Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
 RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony
Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony
Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony
RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony
Waiting for SIPO Anthony Public Inquiry >>
Parse failure for http://humanrights.ie/feed/. Last Retry Wednesday September 17, 2025 14:41
The Debate: This House has Confidence in the President-Elect of the Oxford Union Wed Sep 17, 2025 11:37 | Will Jones
Should the Oxford Union have confidence in its President-Elect, George Abaraonye, whose comments celebrating Charlie Kirk's murder were leaked this week? Is it a matter of cancel culture or basic decency? Join the debate.
The post The Debate: This House has Confidence in the President-Elect of the Oxford Union appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
BBC Moral Maze Waffle-Fest Fails to Address Objection That Net Zero Could Leave Billions Dead From S... Wed Sep 17, 2025 09:00 | Chris Morrison
In last week's Net Zero edition of the BBC's Moral Maze, the most basic objection to climate doomerism ? that Net Zero 2050 could leave billions dead of starvation ? was ignored, says Chris Morrison.
The post BBC Moral Maze Waffle-Fest Fails to Address Objection That Net Zero Could Leave Billions Dead From Starvation appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
How Left-Wing Activists are Recycled Wed Sep 17, 2025 07:00 | Charlotte Gill
If you've looked at pictures of Left-wing protests and think, 'Haven't I seen her before?' you'd be right! Charlotte Gill investigates the weird small world of Leftist activist recycling.
The post How Left-Wing Activists are Recycled appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
News Round-Up Wed Sep 17, 2025 01:15 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
German State Media Have Systematically Slandered Charlie Kirk in the Wake of his Assassination Tue Sep 16, 2025 19:00 | Eugyppius
German state media have systematically slandered Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination, says Eugyppius. They portray him as an unhinged and dangerous fascist, just stopping short of blaming him for his own death.
The post German State Media Have Systematically Slandered Charlie Kirk in the Wake of his Assassination appeared first on The Daily Sceptic. Lockdown Skeptics >>
Voltaire, international edition
Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en
Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en
The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en Voltaire Network >>
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Chomsky Reconsidered
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other press
 Friday February 04, 2011 18:44 by Chris Knight - Radical Anthropology Group
Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group continues his examination of Chomsky's life and work. In particular he analyses an early work by Chomsky: Cartesian linguistics. He also looks at some sources Chomsky tapped for funding in his early days. Full text at link.
In 1966, Noam Chomsky (pictured) published his Cartesian linguistics. The book was a survey of rationalist conceptions of language and mind, focusing heavily on the French mathematician and philosopher, Réné Descartes (1596-1650). In his early years, Chomsky had been working within the structuralist tradition of Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, Leonard Bloomfield and his own teacher, Zellig Harris. Chomsky wrote Cartesian linguistics in order to signal to the world his change of mind. His distinctively 'Cartesian' approach, he now clarified, was a rebellion against the entire 20th century tradition of structural linguistics. ... A brief round-up of Chomsky's most celebrated ideas will confirm that his point of departure is invariably the soul, with the corollary that this strange entity, being perfect, is autonomous with respect to man's intrinsically imperfect body.
Take Chomsky's admission that, superficially, language does not look perfect at all: "One massive case," he notes, "is the phonological system: the whole phonological system looks like a huge imperfection; it has every bad property you can think of."[34] Phonology makes languages sound different. This is obviously anomalous: "strong minimalism", after all, would predict just one language spoken by everyone. Does this mean that the theory is falsified by the data? Not at all, claims Chomsky. Humans really do speak just one common language. Yes, he admits, they sound different. Variations exist in choice of sounds and also in arbitrary sound-meaning associations. "These," he says, "are straightforward and need not detain us." ...
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