Chomsky and Foucault on Human Nature and Politics

Permission granted by Social Theory and Practice Journal, Department of Philosophy, Florida State UniversityIn 1971, Dutch television held a series of interviews and discussions with noted intellectuals of the day to discuss a wide range of issues regarding contemporary social and philosophical affairs. Perhaps the most significant of these encounters was the meeting between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault. It brought together arguably the two most prominent Western intellectual-activists of the day in a debate that illustrates clearly the lineage of thought within which each writer is situated. Nominally the discussion was in two parts: the first an examination of the origins or production of knowledge, with particular concern for the natural sciences, the second explicitly focused on the role and practice of oppositional politics within Western capitalist democracies—in part a response to the unfolding Vietnam Wa

Language Acquisition: Seeing through Wittgenstein

This paper aims to exemplify the language acquisition model by tracing back to the Socratic model of language learning procedure that sets down inborn knowledge, a kind of implicit knowledge that becomes explicit in our language. Jotting down the claims in Meno, Plato triggers a representationalist outline basing on the deductive reasoning, where the conclusion follows from the premises (inborn knowledge) rather than experience. This revolution comes from the pen of Noam Chomsky, who amends the empiricist position on the creativity of language by pinning down it with the innateness hypothesis. However, Chomsky never rejects the external world or the linguistic stipulation that relies on the objective reality. Wittgenstein’s model of language acquisition upholds a liaison centric appeal that stands between experience (use theory of meaning) and mentalism (mind based inner experiences). Wittgenstein’s Tractatus never demarcates the definite mental processes that entangle with the method of understanding and meaning. Wittgenstein’s ‘language game’ takes care of the model of language acquisition in a paradigmatic way. The way portrait language as the form of life and the process of language acquisition is nothing but a language game that relies on the activity of men

Meaning theory and the problem of the acquisition of a first language.

The thesis begins by making two distinctions which are\ud central to its methodology. The first is that between valid\ud and invalid criticism, the second between philosophy of\ud language and meaning theory. These distinctions combine to\ud produce the methodology which informs the thesis, namely\ud that a theory of meaning can be validly criticised in terms\ud of its account, implicit or explicit, of first language\ud acquisition and, conversely, an account of first language\ud acquisition can be validly criticised in terms of its\ud theory, implicit or explicit, of meaning. The thesis\ud continues by testing the appropriateness of the methodology\ud against the classical empiricist and rationalist accounts of\ud meaning expressed in terms of Ideas, arguing that the\ud majority of criticisms of these accounts misfire as they do\ud not operate within the framework of the positions they\ud purport to criticise. Such invalid criticism is replaced\ud with that argued for here, the conclusion being that the\ud classical accounts of meaning are to be rejected on the\ud grounds that they make use of a phenomenon, language, whose\ud acquisition they cannot, within the terms of their own\ud position, explain. Modern, post-Fregean, empiricist and\ud rationalist positions, those of Quine and Chomsky\ud respectively, are then subjected to similar treatment. Both\ud of these positions have explicit accounts of first language acquisition and so the conclusion to this section of the\ud thesis reverses that reached when discussing the classical\ud positions, in that the explanations of first language\ud acquisition given by modern empiricists and rationalists are\ud based on meaning theories which, for a variety of reasons,\ud do not justify their explanations of the phenomenon of first\ud language acquisition.\ud In an attempt to move towards a more positive position two\ud alternative accounts of meaning theory, the formal and the\ud descriptive, are then examined. The formal account,\ud Davidson's, is defended against those critics who produce\ud attacks centering upon its meaning theory as being, in the\ud sense described above, invalid. However, as it is then\ud shown not to be able to account for first language\ud acquisition, it is eventually rejected. The descriptivist\ud account is identified by tracing the development of\ud Wittgenstein's philosophy to support a particular\ud interpretation of his later account of meaning as being a\ud descriptive one and a defence is offered to a number of\ud criticisms of that position. A poorly worked out\ud experiential account of first language acquisition is then\ud identified, and this is developed further by introducing the\ud area of non-linguistics, where meaning can be given without\ud words. The thesis concludes by suggesting that this area's\ud account of first language acquisition, although having a\ud number of difficulties with its implied meaning theory, can be combined with the later work of Wittgenstein to produce\ud what is at least a descriptively adequate account of both\ud meaning and first language acquisition. Moreover, it points\ud to an area of enquiry where philosophical techniques can be\ud utilised to great effect so as to add new dimensions t

