Talk:Noam Chomsky/Archive 2

message: (10/22/03) hello.  i've made some changes to the chomsky article.  mostly i rewrote the section on linguistics -- clarified chomsky's ideas and addressed the primary criticisms on the part of other linguists.  i also softened the language a bit in the psychology section, and made a small change at the end of the section on Faurisson that imo should try to make it more balanced (though i won't be surprised if it generates controversy :). benwing
(16/09/04) Hi, i made some additions about other alternatives to Chomskyan linguistics, specifically mentioning Lakoff and Johndon and discursive psychology etc. Anyone who disagrees feel free to tamper! BScotland
I think such (and other) alternatives deserve mention, but further information about them should be provided on their own articles. Also, the section seems misplaced considering the current heading levels. A paragraph somewhere in Contributions to Linguistics looks like a better alternative to me. --Glimz 00:54, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)
What does everyone else think?
BScotland
:I agree with Glimz that it is misplaced and should be added as a paragraph and not as a section. Note the discussion below that it also might be better to remove the current (political) criticism section and merge the info in other sections instead. Also, I tried a google search on Lakoff, and came up with interesting results. He claimed that Chomsky didn't contribute anything to linguistics in 30 years, just before Chomsky published his minimalist program in 1995. And there's a 1973 NY Review of Books reply by Chomsky where he compares what Lakoff wrote to what he referred to, which looks embarrassing. I also heard Lakoff on a liberal talk show, and I see that he writes articles, where he is much less modest than Chomsky in using his linguistics credentials in order to tell women that they should use terms other than 'pro-choice' etc., unlike Chomsky who always avoids doing this. He seems like quite a windbag... what do you think of him? Nimc 16:07, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: With regard to style, I personally prefer incorporating criticism in relevant sections, rather than creating separate criticism sections. With regard to substance, any information that is accurate and relevant should be included in wikipedia. It seems obvious that this info is relevant, though as Glimz said, if further info would be lengthy, then we should decide whether it belongs here or in other articles, but right now it's not lengthy at all. The most important issue is accuracy, so if you use weasel words like "many linguists (in fact, most) are NOT Chomskyans", it might be problematic. My personal opinion is that we should use weasel words as little as possible, and if you do so then the accuracy issue will be simple to handle. The specific info that you added doesn't seem to be the kind that requires weasel words anyway, i.e. it's possible to just name the relevant people and describe what their opinion is. Nimc 18:04, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Chomsky and linguistics, etc.

message: Overall, I think we're not that far apart and you're adding good new material about Chomsky's thoughts on the more abstract subjects.  However, I still don't understand your reasoning behind some of it and I think some of it needs citations.
1) When specifically has Chomsky called himself a Marxist?  Not that it's totally implausible, but this needs a citation.  (Leaving this part pending an answer.)
2) Why do you say Latin American and South America?  Better would be 'Latin America' or 'South and Central America'  (Restoring this part pending an answer.)
3) Saying "the United States' capitalist influence" rather than "the United States' influence" is wrong.  Did Chomsky speak out about Soviet imperialism because of the Soviet Union's "capitalist" influence on Afghanistan?  (And yes, Chomsky has spoken out against the Soviet influence, although it has been muted compared to his discussion of the US, for the reasons discussed in the article.)  (restoring pending answer)
4) Why did you replace the single link to libertarian socialism (Wikipedia's page on Chomsky's style of anarchism) to seperate links to the "disambiguating" page anarchism and the more specific page libertarian socialism?  (restoring pending answer.)
5) You consistently attach motives to Chomsky's actions that he himself does not attach, and which seem to be counterfactual.  Does Chomsky oppose US meddling in Iran (as described in Uncle Sam) because the Islamic Revolution was "socialist"?!  Did Chomsky really oppose Bolshevism because it would disparage socialism, and not because it was authoritarian and brutal?
Why not just describe Chomsky's writings, and let others deduce the motives?  Or describe the motives which Chomsky himself gives?  I am reverting and deleting many instances of this.
I do hope you stick around, and keep working on the page, though, because you are adding good content.
DanKeshet 15:58, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Chomsky holds largely anarchist (or "libertarian socialist") views. Some of the people above should, you know, find out what the hell they're talking about before they make any sort of edits... --Tothebarricades.tk 20:29, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  comments on latest version 

