(1 of 3) Kant, Chomsky and the Problem of Knowledge.

An exploration of the intellectual problem situation facing Kant - Kant's dilemma. Kant was enchanted by the success story of Newton's Principia, it's universal explanatory reach and its precise predictions. But he was also enchanted and convinced that Hume's argument against induction as the method of science was devastating. Kant, guided by the principle that knowledge had to be justified, was led to suggest another way out - that our minds bring a priori synthetic knowledge (e.g., Euclidien Geometry) to, and make possible, experience, because this general knowledge is the precondition of any ordered experienceThis serves as a background to the way Chomsky looks at language, as something that is a genetic developmental plan of the growing human brain. It is something we "know" in some sense before we are born, rather in the way we "know" how to develop vision or an auditory system: language just grows. Chomsky's biological emphasis on our prenatal genetic developmental plans as a way we can have general knowledge (of language) without induction is analogous to the emphasis of the Rationalist philosophers on A priori synthetic knowledge. So Kant's problem situation can throw philosophical light on Chomsky's view of language and how Chomsky's view is a part of the rationalist tradition of thought.

[Note: my portrayal of Kant's intellectual problem situation is indebted to Karl Popper's treatment. See his The Two Fundamental Problems of The Theory of Knowledge and Conjectures and Refutations.)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Kant
• Chomsky
• knowledge
• induction
• language
• Newton
• Principia Mathematica
• justification of science
• Universal law
• Universal theory
• David Hume
• scientific induction
• priori
• empiricism
• rationalism

[SherryVapors]

Dear Dr. Percival:

Thank you VERY much for taking the time and the effort for conducting these lectures and posting them for the rest of us. I am currently reading Kant's Critique and found your lecture series extermely helpful. THANK YOU!