From: Noam Chomsky Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2015 5:30 PM To: Jeffrey E. Subject: RE: Re: That makes sense. At some level, at least the cellular level, there must be similarities on how various systems are decoding signals. But there are systems of the mind/brain where this doesn't seem to carry us very far. For example, organization of voluntary motor action. And for language it is even more intricate and mysterious, because language has this curious property being a central system, used for input and for output though largely functioning internally as a (or maybe the) mechanism of thought. And there's an additional problem for research: Unlike the human visual system, we can't learn anything about language by study of other organisms because there is nothing analogous, so invasive experimentation of the kind that is so informative about the mammalian visual system is of no use. From: jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected] Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2015 11:12 AM To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: Re: understood, however i am working down the line , i dont care what creates the signal . light lines regularites, etc. sound smell etc. they merely produce a chemical -electrical . signal/pattern . no more no less. the de encryption of that signal is my focus. the method that makes "sense" from that signal is my prey. On Thu, Dec 24, 2015 at 10:51 AM, Noam Chomsky < > wrote: This is the program David Marr initiated, developed by Shimon Ullman and others. Makes sense, and there are some interesting results. David was a friend, and we often discussed these topics. In fact, his famous three levels adapted a model from generative grammar. But there was always the fundamental problem I mentioned. Vision is an input system, crafting coherent images from lines, points of light, etc. Language is used for that purpose too, but it's not what language is. That fundamental difference, along with the fact that the principles involved seem quite diff