message: I'm moving the Faurisson section to a special article on the Faurisson Affair. I'm justifying the decision on the grounds that this was the criterion adopted with the Dershowitz-Finkelstein Affair.
----
I moved the following text to here because it is broken analysis:
- - - - - - -
Chomsky's views on terrorism are not unifaceted.  On page 76 of his book 9-11, Noam Chomsky defines terrorism:
Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism. 
Chomsky clearly distinguishes between the targeting of civilians and the targeting of military personnel or installations.  Thereby placing the definition of terrorism on an objective basis.  At other times, Chomsky defines terrorism as being relative: 
It is the weapon of those who are against 'us' whoever 'us' happens to be. And if you can find a historical exception to that, I'd be interested in seeing it.
 
In addition, Noam Chomsky identifies terrorism with  low intensity warfare.
The U.S. is officially committed to what is called “low–intensity warfare.” That’s the official doctrine. If you read the definition of low–intensity conflict in army manuals and compare it with official definitions of “terrorism” in army manuals, or the U.S. Code, you find they’re almost the same. Terrorism is the use of coercive means aimed at civilian populations in an effort to achieve political, religious, or other aims. That’s what the World Trade Center bombing was, a particularly horrifying terrorist crime.
- - - - - - - 
The problem is that the analysis being presented does not distinguish between what Chomsky thinks terrorism is and what he says other people mean by the word.  In the first quotation he is giving an opinion of his own (but it is not a definition since it doesn't say that nothing else could be terrorism also).  In the second quotation he is commenting on what he sees as the establishment usage of the word "terrorism".  He is not saying he agrees with it and in fact it is obvious that he does not.  In the third quotation he is again emphasising the commentary made in the second quotation, and again he does not at all say that he agrees with either of the two usages of the word "terrorism" that he describes.  In other words, there is nothing at all contradictory between these three quotations.  I find them entirely consistent and entirely Chomskyesque. --Zero 07:23, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Faurisson yet again 

