Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky argues that the cognitive capabilities of all organisms are limited by biology and that certain problems may be beyond our understanding:
A Martian scientist, with a mind different from ours might regard this problem as trivial, and wonder why humans never seem to hit on the obvious way of solving it. This observer might also be amazed at the ability of every human child to acquire language, something that seems to him incomprehensible, requiring divine intervention. —Noam Chomsky, Language and problems of knowledgeRead more about this topic: Cognitive Closure (philosophy)
Famous quotes by noam chomsky:
“We can imagine a society in which no one could survive as a social being because it does not correspond to biologically determined perceptions and human social needs. For historical reasons, existing societies might have such properties, leading to various forms of pathology.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the ‘creativity of language,’ that is, the speaker’s ability to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately understood by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are ‘familiar.’”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)