Conversation Outline: 00:00 Intro 00:37 How did you manage to be so productive? 01:07 What got you introduced to Linguistics and Philosophy? 02:47 What were courses like Syntax back in the day before you revolutionised the field? 04:42 What makes human languages different than other animal communication systems? 08:12 The difference between your view on the evolution of language and Steven Pinker’s view 15:50 The human language faculty 20:18 Truth-Conditional Semantics 30:49 Semantic Internalism versus Externalism 36:08 Truth, Public Languages, and I-Languages 38:55 What is truth? 40:18 Paradoxes of truth and vagueness 41:44 Zeno’s Paradox 45:31 Vagueness and The Sorites Paradox 50:47 The cognitive relationships between mathematical and linguistic abilities Enjoy! twitter.com/tedynenu ------------------------------------------------- P.S. I apologise in for the occasional audio problems, they were beyond my control :( At 13:44, Prof. Chomsky's connection was lost for a few seconds. He told me in private that the argument he was making was along the following lines: "Modern humans appeared 2-300,000 years ago. Prior to their appearance, there are no indications in the archaeological record of any significant symbolic activity. Genomic evidence shows that the small groups of humans began to separate at least by about 125-150,000 years ago. Faculty of Language is shared in all surviving groups as far as is known, other cognitive capacities as well. Hence presumably all in place before separation. Shortly after there is rich symbolic activity, more complex societies, etc. All numbers are evolutionary time, a flick of an eye.That suggests that the language-thought amalgam probably appeared along with modern humans, and hasn't changed since. Then comes plausible scenarios for language evolution"

Enjoyed the interview very much. Consider part 2

Just found your channel and watched 2 interviews - I've subscribed, very nice interviews! Thank you so much 😊

Good discussion, i dont understand half of it yet but i love it

I am subscribing to your channel, it's a diamond.

wow noam chomsky! thanks for making this available! when was it recorded?

he is so knowledgeable... you feel that listening to him is sacrilege 😅😅😅

The sound level is too low. Great interview otherwise.

Does the theory of truth-conditional semantics justify a lie?

What annoys me about intellectuals like Chomsky, is that even at their intellectual level, they still want to compete of what is the primary function of something like language. Language involves thinking. Without thinking, there would be no language. However, human beings are a social species, and we wouldn't survive without some form of communication, be it language or otherwise. These things go together like an organism and it's environment. I wish he actually spent his early years doing something more valuable, than arguing useless things, in my opinion. What a waste of an amazing intellect.