Of course, once a political party comes to power it will become corrupt as well (e.g. if the Greens replaced the Democrats). However, it is entirely different if power is significantly shared by 5, 6, 7, or 15 parties with different ideologies. Not saying that it wouldn't happen, but it is a different matter.
Well I think that its pretty clear that in this case it is not an individual who is donating money, but an organization funded by the state of Arizona.
I switched almost full time to Firefox, and never looked back. Sometimes I open up IE, but only because I have multiple hotmail accounts, and want both opened at the same time.
Nice to know that we're spending our defense budget wisely. With the development of these new WMD's, in thirty years we won't have to be worrying about just the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but of anti-matter weapons as well.
Please, some one tell me that they are not missing the irony of the US developing new WMDs?
what if they voted to kill all blue-eyed people in the world (or any other thing which we would oppose)? Should the US abide by the vote, or do what it thinks it should do?
Precisely what is this English language you are talking about? The idea that there is some correct form of English is artificial, and what that standard of English is is arbitrary. And your complaint is equally arbitrary. What exactly gives your variant of English pre-eminence? For that matter, how do you know that the original poster was not speaking another variant of English, and not simply making mistakes?
Here's a list of some different Englishes:
Aboriginal English, American Standard English, Aruba English, Australian Standard English, Belfast, Bermudan English, Brummie, Brummy, Birmingham, Black English, Bolton Lancashire, Canadian Standard English, Carribean English, Central Cumberland, Cockney, Cornwall, Craven Yorkshire, Cumberland, Devonshire, Dominican English, Dorset, Durham, East Anglia, East Devonshire, Edinburgh, Geordie, Grenadian English, Guyanese English, Jamaican English, Liberian Standard English, Lowland Scottish, Malaysian English, Manglish, Neo-nyungar, Newcastle Northumberland, Newfoundland English, New Zealand English, Noogar, Noonga, Noongar Norfolk, North Hiberno English, North Lancashire, North Wiltshire, North Yorkshire, Northumberland, Radcliffe Lancashire, Scouse, Sheffield Yorkshire, Singlish, Singapore English, Somerset, South Hiberno English, South Wales, St. Lucian English, Sussex, Tyneside Northumberland, West Country, West Yorkshire, Westmorland, Yanito
Which of these is true English, friend? I'm afraid its your ignorance that is the problem, and furthermore, your nazi-like attitude to English. Furthermore, your argument about "suspect[ing] the point(s) that he/she was trying to make" is an ad hominem argument, anyway.
The same hole thats supposed to be causing global warming.
The ozone hole does not cause global warming. Global warming is caused by an increase in ozone gases in the atmosphere: it keeps the heat here, preventing sun energy from re-radiating out into space. The ozone hole may though be, funnily enough, caused by global warming here
The problem with ozone depletion is that the ozone shields us from high-energy cancer causing light. here
I've been a Green Party member my entire life. And I agree with most of your positions. But I also think that your position on nuclear power is idiocy. Nuclear power has never been cleaner than before, and there are viable methods of keeping it safe too. Nuclear power plants can only melt down when they are too big, and they don't have to be. Nuclear waste can also be safely disposed of.
I know that it is an unpopular position in the green party, but nuclear power is green, and I think that you should be brave enough, and intelligent enough,to stand against even your own party on this issue.
Thank you, and you still have my vote, as a faithful supporter of third parties in American politics.
I have five mod points, and it is sorely tempting to use these mod points in this discussion of abortion, but I'd rather put my two (or three) cents in.
I agree with some of the earlier comments that pro-choicers and pro-lifers are talking past one another- and fail, utterly, to address the concerns that are both very valid. I honestly tend toward the pro-life, and support, for example, laws that make it a double murder to kill a pregnant mother (say with a shotgun to the belly).
When does the life of an organism begin? That is one question. The other question is, "When does a human being become a person." These are not the same question.