message: TDC, I think the addition of the quote regarding Chomsky's support of terrorism requires some more information:
* By what definition were these "insurgencies" and "Marxist"? — both are fairly controversial terms in this context.
* A reputable source for the quotation.
Also note that Chomsky doesn't say that there should be exceptions specifically for Marxist insurgencies in terms of the use of terror tactics — this is your interpretation of what he said and it shouldn't be stated as a fact on the page. What Chomsky seems to be saying, if the quote is genuine, is that in general, terror can sometimes be justified, depending on whether it has good or bad consequences on balance. This is very different from your summary of Chomsky's views on this matter. I have reverted the edit until a compromise can be reached. Cadr
: Update: There appears (according to google) to be a transcript of an interview containing this quote on chomksy.info, his official site (the page is loading slowly for me at the moment: http://www.chomsky.info/debates/19671215.htm). Hopefully this will allow us to see the quote in context and come to some agreement about how it should be discussed in the article. Cadr
: Update 2: The quote you used is rendered rather out of context because it omits the first and last sentences of a paragraph! This is the full quote:
::As to the NLF terror, I think Dr. Arendt and I agree in conclusion but probably disagree on the reasons. For me, her vision is too absolutistic. I don't accept the view that we can just condemn the NLF terror, period, because it was so horrible. I think we really have to ask questions of comparative costs, ugly as that may sound. And if we are going to take a moral position on this -- and I think we should -- we have to ask both what the consequences were of using terror and not using terror. If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines, then I think the use of terror would be justified. But, as I said before, I don't think it was the use of terror that led to the successes that were achieved.
:This makes the whole thing look much more hypothetical, and not actually a statement that the terror was justified (in fact the omitted initial sentence suggests quite the opposite). Here's another quote supporting this: "But, for reasons that are pretty complex, there are real arguments also in favor of the Viet Cong terror, arguments that can't be lightly dismissed, although I don't think they're correct." I'm afraid this seems to be just yet another cynical smear-job on Chomsky. --Cadr
I saw 2 smears in the article. There was a line saying that Chomsky has endorsed terrorism by communist movements. I don't think it is legitimate to put such a line in the criticism section, because it implies that Chomsky did in fact 'endorse terrorism by communist movements', and some people are critical of him doing this. A better try would have been to say that some people accuse Chomsky of 'endorsing terrorism by communist movements', but without any evidence for this it'd sound more critical of the people who make these accusations anyway, so I deleted this line. Second, there's criticism that the claims that USA is responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians in Sudan aren't based, but the corrrect link to the wikipedia article claiming the exact same thing was missing. For now, I just fixed the link to the Al-Shifa plant bombing, and left the criticism as it is. However, the whole incident is more likely to put apologists of USA atrocities in a bad light than anything else, and in fact what Chomsky discussed in his book 9-11 makes this even more troubling, since USA blocked attempts by the UN to inspect the damage in Sudan. Anyway, Chomsky's reply to the questioning of his sources can be found at salon.com --Nimc 12 Apr 2004
The line "Alan Dershowitz, with whom Chomsky has engaged in many verbal battles through the media," seems to imply that Chomsky was on tv together with Dershowitz many times, assuming that 'verbal battle through the media' means tv. This is probably wrong, or to the very least the word 'many' is wrong, though I suspect that no such 'verbal battles' occured at all (Chomsky is not exactly a welcomed guest on tv shows.) All I know of is a university talk by Chomsky in which Dershowitz claims he debated him, and an exchange of letters in the Boston Globe (i.e. not verbal) which Dershowitz wouldn't be delighted to be reminded of. This line was added to wikipedia on 4 Aug 2002, but integrated from another entry, so I guess it's hard to know who wrote it? If anyone has evidence for it, I'd be interested to see it. 
Also, the title 'About Chomsky and Chomsky archives' doesn't contain any archives. And, the link for Werner Cohn's sci-fi book appears twice, both there and as [1] in criticism - I'd assume that one link should be more than enough for this particular book... --Nimc 00:24, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Chomsky's alleged support for Marxist terrorists; the Al-Shifa controversy

message: In a recent edit, Chomsky's critics have been classified by left-wing/right-wing.  I agree that under some political spectra in the US, Dershowitz is considered a left-winger, but I don't think it makes sense in this context for two reasons: 1) under almost any accepted political spectrum, Dershowitz is far to the right of Chomsky.  In the context of an article on Chomsky, Dershowitz could just as easily be called a right-winger.  2) even on the conventional political spectrum of the US, the disagreements between Chomsky and Dershowitz revolve around Israel and Palestine, an issue that doesn't appear along a political spectrum in the US.  Therefore, I would like to remove these labels from Dershowitz and Horowitz (an interesting left/right story himself).
:I agree with you.--GD 19:05, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  left-wing dershowitz 

