Wednesday 6 April 2016

(Pre-Socratic Sources Of) The Thoughts Of Plato In Formal Linguistics

Russell (1961: 123):
From Parmenides he [Plato] derived the belief that reality is eternal and timeless, and that, on logical grounds, all change must be illusory.  From Heraclitus he derived the negative doctrine that there is nothing permanent in the sensible world.  This, combined with the doctrine of Parmenides, led to the conclusion that knowledge is not to be derived from the senses, but is only to be achieved by the intellect.  This, in turn, fitted in well with Pythagoreanism.

Blogger Comments:

Rewording the above to make the connection with Formal linguistics:
knowledge of language is not to be derived from perceiving texts (instances of language), but is only to be achieved by the considering intuitions about language (instances of knowledge).

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