* https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000411

* http://lingphil.mit.edu/papers/pesetsk/Nevins_Pesetsky_Rodri...

Pointing that out made him really defensive; understandable, perhaps, but recursion has been found in literally every other language in the world. You can't be that surprised when people have serious reservations an argument that hinges on the validity of a tiny data set from a language that only you understand.

I stopped paying attention after that, though. Maybe there's other people doing work on it now.

All we are discussing is a biological system, and biological systems are things that may be investigated.

"Chomsky has replied that he considers recursion to be an innate cognitive capacity that is available for use in language but that the capacity may or may not manifest itself in any one particular language"

which makes me wonder - do they show an innate understanding of the concepts when it is discussed with them.

Alternatively, someone who speaks Piraha natively could learn English and discuss about this concept in English.

I don't really believe it, and most linguists haven't since the early 20th century, but that's the claim he made.

He finds that his interest in languages and linguistics exceeds that of spreading Christianity and makes a career change.

Then, either

A) He realizes that he’s the only one who speaks this language and concocts a scheme to seek fame and fortune by falsely claiming it contradicts the leading theory of linguistics because no one can prove him wrong. Mwahaha!

Or

B) As he learns about linguistic theories, he realizes that the language he learned as a missionary contradicts the leading theory of linguistics. This is academically interesting, so he writes a paper and gives talks describing what he found.

While A is certainly possible, it seems B is more likely.

And if you're talking the scientific investigation of complex phenomena like language, fooling one's self is common. Indeed, unless a researcher is using tremendous care, their chance of at least partly fooling themselves is very high.

Scientific processes and checks and balances exist because of this. That Everett essentially ignored these and primarily argued his case in the press leads me being very dubious of him. But this still doesn't he's a "liar", that he believes what he claims is plausible but doesn't change anything else.

I remember growing up as an Evangelical Christian, I felt this argument was pretty decent. But eventually I came to realize that the argument hinges on the assumption that you can't be both a 'lunatic' in one part of your life, and functional or even an admirable person in other parts of your life.

Which of course is a silly assumption. The world is filled with genius crackpots, do-gooders who sucked in other parts of life, or people who are highly successful in one area and utter failures in other areas.

It's notable also the way Lewis cites honest people attesting to miracles, with again the false dichotomy that either the miracles happened as they described or the people were liars, when we have already a multitude of examples of honest, intelligent people thinking they've seen something that they haven't.

A true dichotomy would be more along the lines of: he is right or he is wrong.

Of course all possibilities subdivide, if he is wrong he is knowingly wrong and a liar or he made mistakes and too grandiose claims. Even if he is right, he could be right for the wrong reasons: his conclusions could be unsupported by his premises & evidence but still correct.

That may be my bias as a very casual reader who isn't particularly invested in linguistic theories. (I certainly like Chomsky's social/political criticisms.)

[1] http://blog.thegrandlocus.com/2016/04/did-mendel-fake-his-re...