Chomsky vs Foucault on Creativity & Science (1971) 

I believe it is not actually a ‘VS’, it is a discussion rather than a debate and ‘and’ maybe more suitable

Merci pour ce que vous faites. Il est important de publier et de partager ce genre de contenu. Greatings from France

It's amazing the clarity that both are able to conjure off the cuff. Both seem to be speaking such an exemplarly form of their native language -- for claity sake -- that one can even understand Foucault's French!

Wonderful to hear Foucault speak about a matrix that replaces another matrix and incurs a new conception of truth. In essence, science is part of culture (human enquiry) and it's alterations and new hypotheses and "truths" are a reflection of shifts in cultural ideas at that time. For example, Einstein's theories of relativity were very much in keeping with the experimental ideas that could be seen at that time; Modernism. It is, of course quite easy to conceive such ideas today, when shifts in ideas and everything else are occurring at an accelerated rate. Foucault's conceptions also circulate around the Romantic notion of the heroic genius. As in the arts, scientists were seen to shine the light of their brilliant creativity to problems that have been unanswerable for aeons. It was an individuals superior intellect and, most importantly creativity (the capacity for new ideas) that really sorted out the brilliant from the intelligent. This kind of animalistic, intuitive, instinctive accident of nature together with the refinement of an absurdly large intellect and a mind that could soak up reams of technical knowledge was seen as an intrinsic key to new ideas in intellectual fields. The notion of the creative as merely a conduit to societal tropes and an environment full of discernible phenomena reduces the abilities and status of the creative. This is in keeping with ideas such as "he death of the author" and other postmodern tropes. Foucault's ideas are much more established now but back in the '70's they must have seemed very challenging, contentious, radical and absurd.

Hello. Thanks for uploading this video. Sending you my warm greetings from Germany. ~ June 2022. ~

I thought Chomsky was gonna start speaking French , also real handsy back then !!

It's at the very end, around 13:00, where we see in Foucault's response a key difference between the two thinkers

Merci beaucoup d'avoir partagé ce moment d'excellence humaine. Mon cerveau Gen-Z apprécie les connaissances de qualité. 🇲🇽

They both have a point. Foucault is often misrepresented because he is misframed inside Chomsky's structures. But it is important to not pick apart Foucault on Chomsky's ground just to be able to say 'well, obviously this is the worse philosophy'. Foucault has to be understood from the place of the panoptic principle that is proliferating throughout society and that has normifying properties. In a sense Chomsky's framing even embodies this panoptic principle saying 'who are you and how do you fit in our frames?'

Everyone who end up making something, tangible or not, that stops the flow of human cultural evolution is a creative. Ideas and discoveries flow forward without stop, some individuals are able to see the past, the present and foresee the future in a way that they are able to synthesize an absolute factor. Some people have the cerebral capability to elaborate in a way that past, present and creation(future) always happens in the present. Not a more capable brain just a different operation system. Creative minds often find struggles in following certain imposed rhythm of understanding, not about be fast or slower, it’s just a different way to see the true essence of the present.

I'm reading (very slowly...) Foucault's 'The Archaeology of Knowledge' at the moment. I wanted to hear him talk and that's why I visited your channel today! If Foucault was still living today I do wonder if his thinking would have changed like Chomsky's. His views on popular issues has me asking "What went wrong"...

Foucault was such a genius. uncomfortable for the status quo then and now.

As a sociologist Foucault knowledge is based on wading his way through structuralism,post structuralism,functional structuralism, conflict theory and symbolic interactionism. These have provided Foucault with a far more sophisticated approach to macro and micro studies of the political, social and economic systems that form the framework of any discussion.

12:36 Today, this point of disagreement would not be considered a case of either-or: Surely, the constraining rules/regularities of creativity are generated _both_ cognitively by “the mind or human nature” _and_ epistemically by “social forms, ..., etc.”. Right?

0.00 till 1.06.....wow ...if that doesn't hit home hard in 2021/22....01:29 hits home hard

What is so magnificent about Science is that is has successfully indoctrinated in the popular psyche that a notion of “more or less profound” and “more or less empirical” is analogous to a truthful or factual notion.

Internalism vs. externalism. Both sides have strengths and weaknesses.

RU-vid algorithm is that you

You are what you think just because you think it does it is what you do with that thought ❤ to the world

I love how chomsky kept flicking his hands so rapidly.

cool

"... E ciò non significa che alla fine tutto rientrerà nel dominio della scienza [scientismo], al contrario: personalmente credo che molte delle cose che vorremmo capire e forse la maggior parte delle cose che ci piacerebbe capire - come la natura dell'uomo o la natura di una società deente o molte altre cose - potrebbero davvero non rientrare nell'ambito delle possibili scienze umane..." (N. Chomsky, in dialogo con M. Foucault nel 1971 - video su YT)

i think that what foucault misses and what chomsky sees is that in each layer that we hide something to create new knowledge as the first says, we actually come to hide something less. There is a reality there that we are trying to reach and i think that this is fundamentally what the first doesn't believe in and the latter argues for. For me, the best analogy in this regard is that of a Rubik cube; you can make one side without making the others, you have to deconstruct that side in order to make another and you have to keep others scrambled, but slowly but steadily you start to see that this is really the only way to actually solve it so that each side is complete.

