From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 23 2003 - 18:27:41 GMT
Joey C.,
Unfortunately, I don't know all that much about Chomsky (i.e. I'm not an
expert on him), but here is what I know: much of his work in linguistics
has been about a universal "deep structure" that is the same for all
language users and all languages. On the surface, this may seem similar to
Pirsig's description of all people universally experiencing Quality.
Pragmatists are, of course, deeply skeptical about the existence of a
"universal deep structure." How would we know? The linguists reply that
we have to posit this deep structure or else there would be no way to do
linguistics. The pragmatists, following Donald Davidson, reply that the
actual learning of a language has nothing to do with a positing of a deep
structure, so why should we continue with one in linguistics?
Universalists side with Chomsky (and so might offer a universalist reading
of Pirsig), while pragmatists side with Davidson (and so might offer a
pragmatist reading of Pirsig).
So, Joey C., in essence, if you like Chomsky, that might be his relation to
Pirsig.
Matt
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