Help a newbie out
Hello!
I'm new on here, and also fairly new to philosophy in general, so I apologise for my supposedly shallow understanding and knowledge of concepts and such.
Before this I've studied mainly linguistics and Spanish, but now I decided to do a semester of philosophy. I'm currently doing a course in Epistemology. However, I find it hard to develop my thoughts and get stimulated only by reading. I need to discuss in order to learn. Due to the pandemic, the possibilities to do this through my university are scarce. So I hope I'll find what I need on here. Otherwise, I'd be grateful if anyone would direct me and perhaps give me any tips on sites or groups where I can find ppl to discuss with :)
Now, onto my current question!
I'm reading Locke's Essay on Human Understanding and Leibniz answer to this. Anyone who has read the same text(s) that wants to discuss it? (More precisely, we're reading Jonathan Bennetts facilitated text from 2004. I don't know how much significance this has.)
I'm new on here, and also fairly new to philosophy in general, so I apologise for my supposedly shallow understanding and knowledge of concepts and such.
Before this I've studied mainly linguistics and Spanish, but now I decided to do a semester of philosophy. I'm currently doing a course in Epistemology. However, I find it hard to develop my thoughts and get stimulated only by reading. I need to discuss in order to learn. Due to the pandemic, the possibilities to do this through my university are scarce. So I hope I'll find what I need on here. Otherwise, I'd be grateful if anyone would direct me and perhaps give me any tips on sites or groups where I can find ppl to discuss with :)
Now, onto my current question!
I'm reading Locke's Essay on Human Understanding and Leibniz answer to this. Anyone who has read the same text(s) that wants to discuss it? (More precisely, we're reading Jonathan Bennetts facilitated text from 2004. I don't know how much significance this has.)
Comments (39)
I also read Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. It is one of the best books of philosophy ever written in my opinion (this is why I went back in the day so empirical he). I am from Spain so I read the Spanish commented version of two philosophers from my country.
Yes! I want to discuss it too. What is the matter?
Quoting javi2541997
Well, certainly not all of us can have the correct opinion.
Leibniz was a systemic metaphysical thinker-he created his own system (presumed on rationalism) he thought explained everything. Locke was an empiricist and founder of political Liberalism. Thats the short summary I can think off the top of my head. I studied both of them in my third year philosophy of Enlightenment class (the period of philosophy between 1500s-1700s), I can't say I'm particularly well read in any of those thinkers, or even a fan, but drop me a message and I'm always happy to discuss!
Let's try to avoid simplistic labels. These terms were not used by the aforementioned men themselves, are not very well defined, and do little except help philosophy undergraduates pass multiple-choice exams.
Locke was as much a "rationalist" as any reasonable person is, because he's not an imbecile. Ditto with Leibniz. It's just not so simple. It's like saying Augustine was a Catholic and Pascal was a Protestant. Does that tell us much of anything? Not really.
Of course both Locke and Leibniz believe in a natural endowment, what today we'd call "genetics," and of course both believed in the importance of the environment on human development. A lot is made out of phrases like "tabula rasa," etc., but again -- usually taken from philosophy 101 survey classes where they assign a few pages, plunk down a few labels, and move along to the next "famous philosopher."
These dichotomies are almost always useless for all but the most superficial understanding: nature/nurture, mind/body, subject/object, internal/external, rationalist/empiricist, etc. etc. Avoid them like the plague, I say.
I find Locke's political ideas to be highly interesting and still relevant today. Have you managed to read Two Treatises on Government?
I am not as well-read as others but I love the word "logos" and have a little knowledge of how our brains work based on modern science that Locke and his contemporaries didn't have.
Logos can be interpreted as, reason, the controlling force of the universe, or as order, mathematical order, universal law. Our brains are structured to recognize patterns so I would say our ability to reason is innate. It is not always a conscious process but can happen on a subconscious level, thus the advice to sleep on the problem want to resolve or I find driving is great for processing my thinking. Driving is a distraction that enables some thinking processes to work better and prevents us from having a chokehold on our beliefs if we are opening to questioning things(being narrow-minded).
