Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Noam Chomsky on Consciousness, Sam Harris, Mandating Vaccines, Husserl, and Kripkenstein

Episode Date: September 11, 2021

Sponsors: Go to https://curiositystream.thld.co/TOE and use code TOE to save 25% off today. https://brilliant.org/TOE for 20% off. http://algo.com for supply chain AI. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:10 [finding blanks] Which of your beliefs do you hold most tenaciously that has the least evidence? 00:03:45 [Mohit Mukherji] Is phenomenology (in the tradition of Husserl etc.) an adequate way to study consciousness 00:05:50 [Jake Watson] Can you ask him why he thinks Hume was a rationalist? 00:08:05 [Laura] Retrocausality and free will 00:09:55 [Cybmor] Russell's descriptivist theory, Kripke's causal theory, semantic externalism 00:18:36 [Kelly Gerling] What does it mean to make a "plan" cognitively? 00:20:47 [Joe Smith] Is recursion an intrinsic and universal property of all human E - language? (as opposed to I - Language) 00:22:39 [Sam Thompson] Stone Duality and studying formal languages topologically 00:25:40 [Chris Langan] Pre-linguistic consciousness / insight 00:28:39 [Chris Langan] Consciousness and language association 00:30:37 [Peter Glinos] Incompatibility between multiculturalism and "progress" 00:34:18 [John Doe] Debate with Sam Harris on the Middle East? 00:37:38 [Someone] Mandated vaccination / why trust the gov't and large pharmaceutical corporations? 00:46:10 [Harjot Singh] Chomsky's thoughts on Stoicism 00:47:48 [John Clever] Heidegger, Husserl, and Kierkegaard / Continental philosophy in general 00:48:28 [George Holliday] Eating animals contradicts being moral + animal agriculture in general00:54:57 [John Tillo] Speaking a new language after brain trauma 00:56:35 [Karl Héðinn] The legacy concerning his Universal grammar + people calling Noam an “essentialist” 01:02:45 [Debra] What questions does Noam have for us? 01:05:36 [William Patterson] On the Kripkenstein Rule Following Paradox

Noam Chomsky is a linguist, a philosopher, a political activist, a social critic, a historian, and a cognitive scientist, often called the founder of modern linguistics. The fields of analytical philosophy and cognitive science are replete with references to Chomsky's work and thoughts. Click on the timestamp in the description if you'd like to skip this intro. This is the sixth time that I've spoken to Noam Chomsky. Perhaps this channel should be called Theories of Noam. For those new to this channel, my name is Kurt J. Mungle. I'm a filmmaker with a background in math and physics, explicating or interested in explicating what are called theories of everything from a theoretical physics perspective, but as well as analyzing the possible role consciousness

has to the fundamental laws of the universe, provided these laws exist at all and are knowable to us. If you enjoy witnessing and engaging in real-time conversation with other people on the topics of consciousness, philosophy, and psychology, physics even, then do consider visiting the Discord and the subreddit, which are linked below. There's also a link to the Patreon, that is patreon.com slash Kurt Jaimungal, if you'd like to support this podcast, as the patrons and the sponsors are the only reason that I'm able to do this full- time. It would be extremely difficult for me to go in depth on topics such as string theory or loop quantum gravity or coming up geometric unity,

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science from something to be feared to a delightful experience of guided discovery. You can even learn group theory, which is what's being referred to when you hear that the standard model is predicated on U1 cross SU2 cross SU3. Those are called Lie groups, technically. Visit brilliant.org slash toe, T-O-E, to get 20% off the annual subscription. I recommend that you don't stop before four lessons, and I think you'll be greatly surprised at the ease at which you can now comprehend subjects that you previously had trouble grokking. The third sponsor is joining us for the first time, and that's CuriosityStream.

Now, CuriosityStream is like the Netflix for nerds, or Hulu for history buffs or the Disney Plus for the scientist in you. Go to CuriosityStream.com slash toe slash T-O-E for access to the world's top documentaries and nonfiction series. More on CuriosityStream later. Thank you and enjoy this desultory conversation. Ask me anything with Noam Chomsky. I think you reach a lot of people on interesting topics that it's worth thinking about. No better answer than that. Thank you, thank you. Okay, so can we go live now?

Yeah. All right. Okay, if you're watching and you can see this type metal gear. Metal gear. This one comes from Finding Blanks. Which of your beliefs, Noam Chomsky, do you hold most tenaciously that has the least evidence? Well, that's hard to answer. First of all, there aren't many beliefs that I hold tenaciously. I think they're all subject to question and change. And as far as I'm aware, the ones I hold most confidently are held on the basis of evidence. So I don't know how to answer. are held on the basis of evidence. So I don't know how to answer.

Okay, now we'll go to question number three. Mohit wants to know, is phenomenology, such as in the tradition of Husserl, an adequate way to study consciousness, or are there other better ways of studying consciousness today? I think it's a way to study the nature of consciousness, try to spell out in as much detail and subtlety as we can what we're actually conscious of. But there are plenty of other ways to study consciousness. So for example, efforts to find its neural basis, questions about how far consciousness reaches,

do plants have consciousness? If you're a panpsychic, do atoms have consciousness? Lots of ways to study the phenomenon. It's actually worth mentioning on the side that It's actually worth mentioning on the side that concern for the phenomenon of consciousness, a kind of prime concern, is a pretty modern development. Until probably the 17th century, there wasn't much discussion of consciousness, and the early discussions in the following centuries were mostly about consciousness of what's in our minds, what internal consciousness of the inner workings of our minds. The modern concern with qualia, you know, what's it like to see the color red and so on, that's pretty much 20th century.