It is consistent for the pro-lifers to maintain that once an egg is fertilized by a sperm it is an early homo-sapiens, because it is, for the most part, correct. It is also consistent for pro-lifers to say that that fetus is a person. It is consistent because personhood is socially defined, and hence, formally arbitrary. It is, in many ways, no less defensible than, as some cultures do, to assign personhood only when a child is named. Note that under this view, it is not killing the organism that is immoral so much as it is immoral to kill the person of the fetus.
The problem with pro-choicers is that though they very rightly (in some sense) defend women's reproductive rights, their definition of personhood is at least as arbitrary as that of pro-lifers. The only way in which a conscientious pro-choicer could justify the killing of a fetus and remain consistent with the murder of new-born children is to hold that something special has happened at birth: namely that the organism has become a person. This is no less arbitrary than the other, though perhaps more mysterious, since at least the pro-lifers say personhood starts at the beginning- at fertilization. And it is perhaps less consistent than those cultures who hold that an infant only becomes a person after is named- because that is when it has truly received a social identity.
I have to tend toward the pro-lifers. I would also suggest, though I'm sure that I'll gain no few Foes for saying so, that there should be, on principal, some respect (though not perhaps an equal amount) for the reproductive rights of the father. I understand, deeply, that such a right has substantial implications for women that are not entirely fair.
I reject the argument that pro-lifers hold their position because they do not want empowered women (some might, but lets not stereotype please!). An argument could be made that pro-choicers want to disempower men's reproductive rights by denying personhood to a fetus until that fetus is born. I will not go too far with this, because women in many ways (though not all) carry the burden of actually carrying a fetus (there is a large investment in pregnancy too). But in many cases (hopefully more than not), the father is also making a substantial investment in the child as well: because a pregnant woman may find it hard to work, the father must work very hard to make up the difference (going from a two-income household to a one-income household). To say that a father must, morally, do this, and to also say that a father has no rights to the fetus, is a little hard to swallow. At the same time, this is really quite difficult, because the burden of pregnancy is such that a woman is unable to do many of those things that they would otherwise be capable of doing- and for them to have to undergo this burden for the sake of a father's rights is also a little hard to swallow. It is inherently an unfair situation for both parties.
This is why in many ways the pro-life position makes a little more sense: under good circumstances, the decision to have sex is a decision to accept the consequences of doing so. And, you know, I agree. That is why I also believe three other things very strongly: 1)that we need to develop powerful and easy birth-control methods 2)promote these methods, and most importantly 3)that even in a marriage, there is never never never an obligation to have sex w
I"ve heard, but cannot confirm, that there was some kind of tussle between Lynch and the producers in the second season, and that a few of those were actually directed by others. Can anyone tell me more?
Actually, I was in this computer lab on the top floor, and this big oversized dude stood up and started walking around. At the same time, the earthquake struck- the floor was shaking beneath me, and I almost had thought it was him...
Well, california does have earthquakes every day, it is true. But those are around the 2.9 level...barely noticeable. A 6.0 doesn't happen nearly so often, and a 6 would probably scare the fire out of most people out east, who report a 3 as if it were the second coming. ( :
I think we've stumbled upon a way to finance bigger and better future missions to Mars! For a sizeable contribution, our rovers will draw in a company's logo on Mars.
I think that the feeling that "Reps and Dems are the same for all intents and purposes" is not meant to imply a logical equivalence between Republicans and Democrats. Therefore the argument that Bush and Kerry are different, and that Bush is a Republican and Kerry is a Democrat, therefore Republicans and Democrats are not the same, is not valid. Bush can be worse than Kerry without the Republicans being worse than the Democrats, and vice versa
Similarly, these are also invalid arguments: some americans murder, therefore americans are murderers. Or, some american soldiers torture prisoners, therefore all americans are torturers of prisoners. Some Republicans are reactionary flat-earthers, therefore all Republicans are reactionary flat-earthers. Some Republicans are not like Democrats, therefore no Republicans are like Democrats, or Republicans are not like Democrats. These of course are not valid arguements.
