Chomsky vs Foucault on Creativity & Science (1971)
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- A few clips of Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault science and creativity in their famous 1971 debate. This is a version of an upload from the previous channel. The translation is my own, although I referenced the published text (which by the way was edited by Foucault prior to publication, which is why there are various differences between the published transcript and the actual recording). The audio has also been slightly improved.
The debate was about human nature and took place in November 1971 at the Eindhoven University of Technology, in the Nederlands, as part of the “International Philosophers Project” initiated by the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation and arranged by the Dutch philosopher Fons Elders, who was also the moderator.
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#Philosophy #Chomsky #Foucault
I believe it is not actually a ‘VS’, it is a discussion rather than a debate and ‘and’ maybe more suitable
Merci pour ce que vous faites. Il est important de publier et de partager ce genre de contenu.
Greatings from France
It's amazing the clarity that both are able to conjure off the cuff. Both seem to be speaking such an exemplarly form of their native language -- for claity sake -- that one can even understand Foucault's French!
Foucault is speaking slowly so Chomsky understands him and also vice versa.
People who study continental philosophy in the western world are typically required to learn English, French, and German.
Wonderful to hear Foucault speak about a matrix that replaces another matrix and incurs a new conception of truth. In essence, science is part of culture (human enquiry) and it's alterations and new hypotheses and "truths" are a reflection of shifts in cultural ideas at that time. For example, Einstein's theories of relativity were very much in keeping with the experimental ideas that could be seen at that time; Modernism. It is, of course quite easy to conceive such ideas today, when shifts in ideas and everything else are occurring at an accelerated rate.
Foucault's conceptions also circulate around the Romantic notion of the heroic genius. As in the arts, scientists were seen to shine the light of their brilliant creativity to problems that have been unanswerable for aeons. It was an individuals superior intellect and, most importantly creativity (the capacity for new ideas) that really sorted out the brilliant from the intelligent. This kind of animalistic, intuitive, instinctive accident of nature together with the refinement of an absurdly large intellect and a mind that could soak up reams of technical knowledge was seen as an intrinsic key to new ideas in intellectual fields. The notion of the creative as merely a conduit to societal tropes and an environment full of discernible phenomena reduces the abilities and status of the creative. This is in keeping with ideas such as "he death of the author" and other postmodern tropes.
Foucault's ideas are much more established now but back in the '70's they must have seemed very challenging, contentious, radical and absurd.
They are still absurd. He attempts to inject moral relativism into everything, allowing people to reject scientific truth when it doesn't comply with their bias or relative view of their experience. There is some value of viewing science as a product of the creative mind, but it is a limited view. Postmodernism is a black hole of rational thought. It consumes everything in its path, including progress.
Hello. Thanks for uploading this video. Sending you my warm greetings from Germany.
~ June 2022. ~
I will look into the works by Foucault. I know that there are god vs. God, and the first one is the true god. It is in every one of us, the continuations of life from the ancient times.... The Chomsky knows about it, and there are matters in needing to be discussed on the meeting point. I think one location is to discuss about the Vagus nerve, and there are more to explain on the other criteria that I know of. It's simply way complicated to explain in short comment section. 🤔🧐🤓😎
Foucault was such a genius. uncomfortable for the status quo then and now.
Chomsky was a genius ( especially in the field of Linguistics) as much as Foucault or more
@@bluecruefulit’s not a competition dude 😂
Foucault was such mediocre intellect. I have yet to hear or read a statement by him that isn't a trivial, pointless conclusion. His first statement
in this segment he critiques the synthesis
of science. That it 'does away with old already acquired knowledge'. Well if he understood science he would know that
it does not necessarily and in fact rarely arrives at universal truth. The goal post are constantly being moved in science. Truth is constantly being synthesised and refined through science and new conclusions can then be made.
But therein lies Foucaults problem. He hated truth. Like any narcissist does.
You could define him as the ne plus ultra
of narcissists as he dedicated his philosophy to the denial of universal truth. Relativism is the greatest gift ever given to narcissists.. When truth is relative they are never wrong and they love that.. On every level. Even in a carnal way.
He couldn’t deconstruct the AIDS that eventually killed him (looks like a mere social construct didn’t mesh well with his allegedly nonexistent human nature) and had he been born a bit later he would have been saved by the very Enlightenment values that he dismissed as arbitrary means of oppression.
