:34:28reasoning practice. But there also exist peripheral notions, those by which scientific practice
00:34:33designates itself, differentiates self. Sorry, it's easy to gap out with this stuff. Let me just
00:34:39take a run at that again. There are, at the same time, elements which play a role in the discourse
00:34:44and in the internal rules of the reasoning practice. Okay, so is he talking about scientific
00:34:52identifications, mammal versus reptile, and the scientific method, which is science describing
00:34:58how science is done, or reason describing how science is done. All right. But there also exist
00:35:03peripheral notions, those by which scientific practice designates itself, differentiates self
00:35:09in relation to other practices, delimits its domain of objects, and designates what it considers to be
00:35:14the totality of its future tasks. The notion of life played this role to some extent of biology
00:35:19during a certain period. Yeah, I mean, biology has a challenge. I mean, a virus is alive. Biology has
00:35:25a bit of a challenge trying to figure out what life is, but that's really only at the periphery.
00:35:33Nobody looks at a rock and a lizard and says, I don't know which one is alive. But, you know,
00:35:37in the periphery, the edge cases, that kind of stuff, right? In the 17th and 18th centuries,
00:35:44the notion of life was hardly used in studying nature. One classified natural beings, whether
00:35:48living or non-living, in a vast hierarchical tableau which went from minerals to man. The
00:35:53break between the minerals and the plants or animals was relatively undecided. Epistemologically,
00:35:58it was only important to fix their positions once and for all in an indisputable way.
00:36:05Okay, I mean, I'm not going to doubt our good friend Mr. Foucault. Let's assume that that's
00:36:12true. At the end of the 18th century, the description and analysis of these natural
00:36:16beings showed, through the use of more highly perfected instruments and the latest techniques,
00:36:21an entire domain of objects, an entire field of relations and processes,
00:36:24which have enabled us to define the specificity of biology in the knowledge of nature.
00:36:32So, I think what he's saying is that, you know, you had microscopes, you could look at cells,
00:36:38and so on, and see the movements and processes of cells, and they would be very different from
00:36:44minerals, and so on, right? So, okay. All right. I think that's what he's talking about.
00:36:52So, now you can much more closely value and define the difference between life and death,
00:37:01right? So, throughout most of human history, slaves were considered the just spoils of war,
00:37:06and slavery was not considered immoral. And then, with the spread of self-ownership and
00:37:12property rights, a human being cannot both be property and own property. And so, slavery was
00:37:17revealed as a huge evil. And so, that which was good and evil changed. So, we understand that.
00:37:24Can one say that research into life has finally constituted itself in biological science?
00:37:31Ah, yes. So, this is the idea that
00:37:37progress is infinite, and we're only somewhere along the continuum.
00:37:42In the past, people thought X. Now, they know that X is false, and they believe Y. But,
00:37:50it could be true that Y is proven false, and A, B, C, or whatever will, right? So, it's the idea
00:37:55that... So, in the past, people thought the world was flat, and they were certain of that,
00:38:03and now we know the Earth is a sphere, and so you can't be certain of anything. Are we sure
00:38:08that we've arrived at the final shape? Maybe the Earth is, in fact, banana shape. So,
00:38:11the idea that people were wrong in the past is then transmuted into people can be wrong
00:38:18in the present, right? Well, that's just not true, though. So, the fact that people were wrong in the
00:38:27past does not mean that everything is eternally open to revision in the present. So, when I was
00:38:39a kid, and I was learning my times table, I would get my times table wrong, but now I know the times
00:38:46table, right? So, 12 times 12 is 144. Yeah, I still... 12, you went 1 by 1 to 12 by 12. So,
00:38:55because I got things wrong in the past, does that mean that when I say, like, when I was a very
00:39:00little kid, and I said 2 and 2 make 5, and I got that wrong, and now I say that 2 and 2 make 4,
00:39:06and I'm right, does that mean that 2 and 2 might not equal 4, because I got it wrong in the past,
00:39:11and therefore I can't be certain of anything in the present? Well, that's nonsense!