I think what is meant is that for the most part, is that most party members of either party do similar things political things, and hold similar political stances.
As for there being a difference between Kerry and Bush, I agree. But if Bush happened to be a conservative Democrat, and Kerry a liberal republican, how much would this change?
But I will note that if I wanted to develop a thorough and accurate model of the evolution and development of a speech community I would need to address how it is that we are able to learn (and create) languages at all.
>I seriously think you underestimate how far you can >get without that, but I'm not about to just say >"no".
I was thinking about precisely that exactly when I was writing my comment, and I tried to indicate my meaning clearly by including the words 'thorough' and 'accurate', but I may not have succeeded. When we go about modeling things, we are involved in a process of abstraction, which entails choosing which details to retain as part of the model and which to eliminate. For example, a lot of population genetics models can do quite a lot without having to include accurate and explicit (sub)models of the mechanics of genetic variation, reproduction, etc. I think that we are pretty much in agreement here.
With regard to your comments about language universals: I agree, and, I think that this problem is too often overlooked in my area of study, cultural anthropology. To say that some feature is universally found does not immediately imply that this feature is a consequence of, say, our common genetic heritage. Supplemental evidence is needed, and unfortunately, this evidence can be really quite hard to obtain. However, in defense of this approach, I might say that there may be an argument from probability to support the conclusion that some universally present feature (in our data set) about grammar derives from common features in the brain (the 'hardwired' part).
Let me give an example from the research of Dwight Read, and myself, concerning the structure of kinship terminologies. Kinship terminologies are widely supposed to be means of specifying genealogical relations between various sorts of relatives. However, while this may be true for many, most, or all kinship terminologies, it is not a necessary part of what constitutes a kinship terminology. For example, many kinship terminologies include terms which do not specify genealogically related individuals, much less genetically related individuals, the so called 'fictive' kin terms. Instead, a kinship system appears to generally consist of two simultaneous conceptual systems: a system of genealogical tracing, and a kinship terminology. In this view, a kinship terminology is a symbol structure. Kinship terms specify genealogical relations only in a process of instantiation wherein kin-terms are mapped onto genealogical space. But they need not be instantiated genealogically, they can be instantiated by whatever cultural rules are relevant (e.g. rules specifying fictive kin).
Now the interesting part is that the kinship terminology is a symbol structure with a generative grammar. Specifically, it is a semi-group algebra. By this I mean that a subset of terms in the kinship terminology are atomic terms for the algebra, from which all other terms may be derived by re-iteratively taking kin-term products with these atomic terms. For example, in the American Kinship Terminology, the atomic terms are parent, child, and self. A kin term product is something like, parent of parent of self= grandparent. Furthermore, to be a semi-group algebra each kin-term product must be single-valued- that is a kin-term product does not result in more than one answer, and it must be complete.
To bring me back to the point, it turns out that every kinship terminology we have yet analyzed has been shown to have an algebraic structure, though the structures appear quite different (just as different grammars appear different). Read has analyzed the American Kinship Terminology, the Trobriand Islander terminology, the Punjabi terminology, and the Shipibo terminology. I'm currently involved in the analysis of the Polish Kinship Terminology, along with Dwight Read. Now, on technical grounds, I cannot conclude that this is a human universal. This is an empirical question. But it is highly suggestive that all kinship terminolo
I wrote out a long reply, but somehow it never posted.
Do you think that using an individualistic, purely psychological notion of "language" you're going to satisfy people's questions about this phenomenon?
