Recursion and the Universal Grammar

Ooops...thought you said, "excursion"...

Actually, pretty interesting although a shade abstruse (not trying to be obtuse).

I would enjoy seeing Noam Chomsky being found in error and taken down a couple of notches for entirely different reasons... namely his mideast 'philosophy' and anti-Israel stand.

We're only taking the first baby steps in understanding how we came to have our languages. I'm certain that language shapes consciousness, and I think I can follow the basic argument that "no recursion in a language means there is no underlying biological 'hardware' for grammar." But one of the other things we're starting to barely understand is epigenetics, so maybe there are biological mechanisms in play and the "universal" part of the Pinker-Chomsky position is a matter of degree and not kind.

Anyway, if my understanding of the scientific method is adequate, in scientific progress, two wrongs can make a right when competing theories merge on common ground while shedding erroneous elements. That tribe's language sounds like good scientific news regardless of how you might think about the idea of universal grammar.

Yes GW, the bais of the scientific method is to continually reevaluate any 'truth,' anytime new evidence is discovered.  The problem with 'some' scientists is that that have changed their current 'understanding' of <whatever> into a dogma - a belief.  They believe that have discovered the truth, and refuse to re-evaluate their <whatever> when new data is discovered.  In a sence, they have 'made' their own religion.

Yes, but it is everyone in science, not just the folks clinging doggedly to their favorite ideas. I piss off many of my academic friends when I say things like this, but science is every bit as faith-based as Roman Catholicism. It's just the objects of faith that are different. In theistic systems, gods & other mystical beings are objects of faith. In science, we put our faith in the overall goodwill of the research community and our personal committment to rational analysis of reliable data.

My problem with scholars like Chomsky is not what he does in his role as an activist, but the fact that he is part of the 'pop scientist scene,' for lack of a better term. I blame TV for the problem. Back in the early/mid-'70s when I was a lad waiting every week for new episodes of PBS's Nova, the shows were primarily focused on science and episodes with barely a human face in them were not uncommon. Now, when they cover a botanical theme or even animal behavior, there's almost always a large chunk of screen time given to perky scientists talking about the experience of doing their work rather than the work itself.

But that says nothing about the OP's focus, which makes me fell obliged to apologize for abetting a threadjacking in progress and to at DrJ for jumping on the snarkiness bandwagon. The interesting questions are about the nature and evolution of language, not whether we like Chomsky's politics or personality.

I'm alright with this statement. Most people with that opinion state the first part and leave off the second. I think that placing faith in a process is different in a lot of important ways from placing faith in a specific set of facts. So, while I personally think that you're right in a way, they are different in a couple of important ways, too.

No need to apologize for threadjacking.

All I can say is "HUH?". That story is almost 3 and a half years old.

Definitely. For one, I'm fairly certain that religious sects far outnumber factions in the scientific community, and that's likely because science requires verification by repeatable testing while religious testimony can be based entirely on interior experience. I guess in that sense, I do agree that a mind that thinks with recursion contains infinite conceptual possibilities. But there are only so many grains of sand on the Earth at a given time.

That little article you linked also makes me wonder how much, if any, progress the 'intelligence' measuring crowd have made recently. I'd love to have a culture-neutral form of IQ test to apply to those folks without recursion in their heads. Does that fundamentally simpler language framework slow them down at problem-solving? A social dyanmics study would be interesting to read also--does that inability to nest phrases have effects on how they settle disputes?

And what's the date got to do with it? Good questions are often worth years, decades, or even centuries of discussion.

I think that is a misuse of the term 'faith'.  Scientists place 'faith' in the scientific method, which is a logistical construct used to provide a framework for exploration of hypotheses.

It's akin to saying you have 'faith' that 1 + 1 = 2.  Well it's defined that way (and don't bother with what it is in binary), 'faith' is a nonsequitur.

I would entirely agree that there are scientists form whom certain theories have achieved a religious aura to which 'faith' can be applied (the AGW argument to speak of one, and let's not debate that here, there's already a thread which hopefully is dead).  However, what they do isn't really 'science' anymore, it's far more akin to politics.  Science, though, is not faith based, even if some scientists may treat their work (or the work of others) as though it were.

But to the point of this thread.  I'm not sure I understand what 'recursion' means here.  I'm certainly no linguist, so perhaps someone could elaborate on it for me.