And it's moved to the center of a lot of philosophical discussion and debate, even, called the hard problem, only in very recent times. I don't see much basis for it. Plenty of other deeper problems. But anyway, there are many ways to study it. The next question is four, number four, from Jake Watson. Can you ask him why he thinks Hume was a rationalist? It depends what we mean by rationalist. The term is pretty loose, but one crucial element in the rationalist-empiricist semi-conflict, they overlap a lot, was the question of the primacy that you give to internal structures of the mind, what were loosely called innate ideas. But remember the term idea was used very broadly,

thoughts and so on. So how much is internally structured? Well, Hume believed a lot. His answer to the paradox of induction that was prime element of his thinking was animal instinct. We're just built a certain way, and that way we make certain, draw certain conclusions from a variety of evidence, even though there's no logical basis for it. So from that point of view, though there's no logical basis for it. So from that point of view, and he was also interested in studying the internal built-in nature of the mind, what he called the secret springs and principles by which the mind functions. That's continuous with rationalist thinking in some ways. I don't really think historical figures can be easily split into one or another category. Nobody could be a pure empiricist. It's incoherent. Some people profess it, but they don't mean it. As soon as you look, it turns out it's not the case there, considering the internal nature of the

mind at many points. Leibniz pointed this out in his critique of John Locke in his new essays. He says, look, there's reference to an invocation of innate structure all over the place, as there has to be. Okay, this question comes from the chat, so it's not on your list. This is Laura Sosa, who says, forgive a novice here, what are your thoughts on retrocausality, quantum entanglement, time perception, and precognition studies? Well, it's an interesting question about the only argument I've ever seen from the sciences on why there can't be free will is The argument that if in our life experience X precedes systematically Y and we take X to cause Y, and if it seems that we're carrying out an act, say, am I lifting my finger just because I decided to do it. At some level, maybe not the level of experience, there's an argument that time is reversible,

which means that the lifting my finger could have preceded the decision to do it, which seems to conflict with the idea that I decided to do it. I personally don't think that's a very persuasive argument, but it is at least one argument, I think probably the only argument that comes from the sciences against the universal belief, which we all have, whether we deny it or not, that we can make decisions about our next action. Number five on the list, Saib Moore asks, do you think that the many theories of reference and meaning that philosophers have developed over the years, such as Russell's descriptive theory, Kripke's causal theory, semantic externalism,

etc., do you think they have any real-life impact on how we use language? If not, what's the point? Well, I don't think their purpose is to have a real-life impact. Their goal is to explore and understand the nature of, in particular, how language relates to the world, or use of language relates to the world somehow, obviously. Question is how? That's the question of reference. The question of meaning is much broader. Meaning is a term that actually is very hard to translate into other languages. Most other languages don't even have that term. But it's a very broad and loose term about the general significance of things that we do. So what about these particular theories?

Russell's descriptivist theory is basically an effort, the substantive crucial part of it was his theory of singular definite expressions. And that's been quite useful in undermining That's been quite useful in undermining misinterpretation of sentences based on their surface properties. That was a useful contribution to understanding the semantics of natural language. The other ideas that are proposed here, my own view is that they're based on a false assumption, which undermines them. The false assumption is that language has a notion of reference or denotation. Now here we have to make a distinction. Distinction was made sharply 70, 80 years ago by Peter Strawson and others. There's a relation between an object in a system for language, an internal object, something in our minds, like the word river to refer to the Rolito River, which I cross on the way to work. And that's very different. That's an act. References are relation. There's no doubt that human life includes the activity of referring.

Like I can refer to the chair you're sitting on. But that doesn't imply that language has a relation of reference, a relation between say words and mind external objects. And I don't think it does. When you look closely at the meaning of words, they don't refer to mind external objects. So if I take a simple sentence like, he's pushing an open door, as a literal meaning and a metaphoric reading. Let's take the literal meaning. He's pushing an open door. Well, there's one referential phrase there, open door. What's that? I mean, a door is a material object. An open door is an abstract conception. You can't tell by looking, a physicist looking at the world

can't tell whether it's an open door. Whether it's an open door depends on how it functions, how you tend to use it, whether you expect it to be closed tomorrow and so on. So there's no such thing in the world as an open door. And the same applies to rivers. You can take the river that I cross on the way to work, Rolito River, it happens to be, I live in Arizona.

I've almost never seen any water in it. It has water only when there's a very heavy rain. So you can be the Rolito River without having any water. You can be the Rolito River if the course is changed or reversed. If its walls are put on the side and it's used for commercial vessels. It's not a river, it's a canal. You can actually harden the surface and use it for commuting downtown. And then it's a highway. So you can make huge changes and it's still a river. You can make slight changes.