Well, my answer is certainly going to depend on what kinds of questions these 'people' have. But I will note that if I wanted to develop a thorough and accurate model of the evolution and development of a speech community I would need to address how it is that we are able to learn (and create) languages at all. This is not trivial because the machinery in the brain that make language learning possible can very well have an enormous impact on the shapes that languages take. The individual is also the common denominator in any speech community. Though, under normal circumstances, every language user belongs to one or more speech communities, different language users may (and do) belong to different language communities. They are capable of belonging to these language communities because they are capable of learning languages. They are capable of learning languages because structures in the brain are ready to receive linguistic inputs, and place limits on the possible 'interpretations' of such inputs.
To take the individual as THE principal unit of language processing does not imply that social dynamics are unimportant factors to consider in the evolution of a speech community, or for that matter the development of a new one. Classically you I think would be a macro-linguist and Chomsky a micro-linguist, you saying language is embedded in a larger system, and Chomsky saying, look this is how the machinery of language works. Like macro-economics and micro-economics, it may be difficult to reconcile the two views, but I think that a population-thinking approach may help. On the one hand you start off with a model of individuals, and then you specify, or examine, the structure of the dynamics between those individuals, and move on from there. For example, in economics, you can design a simulation where individual agents are classical utility maximizers. Then put these individual agents in simulated situations and look for emergent properties of the system- i.e. the interaction effects of the decisions of individual agents. For the development of a language community, we would create a model of individual language learning, and then we watch how these models interact to create language communities. I think that this accomodates your concerns.
As for poverty of stimulus and parental cues, I've a number of replies. 1) First, a question: is the evidence contrary to Chomky's position cross-cultural? Is it universally true that all children who have learned a language have also had such cues? Does a Tiwi child get such feedback? 2)To say that such cues help the child mildy begs the question, since it is, in the last analysis, only another instance of input for the child to process.
I will admit that I am not terribly well versed in Chomsky's program of linguistics. It is not my field. However, I generally hold it to be true that a person with a tabla rasa brain could not possibly make any sense of the world in its lifetime. I believe, though again I'm not sure, that this has been called the grounding problem in cognitive science. How is a brain to know, without prior specifications, to know what kinds of information is relevant? With regard to language, I can imagine that such a child may mistakenly focus entirely on the tonal properties of speech when learning English- and everytime the child is corrected by the parent, instead of paying attention to the choice of words, or the order of words, it only pays attention to the the tonal properties of the correction, and tries to learn from this new input. And after every correction the child 'concludes', the problem is more subtle that I thought, I will pay closer attention.
Slashdot Mirror
Government is a greedy algorithm.
At any rate, I think its better than voting for someone who's not going to win at all.
Yes. I wonder if that is what happens when a dictator claims that he received 99% of the vote.
Of course, once a political party comes to power it will become corrupt as well (e.g. if the Greens replaced the Democrats). However, it is entirely different if power is significantly shared by 5, 6, 7, or 15 parties with different ideologies. Not saying that it wouldn't happen, but it is a different matter.
Well I think that its pretty clear that in this case it is not an individual who is donating money, but an organization funded by the state of Arizona.
Yes. And we're developing new ones too.
What it's called is a diet pill.
I switched almost full time to Firefox, and never looked back. Sometimes I open up IE, but only because I have multiple hotmail accounts, and want both opened at the same time.
Please, some one tell me that they are not missing the irony of the US developing new WMDs?
Yeah, but it didn't.
You are right of course, but we haven't been so...cool as all that: just think of all that was done to protesting blacks in the civil rights movement.
