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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Chomsky on Consciousness and Dennett
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Date: Sat, 27 May 1995 00:37:13 GMT
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In article <D94Fo0.9CL@cup.hp.com>, Dan Epstein <de@cup.hp.com> wrote:
>Culled from the Noam Chomsky archives  [...]
>        I want to use the use the term [mental] roughly as we use such 
>terms as chemical or optical or electrical. Certain phenomena, events, 
>processes, states are informally called chemical, etc.. There is no 
>metaphysical divide suggested by that. We merely select certain aspects of 
>the world as a focus of inquiry. We don't seek to determine the true 
>criterion of the chemical or the mark of the optical or the bounds of the 
>electrical. I want to use `mental' in very much the same way, with 
>something like the ordinary coverage, but with no deeper implications. By 
>`mind' I just mean the metal aspects of the world, with no more interest in 
>sharpening the boundaries or finding a criterion than in the case of the 
>chemical. 
> [...]A naturalistic 
>approach to language and mind investigates certain aspects of the world, 
>the linguistic and mental aspects of the world as we do any others seeking 
>to construct inteligible explanatory theories, taking as real whatever we 
>are led to posit in this quest and hoping for eventual unification with 
>what are sometimes called the core natural sciences. Notice that I said 
>unification and not reduction. Reduction is rather rare in the history of 
>sciences. Commonly the more fundimental sciences had to undergo radical 
>revisions for unification to proceed, as in the case of chemistry and 
>physics. Dogmatism aside, we have no idea how eventual unification of the 
>study of cells and the study of language and mind might proceed, nor do we 
>know if these are the right catagories to seek to unify, nor do we even 
>know whether the question lies within the area of cognitive reach. 

>        Baldwin quotes Dan Dennett as saying "This naturalization of 
>philosophy is one of the happiest trends in philosophy since the 1960's. 
>Philosophical accounts of our minds, our knowledge and our language must in 
>the end be continous with and harmonious with the natural sciences." 

Chomsky goes on to criticize the Dennett quotation as either trivial or
secretly dualist.  It seems to me that he has seriously misinterpreted
the quotation.  I would take it as meaning pretty much exactly what 
Chomsky himself has just said.  The gist of both their positions is that
cognitive phenomena can be investigated with what Chomsky calls a 
"naturalistic approach".

If Chomsky can wonder if Dennett is a closet dualist, it can only be out
of unfamiliarity with any of Dennett's books (e.g. _Consciousness Explained_,
which explicitly rejects dualism); it rather seems as if Chomsky is 
extrapolating Dennett's position from a single quotation, and moreover
continuing the modern fashion of using "dualism" as nothing more than a 
swear word to tar one's opponents.  
