7 minutes, approximate transcript
Q: Do you consider yourself a person of faith?
Chomsky: I try not to have faith. I go along with a principle very well enunciated by Bertrand Russel, which is that one should keep away from having irrational beliefs. One should believe in things for which there is some evidence or rational support, apart from commitment to principles like freedom and justice and equality and so on. I guess faith is the things you are committed to....but when it comes to things like world, reality....things for which evidence would be appropriate, my feeling is as far as far as possible one should have substantiated beliefs...
Q: Would you then consider yourself paradoxically a person who has faith in scientific method...
Chomsky: I think it's the only method we have to get some approximate understanding of the world...I don't have faith that it will reach the truth or even whether it is leading us in the correct direction.... as someone committed to the scientific method I am also committed to its consequences and among them that we are organic creatures with specific capacities and limitations and have no reason to think these capacities are such as can enable us to gain the truth about the world....but that's the best we can do...
Q: People will say you cannot have moral principles unless you adhere to a faith...
Chomsky: If I attribute these principles to a divine creature whom I define as ordering you to have those principles, those principles don't become any better established....so it's a useless step...it's true that moral principles are not grounded in unshakable evidence or argument....but nothing is going to make them any more firmly grounded...as for having a meaningful life it's irrelevant...people have meaningful lives with or without...
Q: Can Americanism be fairly characterized a a religion?
Chomsky: We call Americanism or Italianism or Russianism as totalitarian doctrines...inglorious history since Ahab...
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Q: Do you consider yourself a person of faith?
Chomsky: I try not to have faith. I go along with a principle very well enunciated by Bertrand Russel, which is that one should keep away from having irrational beliefs. One should believe in things for which there is some evidence or rational support, apart from commitment to principles like freedom and justice and equality and so on. I guess faith is the things you are committed to....but when it comes to things like world, reality....things for which evidence would be appropriate, my feeling is as far as far as possible one should have substantiated beliefs...
Q: Would you then consider yourself paradoxically a person who has faith in scientific method...
Chomsky: I think it's the only method we have to get some approximate understanding of the world...I don't have faith that it will reach the truth or even whether it is leading us in the correct direction.... as someone committed to the scientific method I am also committed to its consequences and among them that we are organic creatures with specific capacities and limitations and have no reason to think these capacities are such as can enable us to gain the truth about the world....but that's the best we can do...
Q: People will say you cannot have moral principles unless you adhere to a faith...
Chomsky: If I attribute these principles to a divine creature whom I define as ordering you to have those principles, those principles don't become any better established....so it's a useless step...it's true that moral principles are not grounded in unshakable evidence or argument....but nothing is going to make them any more firmly grounded...as for having a meaningful life it's irrelevant...people have meaningful lives with or without...
Q: Can Americanism be fairly characterized a a religion?
Chomsky: We call Americanism or Italianism or Russianism as totalitarian doctrines...inglorious history since Ahab...
Video
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