Here's a list of some different Englishes:
Aboriginal English, American Standard English, Aruba English, Australian Standard English, Belfast, Bermudan English, Brummie, Brummy, Birmingham, Black English, Bolton Lancashire, Canadian Standard English, Carribean English, Central Cumberland, Cockney, Cornwall, Craven Yorkshire, Cumberland, Devonshire, Dominican English, Dorset, Durham, East Anglia, East Devonshire, Edinburgh, Geordie, Grenadian English, Guyanese English, Jamaican English, Liberian Standard English, Lowland Scottish, Malaysian English, Manglish, Neo-nyungar, Newcastle Northumberland, Newfoundland English, New Zealand English, Noogar, Noonga, Noongar Norfolk, North Hiberno English, North Lancashire, North Wiltshire, North Yorkshire, Northumberland, Radcliffe Lancashire, Scouse, Sheffield Yorkshire, Singlish, Singapore English, Somerset, South Hiberno English, South Wales, St. Lucian English, Sussex, Tyneside Northumberland, West Country, West Yorkshire, Westmorland, Yanito
Which of these is true English, friend? I'm afraid its your ignorance that is the problem, and furthermore, your nazi-like attitude to English. Furthermore, your argument about "suspect[ing] the point(s) that he/she was trying to make" is an ad hominem argument, anyway.
Rest easy friend.
The ozone hole does not cause global warming. Global warming is caused by an increase in ozone gases in the atmosphere: it keeps the heat here, preventing sun energy from re-radiating out into space. The ozone hole may though be, funnily enough, caused by global warming here
The problem with ozone depletion is that the ozone shields us from high-energy cancer causing light. here
I've been a Green Party member my entire life. And I agree with most of your positions. But I also think that your position on nuclear power is idiocy. Nuclear power has never been cleaner than before, and there are viable methods of keeping it safe too. Nuclear power plants can only melt down when they are too big, and they don't have to be. Nuclear waste can also be safely disposed of.
I know that it is an unpopular position in the green party, but nuclear power is green, and I think that you should be brave enough, and intelligent enough,to stand against even your own party on this issue.
Thank you, and you still have my vote, as a faithful supporter of third parties in American politics.
madcapjack
I agree with some of the earlier comments that pro-choicers and pro-lifers are talking past one another- and fail, utterly, to address the concerns that are both very valid. I honestly tend toward the pro-life, and support, for example, laws that make it a double murder to kill a pregnant mother (say with a shotgun to the belly).
When does the life of an organism begin? That is one question. The other question is, "When does a human being become a person." These are not the same question.
It is consistent for the pro-lifers to maintain that once an egg is fertilized by a sperm it is an early homo-sapiens, because it is, for the most part, correct. It is also consistent for pro-lifers to say that that fetus is a person. It is consistent because personhood is socially defined, and hence, formally arbitrary. It is, in many ways, no less defensible than, as some cultures do, to assign personhood only when a child is named. Note that under this view, it is not killing the organism that is immoral so much as it is immoral to kill the person of the fetus.
The problem with pro-choicers is that though they very rightly (in some sense) defend women's reproductive rights, their definition of personhood is at least as arbitrary as that of pro-lifers. The only way in which a conscientious pro-choicer could justify the killing of a fetus and remain consistent with the murder of new-born children is to hold that something special has happened at birth: namely that the organism has become a person. This is no less arbitrary than the other, though perhaps more mysterious, since at least the pro-lifers say personhood starts at the beginning- at fertilization. And it is perhaps less consistent than those cultures who hold that an infant only becomes a person after is named- because that is when it has truly received a social identity.
I have to tend toward the pro-lifers. I would also suggest, though I'm sure that I'll gain no few Foes for saying so, that there should be, on principal, some respect (though not perhaps an equal amount) for the reproductive rights of the father. I understand, deeply, that such a right has substantial implications for women that are not entirely fair.
I reject the argument that pro-lifers hold their position because they do not want empowered women (some might, but lets not stereotype please!). An argument could be made that pro-choicers want to disempower men's reproductive rights by denying personhood to a fetus until that fetus is born. I will not go too far with this, because women in many ways (though not all) carry the burden of actually carrying a fetus (there is a large investment in pregnancy too). But in many cases (hopefully more than not), the father is also making a substantial investment in the child as well: because a pregnant woman may find it hard to work, the father must work very hard to make up the difference (going from a two-income household to a one-income household). To say that a father must, morally, do this, and to also say that a father has no rights to the fetus, is a little hard to swallow. At the same time, this is really quite difficult, because the burden of pregnancy is such that a woman is unable to do many of those things that they would otherwise be capable of doing- and for them to have to undergo this burden for the sake of a father's rights is also a little hard to swallow. It is inherently an unfair situation for both parties.
