Noam Chomsky Research Paper

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Pages: 4

Since the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce regained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, philosophers have begun to reconsider persistent philosophical problems within the context of Peirce's previously obscure body of writing. His voluminous work tackles problems from semiotics and metaphysics to the philosophy of science and conceptions of love. Compared to the other two so called "classical Pragmatists" William James and John Dewy, Peirce's work has played an understated role throughout the history of American philosophy and is still relevant in many respects to the contemporary philosophical issues in these fields. Among the issues that Peirce concerns himself with is the investigation into the fundamental epistemological questions: What are the limits of our knowledge? …show more content…
And how can we move beyond old philosophical problems to actually make our ideas practicable? One thinker whom Peirce scholars have largely overlooked in the literature of Peircean studies is Noam Chomsky. This is not surprising considering Chomsky does not identify himself as a Pragmatist, nor is it possible to classify much of Chomsky's philosophical work along traditional philosophical categories. Chomsky's work on I-language and the philosophical consequences of Universal Grammar (UG), nonetheless, exhibits a compatible framework for a contemporary evaluation of Peirce's philosophy. This essay evaluates Chomsky's position in Peircean studies and within the early American philosophical tradition by highlighting some significant ways Chomsky's philosophy of language and philosophy of mind overlap with Peirce's