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Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

openculture.com

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Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#51

Post by ch4s3 »

imjonse wrote: post #39
ch4s3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I have to say he's always seemed like he made up his mind about the world by the 60s and hasn't really adjusted since. His Ukraine takes are right in line with his awful takes on the Cambodian genocide, which he still claims didn't happen.

which he *never* claimed didn't happen. You are another of those quickly educated on PragerU and similar Youtube channels but who never go to original sources?

No he definitely made the claim.

He was quoted saying “tales of holocaust in Cambodia were so much propaganda.”

He went on to say that refugees were making up the stories to please the west. It’s in the 1977 article on his own website.

Chomsky apologists never seem to be able to admit that he carried water for the worst regimes of the 20th century.

To be clear there are nearly 24,000 confirmed mass graves accounting for nearly 1.3 million dead. Fully 60% of the examined remains showed clear signs of execution with the most common method being a pickaxe. Chomsky said the refugees made it up. He’s never taken that claim back.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#52

Post by asah »

ajuc wrote: post #7

I start to dislike Chomsky more and more. His work in linguistic is over my head, maybe it's true, I can't tell. But whenever I hear him speak outside his niche his points are stupid (like this one) or harmful (like his Ukrainian takes). Everybody sees faces in rocks because we have brains fine-tuned for seeing faces. Does it prove that there's something universal in looking like a face or even worse - being a face?…

+1 - I got off the Chomsky bandwagon decades ago.

Language is a loose encoding of thought, nothing more or less. Want proof? Spend some time with ChatGPT4.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#53

Post by 4gotunameagain »

irrational wrote: post #18
ajuc wrote: post #7

I start to dislike Chomsky more and more. His work in linguistic is over my head, maybe it's true, I can't tell. But whenever I hear him speak outside his niche his points are stupid (like this one) or harmful (like his Ukrainian takes). Everybody sees faces in rocks because we have brains fine-tuned for seeing faces. Does it prove that there's something universal in looking like a face or even worse - being a face?…

I have a bachelors in Linguistics. We were taught what Chomsky believes, but our professor also made it clear that many linguists, including himself, didn’t believe it was right or true. Though, this was 30 years ago. I haven’t kept up with the field to know what professors of linguistics think today.

The concept of an innate, universal language that Chomsky came up with is almost certainly true, now whether that universal language contains information regarding what we call ethics, that is an open question

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#54

Post by empath75 »

jebarker wrote: post #2

I'm not sure I understand the point being made. Chomsky seems to be saying that since we learn the prevalent morality of our culture through sparse data there must be an underlying universal morality. But how does that allow for the fact that different cultures do have different moral codes and that those do change over time?

I think he's making two slightly related points.

1) That while it's possible to talk about moral relativism in the abstract, nobody in their own life is a complete moral relativist, which is to say that they will have _some_ moral system that they live their life by, even if they completely recognize the arbitrariness of it.

2) Moral systems have large degrees of freedom, but they _are_ constrained, and he thinks some of those constraints might be innate. For example, while all forms of violence can be approved of in some society, it's always _conditional_. You could _imagine_ a moral system where arbitrary extreme violence against anyone and anything including yourself and your family would be perfectly moral, but you won't see that in any real society. There are always some conditions under which violence is acceptable.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#55

Post by yakubin »

boffinAudio wrote: post #4

All culture is a lie which only persists in the re-telling. For example - there is no such thing as "Europe", unless enough people get together and agree that this thing that doesn't really exist, does exist and shall be named "Europe". "Europe" isn't a physical element, it isn't a naturally occurring substance - it is instead a human cultural construct which only persists for as long as the word continues to be used…

There’s a class of truths whose source is our belief in them, i.e. they are true, because we believe they are true. E.g. in most countries there is right-hand traffic, which is true based on people’s belief that it’s true. Of course it’s written down in law, but the only reason this law has this much power is because people believe in it. Similarly Europe exists, because people believe it exists. But none of those things are lies. They’re no less true than the fact that water boils at 100°C. In case of traffic you may even check the full power of human belief by driving in the other lane. ;)

(There was some clever Latin/Greek epistemological name for it, but I’ve forgotten it.)