00:39:15Absolute, complete, and total nonsense!
00:39:20So, when people thought that epilepsy in the past was demonic possession, does that mean that
00:39:30they were wrong, and it is, I don't know, some sort of electrical or biochemical storm in the
00:39:34brain? I don't really know much about epilepsy, so whatever that is, something like that.
00:39:39Does that mean that, well, no, it might not be. It could be alien possession, right? Like,
00:39:46so, the fact that we have accurate answers now, whereas things were incorrect in the past,
00:39:51does not mean that our accurate answers are equally open to question going forward. So,
00:39:59when he says, well, you know, boy, people didn't really have much of a differentiation
00:40:04between minerals and plants or animals, the break was relatively undecided.
00:40:11We just had to know what minerals were, and what animals were, and so on. But once we got a hold of
00:40:20microscopes, and we could see cell reproduction, and division of mitosis,
00:40:24meiosis, and all that kind of stuff, then we got a better sense of what life was.
00:40:28And so, this has enabled us, says Foucault, to define the specificity of biology and the
00:40:35knowledge of nature. Can one say that research into life has finally constituted itself in
00:40:39biological science? Has the concept of life been responsible for the organization of biological
00:40:44knowledge? I don't think so. Has the concept of life been responsible for the organization of
00:40:50biological knowledge? Well, given that biology is differentiated from geology, in that biology
00:40:56studies living organisms, and geology studies organisms which have not been alive,
00:41:04and never will be alive, Iraq was never alive, and never will be alive. So, I don't know what
00:41:12that means. So, he says, has the concept of life been responsible for the organization of biological
00:41:17knowledge? I don't think so. What the ever-living hell does that even mean? Okay, well, make the
00:41:25case. He says, I don't think so. Well, that's not an argument. It seems to me also not an argument.
00:41:30It seems to me, says Foucault, more likely that the transformation of biological knowledge
00:41:35at the end of the 18th century, the transformations of biological knowledge at the end of the 18th
00:41:40century were demonstrated on one hand by a whole series of new concepts for use in scientific
00:41:44discourse, and on the other hand, gave rise to a notion like that of life, which has enabled us to
00:41:50designate, to delimit, and to situate a certain type of scientific discourse among other things.
00:41:57Uh, what? I'm so sorry. I gotta do this sentence again. I'm sorry, man. This is like
00:42:05fog-enabled brain rot. All right, it seems to me more likely, and that's again, like, can you give
00:42:11some facts? It seems to me more likely, would say the pseudo-intellectual, that rape is wrong.
00:42:17It's more likely than not, right? You're about, you're a philosopher. It's supposed to be about
00:42:22facts and proof. It seems to me more likely, says Foucault, that the transformation of biological
00:42:27knowledge at the end of the 18th century were demonstrated on one hand by a whole series of
00:42:32new concepts for use in scientific discourse, and on the other hand, gave rise to a notion
00:42:35like that of life, which has enabled us to designate, to delimit, and to situate a certain
00:42:39type of scientific discourse among other things. Okay, so they learned more about life with
00:42:43microscopes, and I'm simplifying, but they learned more about life with microscopes,
00:42:47and therefore, they could delineate what was living and not living better. Okay.
00:42:52Foucault goes on to say, I would say that the notion of life is not a scientific concept. It
00:42:56has been an epistemological indicator of which the classifying, delimiting, and other functions
00:43:02had an effect on scientific discussions, and not on what they were talking about.
00:43:06So, is he saying that biology is not a science? The notion of life is not a scientific concept,
00:43:14it has been an epistemological indicator of which the classifying, delimiting,
00:43:19and other functions had an effect on scientific discussions, and not on what they were talking
00:43:24about. So, is he saying that, let's say that there were some, let's say that there were things
00:43:35that were thought of as potentially biological, but when you had a microscope, you could see that
00:43:43they weren't? Or, was he saying that there were things that were considered not biological,
00:43:47but when you looked at them under a microscope, they had indications of classifications that
00:43:52would normally be biological? Well, of course, the classifications don't change the things itself,
00:43:59right? When you get better classifications, it doesn't change the nature of that which you are
00:44:05classifying, right? So, the sort of typical example is the duct-billed platypus,
00:44:10which has eggs and so on, and yet is considered a mammal. It's kind of like an out-there edge case
00:44:15of mammalian classification, okay? So, whether you classify the duct-billed platypus
00:44:26as a mammal or not, does not change the nature of the duct-billed platypus. I get that.