This is why in many ways the pro-life position makes a little more sense: under good circumstances, the decision to have sex is a decision to accept the consequences of doing so. And, you know, I agree. That is why I also believe three other things very strongly: 1)that we need to develop powerful and easy birth-control methods 2)promote these methods, and most importantly 3)that even in a marriage, there is never never never an obligation to have sex w
I"ve heard, but cannot confirm, that there was some kind of tussle between Lynch and the producers in the second season, and that a few of those were actually directed by others. Can anyone tell me more?
I like this list: http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ca/archives.html
Gives a good sense of earthquake activity.
Actually, I was in this computer lab on the top floor, and this big oversized dude stood up and started walking around. At the same time, the earthquake struck- the floor was shaking beneath me, and I almost had thought it was him...
Well, california does have earthquakes every day, it is true. But those are around the 2.9 level...barely noticeable. A 6.0 doesn't happen nearly so often, and a 6 would probably scare the fire out of most people out east, who report a 3 as if it were the second coming. ( :
hey, felt a 6.0 today, in California. mod me offtopic.
I think we've stumbled upon a way to finance bigger and better future missions to Mars! For a sizeable contribution, our rovers will draw in a company's logo on Mars.
Similarly, these are also invalid arguments: some americans murder, therefore americans are murderers. Or, some american soldiers torture prisoners, therefore all americans are torturers of prisoners. Some Republicans are reactionary flat-earthers, therefore all Republicans are reactionary flat-earthers. Some Republicans are not like Democrats, therefore no Republicans are like Democrats, or Republicans are not like Democrats. These of course are not valid arguements.
I think what is meant is that for the most part, is that most party members of either party do similar things political things, and hold similar political stances.
As for there being a difference between Kerry and Bush, I agree. But if Bush happened to be a conservative Democrat, and Kerry a liberal republican, how much would this change?
Exactly, and I'm voting out both the Democrats and the Republicans.
>I seriously think you underestimate how far you can >get without that, but I'm not about to just say >"no".
I was thinking about precisely that exactly when I was writing my comment, and I tried to indicate my meaning clearly by including the words 'thorough' and 'accurate', but I may not have succeeded. When we go about modeling things, we are involved in a process of abstraction, which entails choosing which details to retain as part of the model and which to eliminate. For example, a lot of population genetics models can do quite a lot without having to include accurate and explicit (sub)models of the mechanics of genetic variation, reproduction, etc. I think that we are pretty much in agreement here.
With regard to your comments about language universals: I agree, and, I think that this problem is too often overlooked in my area of study, cultural anthropology. To say that some feature is universally found does not immediately imply that this feature is a consequence of, say, our common genetic heritage. Supplemental evidence is needed, and unfortunately, this evidence can be really quite hard to obtain. However, in defense of this approach, I might say that there may be an argument from probability to support the conclusion that some universally present feature (in our data set) about grammar derives from common features in the brain (the 'hardwired' part).
Let me give an example from the research of Dwight Read, and myself, concerning the structure of kinship terminologies. Kinship terminologies are widely supposed to be means of specifying genealogical relations between various sorts of relatives. However, while this may be true for many, most, or all kinship terminologies, it is not a necessary part of what constitutes a kinship terminology. For example, many kinship terminologies include terms which do not specify genealogically related individuals, much less genetically related individuals, the so called 'fictive' kin terms. Instead, a kinship system appears to generally consist of two simultaneous conceptual systems: a system of genealogical tracing, and a kinship terminology. In this view, a kinship terminology is a symbol structure. Kinship terms specify genealogical relations only in a process of instantiation wherein kin-terms are mapped onto genealogical space. But they need not be instantiated genealogically, they can be instantiated by whatever cultural rules are relevant (e.g. rules specifying fictive kin).
