Noam Chomsky takes no prisoners!

It was good to read on the ever interesting Open Culture site that Noam Chomsky - linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist -

linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist - See more at: http://www.citelighter.com/sociology/linguistics/knowledgecards/noam-chomsky#sthash.5r5jGsyv.dpuf

linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist - See more at: http://www.citelighter.com/sociology/linguistics/knowledgecards/noam-chomsky#sthash.5r5jGsyv.dpuf

linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist - See more at: http://www.citelighter.com/sociology/linguistics/knowledgecards/noam-chomsky#sthash.5r5jGsyv.dpuf

takes as dim a view as I do of the impenetrable posturings of that clique of postmodern philosophers Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida and other theorists who do their best to complicate simple ideas or worse, disguise the fact that they have no ideas of substance at all.

Chomsky writes (more eloquently than I could) - What you’re referring to is what’s called “theory.” And when I said I’m not interested in theory, what I meant is, I’m not interested in posturing - using fancy terms like polysyllables and pretending you have a theory when you have no theory whatsoever. So there’s no theory in any of this stuff, not in the sense of theory that anyone is familiar with in the sciences or any other serious field. Try to find in all of the work you mentioned some principles from which you can deduce conclusions, empirically testable propositions where it all goes beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old. See if you can find that when the fancy words are decoded. I can’t. So I’m not interested in that kind of posturing. Žižek is an extreme example of it. I don’t see anything to what he’s saying. Jacques Lacan I actually knew. I kind of liked him. We had meetings every once in awhile. But quite frankly I thought he was a total charlatan. He was just posturing for the television cameras in the way many Paris intellectuals do. Why this is influential, I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t see anything there that should be influential.

The Open Culture site HERE is a mine of fascinating material. Well worth a look.