Innate ideas and apriori knowledge
Do you believe in such a thing as an innate idea? Or are ideas always built up from experience?
Leibniz believed that principles of math are a clue. Though he granted that knowledge starts with the senses, he didn't believe that's enough. He pointed to the expectation one has that a principle is universally true. Instances of sensory experience can't account for that kind of expectation.
Leibniz believed that principles of math are a clue. Though he granted that knowledge starts with the senses, he didn't believe that's enough. He pointed to the expectation one has that a principle is universally true. Instances of sensory experience can't account for that kind of expectation.
Comments (100)
This is similar to Kant's idea of transcendental categories, which are necessary for rationality itself. You can't conceive of something without it being in space or time, or by not considering the quantity, etc.
In any case, however, these hinge beliefs seem to work pretty well. Hinge beliefs, or beliefs in general, that are horribly off-base would probably not be very conducive to survival and would thus be selected against. But it also seems unlikely that we have 1:1 correspondence in our models of reality; indeed we only experience a fraction of what is actually "out there" in a model composed of an accretion of sensory experience.
So neither are we born "tabula rasa" and neither do we have that Platonic "memory wipe" described in the Meno, but rather it seems that we have basic "rules" of learning that are required for any sort of inquiry at all.
Can't use geometry for carpentry unless you want to do a shit job. Can't infer lengths and widths because things aren't symmetrical.
Space and time, obviously (Einstein clearly ripped off Kant for relativity of space and time, just externalizing Kant's insights about reason, he also has a suspiciously similar quote, and says that the secret to originality is knowing how to hide your sources... not well enough I fear.)
Logic is all about timing, and intuition all about space. I can tell by looking at someone which they'll be better and which they'll be worse at. People that have no sense of time dilly dally, are indecisive, take fucking forever to do anything, and talk a lot.
People that have no sense of space are least viscerally aware of their surroundings, stop right in front of people behind them on the sidewalk, or can't drive for shit and things... yeah... what were we walking about again?
Insofar as language is learned and all ideas are expressed in learned languages it makes it seem as though all ideas are acquired by experience. I seem to remember that Kant made a distinction (and I think he was following Leibniz' own explicit statements in this) between ideas that are merely acquired by experience but cannot be confirmed or dis-confirmed by particular experiences and yet are self-evident by virtue of the general logic of experience itself, and ideas (in the form of beliefs and judgements) which may be confirmed or dis-confirmed by particular experiences.
I take this to mean that some ideas are intuitively self-evident to us and so are not dependent on language per se, although they do require a language for their formulation. It is language which allows us to make explicit what would otherwise be merely implicit and would be reflected only in our behavior and dispositions.
But humans have an innate ability to learn language. They may not be born with a vocabulary, but unlike other primates, are born with the capacity for one. Is that an 'innate idea'? I don't know if is that, but it is hard to see how one could have ideas without it.
As far as Kant is concerned, it is more that there are some necessary intuitions and intellectual functions, which are required to make sense of experience at all.
If we have innate ideas, presumably we would all have them, why don't they just manifest themselves in adulthood? I seem to have to work for whatever ideas I have, they don't just pop up, Ideas occur to the prepared mind.
John Tuzo Wilson, a geologist, proposed that the Hawaiian Islands were the result of the floor of the Pacific Ocean sliding over a volcanic hot spot (as were other island chains in the Pacific). The idea didn't occur to him out of the blue, like some innate idea suddenly floating to the surface. He and other geologists were trying to explain how earthquakes could slide blocks of landscape hundreds of miles--the way the San Andreas Fault (and other faults) have in California. At the time (in the 1940s) it was still believed that earthquakes only moved land up and down and what powered earthquakes was still a mystery. His theory was initially rejected, then denounced. In the late 1950s the research coming out of the International Geophysical Year (18 months, to be precise) revealed that the ocean floors were expanding, and that the floor moved away from the central rifts out of which new floor was produced.
In short order, this led to the theory of continental drift (first, in the 1960s) and then plate tectonics in the 1970s. Was plate tectonics an innate idea? No, it was not. It was hard won theory based on a tremendous amount of field work and mapping over decades which eventually provided enough information to make sense of what was in plain site.
Maybe some "innate kernels of ideas" are present -- like simple fairness, or simple physics -- things fall down, they don't fall up.
I think Kant would assert that our ideas of space and time and the categories are a priori even if the language we use to formulate them is not. Maybe the logic (grammar) of languages is innate (and hence a priori) and isomorphic with the forms that experience takes or can take. I think for Kant the whole shebang interrelatedly arises out of the transcendental conditions of the 'in itself'.
Yes, I think Kant's critique of empiricism is conclusive.
I think we construct all ideas or concepts. Space is both a concept and not a concept. The baby crawling around constructs its concept of space, which is not to say that it does not perceive objects in space. Space, as I think following Kant, is how we intuit what is around us. It is not on this basis a concept but rather our ability to perceive, and we cannot perceive without this ability. It is not conceptual in that sense, it is necessarily a part of the hardware we born with.
Language enables us to conceptualize space, enables us to develop rational concepts to deal with what we perceptive in space. I think we are born with a lot of hardware, but none of it is conceptual from the get-go.
What is an idea?
Every idea is composed of some sensory impression. We think in colors, shapes, sounds (language is just colored shapes and sounds), smells, tastes and tactile sensations. In order to have an idea, you must first had a sensory impression to compose that idea with.
When in trouble, when in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and SHOUT!