This moron was anything but genius
I thought Chomsky was gonna start speaking French , also real handsy back then !!
im extremely handsy....what do you believe this represents?
@@Keldaj ... excessive masturbation ?
@@Keldaj that you are French or French-adjacent lol
Everyone who end up making something, tangible or not, that stops the flow of human cultural evolution is a creative. Ideas and discoveries flow forward without stop, some individuals are able to see the past, the present and foresee the future in a way that they are able to synthesize an absolute factor. Some people have the cerebral capability to elaborate in a way that past, present and creation(future) always happens in the present. Not a more capable brain just a different operation system. Creative minds often find struggles in following certain imposed rhythm of understanding, not about be fast or slower, it’s just a different way to see the true essence of the present.
This is what I would consider as awareness. Creative is for the posterity.
It’s arrogant to assume culture is improving as a matter of course. You imagine that humans are imperfect and are mindlessly heading towards a better or more perfect state.
There is no such thing as *A Creative*. Creativity is applying prior knowledge from disparate sources and crafting a new model which incorporates elements that already existed in a new way.
I’m not sure why I’m replying to this anyway, your whole comment was just a random string of non sequiturs and hyperbolic fancy.
You don’t have anything concrete to contribute. Only a vague notion of the superiority of The Creative mind and some kind of transcendent quality that sets The Creative apart from the boring old stupid Not Creative type of person.
It's at the very end, around 13:00, where we see in Foucault's response a key difference between the two thinkers
Merci beaucoup d'avoir partagé ce moment d'excellence humaine. Mon cerveau Gen-Z apprécie les connaissances de qualité. 🇲🇽
Right here with you bro.
They both have a point. Foucault is often misrepresented because he is misframed inside Chomsky's structures. But it is important to not pick apart Foucault on Chomsky's ground just to be able to say 'well, obviously this is the worse philosophy'. Foucault has to be understood from the place of the panoptic principle that is proliferating throughout society and that has normifying properties. In a sense Chomsky's framing even embodies this panoptic principle saying 'who are you and how do you fit in our frames?'
What's Chomsky's structures?
The panopticon idea is horseshit.
Freud already came up with it, with the superego. Except he tackled it far more maturely.
Another one of the postmodernists' so-called ideas that the psychoanalysts had already come up with was the notion that various impetuses take over individual people and that they engage in motivated reasoning and justification in order to satisfy them.
But that, as well, the psychoanalysts thought of more maturely.
Foucault is more like a bad creative writer than a philosopher, like L Ron Hubbard.
If Foucault is misrepresented, it's because he's purposefully unclear.
The rejection of all other sciences and ideas as with an intent to critique them as products of power as Foucault states, too results in certain normative structures, postmodernism has its own "frames" as you say, it just tries to make them less explicit in its linguistic reproduction.
I'm reading (very slowly...) Foucault's 'The Archaeology of Knowledge' at the moment. I wanted to hear him talk and that's why I visited your channel today! If Foucault was still living today I do wonder if his thinking would have changed like Chomsky's. His views on popular issues has me asking "What went wrong"...
@@nuqwestr What science has done this? I was aware of an attempt from the 1980s where they were looking for a link between genetics and behaivour. After a lot of funding and many years they were unable to prove their hypotheses.
@@divertissementmonas primatology has found elements of fair play and justice. See De Waals books.
@@pablokaufervinent8012 Thank you for the information. I was thinking more of what are called the 'hard' sciences, not Anthropology. I had the oppotunity to study this discipline along with Archaeology where many of the concepts and methodologies are shared. Including the roots and history and if it can be called a science, it is one that is very soft...
Their intereptations largely depend on their current beliefs and contextual approches like the 'particiapant observation' adopted by Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinnowski. If this 'science' struggles with human cultures other than their own I'm sure they are going to come up against more formidable problems with an entirely different species.
@@pablokaufervinent8012 That experiment that was conducted with primates where money was introduced was thought provoking, I must say! Thank goodness they stopped the experiment...
@@divertissementmonas Well primatology is a branch of zoology, not anthorpology much less archaeology , and their methods are different. Biological sciences methos while not those of physics are very well developed and their results have been reproduced. Even in physics you have interpretations, look at the different takes on quantum mechanics. Any science must adapt its method and procedures to its field of study. Furthermore, morality and fair play have been reproduced in studies across many different species and genetics in many cases provides the reason for their development. Basically evolutionary biology also has a lot to say about moralty in animals. In any case before dismissing on theoretical grounds their findings go, check them and in if you can find faults with the results all the more power to you since that is how science advances. It seems to me though that you have already made your mind and no amount of evidence will be sufficient. If that is the case have a good life.
0.00 till 1.06.....wow ...if that doesn't hit home hard in 2021/22....01:29 hits home hard
12:36 Today, this point of disagreement would not be considered a case of either-or: Surely, the constraining rules/regularities of creativity are generated _both_ cognitively by “the mind or human nature” _and_ epistemically by “social forms, ..., etc.”. Right?
No. The particular use of the concept of creativity in Chomsky's case would go for the former.
@@sabyasachisenapati3619 Yes, absolutely! But I was not referring to Chomsky's case, but rather to how we would approach it today, half a decade later, having learnt from both Chomsky and Foucault.
@@JonSebastianF I think Chomsky’s notion of universal grammar is necessarily pre-social. It seems that this necessity is being challenged by some parts of philosophy of mind, but I can’t speak to the fields of linguistics or cogsci (although I imagine the latter is looking for a way out of it). As far as I know, the concept of inbuilt universal grammar is still hegemonic.
EDIT: so basically the synthesis you’re positing hasn’t occurred yet, but seems to be in the works.
Absolutely, creativity is both instinctive and learned... If that's what you are saying?
@@crescentsi Yes, exactly. I mean, I have a degree in different topic that all have a reasonable say on creativity. Indeed, that's not really positing a “synthesis”, but it's definitely acknowledging the effect more possible factors.
As a sociologist Foucault knowledge is based on wading his way through structuralism,post structuralism,functional structuralism, conflict theory and symbolic interactionism. These have provided Foucault with a far more sophisticated approach to macro and micro studies of the political, social and economic systems that form the framework of any discussion.
Internalism vs. externalism. Both sides have strengths and weaknesses.
"... E ciò non significa che alla fine tutto rientrerà nel dominio della scienza [scientismo], al contrario: personalmente credo che molte delle cose che vorremmo capire e forse la maggior parte delle cose che ci piacerebbe capire - come la natura dell'uomo o la natura di una società deente o molte altre cose - potrebbero davvero non rientrare nell'ambito delle possibili scienze umane..." (N. Chomsky, in dialogo con M. Foucault nel 1971 - video su YT)
You are what you think just because you think it does it is what you do with that thought ❤ to the world
What is so magnificent about Science is that is has successfully indoctrinated in the popular psyche that a notion of “more or less profound” and “more or less empirical” is analogous to a truthful or factual notion.
Yes, the flexible nature of (post-)truth or modulated facts...
Have to say about rules and freedom of creativity as “emergent” from the outside as well as the in -- since it's all inseparable from any ontology as I see it.
This gives an outlook on the different ways Kuhn's revolutionary understanding of science was taken - Foucault and Chomsky are both deeply affected by it, but while Chomsky takes it as a better understanding on "how science really progresses" (not linearly, not accumulatively, not from an absolutely free starting point), Foucault takes it as a fundamental criticism of the very idea that science "progresses" and a stance from which to recover the knowledge that has been set outside the paradigm.
I tend to be a Chomsky on this, as was Kuhn himself.
TH-cam algorithm is that you
Hey there!
i think that what foucault misses and what chomsky sees is that in each layer that we hide something to create new knowledge as the first says, we actually come to hide something less. There is a reality there that we are trying to reach and i think that this is fundamentally what the first doesn't believe in and the latter argues for. For me, the best analogy in this regard is that of a Rubik cube; you can make one side without making the others, you have to deconstruct that side in order to make another and you have to keep others scrambled, but slowly but steadily you start to see that this is really the only way to actually solve it so that each side is complete.
Very good analogy!
Foucault isn’t saying that there’s no reality, and I doubt that he denies that there’s some form of scientific progress (he’s not a flat earther lol). I think Foucault’s insistence is best understood as a tactical move rather than being indicative of a metaphysical commitment. If we take seriously the idea that our epistemic viewpoint is always compromised by our role in a system of powers, we have to acknowledge that our beliefs can be wrong in ways that we can’t conceive. I think Foucault’s insistence on the fallibility of science is pragmatic (or political), a reminder to question our beliefs and be open to new ideas.
Et voilà.