A survey of epistemology and its implications on an organisational information and knowledge management model

This is a theoretical paper which aims to integrate various epistemologies from the philosophical, knowledge management, cognitive science, and educational perspectives. From a survey of knowledge-related literature, we have collated diverse views of knowledge. This is followed by categorising as well as ascribing attributes to the different types of knowledge. We have developed a novel Organisational Information and Knowledge Management Model which seeks to clarify the distinctions between information and knowledge by introducing a novel information and knowledge conversions; followed by providing mechanisms for individual knowledge creation and information sharing within an organisation

Pursuing an Export Culture Through the Teaching of Asian Languages in Australian Schools - the Gap between Theory, Practice and Policy Prescription

In February 1994, the Coalition of Australian Governments (COAG) endorsed a report it commissioned in December 1992 on a policy prescription for the study of Asian Languages and Cultures in Australian schools. The acceptance of this report, Asian Languages and Australia's Economic Future (1994), referred to as the Rudd Report after the Chair of the Working Group, was significant. It offered a 15-year plan that aimed to produce an Asia-literate generation fluent and familiar with "export" Asian languages and cultures. In particular, students would have the opportunity to commence the study of one of four priority "export" Asian languages, namely, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, and Chinese, in primary school. However, the Rudd Report’s emphasis on prioritising Asian languages for utilitarian reasons was opposed by those who advocated the study of European languages. This paper examines some of the assumptions about second language acquisition that the Rudd Report made and argues that greater emphasis should have been placed on addressing those theoretical and pedagogical issues significant to LOTE teaching in Australia

On Arthur Eddington's Theory of Everything

From 1929 to his death in 1944, A. Eddington worked on developing a highly ambitious theory of fundamental physics that covered everything in the physical world, from the tiny electron to the universe at large. His unfinished theory included abstract mathematics and spiritual philosophy in a mix which was peculiar to Eddington but hardly intelligible to other scientists. The constants of nature, which he claimed to be able to deduce purely theoretically, were of particular significance to his project. Although highly original, Eddington's attempt to provide physics with a new foundation had to some extent parallels in the ideas of other British physicists, including P. Dirac and E. A. Milne. Eddington's project was however a grand failure in so far that it was rejected by the large majority of physicists. A major reason was his unorthodox view of quantum mechanics.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure

Basil Bernstein: Sociology for education

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT

Media Presence and Inner Presence: The Sense of Presence in Virtual Reality Technologies

Abstract. Presence is widely accepted as the key concept to be considered in any research involving human interaction with Virtual Reality (VR). Since its original description, the concept of presence has developed over the past decade to be considered by many researchers as the essence of any experience in a virtual environment. The VR generating systems comprise two main parts: a technological component and a psychological experience. The different relevance given to them produced two different but coexisting visions of presence: the rationalist and the psychological/ecological points of view. The rationalist point of view considers a VR system as a collection of specific machines with the necessity of the inclusion \ud of the concept of presence. The researchers agreeing with this approach describe the sense of presence as a function of the experience of a given medium (Media Presence). The main result of this approach is the definition of presence as the perceptual illusion of non-mediation produced by means of the disappearance of the medium from the conscious attention of the subject. At the other extreme, there \ud is the psychological or ecological perspective (Inner Presence). Specifically, this perspective considers presence as a neuropsychological phenomenon, evolved from the interplay of our biological and cultural inheritance, whose goal is the control of the human activity. \ud Given its key role and the rate at which new approaches to understanding and examining presence are appearing, this chapter draws together current research on presence to provide an up to date overview of the most widely accepted approaches to its understanding and measurement