Re: principles of collective organization
Rob,
OK. That's a different point:
> I'm talking about his "loss of generality" argument
> presented in "The logical basis of linguistic theory",
> 1962?
>
> In that argument Chomsky rejected empirical methods
> exactly because they found no consistent primitives.
In any case, there's an open-ended number of different
"empirical methods", and it seems to be unreasonable
to reject all such methods just because the ones that
had been tried didn't give the desired results.
As a general principle, I would recommend keeping all
methodological options open:
1. I support the behaviorist's use of empirical methods,
but I criticize them for prohibiting the assumption
of unobservable theoretical entities.
2. I support Chomsky's use of native speakers' intuitions
as a useful heuristic, but I criticize him for prohibiting
the use of empirical methods for testing the insights.
3. Heuristics that say certain methods are generally better
or worse than others are useful, but they should never
be considered absolute, since newer and better variations
are constantly being invented.
So I would say that Chomsky's rejection of empirical methods
on those 1962 grounds was just as ill conceived as his 1957
rejection on the grounds of poverty of stimulus.
John