Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder
of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive
science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and
commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of
philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to
which he has contributed for over half a century. In clear, precise,
and non-technical language, Chomsky elaborates on fifty years of
scientific development in the study of language, sketching how his own
work has implications for the origins of language, the close relations
that language bears to thought, and its eventual biological basis. He
expounds and criticizes many alternative theories, such as those that
emphasize the social, the communicative, and the referential aspects
of language. Chomsky reviews how new discoveries about language
overcome what seemed to be highly problematic assumptions in the past.
He also investigates the apparent scope and limits of human cognitive
capacities and what the human mind can seriously investigate, in the
light of history of science and philosophical reflection and current
understanding. Moving from language and mind to society and politics,
he concludes with a searching exploration and philosophical defense of
a position he describes as "libertarian socialism," tracing its links
to anarchism and the ideas of John Dewey, and even briefly to the
ideas of Marx and Mill, demonstrating its conceptual growth out of our
historical past and urgent relation to matters of the present.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780231540926
Publisert
2015
Utgiver
Vendor
Columbia University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter