Thoughtless. Meaningless

In a recent farewell lecture, a colleague argued that, in their studies of language, Skinner ignored thought, the most important faculty (or activity?) of the human brain, Chomsky ignored meaning, the central aspect of language. This, of course, is a valid piece of criticism, and it makes the approaches look almost absurd. However, one could claim that both knew what they were doing, that both decided to ignore what they ignored in order to make substantiable claims about other aspects.