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On the matter of common sense and freedom, there is a rich tradition that develops the idea that people have intrinsic rights. Accordingly, any authority that infringes upon these rights is illegitimate. These are natural rights, rooted in human nature, which is part of the natural world, so that we should be able to learn about it by rational inquiry. But social theory and action cannot be held abeyance while science takes its halting steps towards establishing truths about human nature, and philosophy seeks to explain the connection, which we all sense exists, between human nature and rights deriving from it. We therefore are compelled to take an intuitive leap, to make a posit as to what is essential to human nature, and on this basis to derive, however inadequately, a conception of a legitimate social order. Any judgment about social action (or inaction) relies upon reasoning of this sort. A person of any integrity will select a course of action on the grounds that the likely consequences will accord with human rights and needs, and will explore the validity of these grounds as well as one can.(Note that Chomsky says “any authority.” It does not matter North or South, West or East, Americas, Europe, Africa or Asia. And am I a person of integrity? I have been a silent sufferer and protester.)
According to one traditional idea, it is a fundamental human need – and hence a fundamental human right – to inquire and to create, free of external compulsion. This is a basic doctrine of classical liberalism in its original 18th century version, for example, in the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who inspired Mill. Obvious consequences were immediately drawn. One is that whatever does not spring from free choice, but only from compulsion or guidance, remains alien to our true nature. If a worker labors under the threat of force or of need, or a student produces on demand, we may admire what they do, but we despise what they are. Institutional structures are legitimate insofar as they enhance the opportunity to freely inquire and create, out of inner need; otherwise they are not. (p. 173)
(Am I freely inquiring and creating out of inner need? Or am I one of many that should be despised?)
The more we investigate, the more we discover that basic elements of thought and language derive from an invariant intellectual endowment, a structure of concepts and principles that provides the framework for experience, interpretation, judgment and understanding. The more we learn about these matters, the more it seems that training is an irrelevance and learning an artefact, except at the margins. It seems that mental structures grow in the mind along their natural, intrinsically determined path, triggered by experience and partially modified by it, but apparently only in fairly superficial ways. This should not be a surprising conclusion. If true, it means that mental organs are like bodily organs – or more accurately, like other bodily organs, for these are organs of the body as well. Despite conventional empiricist and behaviorist dogmas, we should not be startled to discover that the mind and brain are like everything else in the natural world, and that it is a highly specific initial endowment that permits the mind to develop rich and articulate systems of knowledge, understanding and judgment, largely shared with others, vastly beyond the reach of any determining experience. (p. 175, “Containing the Threat of Democracy”)
(When one thinks about something, no matter how abstract the something is, he/she thinks about it in a language or a combination of languages. Without language, there is no intelligence.)
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