random chomsky quotes from 'chomsky on the mind-body problem' by wlliam lycan

Ontological questions are generally beside the point, hardly more than a form of
harassment. (Chomsky unpublished c: 14)

The human mind is a biologically given system with certain powers and limits . . .
The fact that “admissible hypotheses” are available to this specific biological system
accounts for its ability to construct rich and complex explanatory theories. But the
same properties of mind that provide admissible hypotheses may well exclude other
successful theories as unintelligible to humans. Some theories might simply not be
among the admissible hypotheses determined by the specific properties of mind
that adapt us “to imagining correct theories of some kinds,” though these theories
might be accessible to a differently organized intelligence. (Chomsky 1975: 15–56)

[T]he naturalistic temper . . . takes for granted that humans are part of the
natural world, not angels, and will therefore have capacities with specific scope and
limits, determined by their special structure. For a rat, some questions are problems
that it can solve, others are mysteries that lie beyond its cognitive reach; the same
should be true of humans, and to first approximation, that seems a fair conclusion.
What we call “natural science” is a kind of chance convergence between aspects of
the world and properties of the human mind/brain, which has allowed some rays
of light to penetrate the general obscurity, excluding, it seems, central domains of
the “mental.” (Chomsky unpublished d: 3)

find the whole paper here.