Chomsky's Argument from the Poverty of Stimulus - 1
Nilanjan Bhowmick
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Abstract
Chomsky thinks that Plato's problem is especially visible in language. Plato's problem -which is also called by him "Russell's Problem" -is "how can we know so much when the evidence for what we know is so vanishingly small". Plato's problem is brought out in the dialogue Meno. This is also called the Poverty of Stimulus or the Poverty of Evidence problem. The problem is that it is clear that we have certain kinds of knowledge, but it is not clear how we came by this knowledge. Plato thought that the solution was that we recollected the knowledge from the time the soul saw the Forms (the theory of Anamnesis, or Recollection).
Key takeaways
- Usually, in the case of language, we guess that we learn it from parents through instruction, or else we learn it by copying from others or through analogy, induction, application of our general intelligence etc.
- Chomsky has pointed out that there is evidence to believe that our knowledge of language far outstrips our evidence for it, and hence we cannot in principle learn it from others, or parents, or by analogy, or using our general intelligence (whatever the latter is supposed to mean).
- This would be an example of learning by analogy.
- If we learn language through the route of analogy (like (3) and (4)), then (6) should mean that John is so stubborn that he, John, won't talk to anyone.
- Now, we know that sentence (12) cannot be treated on the basis of analogy with (3) and (4).
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