Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!satisfied.elf.com!news.mathworks.com!solaris.cc.vt.edu!insosf1.infonet.net!internet.spss.com!markrose
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
Message-ID: <D3oz2I.Knp@spss.com>
Sender: news@spss.com
Organization: SPSS Inc
References: <3gtu3i$rf3@mp.cs.niu.edu> <3h6k27$l59@mp.cs.niu.edu> <D3nptv.9J9@spss.com> <3h9852$472@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 17:25:30 GMT
Lines: 23

In article <3h9852$472@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>I was not erecting a straw man.  Piattelli-Palmarini, in a 1989
>article in Cognition, argues precisely that the term "learning" is a
>misnomer, and the only thing that ever happens is the setting of
>parameters to select innately specified capabilities.  His article is
>not restricted to language acquisition, but claims to cover
>everything which is usually known as "learning."  He claims that his
>view is consistent with Chomsky's.  In "Language and Learning: the
>debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky," (a 1980 book from
>Harvard U. Press), Chomsky is quite explicit about embracing such a
>view.

In _Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures_ (I think
that's the right title, it's at home; the date is 1987 or so), he explicitly 
mentions aspects of language that have to be learned, including idiosyncratic 
features of the grammar that aren't part of UG (and are not parameter 
settings), the phonological patterns of the language, and the lexicon.  

He has also emphasized, for forty years, the *creative* aspects of 
language, the fact that although the elements of language (sounds, lexicon, 
grammar) are relatively fixed, language-users are constantly producing
sentences no one has ever uttered before.  Far from reducing creativity
to setting parameters, as in your Chopin story, he underlines it.