It's not a river. There's no object in the world that has those properties. These things were all investigated to some extent in classical Greece, like Aristotle discussed the notion house. I should say that I'm taking a little bit of license here. For Aristotle, this was a metaphysical question. What is a house? If we shift to the 17th century cognitive revolution, these questions were reinterpreted in cognitive terms, and that's what I'm accepting. So what is the concept house? And Aristotle's argument is, it's an amalgam of matter and form. The matter is the bricks, the timbers, and so on,

that a physicist could find. The form is the design, the intention of the architect, the characteristic use, the central nature of what makes it a house and not something else. Well, that's in the mind. And the collective minds, in fact, can't observe that. You take a close look at any word in the language, I think it's the same. There just is no relation of reference. That's a mistaken concept of contemporary philosophy of language.

Shows up in the names of books like Quine's Word and Object and so on. I think it's just a mistaken conception. And the causal theory, the theory of, you know, semantic externalism are all based on this concept. And therefore, I just don't think they apply to language. They may apply to invented languages. In fact, they may well apply to the language of science, or the language of metamathematics. For science, it's kind of a norm that we try to create theories

that do have a relation of reference. So if a quantum theorist is talking about particles, they may not actually know what they are, which they don't, in fact, but they at least hope that they exist independently of the mind. When a linguist talks about phonemes, let's say, he's hoping that such things exist somewhere in the world, maybe in the brain. But at least the goal of science is to create systems which do have reference.

But natural language is not invented by people for a purpose. It's a natural object. It doesn't have goals, and it's what it is. Although we use it for referring, it doesn't seem to have reference. Okay, the next question, number six, Kelly Gerling. In 1960, Nome's co-author and colleague, George A. Miller, published this book, Plans and Structure of Behavior, along with Eugene Gallanter. Okay, has the formal core idea of the plan as part of general cognitive functioning been upheld or shown to be false for humans, for mammals generally, what are its applications and usefulness, if any? Well, it was an interesting idea, I think mostly written by George Miller with a collaboration. It was an interesting approach to cognition, trying to apply ideas that had been developed in the study of language mainly.

And as far as I'm aware, it hasn't been developed any further or applied in any significant way. It's very hard to say what a plan is or how many plans there are. The same, say, walking across a room. Suppose I plan to walk across the room. How many plans am I making? Well, thanks to a gentleman named Zeno a few years ago, we know that there are infinitely many plans.

In fact, continuously many plans. that there are infinitely many plans, in fact continuously many plans. I have a plan to walk halfway across, then halfway to the next distance, and so on. And everything we call a plan is just a description at some level we're choosing of a variety of activities and intentions. variety of activities and intentions. And there's no real way to determine how many plans there are, what the plans are. It's a multivariable issue. And I don't think, as far as I know, that the ideas have been clarified, sharpened, or pursued much beyond George Miller's original conception. Okay, the next, number seven. Joe Smith, is recursion an intrinsic and universal property of all human E language as opposed to I language? You may want to tell what the difference between

E and I is. Yeah, well, actually I invented the terms, so I guess I have some proprietary interest in them. But the term E-language is constantly used, but not in the way that I defined it. So I'm kind of at a loss to discuss it. I defined e-language just anything else. I think we have a coherent, useful, important notion of i-language, and there are many other ideas about language, whatever they are, so call them e-language, externalized language. I also added that I didn't think there would ever be any coherent account of some notion of a language. I think that's been pretty well verified. It's now 30 years. I've never seen a 35 years, actually almost 40 years, and I've never seen a coherent definition of characterization of e-language. E-language is used to refer to the actual set of noises that people produce,

but that's not a coherent notion. That changes every time you and I are talking, That changes every time you and I are talking or somebody else is talking. So it's just not a serious notion. And I don't think there's anything to say about it. So I really can't answer. People who think they understand what e-language is, they're the ones who'd have to answer. Okay, we'll get to question number one. Back at the top.

This one comes from Sam Thompson. What are your thoughts on Marshall Stone's maxim, one must always topologize, applied to formal language theory? Specifically, just how much insight do you think can be gained by using topological structures in studying certain well-behaved classes of formal languages?

For those watching, this is referred to as stone duality. Yeah. Well, formal languages or the study of formal languages is part of mathematics. It's not part of linguistics. It has some relation to the study of language, but it's pretty weak. So you have to ask the same question you would ask about

any other mathematical concept. So, if we go back to the mid-19th century, say, the first time there were precise definitions given of the central notion of mathematics, the notion of limit. Newton worked with it, Leibniz worked with it, but they had no clear notion, so the proofs are kind of vague. But by the mid-19th century, there was a need to really sharpen, clarify what we meant by limit. And there were topological approaches which were successful. So the most, the big integration and so on, you use topological approach to the notion of limit. So there the answer to the maxim would be yes in that case.

