What Kind of Creatures Are We?

De: Noam Chomsky

Narrado por: John Pruden

Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time.

In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to which he has contributed for over half a century. In clear, precise, and non-technical language, Chomsky elaborates on 50 years of scientific development in the study of language, sketching how his own work has implications for the origins of language, the close relations that language bears to thought, and its eventual biological basis.

He expounds and criticizes many alternative theories, such as those that emphasize the social, the communicative, and the referential aspects of language. Chomsky reviews how new discoveries about language overcome what seemed to be highly problematic assumptions in the past. He also investigates the apparent scope and limits of human cognitive capacities and what the human mind can seriously investigate, in the light of history of science and philosophical reflection and current understanding.

Moving from language and mind to society and politics, he concludes with a searching exploration and philosophical defense of a position he describes as "libertarian socialism," tracing its links to anarchism and the ideas of John Dewey, and even briefly to the ideas of Marx and Mill, demonstrating its conceptual growth out of our historical past and urgent relation to matters of the present.

©2016 Noam Chomsky (P)2018 Tantor

For scholars and autodidacts.

On consciousness, the mind-body problem, Newton's inability to accept his own discoveries. There is also a section on how Enlightment and Classical Liberal figures interpreted freedom, government and economics.

Velvety philosophy

The entertainment quotient was only surpassed by the sudden tugging on the intellectual scales. Loved the logic sequences and deductions.

Now it all makes sense

Noam Chomsky does a stellar job of ruining the bs’rs with thick and comical (if you can get his dry humor) presentation on the most important topics on what it means to be human.

Thought provoking but dense

Impressively covers a wide array of topics that could each easily be their own book

Good intro to Chomsky’s work

very difficult to follow the logic in this book

I don't think think it is audiobook only problem. this whole book is a mess. Although if I had to say something positive about this book: it made me curious about the field of linguistics.

yeah good job "John Pruden"

There's no way this "John Pruden" is a real man.

John pruden must be some auto generated voice, like maybe there's a line up of smartphones where you say "hey John pruden set an alarm for me at 8am" and it does.

And these money grubbing trolls used that to record a book. Seriously what a society! I hope John pruden becomes sentient and destroys us all.

Nice book with horrible political ideas.

The book is quite interesting when it discusses ontology, philosophy, and linguistics. I read the book for that. But then he goes on tangents talking about politics and economics — and it’s pretty obvious he’s an amateur in these fields and does not understand the very basics. Beside that, it was quite a good book and I enjoyed it.