00:44:32Classifications are imperfectly derived from instances, from things in the world,
00:44:37and an inaccurate classification does not change the nature of the thing itself. When you
00:44:41inaccurately classified the earth as flat, that did not change the fact that the earth was a sphere,
00:44:47and changing your understanding of the nature of the planet or the world from a flat land to a
00:44:52sphere does not change its nature. So, I get that. So what? All right. So, go on with all of
00:44:58this weasel words, right? Well, it seems to me, and trust me, I've been very tempted to do an
00:45:02outrageous, empathetic, and ridiculous French accent, but I've decided not to. Well, it seems
00:45:10to me that the notion of human nature, says Foucault, is of the same type. It was not by
00:45:15studying human nature that linguists discovered the laws of consonant mutation, or Freud,
00:45:20the principle of the analysis of dreams, or cultural anthropologists the structure of myths.
00:45:26In the history of knowledge, the notion of human nature seems to me mainly to have played the role
00:45:32of an epistemological indicator to designate certain types of discourse in relation to or
00:45:37in opposition to theology or biology or history. I would find it difficult to see in this a scientific
00:45:44concept. It was not by studying human nature that linguists discovered the laws of consonant
00:45:54mutation, or Freud, the principle of the analysis of dreams, or cultural anthropologists the structure
00:46:01of myths. Well, they were studying these things, and let's say that you accept Freud's
00:46:13analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments is accurate, and certainly it's not accurate
00:46:21for everyone, and I've done a bunch of dream analyses in the course of my show Free Domain.
00:46:26So, you keep studying patterns, and then you arrive at concepts.
00:46:34So, when we are trying to figure out human nature,
00:46:38and I would argue that human nature is concept formation. It is human nature to have concept
00:46:45formation, and that's a black and white. You're more human if you're better at concept formation,
00:46:52but it is human nature to form concepts, concepts being abstract universalizations from individual
00:47:01instances. You know your own mother, and then you know what a mother is. You have your favorite
00:47:06tree as a kid, and then you can extrapolate to what trees are. So, the ability to form concepts,
00:47:11or the act of forming concepts, is human nature. That's the most, because animals don't do it,
00:47:17right? And so, because I see that people form concepts, and that differentiates us from the
00:47:24animals, I say, well, that's essential to human nature. That is what human nature is, is the
00:47:29ability and the action of forming concepts, because animals can't do it, certainly not
00:47:35linguistically. So, it is through studying people that I discover what human nature is. I don't
00:47:42define human nature as the ability to form concepts, and then just walk away, because I
00:47:47haven't tested it against reality, right? So, I'm not sure. You study people, and then you find out
00:47:52what is the most essential characteristic of human beings, and it is the ability and action of
00:47:58forming concepts, the theory and practice of concept formation, which happens in an automatic
00:48:02fashion. I mean, it is definitely human nature to generate concepts, and this is in accordance
00:48:08with what Chomsky says, is you get more complicated stuff from limited information, sure.
