HUMOUR:

THE CHOMSKY BOARD GAME:

Click on the graphic for better viewing.

VENEZUELA:

NOAM CHOMSKY ON VENEZUELA:

Now Molly has to admit that she doesn't like Noam Chomsky very much. This dates back to a six month exchange in the early 90s when Molly learned exactly what Chomsky was all about in terms of the 'Third World'. It began as a "little" doubt about his support for the Kymer Rouge dictatorship and his attempts to denigrate the atrocities attributed to same. Never mind that his methods of "analysis" could be equally applied to his own "heroes" in East Timor. In other words he accepted "sources" in East Timor that were of the same veracity as those he rejected from Cambodia. At the time he was on the same side as the US government and the government of China in denying atrocities under the Kymer Rouge, though it must be admitted that that the Chinese government never engaged in the sort of lying campaigns that Chomsky and the US government did at the time. This exchange went over six months in the pages of Freedom in which Molly noted Noam complaining and whining that criticism of his pro-Chinese and pro-American view had not been censored out of their pages. Note that this was at the same time that he was complaining about how the New York Times would not publish EVERYTHING that he wrote to them, including insults directed towards the paper itself. To say the least this six months led me to lose ALL respect for Chomsky and his cats-paw and graduate student Milan Rai (who is probably happily ensconced in a $80,000 academic job by now and disavowing his earlier bullshit unless it is part of his CV).

All that being said, as one of the few anarchists on earth who has actually had real experience about what Chomsky is like, I have to commend him in his comments in his 78th year about Venezuela. Watching Chomsky over the decades I expected nothing more than cheerleading for Chavez and the usual childish leftist excuse for everything the dictator-to-be wants to do while blaming everything up to Chavez' hemorrhoids on the machinations of the USA. To say the least I was pleasantly surprised by a recent interview with Chomsky on Z-Net.Yeah, some of the interview was actually quite bizarre, shading into Chomsky's view of the discontent in America today as a "pre-revolutionary" situation. That's fine. Noam hasn't had more than a "street passing" connection with ordinary Americans for almost 40 years, and his opinions are not exactly the best informed in the world. Mostly he's chummy with his academic and leftist friends and very few other people.

What is interesting is not Chomsky's many failings but how he has decided to return, at the age of 78, to the attraction that libertarian socialism held for him in his youth. No doubt Chomsky would claim, as he always has, that his efforts to build a right wing social democratic party in the USA-over and over- were not evidence of any "different opinion" as compared to his "core opinions". Chomsky may be the WORST example of a leftist who can never admit that they were wrong or that they have changed their opinion, but I know from personal experience how much he can lie.

What is not lies is his present comments on the situation in Venezuela as set forth in an interview with him on Z-Net. No doubt the editors of Z-net, good vague leftists as they are, let this "go by" in hopes that very few would read it or see how it contradicts their general cheerleading efforts for the aspiring dictatorship in Venezuela. Chomsky makes some very salient points about how self-management as initiated from below such as what happened in the Spanish Revolution is very different from a top-down process such as what as has been initiated by the Venezuelan government. No doubt Chomsky knows all about the theory of a new ruling classe that can (or have already in Molly's view) replace the "capitalists" as a ruling class. He is, after all, buddy-buddy with Z-net who uphold their idea of a "coordinator class" with no reference as to how this class was described before they came up with this idea-nor any reference to as how it has been described outside of their circles since.

But anyhow, see this interview for at least a "mild" criticism" of how Venezuelan 'Bolivarian Socialism' is far from libertarian. Hardly the hissing and spitting that Molly would do as she recognizes the class aspirations of the managers, even when they hide themselves under the guise of leftism. But still, very worthwhile for a person who can describe the truth while holding back from a shift in perspective that would invalidate too much of their life.

Two Interesting Reviews:
A recent edition of Science Magazine (Nov. 10th, 2006), the journal of the AAAS, contains a couple of book reviews that I find interesting.


