Talk:The Language Instinct
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One went so far as to describe Pinker as the only linguist he knew who was able to write readable prose.
- I'd second that.
Whew, just spent considerable time expanding on the stub. I admire Pinker's writing style, and the book's implications really are sweeping. It's important to put the work in the context of evolutionary psychology / sociobiology to understand what he and other authors are really getting at. --Kris Schnee 10:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Citation needed
"One went so far as to describe Pinker as the only linguist he knew who was able to write readable prose."
If this is a genuine quotation, a reference should be cited. Otherwise it should be deleted.
84.9.80.17 13:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
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- Removed. Bjart 21:23, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Disputed
The implications of the language-instinct hypothesis are far-reaching. Language and similar abilities are some of the traits that most clearly set humans apart from other animals, and have been claimed by thinkers such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1] as the work of God. If language and other mental abilities are in fact explainable as products of evolution, as Pinker argues, then appeal to a deus ex machina is not necessary to describe why these abilities exist.
The idea that language is learned rather than innate does not require a deus ex machina either. There is no controversy here. The question is whether the language capability exists as a separate instinct or is derived by learning from the general intellectual capabilities of the human species (the latter hypothesis is the one Pinker polemizes with). Both a specific instinct and the general intellectual capabilities can be the result of evolution rather than god. And the thoughts of figures like Coleridge and Wallace are quite irrelevant in a modern scientific context. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Pinker challenges the fields of astrobiology and artificial intelligence as well. If language is a specialized ability evolved by humans' ancestors to aid survival in a particular environment, then a search for human-like intelligence elsewhere in the universe (e.g. SETI) is as futile as it would be for elephants to conduct a Search for Extra-Terrestrial Trunks and consider all non-trunk-using species inferior.
The sentence is ambiguous. "Futile" could mean that the search is hopeless or that it is pointless. The first is wrong, because there is such a thing as convergent evolution. The second is wrong, because clearly the presence of an alien human-like intelligence would be more significant for us than just the presence of alien life. And finally, the whole reasoning is mixing up language and intelligence, because the innateness of language does not preclude the existence of a more special - or even "superior" - form in intelligence in humans. Now, if Pinker himself reasoned like this, that can be attributed to him, but it certainly shouldn't be stated as a fact. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Mavens
I have recently read the book, and found it most interesting. Apart from the chapter so headed, which was enraging. The people Pinker attacks are mostly people I've never heard of. The people I have heard of, who are regarded as genuine authorities on English usage, make no such assertions as Pinker attacks. For example, no one regarded as an authority defends the nonsensical ban on split infinitives. Not even the most conservative of them. None of them objects to ending a sentence with a preposition, most calling that ban a mere superstition. All of them have the objective of preserving written English as clear and lucid to all, not of keeping it fixed forever against all change, since all of them acknowledge change as inevitable and language as evolving. I have never seen such a set of straw men set up to be knocked over in my life, and it left me with severe doubts as to the worth of the rest of the book.
I will try at some point soon to contribute a section on the page with cites and so forth, but in the meantime just wanted to state my indignation.
81.155.104.20 (talk) 11:12, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