@@zaltartheomnipotent5421 I understand what you mean but in the way that he argues it he really does make it seem like he believes that many of the things that we come to discover or construct through science are mostly based in our own subjectivity and biases of our systems. In the same way that you have put it, no sane person believes that everything that comes out of scientific progress is objective and true right out of the box, but we more and more come to examine ourselves and our biases and as such we reach progress.
The rubiks cube is made by humans for humans to solve. Not sure I see how this is a pertinent argument in favour of the thesis of an overall cumulative increase of knowledge of "hidden" truths in Nature waiting to be discovered. It is a nice illustration of this thesis though.
The reason they are debating is to reach final conclusion and at least some agreed points, but if the Foucault doesn’t believe truth then what is whole point of the debate
❤️
I believe Cog scientists describes creativity and insight as moments of thought that break the structures and regulations imposed. I do appreciate Foucault's philosophy, altho i doubt i fully understand it
fascinating to behold Foucault, a thinker very likely sincerely attempting to contribute thought of value, who has in fact harmed so many people, so catastrophically in our time.
In what way would you say he has harmed people?
You mean ..thought of value. " that" has and not mean " who "...!? ?
Chomsky elevates his own rules based creativity above the common man to avoid the concept of power. A child’s development of language is not based on the concept of rules but on common expressions of meaning in context and constantly trying to express their ideas beyond the limitation of words.
@Billy Mumphry Yes I do believe the first humans had built in language but later offspring acquired it from bonding with parents. Imagine if you was left in a forest with wolves. You would end up howling like a wolf and unable to communicate with people.
Plus language is creative and flexible beyond the limitation of specific rules. There are many ways to express an idea and our language evolves to adapt to our particular experience of the world..
I think he was just trying to make a living, his only purpose. Like a TV writer for a bad sitcom.
cool
1:44 cameraman had to back up for this dude lol
Sigh, the "old" chomsky was pretty amazing ^^
Foucault is absolutely right. Medicine is good example. Modern, scientific medicine has totally suppressed all other local traditional medicines and healing techniques like herbalism, shamanism and other practices.
I really want a mango lassi now
Surely the nature of man doesn’t fall outside possible sciences? Darwin gave us a great start
I didn’t understand Chomsky's point that due to limitations of our innate structural principles we are able to produce immence creative scientific discoveries! How and why wouldn’t we produce more if there wasn’t any limiting principle innate to us?!
The funny thing is that Foucault has his own version of "human nature", even though he says to be completely against this notion.
il n'y a de creativité possible qu'à partir d'un système de règles - 12:25 in slavery... good, c'est pareil - peut-être la même chose que j'ai dit
So the debate is basically if structures are "natural", "essential to human nature" (which justifies them by right, sophistically) or merely contingent, and thus are meant to change, as they have changed in the past (which denies justification for any structure).
I find many problems with essentialism. First of all you're basically begging to be proven wrong. Second of all, if we indeed find these innate structures, we also find what would happen if we remove them (just like genes ; if we are determined by certain genes, we also know it would be different without them).
Thirdly, you cant make an "is" an "ought" by any means.
We have long passed humanism. The next step is to go beyond nihilism, something Nietzsche saw very clearly almost 150 years ago. But i dont know when we will have this sincere debate.
The little I understand of what they say, I equally disagree with: Foucault, the constructivist, who sees epistemic "grid" after "grid", instead of the obvious progress of knowledge, Chomsky who sets a priori limits to that knowledge and equates its slow and difficult rise over centuries to the learning of language by every child since the dawn of humanity.
what a horrible loss...
Chomsky great thinker
As it turns out, they could both be wrong, and they both ended up on the same side.
Not really.
@@MrWhiskeycricket Two Marxists respectfully disagreeing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
@@captaingrub2228 neither of these guys is a Marxist.
@@MrWhiskeycricket I realize Foucault claimed not to be Marxist once the calamity of Marxism could no longer be ignored - pomo is nothing if not slippery. On that I would quote the bard “A rose by any other name . . .” (if it walks like a duck). Chomsky was an early denialist/apologist for the Khmer Rouge and he called Venezuela a model for other South American countries. Believe it or not I had an in person, private, political discussion with Chomsky 22 years ago (I used to supply him with firewood in the winter on Cape Cod).