message: That quote could be highly misconstrued by someone not familiar with Chomsky's ideas or writing style.
:Well, it is said (note: 'said', not 'written') in a provocative way, but it's clear. Though later in the Q&A session of this talk (given right after 9/11) he did say: "I mean, the Nazis weren't carrying out counter-terror, they were carrying out terror. They called it counter-terror and the U.S. military agreed with them, but for their own reasons." Anyway, I like the way it's quoted right now in the article (it wasn't me who added it), because it seems to me to be provocative in a good way, and it combines well with the previous quote. Maybe you meant that if someone selectively quotes just a few words from this paragraph, he could distort what Chomsky said here - but that is true with just about anything written by anyone. Anyone who tries it with this paragraph would simply be lying, because it's actually very clear and there isn't more than one reasonable way to interpret it. Here's another example from a CBC interview with Chomsky in 2002, though I think that the quote in article is much more appropriate: "Q: The question that arises is if the United States is a leading terrorist state, if as you say, Britain is another example of a terrorist state, how do you distinguish between what you describe as terrorism and what they are saying — Osama Bin Laden who's a terrorist? Make the distinction. Chomsky: It's very simple. If they do it, it's terrorism. If we do it, it's counter-terrorism. That's a historical universal. Go back to Nazi propaganda. The most extreme mass murderers ever. If you look at Nazi propaganda, that's exactly what they said. They said they're defending the populations and the legitimate governments of Europe like Vichy from the terrorist partisans who are directed from London. That's the basic propaganda line. And like all propaganda, no matter how vulgar, it has an element of truth. The partisans did carry out terror, they were directed from London. The Vichy government is about as legitimate as half the governments the US has installed around the world and supports, so yes, there was a minor element of truth to it, and that's the way it works. If somebody else carries it out, it's terror. If we carry it out, it's counter-terror. I think perhaps one of the most dramatic examples right at this moment is a place where I just was a couple of weeks ago, southeastern Turkey. Southeastern Turkey is the site of some of the worst terrorist atrocities of the 1990s." Nimc 15:30, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chomsky on terrorism 

message: Please, can we have the interwiki links to other languages for the article back. They are last seen in the version from 13:58, 28 Jul 2004, and I see no reason whatever to delete them. Byrial 21:10, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Interwiki links

message: This page has been protected for too long, and I am unprotecting it. Please discuss changes, do not engage in revert wars, and try to reach consensus. Furthermore, you might want to note the standards advocated by WikiProject Philosophy, which states that criticism of a thinker should be made with specific citations to critics instead of a vague "some argue that," thus restricting criticism to noteworthy criticism, and preventing original research. Snowspinner 14:05, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC).
:For reference: Original research, Weasel word, Wikipedia:Verifiability (problems that are still here) Nimc 13:00, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Protection

message: This is off-topic for this page, but on-topic for controversial/disputed pages in general, so I hope you don't mind this interjection.  I'm looking for a few good veterans of edit wars on frequently controversial pages like this one, who would be willing to look over a design proposal for Wiki branches that I've written up and will probably attempt to prototype in the near future (not likely on wikipedia itself at first, but perhaps on other experimental wikis).  The whole thing is long, but I'd be quite happy if you only looked at the much shorter section on "Branches", which is the most important part.  I'm particularly interested in hearing whether you think such a branch mechanism (a) would improve Wiki workflow and consensus-building, by allowing alternative approaches to be developed and evaluated side-by-side, or (b) would hinder consensus-building by making it less necessary for the majority to take minority viewpoints into account.  But in general, I'm interested in any and all comments, preferably on my talk page.  Thanks! - Brynosaurus 09:33, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you familiar with this proposal(question 4) ? Is there further discussion of it somewhere ? How does it relate to the branches that you suggest ? Nimc 13:00, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I wasn't familiar with it, but am now - thanks for the pointer!  Actually, I already had in mind the idea that a branch facility like the one I outlined could be very useful in building "stable" branches (and I even included a "to-be-written" section for it at the end of my proposal), but hadn't gotten around to writing it up.  I've asked on the wikimedia-l list about the draft proposal for the "1.0 stable" release plan that Jimbo promised in this interview question; I would be happy to work on revising my design toward that purpose, but don't want to conflict with something that's he's already done or is working on. - Brynosaurus 02:42, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for feedback: Wiki branches/voting proposal (an alternative to page protection) 

message: Shouldn't the section in the Chomsky article that is titled Criticism of Science be titled differently? After all, he is the one defending science from other people's criticisms. Maybe the section ought to be titled "Defense of Science."
*He's also criticized science, namely the attempts to quantitatively explain human nature. But yeah, he's mostly very "rational," arousing criticism from the "postmodern" mystics. --Tothebarricades.tk 22:54, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Somewhat unimportant comment 