When applied to formal language theory, we have to ask the same question. Is there a topological approach that gives us some insight into the nature of these formal systems? Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, but there's nothing to say about it until the argument is given for a topological analysis. I don't think there are any, but maybe that there are, and I don't know about them. It's at this point you may be a bit lost, and that's okay, there's quite a bit of jargon. To learn a new subject intensely, it helps to get an overview, and CuriosityStream acts as an ancillary to that quest. By furnishing a variety of documentaries on the topics of physics and consciousness, I recommend you watch Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places, which combines quite a few interests of this channel, namely the unification quest in physics, alien life,

and even artificial intelligence. Go to curiositystream.com slash toe, that is T-O-E, for unlimited access to some of the world's top documentaries and non-fiction series. Use the promo code TOE, T-O-E, and you'll save 25%, which comes out to about $14.99 a year, slightly over a dollar a month, and that trounces any of the other video streaming platforms. The link is below, and do let me know what you think of Stephen Hawking's favorite places. This next question comes from Chris Langan. It's not on the list that you have. To what extent is scientific discovery pre-linguistic, especially with regard to intuitive flashes of genius? Well, I think we can extend that question. To what extent is all of the most prosaic human thought pre-linguistic?

Well, actually we know something about that, not a lot, but there's very strong evidence that most of our use of language, what you and I are doing now involves mental operations that are beyond the level of consciousness. Well, beyond the level of consciousness, we can't introspect into them. We have no idea what's going on in our minds. You can only study it from the outside, the way you study from what's called the third person perspective. You can study it the way I can study the chair that you're sitting on. But I don't have any

internal understanding of it. Now what's going on in our minds? I mean there are two ways to try to understand it. One is introspection, the other is scientific canal theory. From scientific research and research in linguistics, we can get some account

of what's going on in our minds. Introspectively, all we get is that fragments are coming to consciousness and now we can build expressions out of them. So what's going on internally to the extent that we understand it is basically linguistics, but that just tells us that there's probably plenty more that we don't understand. Like, for example, suppose I'm trying to decide what's the best way to drive to work today. I don't know about you, but I use visual images. I sort of make a visual map of the layout of the town, where there's likely to be a traffic jam, where there's likely to be a detour, and then I make up some plan, back to plans. But how much of this is linguistic? We don't have any way to answer.

All we know is somehow these things are going on in our mind. We can introspect a little bit. There's some scientific results, but it's an area that's extremely difficult to explore. Okay, the next question also comes from Chris Lang, and it's related to this. How does language relate to consciousness? Is linguistic self-reference a useful concept in this regard? Well, as I said before, consciousness is a pretty recent topic of extensive thought.

Going back to what I just said in answer to the last question, one thing we know about language and consciousness is that most of language use is inaccessible to consciousness. and that we're consciously aware of, is a very superficial reflection of mental activities going on in the mind, many of which, to the extent we understand them, are linguistic in character, but they're not reaching consciousness. So among the areas of consciousness, there are things like Among the areas of consciousness, there are things like my seeing that there's a chair behind you, which I assume you're sitting on, though I of course don't know it. I don't even know that there's a chair. Maybe it's a painting on the back wall, but I interpret it as a chair that you're sitting on.

That's conscious. I understand the questions that you're reading, that's language and consciousness, but how far language reaches to consciousness, or how far consciousness reaches to language, are pretty open questions, or consciousness reaches the language, are pretty open questions with some of the properties I mentioned. Razor blades are like diving boards. The longer the board, the more the wobble, the more the wobble, the more nicks, cuts, scrapes. A bad shave isn't a blade problem, it's an extension problem.

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that the state should actively intervene in the preservation of cultures and as much as they do they take on the assumption that these cultures are equal, or at least equally worth preserving. However, progressives believe that culture can improve, that the culture of today can be better tomorrow. This takes the opposite presupposition that not all cultures are equal, because if the culture of tomorrow wasn't going to be better than the culture of today we can't call it progress how can multiculturalism and progress be compatible let's start with equality of people so from one point of view people are for a decent human being at least, people are equal. They have equal

rights. Like I have the same right to pole vault as an Olympic champion, as we both have the same right to do it, but I'll never be an Olympic champion. We're not equal in that respect. It's not too late, no. I'll be lucky if I can go a foot high, you know. But nevertheless, from one point of view, we're all equal. From another point of view, we're quite different. And I think pretty much the same is true in the case of cultures and languages.

True in the case of cultures and languages. Here the questioner crucially put in, at the very least, equally worth preserving. Well, turning that to individuals, at the very least, my right to pole vault is worth preserving. If I find it fun to try, okay. That doesn't mean it's equal to the Olympic champion. And I think the same is true here. Each language, each culture has its own intrinsic value. And the people engaged in that culture using that language have every right to preserve and enrich their own tradition, right to preserve and enrich their own tradition, including enrich, which means making it better. Like maybe they can improve the complex kinship systems they have, but the kinship systems are worth preserving for them because it's a crucial part of their lives, for all of us, because it gives us insight into the nature of

human cognitive capacity, human nature, human relations. So I think, though on the surface, it looks like a contradiction, I think it's resolvable. Every culture, every language, like every person, should be equally worth preserving, meaning granted all appropriate rights, including the right to develop and flourish and improve. I'm not going to do it, but the chance to improve my pole vaulting from one foot to a foot and a half should have that right. And the same with my culture, a lot of ways in which it would be improved. I think we could mention plenty of them, but they're all aspects of the human general, human capacity, which have the right to flourish and develop in their own ways. Question number 44. While I don't like to ask you political questions, we'll get somewhat political. John Doe asks, would Noam ever consider giving Sam Harris a televised discussion on the role of religion and the U.S. military adventurism in creating the present situation in the Middle East? Well, I often have discussions on these matters.