However, our brains love to play tricks on us and can be very creative, therefore, just because we think something is true, we can not be sure. That is where empirical thinking comes in. We need to check our reasoning with others, and when possible we need to check our reasoning through the scientific process. A problem with believing things on faith is a failure to adequately check the reasoning and this is why the argument is so important! Looking things up in the Bible is not the best way to gain knowledge. Math is the language of God but how many of us are literate in math?
That is, matter can not manifest without organization, and we can observe cause and effect, and with math, discover universal laws. We can use math, and observe, why things are as they are, but we can not be sure our reasoning is correct. We need to use math or the scientific method to check our reasoning, and when there is new information, we need to check our reasoning again, and again. Logos is perfect. Our ability to know of it is not. :grin:
But these patterns have to be taught previously in someone's brain. So the ability to reason is soft innate.
John Locke put a good example here. One of the basics of knowledge about Aristotle: one object cannot be a different object at the same time. Perfect we all understand it. But... What about all of those people who will never think about this principle? I mean, imagine a kid born and raised in an island without developed science/education and then he would never heard of this principle and other criteria that give us the ability to reason.
I guess his ability to reason would be more precarious than ours that understand this criteria.
So, it will depend in someone's background to develop a good ability to reason and improve the knowledge. It isn't that innate at all. I think sometimes we born as a tabula rasa.
That is like agreeing to meet and not being specific about the time or place. The word "word" is a label and we can not know what we are talking about without them.
I make an issue of this because of the difference between believing the Bible is God's truth and interpreting it literally, or concluding creationism is not a very good explanation for life as it is. Fearing demons and depending on miracles does not overcome evil as well as science.
Not that long ago, the only shared education most people had was the Bible. Scholasticism, the big advancement in education for Christian Europe was based on the Bible and Aristotle and encouraged debates, but it lacked the empirical thinking we have today because of thinking, rationale is all we need, to know truth. A civilization with mass secular education and empirical thinking is relatively new. I am sure Locke would be thrilled to see our shift from relying solely on the Bible to know God's truth, to empirical thinking.
My specialty is the irrelevant aside.
The documentary, "My Octopus Teacher" shows that 'knowledge' or adaptive capacity, or resourcefulness, is sometimes innate - in octopi, at least. Octopi do not live very long - 2 or 3 years, and are both a prey and predatory species. Success requires effective ability from the start--they come preloaded.
Octopi resources go beyond rote instinct. They appear to have an inheirited store of knowledge.
Human infants also have a little pre-loaded knowledge. They have a few basic facts, like "when things are dropped they fall". So, when they see a balloon filled with helium, and the balloon is let go of, they are shocked and appalled when the balloon rises to the ceiling, contradicting the laws of the universe.
Aside from a few examples, we have to work hard to acquire facts.
I am not sure that reasoning is correct? I doubt that is correct because of my experience with a man who was not intellectual and he was more capable of seeing things as they are than I am with all my college education. My thought experiment is the iceman who was found frozen and science has discovered incredible information about him and all the things he carried. To survive people had to perceive reality as it is, more like my friend who was more like an animal in his clear vision than a sophisticated modern man. I think the more sophisticated we get the more we are deluded by our own thinking.
It is not nature that turns a log into a boat. It is human imagination that turns one thing into something else. We are about as far from nature as we can get. Superstition comes from human imagination and that is getting further from truth, right? I have read superstition came late in our history. I have heard it said, if the bridge had not been invented, no one today could build one because our education makes us dependent on what is known. I really wish I could forget everything I know, as see the world as the iceman saw it.
I really don’t see the relevance of that remark; I didn’t say avoid using labels — I said avoid using simplistic labels, particularly when borrowed from introductory philosophy textbooks.