Now the interesting part is that the kinship terminology is a symbol structure with a generative grammar. Specifically, it is a semi-group algebra. By this I mean that a subset of terms in the kinship terminology are atomic terms for the algebra, from which all other terms may be derived by re-iteratively taking kin-term products with these atomic terms. For example, in the American Kinship Terminology, the atomic terms are parent, child, and self. A kin term product is something like, parent of parent of self= grandparent. Furthermore, to be a semi-group algebra each kin-term product must be single-valued- that is a kin-term product does not result in more than one answer, and it must be complete.
To bring me back to the point, it turns out that every kinship terminology we have yet analyzed has been shown to have an algebraic structure, though the structures appear quite different (just as different grammars appear different). Read has analyzed the American Kinship Terminology, the Trobriand Islander terminology, the Punjabi terminology, and the Shipibo terminology. I'm currently involved in the analysis of the Polish Kinship Terminology, along with Dwight Read. Now, on technical grounds, I cannot conclude that this is a human universal. This is an empirical question. But it is highly suggestive that all kinship terminolo
I have to admit, that your comment is funnier than mine. I laughed myself silly.
Do you think that using an individualistic, purely psychological notion of "language" you're going to satisfy people's questions about this phenomenon?
Well, my answer is certainly going to depend on what kinds of questions these 'people' have. But I will note that if I wanted to develop a thorough and accurate model of the evolution and development of a speech community I would need to address how it is that we are able to learn (and create) languages at all. This is not trivial because the machinery in the brain that make language learning possible can very well have an enormous impact on the shapes that languages take. The individual is also the common denominator in any speech community. Though, under normal circumstances, every language user belongs to one or more speech communities, different language users may (and do) belong to different language communities. They are capable of belonging to these language communities because they are capable of learning languages. They are capable of learning languages because structures in the brain are ready to receive linguistic inputs, and place limits on the possible 'interpretations' of such inputs.
To take the individual as THE principal unit of language processing does not imply that social dynamics are unimportant factors to consider in the evolution of a speech community, or for that matter the development of a new one. Classically you I think would be a macro-linguist and Chomsky a micro-linguist, you saying language is embedded in a larger system, and Chomsky saying, look this is how the machinery of language works. Like macro-economics and micro-economics, it may be difficult to reconcile the two views, but I think that a population-thinking approach may help. On the one hand you start off with a model of individuals, and then you specify, or examine, the structure of the dynamics between those individuals, and move on from there. For example, in economics, you can design a simulation where individual agents are classical utility maximizers. Then put these individual agents in simulated situations and look for emergent properties of the system- i.e. the interaction effects of the decisions of individual agents. For the development of a language community, we would create a model of individual language learning, and then we watch how these models interact to create language communities. I think that this accomodates your concerns.
As for poverty of stimulus and parental cues, I've a number of replies. 1) First, a question: is the evidence contrary to Chomky's position cross-cultural? Is it universally true that all children who have learned a language have also had such cues? Does a Tiwi child get such feedback? 2)To say that such cues help the child mildy begs the question, since it is, in the last analysis, only another instance of input for the child to process.
I will admit that I am not terribly well versed in Chomsky's program of linguistics. It is not my field. However, I generally hold it to be true that a person with a tabla rasa brain could not possibly make any sense of the world in its lifetime. I believe, though again I'm not sure, that this has been called the grounding problem in cognitive science. How is a brain to know, without prior specifications, to know what kinds of information is relevant? With regard to language, I can imagine that such a child may mistakenly focus entirely on the tonal properties of speech when learning English- and everytime the child is corrected by the parent, instead of paying attention to the choice of words, or the order of words, it only pays attention to the the tonal properties of the correction, and tries to learn from this new input. And after every correction the child 'concludes', the problem is more subtle that I thought, I will pay closer attention.