I don't know about televised. Television doesn't do these things, but on podcasts, on programs like this, constantly discussing questions of this kind. I had a couple this morning, in fact. Should it be with Sam Harris? I don't know why. The little I know about him, I don't think it would be a very valuable discussion, but I'm involved in them all the time. Of course, I select only a small fraction. I may not have enough invitations for a 96-hour day easily, so I have to pick just a few and pick by priorities. I pick this one, not other ones. It's my judgment about what's value to pursue. And without wanting to comment on Sam Harris from the little I know about him, it hasn't seemed to me worth pursuing. Well, I'm grateful that you said yes to this. We'll go on to the

next one, which is 45. When commenting regarding Sam Harris before, you mentioned that he's racist. However, criticizing certain interpretations of Islam isn't the same as criticizing Muslims. How can one criticize interpretations of Islam without being called a racist? The way Muslims commonly do, the way they, I mean, I'm Jewish. I criticize many aspects of Judaism. Doesn't mean I'm an anti-Semite. The most dedicated religious Jew criticizes other aspects of Judaism. So the Orthodox raven in Israel, which basically runs all religious affairs in the country, they're very harshly critical of the kind of Judaism that is pervasive in the United States. Reform Judaism, conservative Judaism. As far as they're concerned, that's not even Judaism. It's heresy.

Well, they're not racist. They're not anti-Semites. So that's the way to do it. There are also other ways of doing it, where you say Islam by its nature is evil, destructive, one or another thing. That's racist. Does one have to be Muslim to criticize Islam,

or can one not be of the faith and still criticize it? I can perfectly well criticize the jihadi ideology, for example, and many other aspects of Islam or Christianity. There are elements of Christianity which, in my view, are abhorrent, so I can criticize them without being a racist. Okay, one more political question. That's the next one, 46. Number 46. Someone asks, Chomsky hates big pharma and big corporations, but wants to insist people patronize Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and so on. Why trust these companies and the government in this area, given there are many independent virologists and vaccine developers who advise against mass vaccination during a pandemic, such as Geert van den Bosch. Where is that? Question number 46. 46?

Yep. Okay. Why these companies and the government, given that there are some independent virologists and vaccine developers who oppose vaccination? Well, the answer of why I'm in favor of vaccination is because of the overwhelming evidence vaccination radically, radically reduces infection and cuts back, radically cuts back severe disease and contagion, and also reduces the pool for mutation. I think the evidence on that is quite overwhelming, has nothing to do with your attitudes towards big pharma or government. Just simply take a look at the map that appears every day in the New York Times about hotspots this morning, for example. There's remarkable facts shown.

It's remarkable facts, Sean. The places that are the worst hotspots are shown in red and less bright colors for others. One thing that's striking, dramatic about the global hotspots is that the United States is the prime offender in the world. There are a few other places scattered around that are red, but the big dark red areas are the United States. That is an astonishing fact. This is the richest country in the world, most powerful country in the world, has natural advantages that no other country has, and it's the worst place in the world for dealing with the pandemic. If you look more closely at the map of the United States, you see exactly why. The red spots are

essentially the old Confederacy and a few outliers like Wyoming and Idaho with Republican, run by Republicans. What does that tell you? You look a little closer, you see these are the states where people are refusing vaccination. Then if you go even closer, you look into the hospitals in Alabama, Idaho, what you find is desperate, totally desperate nurses and doctors trying somehow to deal with the flood of cases, almost entirely unvaccinated. Overwhelming. out yesterday of the sharp rise in COVID infections among children too young to get vaccinated.

Now, these are preliminary studies, so just a surmise so far. But so far, what they show is exactly what you could predict. These are the children of unvaccinated parents. Okay. Now, around the world, you find the same thing. That's why health officials everywhere are calling for more extreme vaccination. Now, there are a few people who say there are some of those mentioned who say well there are possible dangers in vaccination. That's true of vaccination generally. It's true of polio, it's true of measles. There are possible dangers. But now we turn to an interesting sociological phenomenon. In the past, there have been plenty of vaccinations and vaccine mandates. So for schools in the United States, I presume other countries, there's a vaccine mandate for sending a kid to school. You can't send a kid to school who hasn't had the polio vaccine, which is correct, that protects children from the danger.

Now, yes, there's some danger in polio vaccines. It's always been understood. Same kind of dangers that are pointing out today. But nobody ever paid attention to it before. So we have a strange sociological phenomenon. Right now, there are major movements, major movements, most of them on the far right, but the left as well, saying we have to pay attention to the kind of dangers that have always been known. And we have to pay attention to the few outliers who say, well, maybe these

dangers outweigh the benefit of vaccinations, and we should ignore the fact that literally millions of people are dying from lack of vaccination. Now that's a sociological problem. Why is it different now than ever before? Why is there a group of people who eagerly latch on eagerly latch on to any straw of evidence that there might be something wrong with mass vaccination. And there are always such straws. Why is that happening? My suspicion is it's another reflection of a collapse of the social order and a serious decline of the general environment of rational discourse and civilized interchange shows up in many areas. And I suspect that this is part of it.

