What Kind of Creatures Are We? (Columbia Themes in Philosophy)

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:35 -0500

In this book Noam Chomsky tries to answer the question the title poses. Being a linguist, he attempts to answer this question from a linguist’s perspective. Taking a deep dive into the meanings and relationship between language and thought Chomsky tries to summarize years of linguistic research and some conclusions he has come to in his experience. One of the most interesting conclusions is that to him it appears as if instead of the ancient idea that “language is sound with meaning” Chomsky believes that phrase should be reversed to say that “language is meaning with sound”. He attempts to demonstrate how language is actually a couple layers deeper into the structure of the brain than previously thought. In fact, we may in some ways “think” in a language. So perhaps without language we could not “think” at all?? This feels intuitively true to me. The book then addresses a line of thinking that could be called “mysterianism”. Put simply it is that we face two types of problems. The first type are problems we can solve. The second type are problems we will never solve. Otherwise known as mysteries. This second type of problem Chomsky claims we are not the right type of creatures to solve. Similarly, to how rats are not the right kind of creatures to solves for prime numbers. To support this argument, he brings up the story of how Newton not only fundamentally changed physics but changed science entirely when he introduced the concept of “Force”. Newton himself could not wrap his mind around what this force was only, how it worked. From then on strict materialism was out. No one could explain in strictly mechanical terms how the universe worked. This book contains some interesting anecdotes as well as compelling theories. At points the writing can get a little long in the tooth for a non-linguist but over all very interesting.

Noam_chomsky on George's Blog

What Kind of Creatures Are We? (Columbia Themes in Philosophy)