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#56

Post by jebarker »

LindeBuzoGray wrote: post #41
jebarker wrote: post #2

I'm not sure I understand the point being made. Chomsky seems to be saying that since we learn the prevalent morality of our culture through sparse data there must be an underlying universal morality. But how does that allow for the fact that different cultures do have different moral codes and that those do change over time?

It can be seen in an individual. A boy is raised in rural Oaxaca, Mexico. He works on a farm, speaks Copala Triqui and no Spanish. Then when he's 14 his family moves to east Los Angeles. As he adjusts to his new situation, his behavior changes. The moral code of rural Oaxaca is different them that of east LA. His moral code changes. Perhaps he always gave a great amount of help when needed to neighbors in rural Oaxac…

I don't think it's obvious that those traits, e.g. not stealing, are universal or part of some fundamental moral grammar. It just means they're common and widespread.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#57

Post by Spooky23 »

maeln wrote: post #19
ajuc wrote: post #7

I start to dislike Chomsky more and more. His work in linguistic is over my head, maybe it's true, I can't tell. But whenever I hear him speak outside his niche his points are stupid (like this one) or harmful (like his Ukrainian takes). Everybody sees faces in rocks because we have brains fine-tuned for seeing faces. Does it prove that there's something universal in looking like a face or even worse - being a face?…

> But whenever I hear him speak outside his niche his points are stupid (like this one) or harmful (like his Ukrainian takes). Chomsky was always like this. He is an unapologetic hypocrite, constantly criticizing the U.S and "the west" while defending "socialist" country for the exact thing, and often even worse, than he was criticizing the U.S for. Even going as far as denying the existence of genocide during the Yu…

Chomsky is a provocateur. The currency he measures is attention. There’s some interesting things that he has to say, but ultimately, not worth getting your blood pressure up over.

It’s good to critique the US or the west - you cannot improve without dissent. Fortunately, Chomsky is in the US and enjoys unimpeded speech and academic freedom.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#58

Post by olalonde »

irrational wrote: post #18
ajuc wrote: post #7

I start to dislike Chomsky more and more. His work in linguistic is over my head, maybe it's true, I can't tell. But whenever I hear him speak outside his niche his points are stupid (like this one) or harmful (like his Ukrainian takes). Everybody sees faces in rocks because we have brains fine-tuned for seeing faces. Does it prove that there's something universal in looking like a face or even worse - being a face?…

I have a bachelors in Linguistics. We were taught what Chomsky believes, but our professor also made it clear that many linguists, including himself, didn’t believe it was right or true. Though, this was 30 years ago. I haven’t kept up with the field to know what professors of linguistics think today.

His editorial on ChatGPT definitely read like "sour grapes"[0].

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chat...

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#59

Post by miracle2k »

dhoe wrote: post #49
dgb23 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to mix things up? He has been very critical of "socialist" countries, especially towards their underlying political ideology.

Happy to learn otherwise, but everything I've seen follows the pattern of briefly paying lip service to the fact that some enemy of the US is not perfectly innocent, but well we're all human, and here's five pages on how the US is the worst.

“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that: namely, I can do something about it. So even if the US was responsible for 2% of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2% I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one’s actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2014/04/01/why-criticize-your-o...

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#60

Post by bluecalm »

Morality is a mechanism that helps with following some rules within a society without spending excess resources on enforcing them. It evolved in small groups (in comparison to the size of societies today).

If you accept this view on what morality is then it's pretty obvious there ought be some universal rules as human groups have a lot in common and some rules universally help with survival of a group. "Don't kill your peers" is one example. "Don't take their property without their consent or some process" is another although it can only arise in groups advanced enough to come up with the concept of property. Then there is a whole set of rules related to sex and reproduction which are again pretty universally needed for the group survival but can be established in various way - there more than one solution giving a chance for group's survival unlike in "don't kill your peers" case.

I am yet to meet a fundamental moral relativist who claims we can adopt any rules we please but a position that there are many set of rules that arised to help with the purpose of group's survival is both common and imo obviously correct. There is in fact an underlying mechanism for moral rules (group survival) which those rules stem from in one way or another. There might be better or worse set of rules and they might be different depending on environment a given group exists in. "Don't kill your peers" is going to be there but "Don't kill the weakest members of the group so the resources can be saved" not necessarily so.

It seems to me that Chomsky is arguing against a very narrow and strict definition of moral relativism here or I am not getting his point.

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