Chomsky and Evolutionary Theory
by NoShips on March 12th, 2017, 3:29 am
A few months ago, yours truly and several other members got embroiled in a mishmash of threads on the topic of "evolutionary theory" (hereafter ET), and, in particular, my own dissatisfaction thereof. Among my litany of animadversions were:
(1) Predictive impotence -- ET, as far as I can see anyway, yields few or no non-trivial, non-vague predictions or retrodictions.
(2) Explanatory vacuity -- those most able to evolve ... um, evolve
(3) Circularity -- the theory seems to me (and fellow naysayers) riddled with vicious circularities
(4) Vagueness -- There appears to be no consensus on precisely what ET is. For example, does Gould's punctuated equilibrium constitute a rival to ET? Or is punctuated equilibrium properly seen as a part of ET? The lack of any definitive formulation defies all attempts at refutation, even before we bring to bear the philosophical considerations militating against the doctrine of naive falsification that bedevil any scientific theory.
(5) The hostility to criticism evinced by ET's overzealous votaries, doubtless a reaction to religiously-motivated skepticism, but which nonetheless I do not detect in other branches of science, and find disturbingly inimical to the spirit of modest scientific fallibility.
I had tried, to little avail I fear, to persuade our members that there do exist a small, though nonetheless significant, cabal of scholars who, like myself, find ET inadequate; either on grounds of factual inaccuracy (e.g., mismatch of fossil record with Darwinian processes, inability of Darwinian processes to perform the duties incumbent upon them, etc), or plain vacuity and vagueness (i.e., ET is compatible with any observation; nothing is ruled out).
The list of anti-ET conspirators contains such luminaries as Jerry Fodor (philosopher), Michael Denton (biologist), David Berlinski (polymath), NoShips (castaway), and ... wait for it ... Noam Chomsky (pianist).
I ushered Chomsky into our previous skirmishes, since judging from my own desultory reading over the years, his attitude to Darwinian/neo-Darwinian models of evolution might, as I see it, best be described as lukewarm. At the time, though, I was only able to adduce one quote, viz:
"In fact, the processes by which the human mind achieved its present stage of complexity and its particular form of innate organisation are a total mystery, as much so as the analogous questions about the physical or mental organisation of any other complex organism. It is perfectly safe to attribute this development to "natural selection," so long as we realise that there is no substance to this assertion, that it amounts to nothing more than a belief that there is some naturalistic explanation for these phenomena. The problem of accounting for evolutionary development is, in some ways, rather like that of explaining successful abduction. The laws that determine possible successful mutation and the nature of complex organisms are as unknown as the laws that determine the choice of hypotheses."
As I recall, my suggestion that the aforementioned free-thinking macrocephalic and cunning linguist might be hostile, or at least apathetic, to ET was met with some incredulity by at least one member (waves to Eclogite :-) ). To this effect, I now add a few quotes from a book I'm currently ensconced in, "The End of Science", by Scientific American staff writer John Horgan: a collection of his interviews over the years with a cocktail of scientific and philosophical luminaries:
"But Chomsky has never been comfortable with Darwinian accounts of human behavior. He accepts that natural selection may have played SOME role in the evolution of language and other human attributes. But given the enormous gap between human language and the relatively simple communication systems of other animals, and given our fragmentary knowledge of the past, science can tell us little about how language evolved. Just because language is adaptive now, Chomsky elaborates, does not mean that it arose in response to selection pressures. Language may have been an incidental by-product of a spurt in intelligence that only later was coopted by for various uses" - Horgan (p 151)
It seems, then, that whatever other misgivings Chomsky may harbor regarding ET, his own hypothesis of an innate language organ requires a saltation, nay an exaptive saltation (is that an oxymoron? a contradiction? --anyway, all of a sudden we got really smart), that Darwinian-based models forbid. Moreover...
"The problem, according to Chomsky, is that 'Darwinian theory is so loose it can incorporate anything they discover'." (also p 151)
... which ("looseness") exactly mirrors my own view: Anything is compatible with ET; nothing is ruled out. So,
(i) Thoughts, corrections, criticisms, glazed doughnuts welcome
(ii) What does ET rule out, if anything? (I'll need to know what ET is first, of course). Because, like Chomsky, I'm afraid anything we observe is simply absorbed effortlessly by the ET faithful, much as those Bible Bashers remain unsurprised by pretty butterflies, as they are unfazed by children with cancer. Is compatibility not an execrably low standard for evidence?
(iii) I've noticed recently that (at least some) Americans pronounce mirror as mee-ror. Can you stop doing that, please? It's annoying. :-)