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Language and Progress: A Conversation with Steven Pinker and John McWhorter

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Jay Shapiro

An event held in New York City with the best selling authors and public intellectuals Steven Pinker and John McWhorter where they discuss their work in linguistics and progress denialism.

(no video for the end of the Q and A)

Here’s a thread that I posted with a whole bunch of links to interesting things that are referenced in this talk: https://twitter.com/jay_shapiro/status/1071130575824551936

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49 thoughts on “Language and Progress: A Conversation with Steven Pinker and John McWhorter”

  2. Such a strange talk. It's like every other question is about language and every other is some deep political question

  4. In part I wrote my PhD about the new secular faith in this crazy world (the post modern left or whatever you want to call it). I finished in 2009. While doing it I had to hide my work from the academics around me because it was them I was writing about. Quite the mindfuck… I came out the end totally wrecked – they smelled me out and found ways to twist the knife. But yeah – 10 years later and I'm so glad I didn't believe the hype. And it's so great to see calm, learned people who see the same problem. Pinker might bitch about Nietzsche, but it's this bullshit secular religiosity that Nietzsche's complaining about so often. Beware the herd.

  7. @44mins If you want a vague description as to why evolution doesn't fit into Chomsky's general thesis, and why there are problems with evolutarionary theory being a paradigm that has anything like a directorship over language development: is because language, if we are take to take the mental object aspect specification for language seriously, means that the mental-scape (if I may refer to it that way), is infact dominant over the evolutionary model, and it might have something like the evolutionary model imbedded within it, but language can be in no way subordinate to evolution. Basically, the psychological reality, which is the foundation of language, is itself an environmental condition that IN PART shaping evolution of our species, or species with language: and although there fitness might play a role, it is only fitness in realm of a psychologically cohesive-context: or to dispense with the fitness concept all together, and replace it the more accurate conception that shows the cracks in the evolutarionary model: selective pressure becomes an internalized within the source of language, when language is operative. Not to get too mystical, the realm of purpose is the realm of spirit, and language is one of the mediums of those characteristics, as non-temporal/non-material those aspects of REALITY are (as such). A mystical reading of Christianity, transforms much of the doctrine into a deep philosophical treatise, using the metaphor of material to explain the connection between the DOOR and the MIND, which is the ONLY begotten, chosen of God. The spirit of which is described as no-one ever seeing its face; that it does not love persons; it is the lover of the 'soul', those narratives that reside in the book of life, BOOKs contain workS, because WORKS generate thematic knowledge of life. Anyway, for those who do not appreciate the delve into religious analogy, there is a secular version that can be worked out: and it starts with realizing that evolution is extremely philosophically limited, it does not offer a correct explanation, it offers a description that is bound to anti-mental and non-mental causation, and once you have minds or a shared mind which has the POTENTIAL to encapsulate the selective pressures, evolution effectively takes on a totally different character, based on the economy of account that has mentally encapsulated it, a spiritual phenomenology must then be regarded as superior to (SO-CALLED) empirical-ideations.

  11. Seventy percent of “white” people have no #ADoS [American Descendants of Slavery] friendships via Government Housing Policy.
    Hypothetically master bating myself right now into believing living in a racist nation is fine.

  13. I am English and live in Australia.

    The pruning of vocabulary by the difference in climatic and cultural context is striking.

    I notice the break in social historical continuity between the new and old world's tends to make new world English sound niaive to English English speakers.

    American's appear ignorant of the magic 'e'.

    Rout (rowt) means to chase out. Route (root) means to describe directions. There is a reason why the 'e' is there.

    The adoption of new terms appears to be used to signal contemporaneity of ideas too.

    The words version and revision have be supplanted by iteration.

    Iteration once meant to repeat.

    Computer programmers would iterate routines (run programmes repeatedly) to iron out glitches in the programme and thereby make the programme more reliable.

    The cultural dominance and financial cache of silicon valley has altered the very meaning of the word.

    Well read lovers of English understand and are aware of these wrong turns.

