On Thu, 7 Nov 1996, andrew kliman wrote:
> At a dinner in Trinity College, Chomsky remarked that the foundation of his
> theory was "fundamentally unknowable aspects of the mind." Sraffa
> interjected: "Then how can you talk about it?" This is the trap that Kant
> set up, the trap of a fundamentally unknowable thing-in-itself that "lies
> behind" appearances.
Chomsky's substantive work in linguistics is much more
worthy of respect that his philosophical obiter dicta. In
effect, he has shown that the deep structure of natural
language is eminently "knowable".
AC.