Do you think we should force vaccines or mandate them? I don't think we should force vaccines, but I think we should protect people from those who decide, I want to be free to endanger others. If people don't want to be vaccinated, fine. They should have the decency to segregate themselves. Go somewhere. Don't go to a concert where you endanger others. Okay? Don't go to a concert where you endanger others.

If you don't want your kid to have a polio vaccine, you're not forced to do it. But don't send them to school to endanger other children. So I'm in favor of vaccine mandates. I think they're crucial for ending, at least trying to contain this disease, at least trying to contain this disease, which is rampant in the United States because of the strange sociological phenomenon that I mentioned, the unusual breakdown of the social order and rational civilized discourse, which we see in many areas. Take a look at the polls of Republicans. It's astonishing. About a quarter of Republicans think the government is run by an elite of sadistic pedophiles who are carrying out experiments on young children.

who are carrying out experiments on young children. I mean, it's total madness. You know, this is higher than the percentage of people who support organized religions. It runs through, I mean, a majority of Republicans say they're not going to get vaccinated. Well, there are also sectors of the left which have been caught up in this strange disorder and, as I said, are eagerly seeking any fragment of evidence, however weak,

that might question the overwhelming evidence of the efficacy of vaccines. overwhelming evidence of the efficacy of vaccines. Okay, we'll get to question 43. Harjot Singh, I don't think I've ever seen Chomsky talk about stoicism, and I'm interested to hear what he has to say. Well, the reason I haven't talked about it is I don't have much to say about it, except Wittgenstein's adage in the last sentence of the Tractatus, if you have nothing to say, keep quiet. So I could comment on it, but I have nothing of any interest to say about it.

Okay, we'll get to question 303030 from John Clever. What are your thoughts on the dominance of the analytical school of philosophy over thinkers like Heidegger, Husserl, Kierkegaard? Why aren't there more continental universities? That means, I presume, in the United States, or in the West generally, in the Anglophone areas in the United States. and most other educated people have found more interest in the analytics school than in Heidegger, Husserl and Kierkegaard. You can study them. There are universities where you can major in them, do a PhD in them, but it's not the dominant school in the anglophone areas. It's mainly Britain and the United States and Australia.

The reasons are what I said, people found greater interest in it. Speaking personally, I share that opinion. I find, not Heidegger, who I don't get much out of, but Husserl and Kierkegaard are interesting. Husserl could be considered in the analytic tradition. I don't know why he's put there. Kierkegaard, for me, is interesting literature. It's not what I would call the kind of... It doesn't raise the kind of philosophical questions that I'm interested in.

But read it, learn something from it, fine. Okay, we'll go to 28. George Holiday. What is your view on animal agriculture? How can one reconcile supporting immoral industries while trying to live

a morally good life? Well, that's a fact about life. We cannot live our lives without carrying out actions which we know are immoral, like talking on this discussion, which is using energy, and use of energy is destroying the environment. I talked before about driving to work. I have no other way to get to work. I can't go by a bicycle, can't walk, can't take mass transportation because there isn't any, so I drive to work. Well, I know that's harming the environment. I suppose you have an iPhone.

I don't happen to have one, but most people do. If you have an iPhone, you're contributing to the slaughter of millions of people in the eastern Congo, where the basic minerals are, and where warring tribes are killing people to get hold of them so that the multinationals who are hovering over their shoulders can get the minerals and turn them into your iPhone. Just about every aspect of life, we're doing something that we know is immoral. That's a fact, and there's no way to avoid it. Absolutely

no way, if you want to survive. Well, that means we have to make decisions, to make choices, to be as moral as we can be within the limits of maintaining passable existence. On animal agriculture, I think you could ask the same about plant agriculture. Plant agriculture is not a panacea. It's destroying agricultural lands, destroying habitats, leading to the development of coronaviruses, for example. Plenty of problems with plant agriculture. Plenty more with animal agriculture. The way animals are treated is obscene, also very harmful to us. Like one of the main problems in contemporary human life, very serious one, probably on a par with global warming, nuclear war and others, is the development of antibiotic resistance organisms. Well, that's serious. It's beginning to reach the point where

health officials, scientists are concerned that in maybe a couple of decades, it'll be impossible to carry out any surgical procedures or any most other medical interventions because they'll simply be too dangerous because of antibiotic-resistant organisms. Well, where's antibiotic resistance coming from? Mostly from overuse of antibiotics, and most of that is in animal or agriculture. You pack cows and chickens and pigs into virtually unsurvivable conditions, there's going to be disease spread. Well, you're trying to make profit. What you do is not let them live on the range.

You pack them in tight and pack them full of antibiotics. The organisms develop resistance to the antibiotics. Pretty soon you have the flood of antibiotics, the resistant organisms. So we're killing ourselves openly, knowledgeably. Our children, we're killing them. Okay. Is it the right thing to do? Only if you think you want to, that your goal in life is to murder your grandchildren, because that's what we're doing. Well, there are answers. You can have range-free animals, for example. You can stop the overuse of antibiotics. You can allow animals to have a decent existence up to the point where you kill them for eating.