One review by Joseph T. Devlin is of 'Toward and Evolutionary Biology of Language' by Philip Lieberman. The review points out that the three critical differences between human language and other communication systems in other animals are, "...a large vocabulary, a rapid (and robust) transmission system and the ability to combine a finite set of words into a potentially infinite set of sentences." It also points out that, "...each of these is based on existing on linguistic abilities present in other species."


The reviewer goes on to present evidence given in the book that none of these abilities are unique to humans and all have their "prototypes" in other species. He goes on to discuss the vocabulary of vervet monkeys and, of course, the famous chimpanzee experiments in terms of "vocabulary". He states that the most successful chimps have learned about 150 to 200 words which they can combine in novel ways as a sort of "proto-grammar".
Molly aside: A little veterinary note here. Many people have made equal or even greater claims for the vocabulary of dogs. Little of this has been scientifically tested, though on an anecdotal basis I have met dogs who understood at least 6 verbs and up to 15 nouns (excluding "proper nouns" which might take the number much higher). What I have failed to see evidence for is that dogs have any concept of grammar. The whole idea of "a ball" versus "the ball" is beyond them, though I must admit that this distinction present in Germanic languages, Romance languages, Arabic, and Greek isn't present in most Slavic languages. It's minor actually.
What I usually struggle to communicate to people who were never taught grammar is that dogs are even more lacking than they are. Dogs do not understand such things as "tense" or "mood". My best example is the following. If you say to your dog,
"If you shit on the floor again, I will kick your ass"
The dog, being ignorant of both conditional and future tenses...and mood as well hears what you have said as,
"Shit...floor...kick ass."
Knowing the nouns "shit" and "floor" and being a bright dog who has picked up your use of the term "kikas" as one word signifying aggression the dog, being very eager to please, promptly shits on the floor and attacks somebody. The dog is very well acquainted with the imperative mood and takes what you have said as such. Actually, most dog's just cock their head in confusion and beg you to make a little more sense. This is, of course, the "eternal present" that mystic philosophers have always assumed is the best way for people to live.
Something to both think and woof about.


Back to the review. The reviewer goes on to compare the human ability to recognize "communication phonemes" at a much more rapid rate than they recognize other sounds. Phonemes are understood at a rate of 20 to 30 sounds per second while other sounds of 10 to 15 per second are hear as a "buzzing noise".
Molly Aside: I wonder if this is true of musical notes as well as random sounds ?


The reviewer notes that other animal species can produce every phoneme found in humans, even if all are not found in any given species in the variety found in humans. He goes on to state that "changes in the position and shape of our tongue, however, have enhanced our vocal communication by enabling us to generate more distinct vowel sounds that reduce ambiguity in the acoustic signal. Because these changes also increase the risk of choking on our food, the communicative advantages must outweigh the potential costs.
Molly aside: There have also been changes in the anatomy of the human larynx during the course of the evolution of hominids. This is a simplified statement.


The reviewer goes on to point out the differences between the model proposed by Lieberman and that proposed by people such as Chomsky and Pinker in terms of the production of grammar. the basic difference is that Lieberman proposes a "reiterative" system dependant on the basal ganglia structure of the brain that says that language is structured by a more or less simple process of repetition to produce a coherent whole ala a sort of "natural selection" in the brain reminiscent of "dance". The reviewer points out that the author wrongly attributes a greater specificity of cerebral cortex involvement to people such as Chomsky, Pinker and others than such people actually hold in their view of language-including the naming of specific cortical regions that such people simply don't name- as an "hierarchically structured" process that requires the "overwhelming" participation of the cortex. Very much a straw man argument on the part of the author.


The reviewer, however, points out that the author's enumeration of the prelinguistic abilities of other species is very valuable in laying out the evolutionary biology of the evolution of language and that the author's focus on the basal ganglia is a needed correction to something of an over concentration on the cortex in the neurobiology of language.
Molly's final aside. I think that I have pointed out one problem previously, that "music" may also be organized in an "hierarchical" manner similar to language in that rules of context may determine meaning. This is certainly true of the artform known as "comics", something that I have more familiarity with than "fine art", though I am pretty sure that it is true of other visual arts as well. I am very much the amateur in terms of the visual arts outside of comics, though I am familiar with at least a few of the rules, especially as they apply to art history. All that being said the point is that I personally "provisionally" favour the idea that many other modes of human communication are structured in an hierarchical rather than a reiterative manner. This points to an evolutionary conserved ability to understand many different modes of communication that is basically the same at its simple base. If this is right I am sure that both neurology and evolutionary biology will eventually converge towards a parsimonious explanation of why bower birds can understand both the communication of nests and of songs. Let's leave the humans for later.


