On Language and Humanity: In Conversation With Noam Chomsky


The father of modern linguistics is still opening up new kinds of questions and topics for inquiry.

“For the first time I think that the Holy Grail is at least in view in some core areas, maybe even within reach.” Image: Wikimedia Commons

By: Amy Brand (posted 12th Aug 2019)

I have been fascinated with how the mind structures information for as long as I can remember. As a kid, my all-time favorite activity in middle school was diagramming sentences with their parts of speech. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that I ended up at MIT earning my doctorate on formal models of language and cognition. It was there, in the mid-1980s, that I had the tremendous good fortune of taking several classes on syntax with Noam Chomsky.

Although I ultimately opted off the professorial career track, I’ve been at MIT for most of my career and have stayed true in many ways to that original focus on how language conveys information. Running an academic publishing house is, after all, also about the path from language to information, text to knowledge. It has also given me the opportunity to serve as Chomsky’s editor and publisher. Chomsky and the core values he embodies of deep inquiry, consciousness, and integrity continue to loom large for me and so many others here at MIT, and are well reflected in the interview that follows.

Amy Brand: You have tended to separate your work on language from your political persona and writings. But is there a tension between arguing for the uniqueness of Homo sapiens when it comes to language, on the one hand, and decrying the human role in climate change and environmental degradation, on the other? That is, might our distance from other species be tied up in how we’ve engaged (or failed to engage) with the natural environment?

Noam Chomsky: The technical work itself is in principle quite separate from personal engagements in other areas. There are no logical connections, though there are some more subtle and historical ones that I’ve occasionally discussed (as have others) and that might be of some significance.

Homo sapiens is radically different from other species in numerous ways, too obvious to review. Possession of language is one crucial element, with many consequences. With some justice, it has often in the past been considered to be the core defining feature of modern humans, the source of human creativity, cultural enrichment, and complex social structure.

As for the “tension” you refer to, I don’t quite see it. It is of course conceivable that our distance from other species is related to our criminal race to destroy the environment, but I don’t think that conclusion is sustained by the historical record. For almost all of human history, humans have lived pretty much in harmony with the natural environment, and indigenous groups still do, when they can (they are, in fact, in the forefront of efforts to preserve the environment, worldwide). Human actions have had environmental effects; thus large mammals tended to disappear as human activity extended. But it wasn’t until the agricultural revolution and more dramatically the industrial revolution that the impact became of major significance. And the largest and most destructive effects are in very recent years, and mounting all too fast. The sources of the destruction — which is verging on catastrophe — appear to be institutional, not somehow rooted in our nature.

“The sources of the destruction — which is verging on catastrophe — appear to be institutional, not somehow rooted in our nature.”

Continue reading “On Language and Humanity: In Conversation With Noam Chomsky”

TEDIOUSLY BANAL AND BORING

“It is a peculiarity of thought that it never remains by itself, but always digresses to other things. The thought is the point to which I should stick, but it is the nature of this point, not to be able to stick to it. Thinking is a thing full of contradictions, a dialect secret.”(Joseph Dietzgen, ‘Letters on logic’, II, 1880-1883, in Art, Class & Cleavage: Quantulumcunque Concerning Material Esthetix, Ben Watson 1998)

Brazen crass self-promotion at best. Poorly written and thought through cultural critique at worst. Subject to revision at any time.

I Digress Indeed has released three new albums on the Imaginary Nihilism label, Boring, Tedious & Banal, iPad Recordings Vol 1, 2 & 3.

Continue reading “TEDIOUSLY BANAL AND BORING”

HOMO FLUDENS

Splash’n’Klang is a musical practice developed by Out To Lunch in response to various problems facing modern music. Over the course of the twentieth century, recording wrecked the old composer-score-musician arrangement, enabling advanced music to dissolve the distinction between documentary sound and composed score (see Derek Bailey, Iancu Dumitrescu and Frank Zappa’s “Wolf Harbor”).

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TAKING CARE OF HIS OWN ERECTIONS.

The Dickster has done it again. Evil Dick, never one to shirk his responsibility to throw us all off the musical track, has created yet another exquisite red herring, Earthly Delights. Evil is a multi-instrumentalist of rare ability with a stunning imagination. A truly unique composer in a Varesian and Other Worldly tradition, whose music demands an attentive and serious,  yet inquisitive and  playful ear. A musician who never forgets to pose the question to the listener, in fact, to all of us, now living in an ever increasingly precarious world…

“Well, are you going to buy the fucking  thing or what?”

Continue reading “TAKING CARE OF HIS OWN ERECTIONS.”

COFFEE AT MILANOS ?(DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!)

Ben Watson on COFFEE AT MILANOS

“It’s very direct, very melodic, and it sounds like a bunch of demos recorded by visitors from outer space who have just encountered jazz and are demonstrating what they’ve found to an interplanetary alien space station crew of investigative analysts.You see, what kills music is THEATRE, the sequencing of brute effect according to narrative … Wagner, Pink Floyd, Cornelius Cardew’s The Great Learning, David Bowie. What I crave is collective union of attention to musical detail: to the intricacies and intimacies of players’ establishing harmony and rhythm; unstitching the inherited garment and playing with frayed edges and weird worlds of thread. Or, to change metaphors, what I hear in COFFEE AT MILANOS is the dissecting scalpel of player intelligence cutting through the skin surface of “music” to expose pumping arteries and zinging nerve cells and replicating blood corpuscles. Close focus on the stuff of music itself.”

https://archive.org/details/DontEvenThinkAboutIt20-i-2016

THE BALLAD OF BIG BAD BEN

In 1997, following a negative review of Tom Chant’s Touch (Matchless), three big cheeses in London Improv – Eddie Prevost, Evan Parker and Martin Davidson – decided that the Ben Watson by-line must be banished forever. This was Tom’s big break, and it upset their plans if anyone pointed out the record wasn’t much cop (since then, all three musicians have agreed in private that I was basically right). Derek Bailey was highly amused, and congratulated me on outraging no less than three eminences with a single short review. Shortly thereafter, Evan Parker was raging in a reader’s letter against another “erroneous” critic, and said something along the lines of “the problem is that, if – God forbid – Ben Watson should be run over by a bus, there’s going to be another idiot ready to replace him”. Derek pointed this out to me, raised an eyebrow and said “that’s a threat, you know, and not so veiled …”. Derek responded to this letter (and some other things) in “The Ballad of Big Bad Ben”. It’s from Chats (Incus), a fantastic CD-R with lots of Derek’s inimitable spoken-word.

 

LOCATION / DISLOCATION (WITH SHOUT OUT TO PHIL JONES)

HERE IS THE OFFICIAL GUFF

Work Title: location / dislocation

Dimensions: 7.5 metres X 1.5 metres

Materials: Acrylic paint on wall surface, accompanied by musical interpretation.

Paint: Phillip Jones

Double Bass: James Rust

Percussion: Mark Grunden

Guitar: James Wilson

Tenor and Soprano Saxophones: Konk Zooben

Year: 1999 Continue reading “LOCATION / DISLOCATION (WITH SHOUT OUT TO PHIL JONES)”