Thanks

Might try here... usually don't reference the wikipedia, but this seems correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursion

Discussions of the necessity of linguistic recursion are fairly amusing, especially those originating from Chomsky. The average neuron has the ability to form recursive connections in its inherent structure, yet this capability does not necessarily imply that a particular set of neurons needs to create recursive connections. It has long been thought that this linguistic structure is necessary during the creation of sentience since the referencing of self by self appears necessary for self-awareness. Yet, there are several examples in English which cast doubt on this. Let's look for example at the following statement: "This Statement is false." This is a paradoxical statement in general. If the statement was false, it would be true, and if it was true, it would false. However, our minds are not so easily tricked into this paradox, as we can read the sentence and understand it to be meaningless. It would appear as though our minds have a built in safeguards for infinite recursion, which is not exactly a surprise. As any programmer will tell you, infinite recursion is to be avoided at all costs. Thus, it is not suprising that life too would attempt to avoid such pitfalls.

I think you're right in that the faith that Swicord describes is an ordinary sort of faith that attends most human interactions. E.g. Most if not all assertions require us to presume (perhaps, take it on faith) that the asserter is sincere.

I'll try to stake out a stronger claim for faith in science that goes beyond the sort of faith described above. 

Science and mathematics aren't obviously similar. Science is a lot messier than mathematics. It relies on certain premises like "there are observable regularities" or "theories can be tested in isolation". 

There are ongoing debates over whether or not belief in these premises is justified. These debates are complex, and I won't try to convince you one way or the other. 

Regardless, most scientists aren't attentive to these debates. They don't actively attempt to justify the premises on which the rationality of their enterprise depends. This seems at least superficially like faith.

NB. There are some philosophers of mathematics who believe that mathematics, like science, is inductive. In which case mathematics would be more similar to science than I've described. 

I don't follow the argument against Chomsky from the liar's paradox. Chomsky's position doesn't require that we view every sentence that involves recusion - regardless of its other content - as meaningful, does it? (I'm ignorant of the recusion debate in linguistics.)

Well, we are all doing the best we can to understand the world we live in.  None of us is born with the knowledge of the way the world works, and why some things are and some things aren't.  You might describe science as faith, and maybe it is, but what else do you we have to do all day and night?  Just say "there is lots to discover, and I'll never discover it all, so I'll just sit around doing nothing."  What is "life" hasn't even been defined.  Why are some compositions of substances inherently "alive" and some aren't?  And what is the difference between a body that has some "life" in it, and a body where inherent life has passed away?

We have to have "faith" in something, and I prefer to have "faith" in the scientific principle, and more generally, adjustment and improvement over the journey of life and lives.  Because after all, what more is there than what apparently "is"?  And what does it all mean?

Best regards,
Steven.

Yes, deductive vs. inductive reasoning.  Logical constructs as definined, vs. logical constructs as observed.  You don't need to convince me one way or the other, I feel I've enough of a background in the philosophy of science to at least understand your point.  Though I would still maintain that 'faith' is a poor choice of word to use in describing why scientists accept the scientific method as functional.

Good scientists never 'prove' their hypotheses as 'true' (other than when they are in the deductive realm, largely mathematics).  Though certainly there is a lot of confusion in the way terms such as 'fact', 'true', 'proven', ... are used.

Speaking as a research scientist (analytical chemistry), I don't think it would productive to constantly consider those debates, there's actual work to be done   Seriously though, from my perspective inside the ivory tower, while there are those who definitely cling too closely to their pet theories or beliefs, the underlying evidence which is used to support those threories is well scrutinized, and it's only in the areas where that evidence is not fully understood/reproduced that you really have these issues where 'faith' would seem to apply.

It's more a question of what else do you expect us to do?  The scientific method is a logical procedure for testing hypotheses, and it does not contain the ability to prove those hypotheses as true.  Only the ability to show that they have not yet been falsified.  That is an enourmous distinction which I feel many people do not remotely appreciate.

Very true. And most importantly, as I'm sure you know, is that it works. And when we're led up a false path through faulty premises, eventually the bottom falls out and the data are re-interpreted as necessary.

True, but I wouldn't call them safeguards per se. The "software" that runs on the human machine is really fundamentally different than that that runs on computers. It's an analogy that's tossed around alot, but I'd argue that it's really a confusion of (or, more likely, a failure to make explicit) the different levels of analysis.

To say the scientific method works is questionable. It is fundamentally a wavelike process wherein key discoverys build up a distinct scientific paradigm until further discoveries tear down the paradigm. Yet, the basic assumption would imply that upon the discovery of information, which begins a paradigm shift, that all theories and lemmas of the old paradigm would be inherently suspect and would require explicit re-examination within the context of the forthcoming paradigm. However, these full re-examinations do not necessarily happen, and in some cases, theories which are known to be incorrect or inaccurate are simply kept in totality because they are consider to be workably incorrect. A good example of this would be Newtonian Mechanics. It has been shown that Newtonian Mechanics are an inaccurate description of the motion of physical bodies in a vacuum, yet these theories are usable in engineering applications as they are simple and accurate enough to act as workable model.