The rest of your post regarding creationism and science, I sympathize with but I fail to see how that’s relevant to my post either.
I think empiricism and rationalism are quite sufficiently defined, and that Locke and Liebniz, respectively, are exemplars. Furthemore, that Locke's (and Hume's and a few others) empiricism is the most influential strand of English-speaking philosophy in the Anglosphere.
They aren’t. When they are, they do not apply to these men. Unless of course you don’t read them and are forced to use conventional shorthands. In which case, that’s fine. But useless otherwise.
I am glad we have agreement. I think those words are important and meaningful. The Catholic church relied heavily on Aristotle for its Scholastic education and the debates about such matters as how many angels could stand on the head of a pin. Those debates were the height of intellectual achievement, until the backlash opposing Aristotle's rationalism. That is when empiricism emerged beginning the science of modernity.
We still have the conflict of empiricism and relationalism. Rationalism can support religious arguments, science/empiricism can not. When a nation needs to understand a pandemic this difference really matters.
I was grappling with Plato's notion of perfect forms. I don't think we are born knowing what a horse is, but we share some basic knowledge with animals, and an innate fear of spiders and snakes being common. Some people seem wired for music, while others seem wired for the acquisition of languages and others are certainly more into learning kinetically. Leaving a lot of questions about why we recognized patterns and how we learn?
One more thought, our notions of beauty are related to our ability to recognize patterns, things that are symmetric and in harmony are more appealing. Why?
Sounds like the typical narrative of a Richard Dawkins.
“Back when men were ignorant, they would debate about angels— and then humans discovered EMPIRICISM and we were pulled out of the dark ages into the light led by science.”
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Cute, simple fictions.
It was Locke's phrase is that men are born 'tabula rasa', a blank slate, on which knowledge is inscribed by experience. Locke is a textbook example of empiricism and his work set the model for it.
Quoting Tiaclarice
Bennett's editions are extremely useful in my opinion.
Quoting Athena
Well, true, but it's not limited to that. In my view, very few understand philosophical rationalism in our culture because empiricism is so deeply embedded.
I don't think the knowledge of a theoretical principle gives us the ability to reason. The kid on the island can figure out that (for instance) he can get the fruit of a tree by shaking the tree, instead of climbing up on it.
Reasoning is not only reasoning that very intelligent people do (whoever they are), but reasoning is a process in the brain that helps solve problems, big and small.
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Reasoning did not have to be pre-thought. If it did, then there would be no reasoning. (Because there is no infinite regress of men and women passing on the skill and minutiae of the reasoning process.)
That may very well be because RD was right.
I agree. Except I highly resent the fact that spiritual thinking has hijacked the word "rationalism". In my opinion empiricism is a better ground to employ rationality, than spirituality is.
For instance, following this nomenclature, there can be no "empirical rationalist", we must say "rational empiricist."
This hijacking is like a philosophical trend or school would be called "gut". ("Good" in English.) Das ist eine gute Filosophie," would mean not that an argument stands to reason, but that it belongs to the thoughts advocated by the Good Philosophy school.
Brr.
Xtrix, think of it as the natural evolution of philosophy. The more viable thoughts survive, the limited, easy-to-defeat arguments die off.
What is harmony in visual arts? It can't be defined without using it in the definition. Two colours are in harmony when they don't clash ... harmony is the opposite to clashing. I think it is not possible to say what is harmonious in a painting, sculpture or film, without using the word "harmonious" or its synonyms or its denied antonyms.
Then try learning less from textbooks. Locke was also a dedicated nativist, as was Hume. You have to read them to find out, but it should be obvious even before that. Why? Because these guys weren’t imbeciles.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, unfortunately. I have no interest in the simplistic formulations of Darwinists.
Or are you saying that empiricist philosophers, generally, are imbeciles?