00:48:13So, it's really hard to know, as it is generally hard to know, what the living hell, Foucault,
00:48:20is talking about here. So, if he's saying, well, we had better tools for studying life,
00:48:31matter, non-living versus living matter, we had better tools for it, well, of course,
00:48:35that's an epistemological revelation, right? That you can study cells, mitosis, meiosis,
00:48:40cell division, replication, and so on, right? Cell death, and so on, right? So, I mean, back
00:48:47in the past, people thought you fight disease by praying. You pray to God, and through praying to
00:48:52God, God will decide if he kills the disease on you or not. And now, of course, we can look at,
00:49:00you know, white blood cells, T-cells, and so on, attacking the invaders, and we understand
00:49:04if somebody gets a transplant, they have to take immunosuppressant drugs, otherwise
00:49:08their immune system will view the transplanted kidney, say, as a foreign object and attack it
00:49:13and try and kill it. So, now we can see what's going on in detail. I mean, a couple hundred
00:49:18years ago, 200 years ago and change, they didn't even know that the blood circulated around the
00:49:21body. They thought it was just a bag of liquid that didn't pump, right? So, yeah, now you can
00:49:28see the blood flowing around the body and so on, right? In the past, you always had to have
00:49:32exploratory surgery. Now you can get fMRIs, MRIs, and ultrasounds and scans and so on, right? So,
00:49:40that is... So, yeah, you've got better instruments for
00:49:47determining what the nature of reality is. So, that gives you more knowledge, right? So,
00:49:55it's an expansion in detail of epistemology. Epistemology, sorry, is the study of the processes
00:50:04by which we determine truth and falsehood, right? So, he says it's not a scientific concept,
00:50:10it has been an epistemological indicator. Yes. So, when you get more knowledge,
00:50:17when you get greater detail... I mean, as simple as if your eyes are very blurry,
00:50:27it's hard to read. When your eyes are sharp, it's easy to read. If you're blind, you can't read
00:50:33words. You can obviously feel braille, but you can't read. If your sight is restored,
00:50:36then you get access to more information. Sure, I get that, but... So, the invention of the microscope
00:50:45and the telescope, of course, gave people greater knowledge, greater facts. So, it's
00:50:54pretty impossible to tell that Venus is a planet with the naked eye. It's easy to tell that Venus
00:51:01is a planet with a telescope. You can't see the moons around Jupiter with the naked eye,
00:51:08but you can see them with a telescope. So, you have greater knowledge, which gives you
00:51:18a greater capacity to develop accurate
00:51:24concepts. So, when you can see cells through a microscope, you have a greater ability to
00:51:29determine the difference between living and non-living matter. When you can see the immune
00:51:34system in action, then you are less likely to believe that it is prayer that saves you from
00:51:38disease. So, greater knowledge gives you more accurate concepts, but greater knowledge without
00:51:47concepts is kind of useless. So, I'm not sure what their difference is here.
00:51:54So, this is supposed to be a debate, right? So, the first thing that should be done is defining
00:52:02terms, right? What is human nature? The most essential characteristic of humanity not shared
00:52:06by any other creatures and shared by all human beings, right? That would be the definition,
00:52:10right? So, they haven't defined human nature. They haven't defined language acquisition. They
00:52:14haven't defined teaching. They haven't defined even whether the data that you're getting
00:52:19explicitly is from language instruction or from language instruction mixed in empirical reality.
00:52:24So, is it just somebody telling you what a tree is or is it somebody telling you what a tree is
00:52:28and pointing at a tree, right? Just the uniting of language or concepts with things in the world
00:52:33through sense data. So, I don't know. There's no definitions here. It drives me crazy. So,
00:52:36how can these intellectuals start off a debate that's there for common consumption,
00:52:40that they're paid for by the working class? It's exploitive and predatory and wrong
00:52:47to take millions of dollars from hard-working people and then not even define your goddamn
00:52:51terms so they know what you're talking about. You thieves. All right, Chomsky goes on to say,
00:52:55well, in the first place, if we were able to specify in terms of, let's say, neural networks,
00:53:01the properties of human cognitive structures that make it possible for the child to acquire
00:53:04these complicated systems, then I at least would have no hesitation in describing those properties
00:53:10as being a constituent element of human nature. That is, there is something biologically given.
00:53:16Unchangeable. A foundation for whatever it is that we do with our mental capacities in this case.
00:53:22All right? So, he's saying if you could identify the physical substrata of human cognition,
00:53:29but then you'd have differences in cultures, differences in ethnicities, and so on, right?