  15. Pinker's latest book doesn't account for why we set the global poverty line at what he sets it at, and if you raise the poverty line a few dollars (if I am remembering correctly from $1.70/day to $5/day) more people have entered extreme poverty in recent years. He fails to take account for this, and when presented with it attempts to invalidate it rather than explain why $1.70/day is the correct extreme poverty line.

    Dude isn't worth listening to, he's neolib feel good babble.

  21. Have we come far enough in 2018 that I can refer to whales by their colour or should I still refer to them by what ocean they live in or originated from? Blue whales, grey whale, or Pacific-Atlantic whale?

  24. While there are notable exceptions, I have long wondered why there seems to be a large number of notable mathematicians from France. Is there something about the French language that makes math easier, or do they just have better math teachers in France….I would love to have some feedback on this notion.

  29. Fascinating topic, but I truly wish the sound quality could have been better. There were many words, especially names, which were not clear. I turned on closed captions but that was completely ridiculous. And what was up with the seating arrangement? All three were turned away from the camera, so no help from lip-reading.

  33. The former student of pinker who said ‘mastodoon’ I think is Paul bloom. I know Paul and Gary Marcus are famous former students of Steve but I’ve noticed Bloom has a quirky way of pronouncing some words, and he’s also a Canadian and ‘Mastodoon’ somehow sounds vaguely like a Canadian pronunciation to me!

  38. About the only time I really fell I might need to be corrected in a pronunciation error would be with someone's name. Generally speaking, a name, being a much more personal thing than any work we generally use, only has one correct pronunciation. Sometimes, if someone is pronouncing a word very differently than I normally do, I'll ask for clarification, but don't shame the person.

  44. Has any of these guys ever lived not only spoken but lived their life in a foreign country in a foreign language? None of them has had a true expat experience that implied using fluently a different language or even switching between languages on regular basis, and mastering them to the extent that you sort of feel it in your gut. Ohhh they would probably say that it is the culture that we experience, so the way we communicate within a culture is not part of it?! By looking into the meaning of cultural key words and untranslatables in different languages gives you an incredible insight into cultural differences. They present a biased Anglo perspective sorry…

  47. There are some massive "misunderstandings " here. Either deliberate or as well as ploys for their aggrandisement.
    Pinker especially wants to be seen as a Chomsky slayer and for himself to be seen as the new kid on the block. It's also very interesting in that the media pick up on Pinker (not Chomsky) for reasons which Chomsky outlines.

  48. I understand that language does not dictate thought for the first language. But what about someone who acquires a second language? When we acquire another language (especially from a culture very different from our own) do we not gain access to a different world view? In this sense isn’t language the catalyst for at least a part of my thought? For example, there are phrases I have learned in Japanese that if I hadn’t learned the word first I would not have been able to perceive the very emotions or states of being they describe because they are so alien to western culture. Yes, these emotions and states of being are ultimately as a result of cultural and environmental pressures unique to Japan, but having not been born in that culture I know nothing of them and the only way I have access to them is to FIRST learn the word/phrase, only THEN can I cognitively process it. So here it seems to me that language is certainly a means by which my thought is being influenced/altered.

    Further proof of this is demonstrated in the following example:
    According to opponents of linguistic relativism eventually the environment and culture should naturally inform your thoughts of the states of being and emotions unique to the specific culture. However, I know many foreigners who do not speak Japanese despite having lived here for decades and they are completely blind to many common (not all) Japanese cultural concepts; they literally don’t even know they exist and will continue this way until they learn how to communicate. In this case, again, language is playing a central role in helping inform one’s world view and this cannot be argued against.

  49. Now, if a language that says a long time vs a lot of time influences how well they predict time by distance or volume, doesn't it make sense that one that uses gender might influence how one "categorizes" or how one that use SVO vs. SOV order might influence whether one places more emphasis on the aciton than the result? This isn't a "change in world view" but enough of those may have a significant influence on how one generally interprets things. And it's probably very subtle.

    I've spoken 4 languages fluently (meaning I was able to communicate without mental translation). I felt like there were slight differences in how I thought in the languages.

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