Jerold Katz According to Chomskian nativism, the necessary condition for language acquisition is the possession of an innate knowledge of the rules of grammar. His reasoning for thinking that human beings have an innate knowledge of grammar is that human beings are able to learn vastly complex natural languages from a relatively limited exposure to those languages. Thus, Chomsky suggests that there must be some innately possessed knowledge of grammar that is universally possessed by human beings. Such a grammar must also be sufficiently similar across the brains that possess it. Jerold Katz argues that Chomsky’s psychologism is insufficient to account for necessary truths: Chomsky’s psychologism actually denies the possibility of…
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Help? No Thanks
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The Folly of Violence
It only takes two people to start a bar brawl. Someone knocks over a beer, the guy hits him, and soon everyone is fighting. Violence always spreads and there is only one thing that you and I can do that stops it: We must not join in. No matter how angry one might feel about a situation, joining a violent gang is not the answer. Yet many will be tempted. Fueled by foolish rhetoric, irresponsible journalism, and insecure governance, some will go from spectators to participants. And what began as an isolated scrap will turn into a national brawl. The only way to stop the spread is not to join in. …
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A Silly Pro-Abort Argument
Having ‘moral status’ equates to being the kind of thing it is wrong to kill. According to Elizabeth Harman, if a woman decides to have an abortion, then the fetus does not have moral status. If the mother decides not to have an abortion, then, due to the future life of that fetus, the fetus has moral status. I have moral status. If my mother had decided to abort me, then I would not have had moral status. When I was a fetus, my mother decided not to abort me and, in virtue of that fact, I had a future life. Consequently, I had, and still have, moral status. This…
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Notes on Evil and Evidence
Given the fact of evil in the world, is God’s existence probable or not? Many Atheists believe that the existence of God is improbable given the presence of evil in the world. The nature of the problem they pose is inductive. In other words, they present positive evidence that reduces the probability of the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being. The argument usually looks something like this: There are instances of evil in the world that an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without losing some greater good or permitting a worse or equal evil. An omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being would prevent those instances of evil. Therefore, there…
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Theism: Plain or Necessary?
Plain Theism is the view that ‘God exists’ is a logically contingent proposition. ‘God exists’ is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false. In contrast, necessitarian theism holds that the proposition, ‘God exists’ is necessarily true. In other words ‘it is false that God exists’ is a contradiction. I often wondered what would motivate my old prof, Keith Yandell to hold to plain theism. What does it mean to say that God does not have necessary existence or that ‘necessarily, God exists’ is necessarily false? Most theists contend that if ‘God exists’ is true, it is true necessarily. The answer, I think, lies in some of Dr. Yandell’s theistic argumentation. In…
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Sugurity
Everybody wants security. In the eighties, security meant having money. In the nineties, it meant owning a home. On the turn of the century, security meant winning a war on terror. Now, security is about having a political system that secures all our needs – healthcare, education, and even jobs. Political security of this kind is only achieved when governments become the source of some or all of the more valuable goods in society. But can a human system of government achieve that kind of security for its people? Just like every other quest for a human-made source of security, the search is in vain. When one puts all one’s…
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Logic and Normativity
As I argued the other day, there are some people who think reality is underwritten by various norms. I call them normativists. For example, a normativist will think that there are ethical principles that are objective, universally binding, and immutable. As I suggested, normativists will also think this about the rules of grammar – they are objective rules to be discovered not conventions to be created. Today I came across an article that suggests that the normativist is wrong about when it comes to logic: …logic has developed over a long time, and it is likely to continue developing. Currently, non-classical logic is working to fix some of the things that…
