Debate Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault - On human nature [Subtitled]

1. Languages are used for much, much more than communication, and there is good reason to think that capacity didn't evolve for communication, but rather for metacognitive problem solving. 2. The idea that Tolkein --one of the most reknowned writers in our entire canon-- did something isn't relevant to the philosophical discussion of creativity and its obvious bounds. Even Tolkein was just painting within the lines set by the linguists he had read and the obscure languages he adored, not to mention the fundamental limits set by our capacity for language in the first place. For anyone who's curious about this kind of thing, I cannot reccomend the infamous debate b/w Chomsky & Foucault enough; it ranges across topics a bit, but chapter markers should help you skip to the core of it (creativity) if you prefer. Video here: ▶ this video , some old summaries on /r/AskPhilosophy here: link

For anyone who hasn't watched the actual, full video of the debate, you should do so. Watching them argue in two languages at the same time is super fun. ▶ this video Okay, here's what the video is saying, in slightly-longer form. The exchange in the video is basically Chomsky saying "human nature" and Foucault laughing. This gets at the heart of the hour-long debate: do humans have some sort of nature? Foucault, and philosophers like him, think that the idea of 'human nature' is complete and utter garbage. So when Chomsky admits that his position boils down to an appeal of human nature, Foucault just laughs at him. It's a great moment that really highlights the whole thing. I love it.

For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, here's an interesting debate between Foucault and Chomsky: [1] Unfortunately, they're mostly speaking past each other, but it's still worth watching. [1] - ▶ this video

I think he is not interested in epistemology. But I always find discussions on the origins or human knowledge just as fascinating as you. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It sounds like you may have already been exposed to it given the content of your arguments, but there is a very enjoyable debate/discussion between Foucault and Chomsky on the acquisitions of human knowledge and human nature [1] and your position sounds quite similar to the one Chomsky elaborates on. [1] ▶ this video

really wierd, most of my exposure to foucault is indirect. this debate with chomsky on human nature is interesting ▶ this video

It is quite illuminating to see the exchange for instance between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky to get a sense of the difference of tone and focus between european and american intellectuals. ▶ this video

Disregarding the (common!) assumption that AGI will consist of one monolithic LLM instead of dozens of specialized ones, I think your comment fails to invoke an accurate, consistent picture of creativity/"truly new" cognition. To borrow Chomsky's framework: what makes humans unique and special is our ability to produce an infinite range of outputs that nonetheless conform to a set of linguistic rules. When viewed in this light, human creativity necessarily depends on the "linguistic rules" part of that; without a framework of meaning to work within, we would just be generating entropy, not meaningful expressions. Obviously this applies most directly to external language, but I hope it's clear how it indirectly applies to internal cognition and--as we're discussing here--visual art. TL;DR: LLMs are definitely creative, otherwise they wouldn't be able to produce semantically-meaningful, context-appropriate language in the first place. For a more empirical argument, just ask yourself how a machine that can generate a poem or illustration depicting [CHARACTER_X] in [PLACE_Y] doing [ACTIVITY_Z] in [STYLE_S] without being creative! [1] Covered in the famous Chomsky v. Foucault debate, for the curious: ▶ this video

You’re asking the right questions, IMO! Chomsky has spent his life trying to answer this question in different forms, and has ultimately arrived to the conclusion that we live in a “Pre-Gallilean” era of cognitive science, where the only answers available to us are developed through the use of intuitive interpretation (like they used to do with ‘the heavens’/space) instead of empirical contradiction (aka science). He does have some answers, such as “human creativity is the ability to create an infinite range of outputs from a finite range of inputs that nonetheless pertain to our motivations/context in some useful way”, but that’s obviously not a very satisfying answer. It tells us a little — I think Tao is gesturing to exactly this when he complains that GPTo1 can only apply and combine mathematical approaches within a sort of closed domain rather than propose radically new ones - but it’s not helpful for an everyday understanding of creativity. IMO :) In his words, from Language and Mind : "Roughly, where we deal with cognitive structures, either in a mature state of knowledge and belief or in the initial state, we face problems, but not mysteries. When we ask how humans make use of these cognitive structures, how and why they make choices and behave as they do, although there is much that we can say as human beings with intuition and insight, there is little, I believe, that we can say as scientists… What I have called elsewhere 'the creative aspect of language use' remain

Cooked him? They had a perfectly pleasant and interesting conversation for the first 75% of the talk - both regularly shooshing the clueless moderator. Then at the end it turned more towards morality and Foucault showed himself to be quite clearly completely, illogically, disturbingly amoral - as Chomsky himself later more or less described him (a video which has been linked in other comments) No person with a shred of moral character or intellectual honesty could ever conclude anything remotely close to Foucault winning, let alone "cooking" him. edit: It starts building up to the real conflict/debate around maybe 45min, but it really becomes concrete at 54:13. Foucault just finished rambling about "destroy the bourgeoisie " and Chomsky says "surely you believe that your role in the war is a just role" and then further lays down some very sensible, insightful ideas about justice. Foucault then says something to the effect of "the proles dont fight for justice, they fight to have power for the first time in history. One wages war to win, not because it is just". Chomsky disagrees, but remains patient and extends an olive branch to him to say something less insane - suggesting that if such an overthrow would lead to a terroristic police state (e.g. the USSR, north korea etc...) , then I wouldn't want the proles to win. The only justification for such action is if one thinks - rightly or wrongly - that some fundamental human values will be achieved". Foucault just doubles and tr

I am not sure. But when I look at something like this: ▶ this video (Chomsky and Foucault debating at human nature) I tend to think that current (public) thinkers are not as good as they were.

Definitely, the Green Revolution et al is a solid basis for optimism, especially with Ehrlich losing his wager on resource scarcity. And I do like the malthusian lineage you described. This empirical optimism is also paradoxically irreverent toward the immutable attrition of complexity. Our creativity has limits, whatever they are just pick something. At the risk of sounding flippant, 200 years of “creative patching” is historically too small a window to say we can continue subverting this “law” with eternal vigilance (I’ve heard this described as “we are running out of tricks”). Maybe I’m oversimplifying when I say we would have to approach the limit of absolute foresight to achieve this, but I think there’s some truth to it. For example, I like these explanations of our rational limits, with regard to managing a complex society: - CHOMSKY[1]: We have in our heads a certain set of possible intellectual structures. In the lucky event that some aspect of reality happens to have the character of one of these structures in our mind, then we have a science. And that doesn’t mean everything is ultimately going to fall within the domain of science. Quite the contrary… personally I believe that the nature of a decent society might fall outside scope of possible human science. - ZIZEK[2]: Hegel says, the owl of Minerva only flies out in the dusk. [owl being the icon of wisdom] So philosophy can only grasp a social order when it’s already in its decay. Particularly unsettling is our r

agreed. There are many examples of attempts to put into dialog these different traditions of postmodernism vs humanism/analytic rationality: The Foucault/Chompsky debate: ▶ this video The Heidegger/Cassirer debate: link