@@captaingrub2228 Yeah.... neither is a Marxist, though. Foucault doesn't believe in anything and Chomsky is a an anachro-syndicalist, which emphasizes democracy and personal choice within collective organizing. As an anarchist he believes that ANY system that cannot justify it's authority should be dismantled - that would include any authoritarian communist regime as much as anything else.
am i born too late to write, when i grow up, a tome called "The Science of Man"?
12:22 Not really. Au contraire. Innovation, yes. Invention which is the genuine process- product of free play, no. Society is afraid of inventions, of genuine creativity, hence the idea that you need a limitative system of rules to be creative. Yeah, change the society for the better, but not too radically, and definitely do not even think about questioning the rules we have set 😄
The only rules worth respecting are the moral ones/ those that are aligned with the moral rules. The rest… everything can and should be challenged, changed or eliminated if they’re not beneficial. Fuck your idiotic and criminal rules 😄
an intelligent discussion, not breaking any new boundaries, but summarizing the past mistakes, and present. these two intellectuals give me the creeps; they are superficially smart, but inwardly, not so - they have imagination, and depth, but the perception that's required to really amaze (me), would have to be extraordinary. tell us how to solve the issue of corruption.
Two non-scientists self-congatulating their intellects about science. Foucault treats science as if it was history, with nonsensical results. Chomsky is way more based...
Two really smart "intellectuals". They don't make them like that in our stupid times. 🙄
Why the quotation marks?
They do make them like this, actually. They're just not popping off the TH-cam algorithm at the moment.
Everything started when the man of cave started to........... 🤔... think... obviously.... and.... learning to survive... and bingo the creativity is born... and the science... start to begin...🤔👍😄👏
Chomsky believes in innate ideas?! Hmm....
Chomsky believes in innate structures. As for ideas (i.e. the building blocks of these structures) I think he "carefully" believes in them. In "Why only us? Language and evolution" he or Berwick mentions how, while one can attempt to biologically trace back our speech structures, it is a lot more complicated to do the same with the concepts/ideas that get twisted around by these structures.
edit: this is my interpretation of his thought based on what I have read in the afore-mentioned book
What a pair of charlatans
what did they say
hahahahaha
Why?
Truth arrived 1443 years ago, falsehood by nature is bound to perish. God breathed His Spirit into Adam hence human being posses innate capacities according to their ordained roles. Nothing more nothing less. Earth made dwelling place for humankind to till the soil and look heavenwards for Guidance and succour, not to clutter space with debris.
The same Chomsky who believes the official 911 story, the same Chomsky who spends decades analyzing the media without ever asking who owns it
lol, lol, lol
The same ying yang posting copium on yt videos
@@TheLetterH111 imagine spending decades studying the media and it's role in propaganda, and never once mentioning what ethnic group dominates it
Imagine believing the official 911 story
Intellectual, lol
@@yingyang1008 damn dude im actually embarassed for you. Please go outside, it will help you immeasurably
@@TheLetterH111 yeah, because who owns the media isn't important
I find Chomskys' insinuation that there might be questions about reality which are somehow beyond scientific examination deeply troubling.
This peculiarly political left view is the reason why it's almost impossible to debate leftists, why discussions degrade into polemic shitshows and all finally boils down to tribal signaling.
If there is one idea which is responsible for today's rampant tribalism it's this idea: That there are things beyond scientific inquiry.
There was a time in my life when I really hoped radical modern & postmodern secularization would lead to the abandonment of all non-scientific, non-empiric thinking and we could transcend the dirt of subjectivity.
Who would have thought that Leftism was just going to be another church?
Sorry how will we ever find a way to scientifically explain the subjectivity of an individual mind?
How do we test objectively what cannot be observed by another?
first of all most modern science is about non empiric theories
all theoritical
second mathematicians alr proved there're somethings u can't prove to start a system of knowledge which is called axioms
third there's nothing between this and leftist ideology
Because there seemingly are things that are beyond empiricism. Consciousness is one of them regardless of what the computational model of it says. Look at QM. It's legit a complete mess that no-one can make sense of. You can make an argument that our sensory data isn't really reliable although then you get into Solipsism which honestly may not be wrong.
First of all, I don't understand why this vision has to be leftist. Second and more important, I think that transcending the subjectivity to embrace a completely empirical and scientific thinking is very problematic: the objects we are able to study this way are only a small part of reality and politics, ethic, moral, aesthetic etc... Can't be studied scientifically because they aren't about matter of facts.
Brainlet take