Noam Chomsky’s self-identification as a "Cartesian" is most famously articulated in his 1966 book, Cartesian Linguistics. While he is a modern scientist who rejects the supernatural, he finds in the 17th-century philosophy of René Descartes a crucial precursor to his own theories of language and mind.

Chomsky essentially takes the structure of Cartesian thought while replacing its metaphysical foundations with biological ones.

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What Chomsky Keeps

Chomsky adopts three primary pillars of Cartesian thought to build his theory of Generative Grammar:

1. The Creative Aspect of Language Use

Descartes argued that the "test" for the existence of a mind (as opposed to a mere machine or animal) was the ability to use language creatively. Chomsky keeps this "stimulus-freedom."

• Cartesian View: Humans can arrange words to express thoughts in ways that are "appropriate to the situation" but not "caused" by external stimuli.

• Chomsky’s View: We can produce and understand an infinite number of new sentences. Language is not a set of habits or "trained" responses (as behaviorists like B.F. Skinner argued), but a productive system.

2. Innatism (Innate Ideas)

Descartes believed the mind comes pre-equipped with certain ideas (like the concept of God, triangles, or perfection).

• Chomsky’s View: He modernized this into the Language Faculty or Universal Grammar (UG). He argues that children are born with an innate "blueprint" for language, which is why they can learn complex grammar so quickly despite limited data.

3. Deep vs. Surface Structure

Chomsky draws a parallel to the Cartesian distinction between the "body" (the physical sound) and the "mind" (the meaning/thought).

• Deep Structure: The abstract mental representation of a sentence's meaning (the "Cartesian mind" aspect).

• Surface Structure: The actual physical sound or written form of the sentence (the "Cartesian body" aspect).

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What Chomsky Rejects

Chomsky is a methodological naturalist, meaning he believes the mind is a biological property of the brain. This leads him to reject the "mystical" side of Descartes.

1. Substance Dualism (The "Ghost in the Machine")

Descartes was a Substance Dualist. He believed the mind (res cogitans) was a non-physical, immortal soul entirely separate from the physical body (res extensa).

• Chomsky’s Rejection: Chomsky rejects the idea of a non-physical soul. He views "mind" simply as the brain viewed at a higher level of abstraction—much like "chemical properties" are a way of describing the behavior of atoms.

2. The Mechanistic View of the Body

Descartes believed the physical world (including animals and the human body) functioned like a clockwork machine—purely through physical contact and "push-pull" mechanics.

• Chomsky’s Rejection: Chomsky points out that this Cartesian view of "matter" was actually proven wrong by Isaac Newton. When Newton discovered gravity (action at a distance), the "machine" part of the Cartesian world-view collapsed.

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The "Chomskyan Twist" on the Mind-Body Problem

Chomsky’s most provocative argument is that the Mind-Body Problem as Descartes framed it can no longer be solved—not because the mind is too mysterious, but because we no longer know what "body" means.

"Descartes could formulate the mind-body problem because he had a clear, 'common-sense' definition of what a body was (a machine). Once Newton showed that physical things can move without touching (gravity), that definition vanished. Since we don't have a fixed definition of 'physical,' we can't say the mind is 'non-physical.'"

Feature	Descartes' Cartesianism	Chomsky's "Cartesianism"
Source of Language	Non-physical Soul	Biological Brain Faculty
Acquisition	Innate Ideas from God	Genetic Endowment (Evolution)
Mechanics	Mind is free; Body is a machine	The "Physical" is too complex to be a machine
Goal	Prove the existence of the Soul	Build a scientific model of the Mind