00:53:34Not just IQ, but even language structures, right? I mean, in Arabic, there's no word for secular.
00:53:41Everything is based upon religion. So, can you really have conversations in Arabic as robust as
00:53:47you would in English about atheism or non-religious things, right? So then, I think he's saying
00:53:59if we could physically identify in the same way that microscopes allowed you to identify
00:54:05cells and thus further better delineate living and non-living creatures or organisms,
00:54:10then if we could map the physical substrata of these schematics,
00:54:21then that would be closer to human nature. He says, but I would like to pursue a little further
00:54:26the line of developments that you outlined, with which I in fact entirely agree about the concept
00:54:31of life as an organizing concept in the biological sciences. It seems to me, oh God, it seems to me,
00:54:36it seems to me that one might speculate a bit further. Speculate, in this case, since we're
00:54:39talking about the future, not the past, and ask whether the concept of human nature or of innate
00:54:44organizing mechanisms or of intrinsic mental schematism or whatever we want to call it,
00:54:50I don't see much difference between them. But let's call it human nature for shorthand,
00:54:54might not provide for biology the next peak to try to scale after having, at least in the mind
00:54:59of the biologists, though one might perhaps question this, already answered to the satisfaction
00:55:03of some the question of what is life. In other words, to be precise about time,
00:55:10is it possible to give a biological explanation or a physical explanation? Is it possible to
00:55:16characterize in terms of the physical concepts presently available to us the ability of the
00:55:20child to acquire complex systems of knowledge and furthermore critically having acquired such
00:55:24systems of knowledge to make use of this knowledge in the free and creative and remarkably varied
00:55:29ways in which he does? So when you say to be precise, is it possible to this, that or the
00:55:35other? That's not being precise. Speculation is not precision by definition. Can we explain, says
00:55:41Chomsky, in biological terms, ultimately in physical terms, these properties of both acquiring
00:55:46knowledge in the first place and making use of it in the second? I really see no reason to believe
00:55:50that we can. That is, it's an article of faith on the part of scientists since science has explained
00:55:56many other things. It will also explain this. Well, it's a physical characteristic that gives
00:56:04rise to the capacity for human beings to create and act on abstractions. Clearly it's in the brain,
00:56:14it's not in the wrist. Chimps have wrists but they can't do it. So it's only in the human brain
00:56:20that concept formation exists and so clearly it is a physical substrata of the brain that allows
00:56:27for this. It's not an article of faith to saying that which is a product of a physical substrata
00:56:34can be identified with greater details of that physical substrata.
00:56:39That's not an article of faith. Now of course consciousness is the most complicated thing
00:56:44that we study and consciousness is of course consciousness studying itself. The brain is
00:56:49studying itself so there's, you know, there's challenges of course, right? But if something is,
00:56:53the consciousness is a physical effect of the material brain and therefore there must be
00:56:59properties of the material brain that gives rise to consciousness. Saying that it's impossible for
00:57:03us or it's an article of faith saying that we can figure out consciousness by studying the brain,
00:57:08well no, that's not an article of faith because consciousness is an effect of the physical brain.
00:57:13Now might it be ridiculously complicated and take a long time?