Should we stop killing them for eating? Probably, but we're not at that stage of civilization. of civilization. It would mean mass genocide for humans. Most people don't have the luxury to live a vegetarian diet. It's a luxury. Some people can do it. Maybe that's their priority. There are plenty. I should say that if we're interested in animal life, there's a much more important way to save it than a vegan diet that's combating global warming. We're killing species at a phenomenal level, a level that hasn't been seen for 65 million years since the fifth extinction. And if we continue heating the climate, we're gonna wipe out an uncountable numbers of animals,

species we don't even know about. Most of them are species we've never even heard of. Okay, best way to protect animals is to quickly settle the problem of overheating the environment. And then there are other things like decent conditions for animals, cutting back, shifting as much as possible

to plant-based diets, ensuring that the plant-based diets don't have their own serious problems like those I mentioned. All of that are things that can be done. But to try to live a moral life is in fact hopeless. There is no way to do it. Nobody's done it ever in history.

Nobody knows how to do it today. It comes from John Tillow. What are the possible reasons for a person to acquire fluent Mandarin after being in a car crash? So spontaneous language acquisition after some brain injury. Well, that's a story. Somebody who didn't know Mandarin Chinese had a car crash and knew Mandarin Chinese. At this point, I think it would be useful to go back to David Hume, who was raised before, and his essay on miracles. He said, if we're rational people and we get a report of a miracle, which is in radical violation of well-established laws and principles, we have to balance how much do we trust the story,

and how much do we trust established, developed science and understanding. And his argument was, in the case of what are called miracles, the balance is almost invariably against miracles and this is a miracle it's inconsistent with everything that's known in biology in physics in anthropology and linguistics totally inconsistent If it were true, all of science would have to be thrown out. So we have a choice. Do we throw out basically everything we know, or do we question the report? I mean, I'm with Hume on that one.

The next one. Carl, how does he think about his legacy concerning the universal grammar theory, as well as how the field has evolved on human language formation? Some people call Noam an essentialist, and even go so far as saying Chomsky stood in the way of progress. Can you give some context to the theory's birth, and how have things progressed? and how have things progressed? Well, a universal grammar, first of all, is a term that has a traditional usage.

In a traditional usage, it was generalizations about language that hold most of the time. That's a descriptive field that doesn't get very far. You take a look at languages on the surface, they appear to vary all over the place. So you don't get very many generalizations that are generally valid. Some, and they're of interest, but not much. In the modern period, the last 60 or 70 years, the term universal grammar has been adapted to a new context. It's the theory of the innate faculty of language. Human beings have a faculty of language. That's why we're doing

what we're now doing. It has no analogues in other organisms, nothing in the higher apes, nothing in birds, nothing anywhere. They have their own cognitive capacities, often far beyond ours, but this is one capacity they totally lack. This is about as well established as anything is. So there is a faculty of language. Well, next question, what's the theory of the faculty of language? What is it? The name for this theory is universal grammar. To question universal grammar is to say there's no reason why an infant acquires language, but its pet cat with the same experience doesn't acquire a language.

It's a miracle. Well, if you don't believe in miracles, you believe in universal grammar. So you may not believe, think you do, but you do. Then the question comes, well, what's the legacy concerning use of universal grammar. It's a kind of theory that began to be explored in the basically in the 1950s, late 40s. Over the course of these years, there have been many advances. The kinds of conceptions that we had at the very beginning have been sharply improved, changed, modified, you know, a much better conception of what the language faculty is.

It's not finished, of course. More progress should be made. So there's no legacy. The legacy is to keep working on it and try learning more. People who say it's essentialist are confused somehow. It's no more essentialist than saying humans have a visual system. Yes, they do.

It's different from the visual system of insects. Okay. Nothing essentialist about that. It's a fact about the world. I can't imagine how it can stand in the way of progress. It is progress. It's the progress in understanding the language faculty. So, there's a huge, the question reflects a very large literature, but it's

plainly based on some kind of misunderstanding, because the actual issues are, in my view, crystal clear, have been made clear over and over. In these fields, the so-called soft sciences generally, there's an awful lot of confusion. It shows up in all kinds of ways. I mean, it was true of the hard sciences too in earlier years, but they've gradually succeeded in overcoming a lot of it. Take, in fact, biology. If you go back 50 years, 60 years, it was very widely believed in biology that organisms can vary in almost every imaginable way, and that each organism has to be studied on its own without prejudice.

The same view was held about language. Languages can vary almost any possible way. Each one has to be studied on its own. Well, in biology, that's known to be totally false. Turns out in more recent years, it's been learned that there is what's called deep conservation. Basic genetic structures are conserved for a long, all the way back to the beginning of life sometimes.

There are laws of form which sharply restrict the nature of possible organisms. organisms, existing life forms, complex life since the Cambrian explosion about half a billion years ago are fundamentally very similar. They don't vary very much. It's gotten so far that there are even suggestions which are not accepted, but taken seriously, that there might be a universal genome, one genome for all organisms with minor variations. That's kind of the direction that the study of universal grammar has gone. To begin to study it more deeply, turn out to be deep-seated, hidden uniformities. Principles that apply very broadly seem to give different results on the surface, but due to very superficial things. And the fundamental part of language may turn out that there's only one, and that everything that varies is just something on the surface. Can't prove that, but it's going in that direction.