By making this distinction, which is useless. Anyone who is a pure empiricist -- if such a thing can be imagined -- and truly believed we were "tabula rasa," would have to be a complete imbecile. It takes 10 seconds to see why. And, of course, that's not what we see when we actually read these thoughtful men. These labels -- "rationalism," "idealism," "empiricism," etc., came later. You look into it further, and you find that there are complex interplays between the mind and body when discussing knowledge. That entire division itself is a long refuted one, and yet we continue we these formulations anyway. Why? Who knows. But it's difficult for me to tolerate on a philosophy forum.
Quoting Wayfarer
Oh! Well, in that case...
Sorry, but it wasn't the "poor newbie" who brought rationalism and empiricism into this discussion. What I'm setting straight is the useless, simplistic, conventional textbook nonsense that gets repeated over and over again by the people on this forum who've evidently not read one sentence of the people they so easily label x, y, z. If we want to discuss these thinkers seriously, then we owe at least a few passages of their works, and not regurgitating, verbatim, what we remember from our undergraduate history of philosophy course.
Very good argument! Totally irrefutable, and iron-hard! Because you gave an opinion of your own state of mind. You gave no reason why we should or would believe you... you gave your private opinion.
You are the laughing stock of this forum board, and the new members are getting a good grounding of your inability to focus, argue, and think reasonably.
Oh, you mean like this:
Quoting god must be atheist
Also a great argument.
Quoting god must be atheist
True. Given that you did the exact same thing, I figured it was appropriate.
Quoting god must be atheist
Oh no! :fear:
Coming from you, this is devastating.
Yes, true. But I was trying to apply the KISS principle, that categorisation is standard in all intro to philosophy University courses, sure it can be critiqued, but for new students, best to just go with it in my view.
I disagree with you, but fair enough.
Agree. The brain can help us to make the right action when we have to reasoning. Nevertheless, I think the experience is also important here. Most of humans learn because previously they failed doing something. Probably the brain of the kid interpreted the good choice was shaking the tree because previously climbing the tree was dangerous and then he was hurt in the floor.
What I want to say is that sounds difficult (not impossible) that the brain quickly gives to you the most reasonable action instead of exploring all circumstances previously.
I think you have confirmed my opinion. Heaven knows there is a lot I do not know and I don't fault others for not knowing something. But when one is not all-knowing and is trying to impress us with the idea that he is all-knowing, a correction might need to be made, especially when we are dealing with newbies who want to learn. I don't think philosophy is about being all-knowing but rather is about questioning what we think we know. Your point about making a good argument is an important one. :cheer:
It is about inductive and deductive reasoning. Bacon challenged the ancient authorities and this became a very important social movement radically changing our relationship with "authority" and social organization! Democracy could not happen without the change brought about by Bacon. Aristotle is deductive reasoning. Bacon and those who followed are inductive reasoning and empiricism follows. Before the change brought in by Bacon we did not have the consciousness, the questions, that promote science, empiricism, and change. That is the modernism that took us out of the dark ages. For about 2 thousand years, people did not challenge "authority" and did not expect change.
Inductive reason is relatively new and totally changed our relationship with authority and opportunities in life. In the past, we thought God controlled everything. Martin Luther thought God chose who would-be masters and who would serve, and that was determined by birth. Crazy isn't it? Philosophy led to radical changes in how we understand life and our social/political organization.
You might notice the Bible begins with linage and you might remember the Jews and Greeks had a war when the Greeks conquered the Jews and then hired people to do jobs on merit rather than the Jewish rules of positions being controlled by birth. It is pretty amazing Christians accepted the social/political order of Democracy considering the Bible is about kings and slaves, not democracy. My point being Bacon and inductive reason truly brought us into a new age.
I never once said your source was Richard Dawkins. I never once stated that Aristotle (or Plato) weren't influential in the development of the church.
Shows your level of reading comprehension as well, I suppose. Not a shocker.
Your linear view of the history of philosophy is embarrassing.