[lingtalks] CHD Seminar: FRIDAY - Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini

[Katie Wagner]

The Center for Human Development Presents

Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini
University of Arizona
Department of Cognitive Science

Friday, October 31st
12-1pm (discussion 1-1:30pm)
room 003 in the Cognitive Science Building


“The return of the Laws of Form and (some) Perfection in Language"

Chomsky’s Minimalist Program has been criticized by some because it  
portraits Narrow Syntax as the perfect solution to the problem of  
computing in real time the match between linguistic sound and its  
interpretation. The rationale of this criticism is that language is  
part of our biology and biology never finds optimal solutions, only  
“satisficing” ones, as the result of adaptation and natural selection.  
Whether one accepts Minimalism or not on other grounds (I do) it can  
be shown that this critique is unfounded. I will review an entire  
spectrum of factors that have played a major role in evolution and  
that are alien to adaptation and natural selection. For historical  
reasons, and for want of a better term, these are called “the laws of  
form”. These are constraints explained by mathematical and physico- 
chemical laws leading to optimal solutions that exceed the boundaries  
of biology and are quite abstract.

When very similar specific morphologies (Fibonacci series and  
Fibonacci spirals) are observed in spiral nebulae, in the geometrical  
arrangement of magnetically charged droplets in a liquid surface, in  
seashells, in the alternation of leaves on the stalks of plant stems  
and in the disposition of seeds in a sunflower, it can hardly be that  
natural selection is responsible. As we are going to see in some  
paradigmatic instances, the relevant search space would be so huge  
that the hypothesis of such solutions having been found by blind trial  
and error followed by natural selection becomes exceedingly  
improbable. It is even hard to suppose that some genetic machinery is  
specifically (one has to insist on this: specifically) responsible for  
coding these forms as such. It’s vastly more plausible to suppose that  
the causes of these forms are to be found in the elaborate self- 
organizing interactions between several components that are, indeed,  
coded for by genes (protein complexes, morphogenetic gradients, cell- 
cell interactions and so on) and chemical and physical forces. The  
latter are vastly more ubiquitous and vastly less modular than  
biological processes. They transcend the biological subdivisions into  
species, genera, families, orders, classes and phyla.

After having cleared the way for optimal solutions in biology in  
general, we will examine applications of this model to the  
organization of language.


Everyone is welcome.

Speaker list and papers are available at http://www.chd.ucsd.edu/seminar/f08sched.shtml

For any questions about the seminar contact Katie at kgwagner at psy.ucsd.edu




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