The Limits of Understanding - Dennett Vs Chomsky

Daniel Dennett vs Noam Chomsky on the limits of understanding.

[alvaromd]

Chomsky always busy trying to make sense of things instead of criticizing other thinkers. That’s just another remarkable characteristic of this inspiring human being. BTW, in terms of this specific issue, Chomsky was clear (here and elsewhere): the thing is that some aspects of reality seem to be unintuitive to our senses (take the quantum world as a paradigm); it is NOT that our theories about them are unintuitive by definition, it is just that some aspects of the world may not be opened to human understanding as they would be if we were packed with other sensorial organs, different brain cells and, perhaps, different neurocomputational processes.

[HueyTheDoctor]

Dennett thinks it's impossible to pose any question with an answer that lies beyond the capacity of humans to comprehend? What an awful example of a philosopher.

[schweens]

It almost makes me cry how much I love and respect Chomsky. All these questions I struggle with, he so easily explains them with facts and examples. He's brought so much light to my dark world.

[harmonyvegan]

Chomsky's insights are always a joy to listen to.

[jjdemaio]

Dennett comes across as sarcastic, smug and a bit befuddled—Chomsky is cool and lucid, as usual.

[sgbh]

Bertrand Russell — 'Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.'

[cougar]

We don't know the questions we are incapable of asking, like the fish, admittedly at a much higher level.

[aguilayserpiente]

Plato, Descartes, and Chomsky address epistemology and ontology- the nature of thought and the symbol. Plato proposes that our works are thrice removed from the truth of form. Dennett is a positivist - what you see is what there is. Descartes put in motion our Western critical thinking with the example if the ball of wax. The wax appears to be a solid. The positivist would conclude that the wax must be a solid because it looks solid. Descartes applies heat to the wax causing it to become a liquid. Dennett's positivism reaches a roadblock. We are taught by Descartes to explore the nature of things. Chomsky critically examines and tests the limits of our assumed reasoning methods not unlike Plato, Descartes, St. Augustine, Dante, Marx, etc.

[mshioty]

"The limits of understanding" is not a bad thing.

[anonjan]

Dennet is overrated every step of the way

[BET]

I don't get Dennett's position - natural language can be shown to be insufficient in its ability to prove all potential statements in a rich enough system (as per Godel)... so that immediately eliminates natural language (and mathematics as well). So, what is left? Intuition falls well short of satisfying what it means to "understand" something - worse, as Chomsky states, much of what we understand is abstracted out of "reality" and converted into theorems.

[ReynosoJD]

the winner .... Chomsky! Dennett contradicts himself too much.

[naimulhaq]

We do not understand what space, time, mass, charge are, yet we understand the Standard Model and fine tuning of the parameter space.

[pengefikseret]

So there might be questions that we CANNOT understand, but that we therefore do not have to bother about? Does the understanding of a question guarantee that we can answer it? (Dennett seems to presuppose that. The dog cannot understand questions about democracy, so it cannot get any answers. We can understand questions about free will and consciousness, so we can get the answers)

[Kostly]

Dennett is a dwarf compared to Chomsky.

[edwardjones]

Jesus, Dennett is such a waffler - invoking generative grammar as an indication that Chomsky believes we can know everything.😂😂

[kichu]

Dennett is a philosopher i have very much respect. But again chomsky is right here..

[SchutzBoysband]

Chomsky's best argument BY FAR: without limits you can't have scope. Its funny that chomsky's point about the relation of limits and scope is just never dealt with. It's irrefutable so it just gets ignored despite the fact that Dennett loves to invoke Bertrand Russel who wrote a book literally called "Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits".

Dennet is kind of dumb here. There's basically no argument given, he just calls "bizarre" the idea that we could formulate questions we couldn't answer. Well I don't think its bizarre and I've given just as much evidence. Krauss is just dumb - saying there are things we can't understand is OBVIOUSLY A MUCH, MUCH more reserved prediction than the idea that our capacity for understanding is literally unbounded (and saying there are things humans can't understand doesn't entail knowing everything they can). Dennett even throws in "now of course there could be limits" almost as if it doesn't undermine his entire premise. That's bizarre.

It just goes to show that most intellectuals are no smarter than a carpenter, chef, mechanic, or sales clerk. Other than a handful of truly special intellects most intellectuals are just more pompous morons who flatter the right people (Quine in Dennett's case). What's the difference between saying chomsky is an asshole and "chomsky is a new mysterion who likes mysteries" - the first is just invective while the latter is an outright lie. But outright lies are perfectly acceptable in the academy.

[hozera]

The rat example is a fundamentaly flawed argument. The knowledge of prime numbers might have taken humans centuries if not millenia to discover. Not to mention prior knowledge that leads to prime numbers(division, Base 10 number system, ten finger counting). For a rat to understand prime number mazes it must have use of prior knowledge to even have a chance at prime numbers. In short it's like judging a rats natural abilities against knowledge that took us thousands of years to understand.

This is not everything he said but you can apply the same way of thinking to most of his examples. Free will debate, really!? In this age where we can see the brain making a decision before the individual is aware of it.

[slwankaedbey]

The thing is that I know what is consciences? And many others do, but the language of interpreting this idea in particular is not conveyed efficiently, and I tried a lot and finally you'll reach a point in whatever field you're in and that is, you'll find the majority of people understand speaking correctly about some kind of science but not understanding its "essence", and you can trace that by asking an enormous amount of questions until you find that ERROR, so they came up with horrible mistakes, and it is very hard to clarify that error, it's like you have a PC without the processing capability of a certain rare task, it will do all the amazing things you want and worldwide, it'll be recognized as a world-class PC, but still not understand your command of that rare task.
And all of that, again assures the limits of language and the scary limits of understanding.
There's a quote, I don't remember who said it but it was like : I can talk to you about my understanding of a phenomenon but I can NOT give you my understanding of it.