Chomsky's Pragmatism

Review: Chomsky-Foucault Debate "Human Nature: Justice versus Power"

The Chomsky-Foucault debate "Human Nature: Justice versus Power" (original) is a supremely interesting exchange, definitely worthwhile on its merits. But what's particularly interesting to me is hearing Chomsky discuss questions that are conceptually prior to those I normally hear him lecture one -- rather than linguistics or politics per se, you get serious reflection on the enterprise of being a scholar and activist...how thinking occurs and why we ought to do it, according to a young Chomsky at the height of the Vietnam War.

What's striking in this debate is something that's rarely commented on: how pragmatic Noam Chomsky is. The question of why and how to think naturally lend itself to dogmatism. But here you see Chomsky extremely articulate about the limitations of his own mind, yet also steady about his need to move it forward. It's a remarkable posture. When I call it "pragmatic" I don't mean in the everyday sense (ie, someone whose ideas are "viable") but rather in the philosophical sense. The habits of mind that commit oneself to a certain method of truth, and yet aware of the intrinsic limitations of this method.

(Reading the debate, one's even reminded a little of Obama, who once said: "Part of it is psychological...I'm still wrapping my head around doing this in a way that I think the other candidates just aren't. There's a certain ambivalence in my character that I like about myself. It's part of what makes me a good writer, you know? It's not necessarily useful in a presidential campaign.")

For example, look at Chomsky's argument for the existence of human nature (it's so elegant that it's worth quoting in full):

Now, the person who has acquired this intricate and highly articulated and organised collection of abilities-the collection of abilities that we call knowing a language-has been exposed to a certain experience; he has been presented in the course of his lifetime with a certain amount of data, of direct experience with a language.

We can investigate the data that's available to this person; having done so, in principle, we're faced with a reasonably clear and well-delineated scientific problem, namely that of accounting for the gap between the really quite small quantity of data, small and rather degenerate in quality, that's presented to the child, and the very highly articulated, highly systematic, profoundly organised resulting knowledge that he somehow derives from these data.

Furthermore we notice that varying individuals with very varied experience in a particular language nevertheless arrive at systems which are very much congruent to one another. The systems that two speakers of English arrive at on the basis of their very different experiences are congruent in the sense that, over an overwhelming range, what one of them says, the other can understand.

Furthermore, even more remarkable, we notice that in a wide range of languages, in fact all that have been studied seriously, there are remarkable limitations on the kind of systems that emerge from the very different kinds of experiences to which people are exposed.

There is only one possible explanation, which I have to give in a rather schematic fashion, for this remarkable phenomenon, namely the assumption that the individual himself contributes a good deal, an overwhelming part in fact, of the general schematic structure and perhaps even of the specific content of the knowledge that he ultimately derives from this very scattered and limited experience...

I would claim then that this instinctive knowledge, if you like, this schematism that makes it possible to derive complex and intricate knowledge on the basis of very partial data, is one fundamental constituent of human nature. In this case I think a fundamental constituent because of the role that language plays, not merely in communication, but also in expression of thought and interaction between persons; and I assume that in other domains of human intelligence, in other domains of human cognition and behaviour, something of the same sort must be true. Well, this collection, this mass of schematisms, innate organising principles, which guides our social and intellectual and individual behaviour, that's what I mean to refer to by the concept of human nature.

He's purporting to have discovered a "fundamental constituent of human nature." But his method for doing so was strictly empirical. And the discovery is itself highly contained. We have a human nature, but for what use is it? Where does it steer us? If human nature exists then, conceivably, so too does the Good Society. But Chomsky's statements about human nature was too conservative for an answer about what that would look like: just because human nature is there, doesn't mean we can claim any privileged access to it, and it especially doesn't mean that we can assert by fiat moral judgments on its basis (or ask people to sacrifice on its behalf).

Foucault is a great foil for Chomsky on this point. For him, the uncertainty inherent in the value "justice" renders the whole process of social change invalid. If we cannot establish justice for certain, than we cannot dignify our attempts to make change as anything but power plays. These are his premises: Justice itself is not objectively existent. Rather, like other social notions, it is a construct. And constructs are formulated by those who control institutions of power and by those who are victims of them. All of our mental life (including concepts like "justice" "science" "insanity") fit within the "grille" of cultural rules at play. This set of rules is contingent and changeable.

And contrary to what you think, you can't prevent me from believing that these notions of human nature, of justice, of the realisation of the essence of human beings, are all notions and concepts which have been formed within our civilisation, within our type of knowledge and our form of philosophy, and that as a result form part of our class system; and one can't, however regrettable it may be, put forward these notions to describe or justify a fight which should-and shall in principle--overthrow the very fundaments of our society. This is an extrapolation for which I can't find the historical justification. That's the point.

I'm actually pretty sympathetic to Foucault's point about the ways that individuals fit within the totality of the social rules that govern them. But it's not clear how seriously we can take this -- life, after all, would hardly be worth living if we had to ditch all the things that were contingent/constructed. Too much of the stuff of living would be rendered unusable: our identities are products of chance, so those are constructs, and so are our conceptions of "love" and "suffering," our families we've been born into, not to mention any conception of a good society towards which we could struggle. The great irony of the postmodernist's project is that as they've attempted to reject socially constructed "systems of knowledge," they've managed to create there own system -- and one just as untenable as any its replacing. But in some ways worse. Foucault's thought denies the very act of thinking.

Where does Chomsky stand on this? Well, he affirms that justice may not exist, but we still must progress according to the believe that it does. If social change cannot ever have a demonstrative, absolute moral basis (and I think it cannot), then we can either deny the act of progress all together, or retain that notion and attempt to guide ourselves by our moral intuitions alone. Social changes would then revolve on the empirical process of finding the conditions that tend to make people thrive, and that reduce their oppression, a process that concedes from the beginning that the idealism is bracketed by epistemological uncertainty.

For example, to be quite concrete, a lot of my own activity really has to do with the Vietnam War, and some of my own energy goes into civil disobedience. Well, civil disobedience in the U.S. is an action undertaken in the face of considerable uncertainties about its effects. For example, it threatens the social order in ways which might, one might argue, bring about fascism; and that would be a very bad thing for America, for Vietnam, for Holland and for everyone else. You know, if a great Leviathan like the United States were really to become fascist, a lot of problems would result; so that is one danger in undertaking this concrete act.

On the other hand there is a great danger in not undertaking it, namely, if you don't undertake it, the society of Indo-China will be torn to shreds by American power. In the face of these uncertainties one has to choose a course of action.

Well, similarly in the intellectual domain, one is faced with the uncertainties that you correctly pose. Our concept of human nature is certainly limited; it's partially socially conditioned, constrained by our own character defects and the limitations of the intellectual culture in which we exist. Yet at the same time it is of critical importance that we know what impossible goals we're trying to achieve, if we hope to achieve some of the possible goals. And that means that we have to be bold enough to speculate and create social theories on the basis of partial knowledge, while remaining very open to the strong possibility, and in fact overwhelming probability, that at least in some respects we're very far off the mark.

I really admire this mixture of uncertainty and progress. I think it's the correct posture intellecutally and, also, that it's a particularly American one. (See Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club for a review of the American invention of philosophical pragmatism during the reconstruction of the Union after the Civil War). I imagine Chomsky would disagree with this -- but maybe not. After all, Chomsky is one of Foucault's exceptions, someone who's militated against the contingencies of his culture (he was born into a country that he's spent his career criticizing; he was born as a Jew, and has become one of Israel's greatest critic), yet owes much of his life to the freedoms and institutions of American society. So maybe it's this: American sensibilities. But with reservations.