The Thoughts Of Parmenides And Plato In Formal Linguistics

Russell (1961: 163):

Most modern men take it for granted that empirical knowledge is dependent upon, or derived from, perception.  There is however in Plato and among many philosophers of certain other schools a very different doctrine, to the effect that there is nothing worthy to be called 'knowledge' to be derived from the senses, and that the only real knowledge has to do with concepts.  In this view, '2 + 2 = 4' is genuine knowledge, but such a statement as 'snow is white' is so full of ambiguity and uncertainty that it cannot find a place in the philosopher's corpus of truths.  This view is perhaps traceable to Parmenides, but in its explicit form the philosophic world owes it to Plato.

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The view that "there is nothing worthy to be called 'knowledge' to be derived from the senses, and that the only real knowledge has to do with concepts" underlies the approach of Chomskyan Formal Linguistics in modelling knowledge of language, rather than language, and in regarding instances of knowledge (intuitions about language), rather instances of language, as the data from which the theory is derived.

With regard to "most modern humans taking it for granted that empirical knowledge is dependent upon, or derived from, perception", modern Chomskyan Formal linguists, as Platonists, can claim that knowledge of language is not empirical knowledge. This is because, according to Plato's Theory of Ideas, the notion of 'empirical knowledge' is a nonsense, on the grounds that perception affords mere opinion instead of knowledge. Of course, this doesn't prevent Formal linguists from conducting experiments that will, in their view, "prove the theory correct".

The Thoughts Of Plato (From Parmenides) In Formal Linguistics

Russell (1961: 135):

Plato's philosophy rests on the distinction between reality and appearance, which was first set forth by Parmenides;

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In Chomskyan Formal Linguistics, this distinction can be seen in the distinction between Competence and Performance.

Linguistic competence is the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance, which is the way a language system is used in communication. Noam Chomsky introduced this concept in his elaboration of generative grammar, where it has been widely adopted and competence is the only level of language that is studied.

(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.

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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).