00:57:18Maybe. Might it be, let's just take an outside case, might consciousness be so complicated
00:57:23that we will never, even with AI, even with the most brilliant minds working on it for thousands
00:57:27of years, are we going to say that human consciousness is so complicated that we're
00:57:31never going to be able to figure out its physical substrata? Okay, but that still doesn't mean that
00:57:36the physical substrata does not give rise to consciousness. It just means I can't figure
00:57:40out how it happens, right? I mean some primitive savage who turns on a computer and figures out
00:57:47how to use it will not understand how the computer works. I mean most people don't understand how
00:57:53computers work but that doesn't mean that it's magic or that the effects of the computer has
00:57:59nothing to do with the computer itself. So even if we can't explain with AI, with, I don't know,
00:58:07subatomic details and understandings and modelings, let's say that we can never ever
00:58:12figure out how the brain produces human consciousness, we still know that the brain
00:58:17produces human consciousness. So, all right. And Noam goes on to say, in a sense one might say
00:58:23that this is very into the body-mind problem but if we look back at the way in which science has
00:58:27scaled various peaks and at the way in which the concept of life was finally acquired by science
00:58:32after having been beyond its vision for a long period, then I think we notice at many points
00:58:36in history, and in fact the 17th and 18th centuries are particularly clear examples,
00:58:40that scientific advances were possible precisely because the domains of physical science
00:58:45was, the domain of physical science was itself enlarged. Classical cases are Newton's
00:58:49gravitational forces to the Cartesian's action at a distance was a mystical concept and in fact
00:58:54to Newton himself it was an occult quality, a mystical entity which didn't belong within science
00:58:59to the common sense of a later generation action at a distance has been incorporated within science.
00:59:05Right, I mean Aristotle of course went kind of mad trying to figure out the tides because he
00:59:09couldn't conceive of the fact that the moon might have an effect, right? And gravitational effects
00:59:20are not limited like sound takes some time to travel to the moon, right? A quarter of a second
00:59:32or something like that, right? No sorry light, that's light, sorry that's light. Light is eight
00:59:36minutes from sun to earth. So sound travels at what 600 miles an hour or something like that
00:59:41but if the earth suddenly dematerialized the moon would break orbit immediately.
00:59:47Immediately. So, all right.
00:59:55So he says, Noam says, what happened was that the notion of body, the notion of the physical
01:00:01had changed. To a Cartesian, a strict Cartesian, if such a person appeared today it would appear
01:00:07that there is no explanation of the behavior of the heavenly bodies. Certainly there is no
01:00:10explanation for the phenomena that are explained in terms of electromagnetic force, let's say.
01:00:16But by the extension of physical science to incorporate hitherto unavailable concepts,
01:00:20entirely new ideas, it became possible to successively build more and more complicated
01:00:24structures that incorporated larger range of phenomena. For example, it's certainly not true
01:00:31that the physics of the Cartesians is able to explain, let's say, the behavior of elementary
01:00:34particles in physics just as it's unable to explain the concepts of life. Similarly, I think
01:00:40one might ask the question whether physical science as known today, including biology, incorporates
01:00:45within itself the principles and the concepts that will enable it to give an account of innate human
01:00:50intellectual capacities and even more profoundly of the ability to make use of these capacities
01:00:55under conditions of freedom in the way which humans do. I see no particular reason to believe
01:01:00that biology or physics now contain those concepts, and it may be that to scale the next
01:01:04peak, to make the next step, they will have to focus on this organizing concept. They may very
01:01:08well have to broaden their scope. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm out of juice with this stuff. It's just
01:01:13wretched. And then what happens is the moderator jumps in and then Chomsky goes on for another
01:01:20a couple of pages. I don't really have anything larger to say about all of this,
01:01:28other than it seems to me entirely elementary stuff dressed up in a whole bunch of foggy,
01:01:34pseudo-precise language. So anyway, if you find this stuff interesting, I find it an interesting
01:01:40exercise though. I run out of juice with these guys fairly rapidly. I just find it pretty
01:01:47gross. And again, exploitive and revoltingly immoral to not provide value to the average
01:01:54working class person from whom you are ripping off their labor for your pampered and intellectual
01:01:59existence. I just think that's absolutely horrible. But yeah, tell me what you think,
01:02:03if you find this kind of stuff interesting. What did I get to? I got to page 13 of 214,
01:02:0812% through. But yeah, there's no definitions, and it seems to me kind of boring to say,
01:02:16yeah, when you have better instruments, you can develop more accurate scientific concepts. I mean,
01:02:19it really doesn't take that long to say, but apparently it's considered radiantly
01:02:23brilliant by these two people. Eww, gross. All right, let me know what you think.
01:02:28freedomain.com to help out the show. Thank you. Lots of love from up here. Talk to you soon. Bye.