❤️

Have to say about rules and freedom of creativity as “emergent” from the outside as well as the in -- since it's all inseparable from any ontology as I see it.

I didn’t understand Chomsky's point that due to limitations of our innate structural principles we are able to produce immence creative scientific discoveries! How and why wouldn’t we produce more if there wasn’t any limiting principle innate to us?!

This gives an outlook on the different ways Kuhn's revolutionary understanding of science was taken - Foucault and Chomsky are both deeply affected by it, but while Chomsky takes it as a better understanding on "how science really progresses" (not linearly, not accumulatively, not from an absolutely free starting point), Foucault takes it as a fundamental criticism of the very idea that science "progresses" and a stance from which to recover the knowledge that has been set outside the paradigm. I tend to be a Chomsky on this, as was Kuhn himself.

fascinating to behold Foucault, a thinker very likely sincerely attempting to contribute thought of value, who has in fact harmed so many people, so catastrophically in our time.

I really want a mango lassi now

Sigh, the "old" chomsky was pretty amazing ^^

1:44 cameraman had to back up for this dude lol

The reason they are debating is to reach final conclusion and at least some agreed points, but if the Foucault doesn’t believe truth then what is whole point of the debate

I believe Cog scientists describes creativity and insight as moments of thought that break the structures and regulations imposed. I do appreciate Foucault's philosophy, altho i doubt i fully understand it

The funny thing is that Foucault has his own version of "human nature", even though he says to be completely against this notion.

Surely the nature of man doesn’t fall outside possible sciences? Darwin gave us a great start

the creativity of the human kind strated with the language's because when this human strated his activity with the language in history fro exemple when they seeing what is in the environment and drowning what they found in the rocky all the history of human strated with language of course

il n'y a de creativité possible qu'à partir d'un système de règles - 12:25 in slavery... good, c'est pareil - peut-être la même chose que j'ai dit

what a horrible loss...

Foucault is absolutely right. Medicine is good example. Modern, scientific medicine has totally suppressed all other local traditional medicines and healing techniques like herbalism, shamanism and other practices.

As it turns out, they could both be wrong, and they both ended up on the same side.

So the debate is basically if structures are "natural", "essential to human nature" (which justifies them by right, sophistically) or merely contingent, and thus are meant to change, as they have changed in the past (which denies justification for any structure). I find many problems with essentialism. First of all you're basically begging to be proven wrong. Second of all, if we indeed find these innate structures, we also find what would happen if we remove them (just like genes ; if we are determined by certain genes, we also know it would be different without them). Thirdly, you cant make an "is" an "ought" by any means. We have long passed humanism. The next step is to go beyond nihilism, something Nietzsche saw very clearly almost 150 years ago. But i dont know when we will have this sincere debate.

The little I understand of what they say, I equally disagree with: Foucault, the constructivist, who sees epistemic "grid" after "grid", instead of the obvious progress of knowledge, Chomsky who sets a priori limits to that knowledge and equates its slow and difficult rise over centuries to the learning of language by every child since the dawn of humanity.

Chomsky great thinker

am i born too late to write, when i grow up, a tome called "The Science of Man"?

an intelligent discussion, not breaking any new boundaries, but summarizing the past mistakes, and present. these two intellectuals give me the creeps; they are superficially smart, but inwardly, not so - they have imagination, and depth, but the perception that's required to really amaze (me), would have to be extraordinary. tell us how to solve the issue of corruption.

12:22 Not really. Au contraire. Innovation, yes. Invention which is the genuine process- product of free play, no. Society is afraid of inventions, of genuine creativity, hence the idea that you need a limitative system of rules to be creative. Yeah, change the society for the better, but not too radically, and definitely do not even think about questioning the rules we have set 😄 The only rules worth respecting are the moral ones/ those that are aligned with the moral rules. The rest… everything can and should be challenged, changed or eliminated if they’re not beneficial. Fuck your idiotic and criminal rules 😄

Chomsky believes in innate ideas?! Hmm....

Two really smart "intellectuals". They don't make them like that in our stupid times. 🙄

Everything started when the man of cave started to........... 🤔... think... obviously.... and.... learning to survive... and bingo the creativity is born... and the science... start to begin...🤔👍😄👏

Two non-scientists self-congatulating their intellects about science. Foucault treats science as if it was history, with nonsensical results. Chomsky is way more based...

What a pair of charlatans

Truth arrived 1443 years ago, falsehood by nature is bound to perish. God breathed His Spirit into Adam hence human being posses innate capacities according to their ordained roles. Nothing more nothing less. Earth made dwelling place for humankind to till the soil and look heavenwards for Guidance and succour, not to clutter space with debris.

I find Chomskys' insinuation that there might be questions about reality which are somehow beyond scientific examination deeply troubling. This peculiarly political left view is the reason why it's almost impossible to debate leftists, why discussions degrade into polemic shitshows and all finally boils down to tribal signaling. If there is one idea which is responsible for today's rampant tribalism it's this idea: That there are things beyond scientific inquiry. There was a time in my life when I really hoped radical modern & postmodern secularization would lead to the abandonment of all non-scientific, non-empiric thinking and we could transcend the dirt of subjectivity. Who would have thought that Leftism was just going to be another church?

The same Chomsky who believes the official 911 story, the same Chomsky who spends decades analyzing the media without ever asking who owns it lol, lol, lol