For those interested in a "layperson's explanation" of the neurobiology involved in such debates I suggest the following site, formulated for teachers (which is about as "lay" as you can get in my arrogant opinion), 'The Evolution of Language' by Brian Peterson at 'Brain Connection' at http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/evolution=language


Anyways, on to the second book reviewed in said issue. This is a review of 'The Evolution of Animal Communication' by William A. Searcy and Stephan Nowicki, reviewed by Katherine E. Levan and Noah Wilson-Rich. This is actually a review of a subtitle in the Princeton series of 'Monographs in Behavior and Ecology', so it's hard to say if it deserves the title of "book". it's 286 pages long so maybe it does. The subtitle of the book, 'Reliability and Deception in Signalling Systems' really says much more about the "book" than the main title, as it hardly presumes to give an overview of "the evolution of animal communication" at all but merely deals with a few restricted issues in the sociobiology of same.


The main point to take away from this review is that there are three basic situations in which signalling takes place. There is, of course, a continuum between the various situations. They are a "yardstick" rather than "three colours", but research can be oriented by looking at the evolutionary interests of the "communicators" in these three different situations. One is where "the interests overlap" in terms of communication between "related" individuals. This shades because of degrees of relationship towards "where interests diverge" as in communication between the sexes and this, in turn, shades towards "when interests oppose" as between competitors. The monograph, as the reviewers point out, concentrates on the communication "within species" even though many of the most interesting questions revolve around interspecific communication. The reviewers also criticize the concentration on avian species, though this is excused by both the research interests of the original authors and the weight of the data accumulated for birds versus other species. The practical exclusion of the social insects, however, is deplored.


The point to take away from this review is that the evolve communication systems such as "language" have both cooperative and competitive aspects that have to be carefully diced apart by extended research. The whole idea of 'deception" is something central to both animal and human sociobiology and I can certainly see it at work in many (most ?) political statements including that of many people who share the anarchist "adjective" with myself. Some of this stuff is so cynical that I have a hard time imaging that the authors believe their own bullshit. It must be nice to have a totally sponge-like view of the world where you can assert anything, even things that totally contradict each other, at the same time. Liberalism as a malignant brain tumour masquerading as anarchism. The traditional commies at least took as few days to totally switch their views at the orders of Moscow. The great right wing example of this present use of communication as deception may be perhaps the right wing exponents of the "right to life" who want to even expand the death penalty. Left wing nonsense is too numerous to enumerate beyond what I have mentioned above.


Anyways, to get off my hobby horse, if you'd like a debate in left wing terms of the whole concept of "deception in communication" which brilliantly avoids left wing examples but is very penetrating in terms of right wing examples see the "debate" (more like a love-in) between sociobiologist Robert Trivers and Noam Chomsky at http://www.seedmagazine.com/noam_chomsky_robert_trivers.php
Molly

