UT Holds Webinar on Analytic Philosophy with Noam Chomsky, Nadia Maftouni

Known as the father of modern linguistics, Prof. Noam Chomsky is widely recognized for helping to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences and contributing to the development of a new cognitivist framework for the study of language and the mind. As per Prof. Chomsky’s request, the entire session comprised questions and answers.

Nadia Maftouni is a prominent writer, artist, scholar, former Yale research fellow, and a member of the editorial board of the History of Philosophy Quarterly published by the University of Illinois Press.

Maftouni has had debates and interdisciplinary discussions with such luminaries as Slavoj Žižek, Bruce Ackerman, Dudley Andrew, David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Nicholas Rescher, and Dimitri Gutas in several other colloquia organized by the University of Tehran in the past.

At one point in the webinar, Nadia Maftouni remarked to Chomsky, “I’ve exchanged emails with many top scholars, each of them one-of-a-kind in their fields. A unique feature appears in your emails. Actually, you waste no word, even just one word. You use the least needed words. And it suggests, as the father of linguistics, you’ve gotten the harness of words in your hands. You’ve harnessed the words.”