To say that the human machine is fundamentally different from the digitial computer is not entirely true, though my point was not a comparsion with the digital computer. However, you are right to say that the software which runs in the mind is significantly different than that which runs on the modern digitial computer. Yet, both sets of software are based on the same fundamentals of computational abstraction, and the distinctions in the software are a result of the clear distinctions between how the machines are built. The Human neuron and the logic gates of a digital computer function on the same principles, with the difference being that the human neuron is not bound to one particular type in the same way that a logic gate can only function in one particular way. The neuron in fact has a set of emulatable functions which can be changed based on various inputs.

I'm sorry, but how do you expect me to take anything you say seriously after this statement? Especially when you're point against would have been my point for? Everything that has come out of any field of engineering? Thank a scientist for discovering the fundamental principles. It's not perfect, and I don't think anyone would suggest it is, but to say that it just doesn't work is silly.

And please, spare me the lecture on how neurons work. What you've described is a fairly simple and 'not entirely correct' analogy. The proper logic gate analogy is at the synapse, not the neuron. Each neuron may have 100s of synapses when you consider their dendritic trees as well as their terminals that work together in ways that we just don't understand yet. Together, the neurons work in ensembles that seem to use statistical averages of their inputs to perform their functions by virtue of the way they are wired together. In that sense, it's hard to separate hardware from software as easily as you can with a computer.

Ok, unfortunately, I think that I may have let my personal dislike for you derail the discussion. Don't mind me.

Because this thread lacks a definition (value statement) about what science can or should produce?

That, and the fact that you're obviously having a serious conversation with kenata?

Fair enough. I would suggest that a good working definition of 'works' in this context to be: "Produces things that are widely used and would not be available without it." That said, I didn't mean for this thread to be a debate on the merits of the scientific method. But I won't be upset or offended if anyone else wants to continue along those lines.

*shrug* I just thought it was a "fun" and fairly obscure finding with potentially interesting implications.

So do I. Lay discussions of linguistic theories--well, I'm nerd enough to think that's almost as fun as picking flowers in someone else's garden.

I was seriously having fun when I wondered about just what, if any, 'structural' limits a lack of recursiveness in a language would place on people who spoke that language. That's not least because I've not been pointed to a solid riposte to Stephen Gould's The Mismeasure of Man. I'd very much like to know whether a lack of recursion in language meant that a group speaking only that language was at a 'cognitive disadvantage' to surrounding groups with recursive grammar systems.

I am unsure if I would agree with your definition of works, as this would exclude a large set of systems which can be said to "work". Though ultimately my statement was poorly worded. The scientific method much like many systems of inquiry is more of a thought experiment than a practical tool. While many researchers and thinkers have applied the methodology successfully to create great advances, it become questionable if the method itself is to be commended for these advances or if the raw imaginative power of the human mind would have made the discoveries outside of such rigor.

The lack of recursion means that a language is semantically finite as long as it is conceptually finite. Let's look at language L with some grammar G. Now, we shall define a non-recursive grammer in the following way, Grammer G contains rules R. We shall denote A->B to mean that A contains a reference to rule B. For G to be non-recursive, two things must be true. First, that for all A and B in R, there is no such A and B such that A->B and B->A. Secondly, there is no such sets {X1,X2,X3,...Xn} and {Y1,Y2,...,Ym} in R such that A->X1->X2->X3->...->Xn->B and B->Y1->Y2->...->Ym->A. The first rule being a special case of the second wherein our two sets are both {empty}. Under this non-recursive grammar, our language L will always terminate unless G contains a rule set R which is both infinite and contains an infinitely long set of references. A language without semantic recursion would mean that concepts could not be circularly referenced. Thus like our syntactic recursion, one could only have a finite set of meaningful reference. In a larger sense, I doubt any structural limits would cause a significant 'cognitive disadvantage'.

I am utterly confused now.

What exactly do you think the scientific method is anyway?  To say that is doesn't work makes absolutely no sense, much in the same way it doesn't make any sense to say that 1 + 1 = 2 doesn't work.  To revisit that statement...

Now one could argue that some scientists do not apply the SM correctly, but that's hardly the same thing.

I am not exactly sure how one would analogize 1+1=2 and the scientific method, as one is a fact of definition while the other is a methodology of inquery based upon the socratic method.

Both are logical constructs.  Both are entirely definitional.

You may be considering their applications rather than just what they are.

But, are you going to continue your point and claim that the socratic method doesn't work eihter?

What then is your definition of 'work'?  Perhaps that term is a bit too nebulous for this discussion.