This question comes live. It's from Deborah Strayer, who asks, Does Gnome have any questions for us? So I'm assuming she wants to know if you have questions that you think the audience should be considering. What is my question? My question is, why don't you engage yourself more fully to solve the immediate crises that threaten, literally threaten, human existence. We may be finished in a couple of generations. In one of them, I mentioned the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

It's not going to kill all life on earth, but it'll make it radically different from it is now. So let's get to work on it. Future pandemics. Very likely that future pandemics are coming. The more that people are unvaccinated, the greater the chance that new pandemics will, something like the Delta variant or others will arise, maybe come some that are beyond the level of vaccination in any form that we understand. So let's do something about that. Let's make sure that people get vaccinated and protect themselves. Then come the big questions. What about heating the environment? If we continue on our present course, there's every reason to believe that pretty soon we'll reach irreversible

tipping points, at which point it's just an expansion of the process of overheating the environment, which in a not too distant future will undermine the possibility of organized human life, meanwhile slaughtering huge numbers of other species. Then there's the problem of nuclear war, very serious and increasing. What are we doing about it? Provocative actions, which are increasing the dangers of war, creating new weapon systems, which are extremely dangerous. And again, things like space age, space, militarizing space and so on, all very dangerous. Well, all of these problems have to be met quickly. There's no delay. So my question is, why not realize this and devote yourselves seriously

to trying to address it? And I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave at that point. I have another interview coming along. Thank you so much, Professor. Do you mind answering question 21 before you go? The last one, 21? It's William Patterson. 21, William Patterson, because we spoke about Wittgenstein before. So I'd be interested to know his thoughts on Krippenstein's problem of the rule-following paradox. Well, actually, I've written about it about 35 years ago, but the essential point is a misunderstanding of the notion of rule and rule-following that is pervasive in the philosophical literature, extreme in Wittgenstein.

philosophical literature, extreme in Wittgenstein, Kripke took it over. It's just a misunderstanding of the notion of rule of language. So the model that's basically used is something like traffic signals. Stop on red.

Don't turn left on red. That's a rule that we're aware of and that we can think about and follow or we can violate, you can go through a red light. Okay. Lang, rules of language aren't like that at all. So there's, let's take a concrete example. Say, John John stole many books from the library.

Okay. Many books were stolen from the library. Both of them can mean that the library should have more guards so that people won't be stealing books from it. But just a lot of books that John is stealing. Suppose I say many books are easy to steal from the library. It doesn't have that meaning. Many books mean some specific books. Maybe the books on biology.

Those are easy to steal. Probably different meaning. Well, we know that, and we know it following rules. The rules are unconscious, can't introspect into them. They're only beginning to be understood, in fact. Turns out an intricate interaction of principles of computational efficiency and certain properties of language interact to yield these results. Those are rules of language, kind of like the rules of vision. Let's say you get a couple of stimulations on your retina from staccatic eye movements and you see a person. Okay, that's following rules. That's what the rules of language are like.

They're just parts of theories of explaining the nature of, in this case, our language system. That's not what Wittgenstein had in mind. That's not what Kripke had in mind. So the kind of problems they raise just don't arise. They're talking about some other kind of system that has nothing to do with language, vision, or other biological properties. And that's pervasive in philosophy of language, just as the assumption that there's a notion of reference is pervasive.

And it's leading in all the wrong directions, in my opinion. So I don't, I simply don't think these questions arise. Thank you, sir. Have a great day. Yeah. Take care. Okay, I'll stick around for a couple more minutes and read what's going on in the chat. In case you're interested after this, I'm likely going to be recording a reading and a commentary on Raymond Smullyan's Is God a Taoist? Raymond Smullyan is one of my somewhat like an idol. Douglas Hofstadter and Raymond Smullyan are two people that I would like to speak to most on this channel. Raymond, however, he's no longer with us.

He died, I think, in 2017. And not as many people know about his work that I think should. So if I could help popularize or help make more popular his work, that would be great. Thank you, Zeno. Thank you, David. Thank you, Channel Warhorse. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Nate. Okay. Thank you, everyone. If you would like to see more conversations like this, then please do consider going to patreon.com slash KurtJayMungle. The link is in the live chat as well as the description, as the patrons and the sponsors are what allow me to do this full-time. I've been going at it fairly hard recently, so you'll get a slew of interviews, especially in September and early October. Then the plan is to take some

time off in November and December, But when I say time off, I just mean that I'm not going to be on screen. I'll be studying. There's far less pressure when I study. And it's... I enjoy that plenty. Okay, Nate Gibson wants to know what happened to Josje Bak and Donald Hoffman.

Donald Hoffman is unavailable. He's unavailable for a few months. He was available. Something happened, and he's unavailable. Now Josje Bak is still down to do it. We just have to wait on Hoffman, who may not be available until about 2022. Maybe Q2 of 2022. We'll see. Stephen Wallace. I try on an almost monthly basis to get Douglas Hofstadter. He responds to my emails but he politely says no each time. I always tell him that I'm glad he still at least lets me know no instead of ignoring me completely. Okay, thank you everyone. Have a great day.