Noam Chomsky: On Power, Knowledge and Human Nature

212 Pages·1997·13.52 MB·English

by  Peter Wilkin

NOAM CHOMSKY:
ON POWER, KNOWLEDGE
AND HUMAN NATURE
Also by Peter Wilkin
AN INTRODUCTION TO NOAM CHOMSKY
GLOBALIZATION AND THE SOUTH: Towards a Political Economy
of Another World Order (editor with Caroline Thomas)
Noam Chomsky:
On Power, Knowledge
and Human Nature
Peter Wilkin
Lecturer
Department of Politics and International Relations
Lancaster University
f&
First published in Great Britain 1997 by
& MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-333-66916-9
First published in the United States of America 1997 by
& ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 0-312-17477-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilkin, Peter, 1963-
Noam Chomsky : on power, knowledge and human nature / Peter
Wilkin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-312-17477-2 (cloth)
1. Chomsky, Noam—Philosophy. I. Title.
P85.C47W57 1997
191—dc21 97-1797
CIP
©Peter Wilkin 1997
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by
the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 43
06 05 04 03 02 01 00
Printed in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction viii
1. Modernity, Human Nature and Knowledge 1
2. Chomsky's Methodological Naturalism 25
3. Chomsky's Naturalism and Political Philosophy 54
4. The Responsibility of Intellectuals (Problems of Ideology,
Knowledge and Power) 85
5. Political Culture in the USA: Manufacturing Consent 115
6. Chomsky on Libertarian Socialism (Reconciling Solidarity
and Diversity?) 150
Notes 175
Bibliography 185
Index 200
Acknowledgements
There are many people who should be thanked for their help and
encouragement in making sure that this project reached completion and I
will attempt to include most of them here. First and foremost my
appreciation goes to Professor Raymond Plant and Dr Diane Blakemore
of St Catherine's College Oxford and Southampton University respectively
for their guidance, criticisms and comments on my research. Others who
deserve thanks for their advice and criticisms over the past few years
include Professor Trevor Pateman, Professor Preston King, Professor Bob
McKinley and Dr Gordan Hands. In particular I owe a great intellectual
debt to four people without whom I would never have pursued an academic
career: Dr Caroline Thomas, Dr Julian Saurin, Ian Broad and Brian Loader.
With regard to the book itself I would like to express my gratitude to
Professors Carlos Otero, Harry Bracken, Richard Popkin, Hilary Putnam
and also to Roy Bhaskar, all of whom found time to answer my queries
in a friendly and prompt manner.
At Macmillan's/St Martin's Press I would like to thank Tim Farmiloe for
his support and understanding over both the research itself and deadlines
missed. At Southampton John Glenn, Simon Eagle and Lloyd Pettiford
were crucial in providing the kind of friendship that helped me through the
main part of this research. At Lancaster I have incurred debts to people who
have given me help in a number of ways. Andy Stafford has kindly proof
read and offered critical commentary on the text and I am extremely grateful
for his intellectual and collegial support. In addition I would like to thank
Cathal Smyth, Arianna Bove, Martin Elvins, Ged and Sarah Griffin-Keane
for their companionship, encouragement and comradeship in my time at
Lancaster. They helped to make a difficult transition easier than I could have
hoped. Also thanks must be extended to Alison Edgley with whom I have
had the opportunity to discuss some of the issues raised here. I would like
to express my appreciation of the wonderful people working at AK Press
who have helped introduce me to a range of materials and ideas that I would
otherwise have missed. They have been a source of lasting inspiration and
in particular I would like to thank Ramsey Kanaan for his friendship and
encouragement.
Inevitably my thanks and love go to my parents and to my wife who
between them have helped to keep me on track and heading in the right
vi
Acknowledgements vii
direction! It is to Jackie, Eddie and Jules that this book is dedicated. Finally,
I owe a debt of gratitude and inspiration to Professor Chomsky who has been
more helpful in the course of this project than I had any right to expect. I
hope that this work does some justice to the contribution that he has made
to contemporary intellectual and political life.
Peter Wilkin
Lancaster University, June 1996
Introduction
The aim of this book is reasonably straightforward. My first concern is to
examine Chomsky's ideas about naturalism in the context of contemporary
debates about this theme in social and political inquiry. In so doing I will
illustrate the ways in which his ideas help to defend naturalist approaches
to social inquiry. My second and related aim is to give an overview and
defence of Chomsky's ideas about knowledge, power and human nature. The
latter task means that I am concerned not only with his critical writings about
contemporary social and political issues but also with his prescriptive and
normative ideas about libertarian socialism and human emancipation. The
intention here is not to set Chomsky up as a 'Grand Theorist' but to present
him as someone who synthesises a number of important ideas in social and
political thought at a time when these ideas have fallen out of favour. This
book is not intended as an overview of every aspect of Chomsky's work,
such a task would be difficult to achieve in depth in a single volume.
It will become clear to the reader that in addition to setting out the nature
of Chomsky's ideas and the problems that they face I have also sought to
build upon his thought in areas where Chomsky has written less extensively.
This is particularly the case, for example, with regard to his account of
human nature and its significance for social and political thought. It is worth
stressing, therefore, that this is not simply an account of what Chomsky has
written and said but is also an attempt to explore the implications of these
ideas more fully. As such the arguments I am developing are derived from
ideas put forward by Chomsky and are not ones that he would necessarily
agree with.
vm
1 Modernity, Human Nature
and Knowledge
INTRODUCTION: A MODERNIST INTELLECTUAL
Noam Chomsky's work reveals him to be a modernist who recognises the
power and importance of science as a means to provide us with explanations
about events and phenomena in the natural and the social world.1 It is clear,
though, that for Chomsky science is not the only form of knowledge open
to us, nor is it the most important. Ethical judgements about the nature of
justice and how we should order society are central to his concerns and
frequently recur in even his overtly linguistic texts (Chomsky, 1989c,
pp. 152-4). In this chapter I will explain how Chomsky's ideas about
knowledge (arising as a result of his theories about the physical properties
that underlie our acquisition of language) lead him to a view about human
nature that has significance for his social and political thought. Although
committed to Enlightenment ideas of justice, truth and reason, Chomsky
recognises that there are no absolute foundations for knowledge, that absolute
certainty is no longer an option for us and that, as a consequence, some kind
of epistemological humility is required if we are to secure a more just world
order. So where does this leave Chomsky as a bearer of the modernist
intellectual tradition? What kind of Enlightenment tradition is it that he
champions? My aim is to explore Chomsky's ideas about the possibility of
fulfilling these Enlightenment ideas.
As we will see when we consider Chomsky's ideas about scientific
knowledge, his work falls into the framework of contemporary debates
about naturalism (Outhwaite, 1987; Pateman, 1987). Contemporary naturalists
such as Chomsky tend to argue that our knowledge about the world and about
society will change over time as old ideas are rejected and new and more
powerful ones are established. Despite this epistemological relativism
Chomsky and other naturalists retain the idea that not only are there ways
of establishing grounds for knowledge (not absolute, but still rational) but
also that there are ways of evaluating competing theoretical claims. This is
an important point as it is a claim that naturalists will defend against the intense
criticism of humanist writers. As a consequence naturalists argue that it is
not the case that 'any theory goes9 or that cultures are absolutely incom
mensurable. In addition, then, we will be able to consider the extent to
which Chomsky's ideas about knowledge and human nature provide us with
1