message: To User:192.116.202.36]:  What is wrong with the following list of "critical articles" that you deleted without explanation from the Noam Chomsky page?  I find the following list of "critical articles" very useful.  Are these articles unfair in some way that I could not detect?
--> Begin deleted list of "critical articles" <--
; Critical articles
*    My Allergic Reaction to Noam Chomsky, by Bradford DeLong
*    The Hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky, by Keith Windschuttle
*    Chomsky on the Legitimacy of Violence, by Nathan Folkert
*    Chomsky on US Foreign Policy, by Stephen J. Morris
*    Noam Chomsky: Unrepentant Stalinist, by Anders G. Lewis
*    The Khmer Rouge Canon: The Chomsky-Lacouture Controversy, by Sophal Ear
*    Averaging Wrong Answers: Noam Chomsky and the Cambodia Controversy, by Bruce Sharp 
*    Noam Chomsky on the CIA Demographic Catastrophe Report, by Nathan Folkert
*    Chomsky's War Against Israel, by Paul Bogdanor
*    Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers, by Werner Cohn
*    Chomsky Identifies "The Evil" That Haunts the World, by Amir Taheri
*    LeftWatch: Noam Chomsky, by Brian Carnell
--> End list of deleted "critical articles" <--  ---Rednblu 21:20, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: To [[User:192.116.202.36]]: Why did you delete the list of "critical articles"?

message: <<Dr. Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) Has followed a dual career as an academic and as a political and media analyst and polemicist.   He is an Institute Professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: as a young scholar he put forward the ideas that children have an innate capacity to learn language, and that all languages are based on a universal grammar.   He has gone on to develop the Chomsky hierarchy, a system for understanding and improving grammars generally.
Chomsky’s political activities were stimulated by his opposition to the Vietnam war.   He has developed a political theory that America, perhaps unconsciously, reacts as a system to suppress and obliterate any "good example" of a politics or economics which appears to function better than America's particular version of democracy and free market capitalism; within the American state, consent is manufactured by propaganda.   Criticism of Chomsky’s politics has included allegations that he is an anti-semite, a conspiracy theorist, and/or an apologist for communist despots.>>
*Prefer.  This two-paragraph version fits more the style of the leading sections of the other Featured Articles.  For each of the major topics of the article, this Version 2 gives the reader one interesting tidbit and reason to keep reading the rest of the article.  ---Rednblu 16:21, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Glimz here. This version of the intro is wildly inacurate regarding linguistics (the description of the Chomsky hierachy is complete nonsense, and the chronology is backwards, as already pointed out). "Polemicist" is not perhaps quite as POV as it might seem. For example, it can be a complement to say that someone is a "superb polemicist", and it does not imply that what they are saying is incorrect. Most of Chomsky's political works could be considered polemical, because they are written quite unashamedly from a POV, and because they seek to persuade people to agree with that POV. Cadr 18:50, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Version 2: Summarize with one detail from each of two areas--academia and activist

message: <<Dr. Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an Institute Professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages. His works in generative linguistics contributed significantly to the decline of Behaviorism, and led to the advancement of the Cognitive sciences. Outside of his linguistic work, Chomsky is also widely known for his radical left-wing political views, in particular his criticism of the foreign policy of United States governments. He is probably one of the most prominent and influential anarchist thinkers.>>
* I prefer this one. Fredrik | talk 09:48, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Chomsky tends to be careful in defining what he means when he says he is an anarchist, but he seems to think that "libertarian socialism" speaks for itself (or at least, he goes to less trouble to define it). Cadr 17:32, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Version 3: Version 1 extended.

message: Choam-skee?  Chahm-skee?  (note the ironic lack of formal linguistic notation)
Tempshill 17:13, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: In English, Chahm-skee.  American English, maybe.  In British English, "Chomsky". ;) Markalexander100 00:51, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: Well, he is an American. --Sesel 02:09, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  How is Chomsky pronounced?