'Misquoting Jesus':The Conclusion.
Ehrman finishes his book with the summary chapter 'Changing Scripture'. He once more recounts how he "grew up" to appreciate the full complexity of scriptural interpretation from his fundamentalist youth. What has held his interest in the years that followed without the existential certainty of false "complete truth" is,
"...the mystery of it all. In many ways being a textual critic is like doing detective work. There is a puzzle to be solved and evidence to be uncovered."
This is certainly a more adult occupation than "spreading the word" of American fundamentalist dogma. My first thought is that Ehrman was able to grow up not just because he was intelligent and had 'lucky breaks' but also because he lacked a certain vicious streak that glories in the fantasy picture of one's enemies, real and imagined, suffering eternal torment. Also that he lacked a megalomaniac streak that sees one as a hero in a fantasy play about saving people from this fate.
One memorable quote from this section,
"The King James was not given by God but was a translation by a group of scholars in the early seventeenth century who based their rendition on a faulty Greek text. later translators based their translations on texts that were better, but not perfect. Even the translation you hold in your hands has been affected by these textual problems we have been discussing, whether you are a reader of the New International Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Version, the New King James, the Jerusalem Bible, the Good News Bible or something else. They are all based on texts that have been changed in places."
The whole litany quoted above is something to think about. What this book was about was a 'teaser' and and introduction to an intellectual world that only a small minority have any idea exists, and an even smaller minority are "educated laymen" in. It is, in fact, likely that more people have a layman's view of quantum mechanics than have one of Biblical criticism.
I found this book to be very interesting because the author takes the time to lay out the methods that his field uses, along with what is a small sample of the problematic texts for illustration. The idea of methods is important. Biblical criticism bears more than a slight resemblance to other, more modern, political controversies. For example, how many victims a communist dictatorship (or other dictatorship) has killed.
The resemblance isn't just that-to use the 'killing' metaphor- that if you killed off a few thousands of people across the world that the whole matter would be reduced to a "he said,she said" yelling match because it would take a long time for standard methods to be established again. The contrast between legitimate Biblical scholars and advocates of a given Christian sect is more than slightly obvious even in the rare occasions where the sectarians have enough knowledge to cherry pick disconnected facts to weave their stories with. What they lack is the methods of legitimate scholars.
The modern world is rife with such examples in politics. Every side has its "intellectual luminaries" that act like a Christian sectarian. What they ALL lack is any exposition of method . This is why somebody like Chomsky can impress people, not all of them young and naive, by obviously and deliberately picking holes in the periphery of a well established truth such as mass murder in Cambodia/Kampuchea while accepting ALL the same sort of evidence that he denigrates in the first case to "prove" the existence of atrocities in a second case such as East Timor. Chomsky's methods can only be discovered by a critical reading of what he does. Like any good propagandist he keeps the cards of his 'polemical plan' very close to his chest. It is likely that Chomsky mostly believes his own bullshit, though I get the distinct impression that sometimes he quite deliberately lies in a number of cases because he believes that small victories in polemics (and boy!, is he a polemicist) are important enough to justify a little 'fudging' if a bigger truth is served.
Very few people except Chomsky's right wing opponents bother to check his facts or note his methods. Perhaps nobody except they do this. Most people on the left, not just anarchists, accept his pronouncements with the same touching faith as the most traditional of Catholics would respond to a directive from the Vatican- with no interest in how the curia arrived at their decision. Such acceptance even gives a similar feeling of moral/intellectual superiority.
Biblical criticism may be a metaphor for politics.
Ehrman ends his book with a piece of apologetics for the scribes who changed the texts of the New Testament. He puts forward the trivial truth that reading any text is NOT simply a matter of "letting the text speak for itself". All texts have to be interpreted ie "put in different words" to be read at all. This is trivially true, and it might be characterized as post-modernism light.
But you can't read anything at all that you want into every text you chose. That is post-modernism the strong ale. The Gospel of Mathew is NOT an engineering diagram for a better water pump. The Gospel of John is NOT a manual of cruciate ligament repair. To bottom line it Revelations is NOT a history book of the 20th century. The above examples may seem extreme, but academia is full of 'failed revolutionaries' who produce "interpretations" of books that are only slightly less bizarre than those quoted.
That's about it for this book. I found it a valuable exposition of the methods of textual criticism, some of which I was familiar with and some of which I wasn't. The author is to be congratulated on presenting what may be the driest of all dry subjects in an interesting manner.
Just a final comment on my own mind. I've known for some years now that Mark was the oldest authenticated synoptic gospel, and that Mathew and Luke borrowed from Mark in writing their narratives. Yet that simple tiny fact kept slipping out of my mind because of a meme implanted in me in childhood. "The gospels are Mathew, Mark, Luke and John." It's amazing how such a simple recitation drilled into you can interfere with memory later in life. More on memes in other posts.
Molly