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:
“Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid- twentieth century.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“The people who were honored in the Bible were the false prophets. It was the ones we call the prophets who were jailed and driven into the desert, and so on.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis.”
—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)
“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)