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This is the first time I've heard him described as a renowned (or any kind of) analytic philosopher. And I’m not sure he’s contributed anything that’s taken ser

This is the first time I've heard him described as a renowned (or any kind of) analytic philosopher. And I’m not sure he’s contributed anything that’s taken seriously by mainstream cognitive science. Also: “It’s”?

tsimionescu 6y ago
> And I’m not sure he’s contributed anything that’s taken seriously by mainstream cognitive science. If nothing else, he single-handedly tore down behaviorism as a serious theory of the mind, which at one point was status quo and gaining traction. Chomsky used his observations from the study of language to show that behaviorism simply can't explain most of how we acquire language. So even if his own theories of mind had not gained traction (I don't know enough about this to comment), he definitely had a major contribution to cognitive science.
dgellow 6y ago
Then you might want to look deeper into his work. Regarding cognitive science, check the first entry from this list: http://web.mnstate.edu/schwartz/cogsci100.htm http://web.mnstate.edu/schwartz/cogsci100.htm. (If the link to his book is dead, you can check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_Structures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_Structures directly if you prefer). > Also: “It’s”? Autocorrect typo, I fixed it.
yesenadam 6y ago
Maybe they read his wikipedia page, the third sentence of which is: "Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science." But that's just wikipedia, you say, so I looked at the (very "analytic philosophy") article on Philosophy of Linguistics in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Chomsky is mentioned by name 78 times. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/ A quick glance at just the titles of the 94 other articles on there mentioning Chomsky gives an idea of the range of his ideas/writing/influence: https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=noam+chomsky https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=noam+cho...

tsimionescu 6y ago

> And I’m not sure he’s contributed anything that’s taken seriously by mainstream cognitive science. If nothing else, he single-handedly tore down behaviorism as a serious theory of the mind, which at one point was status quo and gaining traction. Chomsky used his observations from the study of language to show that behaviorism simply can't explain most of how we acquire language. So even if his own theories of mind had not gained traction (I don't know enough about this to comment), he definitely had a major contribution to cognitive science.

dgellow 6y ago

Then you might want to look deeper into his work. Regarding cognitive science, check the first entry from this list: http://web.mnstate.edu/schwartz/cogsci100.htm http://web.mnstate.edu/schwartz/cogsci100.htm. (If the link to his book is dead, you can check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_Structures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_Structures directly if you prefer). > Also: “It’s”? Autocorrect typo, I fixed it.

yesenadam 6y ago

Maybe they read his wikipedia page, the third sentence of which is: "Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science." But that's just wikipedia, you say, so I looked at the (very "analytic philosophy") article on Philosophy of Linguistics in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Chomsky is mentioned by name 78 times. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/ A quick glance at just the titles of the 94 other articles on there mentioning Chomsky gives an idea of the range of his ideas/writing/influence: https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=noam+chomsky https://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=noam+cho...