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This book offers a careful and measured response to Noam Chomsky's criticism against deconstructive theories of language. The author reveals the connections between Chomsky's linguistic theories and politics by demonstrating their shared philosophical basis.
From the New Criticism to Deconstruction traces the transitions in American critical theory and practice from the 1950s to the 1980s. It focuses on the influence of French structuralism and post-structuralism on American deconstruction within a wide-ranging context that includes literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, technology, and politics.
In this significant new work in African Philosophy, Christopher Wise explores deconstruction's historical indebtedness to Egypto-African civilization and its relevance in Islamicate Africa today. He does so by comparing deconstructive and African thought on the spoken utterance, nothingness, conjuration, the oath or vow, occult sorcery, blood election, violence, circumcision, totemic inscription practices, animal metamorphosis and sacrifice, the Abrahamic, fratricide, and jihad. Situated against the backdrop of the Ansar Dine's recent jihad in Northern Mali, Sorcery, Totem and Jihad in African Philosophy examines the root causes of the conflict and offers insight into the Sahel's ancient, complex, and vibrant civilization. This book also demonstrates the relevance of deconstructive thought in the African setting, especially the writing of the Franco-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida.
Cybernetic Revelation explores the dual philosophical histories of deconstruction and artificial intelligence, tracing the development of concepts like the "logos" and the notion of modeling the mind technologically from pre-history to contemporary thinkers like Slavoj Žižek, Steven Pinker, Bernard Stiegler and Daniel C. Dennett. The writing is clear and accessible throughout, yet the text probes deeply into major philosophers seen by JD Casten as "conceptual engineers." Philosophers covered include: Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Philo, Augustine, Shakespeare, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Joyce, Dewey, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Adorno, Benjamin, Derrida, Chomsky, Žižek, Pinker, Dennett, Hofstadter, Stiegler + more; with special chapters on: AI's history, Complexity, Deconstructing AI, Aesthetics, Consciousness + more...
Jerry Fodor presents a new development of his famous Language of Thought hypothesis, which has since the 1970s been at the centre of interdisciplinary debate about how the mind works. Fodor defends and extends the groundbreaking idea that thinking is couched in a symbolic system realized in the brain. This idea is central to the representational theory of mind which Fodor has established as a key reference point in modern philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. The foundation stone of our present cognitive science is Turing's suggestion that cognitive processes are not associations but computations; and computation requires a language of thought. So the latest on the Language of Thought hypothesis, from its progenitor, promises to be a landmark in the study of the mind. LOT 2 offers a more cogent presentation and a fuller explication of Fodor's distinctive account of the mind, with various intriguing new features. The central role of compositionality in the representational theory of mind is revealed: most of what we know about concepts follows from the compositionality of thoughts. Fodor shows the necessity of a referentialist account of the content of intentional states, and of an atomistic account of the individuation of concepts. Not least among the new developments is Fodor's identification and persecution of pragmatism as the leading source of error in the study of the mind today. LOT 2 sees Fodor advance undaunted towards the ultimate goal of a theory of the cognitive mind, and in particular a theory of the intentionality of cognition. No one who works on the mind can ignore Fodor's views, expressed in the coruscating and provocative style which has delighted and disconcerted countless readers over the years.
For over twenty-five years Noam Chomsky's prolific political intervention has enlightened and inspired radicals while enraging their opponents in the halls of power. Beginning with a concise biography of his subject, Milan Rai presents a sympathetic yet probing analysis of Chomsky's critique of United States' media and foreign policy and his vision of a libertarian socialist future. Drawing on the entire range of Chomsky's prodigious output, including little-known interviews and articles, Rai examines Chomsky's assault on journalistic self-censorship and business control of the mass media. He shows how Chomsky challenges the US's view of itself as a defender of democracy and equal rights by uncovering the hidden motivations of its foreign policy makers. Rai draws out features of Chomsky's outlook which are sometimes obscured by a rapid coverage of a wide range of issues. In particular he emphasizes the importance of Chomsky's cultural critique in his ordering of political priorities. Accessible and comprehensive, Chomsky's Politics serves as an excellent introduction for those confronting Chomsky's critique for the first time. For those already familiar with his work it corrects some widespread misunderstandings, provides new insights and chronicles the extraordinary contribution of a writer described by the New York Times as "one of the most important intellectuals alive."
Intentionality Deconstructed argues for the view that no concrete entity - mental, linguistic, or any other - can possess intentional content. Nothing can be about anything. The concept of intentionality is flawed, and so content ascriptions cannot be "absolutely" true or false - they lack truth conditions. Nonetheless, content ascriptions have truth conditions and can be true (or possess a related epistemic merit) relative to practices of content ascription, so that different practices may imply different (not real but practice-dependent) intentional objects for the same token mental state. The suggested view does not deny the existence of those mental states standardly considered intentional, notably the so-called propositional attitudes; it affirms it. That is, support is provided for the existence of those states with the properties usually attributed to them, but absent intentional properties. Specifically, it is argued that the so-called propositional attitudes possess logico-syntactic properties, whose postulation plays an important role in addressing the challenge of reconciling intentional anti-realism with beliefs being true or having alternative epistemic merits, the argument from the predictive and explanatory success of content ascription for intentional realism, and the cognitive suicide objection to views that deny intentionality. As part of the rejection of this final objection, intentional anti-realism is presented as a radical view, which claims "Nothing can possess intentional content" but not that nothing can possess intentional content, and it is argued that this is a legitimate characteristic of radical philosophy. In spite of rejecting the "claim that" talk, intentional anti-realism gives clear sense to its dispute with its rivals as well as to its own superiority. Various arguments for intentional anti-realism are presented. One argument rejects all possible accounts of intentionality, namely primitivism, intrinsic reductionism - the prominent example of which is the phenomenal intentionality thesis - and extrinsic reductionism (that is, reductive naturalistic accounts). According to another argument, since intentional properties are shown to be dispensable for all possibly relevant purposes, and no sound arguments support the claim that they ever are instantiated, the application of Ockham's razor shows that no such properties ever are instantiated, and another step shows that neither can they be.
This book offers introductory entries on 80 ideas that have shaped the study of language up to the present day. Entries are written by experts in the fields of linguistics and the philosophy of language to reflect the full range of approaches and modes of thought. Each entry includes a brief description of the idea, an account of its development, and its impact on the field of language study. The book is written in an accessible style with clear descriptions of technical terms, guides to further reading, and extensive cross-referencing between entries. A useful additional feature of this book is that it is cross-referenced throughout with Key Thinkers in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language (Edinburgh, 2005), revealing significant connections and continuities in the two related disciplines. Ideas covered range from Sense Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Logic, through Generative Semantics, Cognitivism, and Conversation Analysis, to Political Correctness, Deconstruction, and Corpora.
“There are two problems for our species’ survival—nuclear war and environmental catastrophe, ” says Noam Chomsky in this new book on the two existential threats of our time and their points of intersection since World War II. While a nuclear strike would require action, environmental catastrophe is partially defined by willful inaction in response to human-induced climate change. Denial of the facts is only half the equation. Other contributing factors include extreme techniques for the extraction of remaining carbon deposits, the elimination of agricultural land for bio-fuel, the construction of dams, and the destruction of forests that are crucial for carbon sequestration. On the subject of current nuclear tensions, Chomsky revisits the long-established option of a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East, a proposal set in motion through a joint Egyptian Iranian General Assembly resolution in 1974. Intended as a warning, Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe is also a reminder that talking about the unspeakable can still be done with humor, with wit and indomitable spirit.
