Chomsky vs. Skinner

Question 1

What are five general critiques that Chomsky makes against Skinner’s paradigm?

Answer 1

1. It is a lot more vague than posed
2. Lack of generalizability outside of a lab setting
3. Skinner’s terms (and his avoidance of mental terms) obscure important distinctions
4. You cannot predict verbal behaviour without presedence of knowledge about internal structures
5. It does not do justice to explain the complexity of childrens’ language capabilities

bold = most important

Question 2

Skinner says his theory is more objective because of the terms he uses refer to observable things and behaviour, why is this not true according to Chomsky?

Answer 2

If taken literally: it applies to such a small subset to still constitute a lawful relation, it loses its usefulness. If taken metaphorically: it becomes so broad that it loses all objectivity and lawful relations

Question 3

How does the term (properties of) stimulus tie into Chomsky’s general critique of vagueness?

Answer 3

With the chair example:
1. For the relation to be lawful, a chair needs to constitute a single response. This is simply not viable in real life.
2. Skinner’s solution = to make the property of the chair the stimulus (e.g., redness). However, this eliminates the objectivity as we can now only establish the property of the object after someone has given a response.

> > Aka literal vs. metaphorical

Question 4

How does the term response strength tie into Chomsky’s general critique of vagueness?

Answer 4

Skinner’s response strength (in animals) is measured by things like pitch, stress and quantity:
1. Taken literally = a strong response is one of a high pitched, repeated exclamation (wow, wow, wow, wow) > This does not constitute real behaviour
2. Metaphorically = Someone having a soft utterance (wow…). Counting this means it ones again loses objectivity

Question 5

How does the term reinforcement tie into Chomsky’s general critique of vagueness?

Answer 5

Skinner sees reinforcement as a necessity for both learning and response, once more:
1. Literally abides lawfulness, but cannot translate to real behaviour (e.g., reinforcement is not necessary in language acquisition)
2. Metaphorically it becomes broad and loses objectivity

> > For the latter, X is reinforced by Y is no different than X wants Y

Question 6

Why is Skinner’s use of the term deprivation inadequate?

Answer 6

• His constraints of only using behavioural terms leads him to ambiguous terms > a speaker expressing themselves needs a clear environmental link.
• When someone asks for something, then they must lack that something (deprivation)
• There is ambiguity in what the deprivation is: when asking for a book, are you deprived of reading? knowledge? paper?
• Again, this is just a roundabout way of saying X wants Y

Question 7

Skinner limits himself by not using internal states. He uses the listener’s behaviour to descriminate between things like requests/commands. Why is this problematic?

Answer 7

Skinner’s request = the listener being motivated to reinforce the speaker)
- This makes little sense, a request does not cease to be if the listener fails to fulfill it.
- Skinner is basically just avoiding the term “intention” here

Question 8

Chomsky finds Skinner’s paradigm inadequate in explaining the learning process seen in children, why?

Answer 8

• Parental reinforcement is not necessary for learning (immigrant children, mimicry).
• The environment is not rich enough to explain language acquisition (parents are not precise enough). Furthermore, children are able to construct and understand an infinite number of sentences (which they are not actively exposed to- L4 slide 44)
• Children learn language spontaneously (a gradual process and not through trial and error through parental reinforcement/punishment)

Question 9

What is Chomsky’s theory about language acquisition (in children)

Answer 9

• A requirement of mastery of grammar (cannot be done pure inductively- tho this likely does not hold as true) + grammar is generative (the infinite sentence construction/understanding without exposure)
• Above leads into poverty of the stimulus (grammar cannot be derived from available data). This = grammatical knowledge is innate
• aka the Language acquisition device (LAD)
• The study of language is one of of the mind (rationalistic)

Question 10

Chomsky’s critique regarding aversive stimuli (mands)?

Answer 10

Skinner means for this to cover things like threats. A history of reinforcement will lead to an appropriate response
- Chomsky’s “money or your life” in that a literal history of reinforcement is not necessary
- Skinner’s pose that an adequate description of the reinforcer is enough (magical mands) > again, this takes away the objectivity