If that doesn't work keep trying to figure it out,
Just laugh at the punch lines and the truth will come out.
What that represents is the intrinsic memory centric systems logic that the cells of our bodies use to organize themselves. Whether you want to call it an innate "idea" just depends on how you define the word.
And what sensory experience leads you to posit the square root of -1, pray tell!
That is a good example, but then you could have picked just about any concept in science or mathematics.
Where did the idea of God come from then?
My sense of vision. Could you do math without visual symbols - like numbers? Math is just another form of language. Notice how you had to put up visual symbols just to declare a math problem. Try solving that problem without ever having seen these symbols, or taught how to solve it.
Primarily from our sense of vision. Our sense of vision provides us with the most information about the environment than any of our other senses. We are visual creatures and mostly visual thinkers. How could you ever arrive at the idea of God if you haven't first experienced a world for God to create to then declare that God exists? How does one transmit the idea of God if not through speech or pictures?
Try doing either without any senses.
But God is not visible to the eyes, and the thought of God is not a composite of elements taken from the visible world, so your assertion seems to contradict itself.
Are you saying that these blind and deaf mathematicians were born knowing mathematics, or were they taught it? If the latter then how did they learn it - if not by using their available senses? Braille and sign-language are just different forms of language using different symbols for different senses.
Isn't making things more simple to goal rather than making it more complicated?
But the "effects" of God are visible to the eyes. The effect (like your existence) is what needs to be explained and your mind seeks explanations for virtually every thing experienced. Declaring God not to be visible to the eyes is just and assertion made by believers to make their God unassailable by science. I don't understand how anything that you know or think of isn't a composite of elements taken from the senses. If God isn't a composite of elements taken from the senses, then what is it and how do you know it even exists?
They were taught it, but some of them were mathematical prodigies, i.e. they were able to grasp mathematical ideas with far greater ability than other people. How did they get that ability? Why are some people incredibly good at maths (like the movie, The Man who Knew Infinity about Ramanujan) and some, like me, very poor at it?
Your idea seems to be: mind as mirror of the world, we have experiences through the senses, that builds up sense impressions which form the basis of ideas and knowledge. Is that about right? Obviously I am putting it very simpistically as this is a Forum and entries have to be reasonably short.
That is very much like the 'representative realism' of the British empiricisists, like John Locke. So I'm not saying it's baseless. But that kind of empiricist realism is what Kant was criticizing in his great work, Critique of Pure Reason. He showed that whilst the mind is recieving impressions, it is not simply a blank slate or tabula rasa on which sensations leave imprints. The mind itself organises sensations and perceptions according to the whole table of judgements, intuitions, and the other intellectual faculties.
So does that prove there are innate ideas? It depends on what is meant by an 'idea'. Certainly it doesn't mean we are born with language and theories and other abilities, but we have some innate capacities, which, for instance, other primates don't have.
I don't believe the mind to be a mirror of the world. Our minds are limited and skewed representations of the world.
The issue is our ideas come already organised. We don't "derive"a tree from the blur in the distance. Upon recognising it as a tree, we know it to be a tree. Despite being a priori, our ideas are an expression someone within an environment. If I was not present, in front of a tree, with my experience, I would not have an idea about the tree in question. At any given moment, anyone's ideas are their present experience. Experiences which were not given prior to themselves.
In way, we are born "tabula rasa," just not in the sense Locke argues. Prior to ourselves, we are not there yet. We haven't happened. A nothingness until we exist and experience in a given way. What we know is not defined until our experiences of knowledge exist. It's just the "tabula rasa" state is something we never something we exist with. At any given moment we are an experiencing being existing within an environment.
The "nothingness" of "tabula rasa" is only a fictional expression. Relevant to saying what is possible, but never a reflection of our actual states, despite our actual state being constituted by an existing environment.
Learn how to throw a rock well, and precisely. That takes some pretty hardcore math skillz. Once you're good at doing that, you'll be good at math, and then you just have to learn all of the stupid formulas, memorize them, and then they'll click eventually. I'd suggest throwing rocks while trying to solve math problems rather than thinking about it.
Also, synthetic a priori, kind of meaning half in the world, half in you. Like jigsaw puzzles, you just have to find out how they all fit. There is much pretending, and competition though, and the voices in your head are not your own, they're other peoples... and those people are all out for themselves and not you. You need to follow your nose, as it were to the right voices that inspire rather than repress you -- inspiration is energy which can be utilized for adventurous thinking and behavior.
I don't know why I replied to you particularly, I guess for the first part, but then just kind of trailed off to general comments.
I'm not disagreeing that the ability to organize sensations isn't less inherent in the nature of the mind than the sensations themselves. Without either there would be no mind. It would be like saying you could boil water without any water.
We really need to nail down a consistent definition for ideas and knowledge. I define knowledge as instructions for interpreting symbols. I know how to tie my shoes and speak English. I follow specific instructions stored in my long term memory to tie my shoes and speak English. The instructions are composed of sensory impressions (symbols) in a certain order that I try to repeat. I acquired these sets of instructions through numerous previous experiences, with each one adding new instructions to improve efficiency. My mind instinctively organizes these experiences for a purpose - to improve my efficiency in functioning in the environment.
Ideas are simply manipulated sensory symbols for some purpose - usually to improve my efficiency in functioning in the environment. I could say that the organization of sensations itself is an experience. I can reflect upon my own mental activity, which is one of the distinctions between humans and most other animals. Acquiring new knowledge through the organization of sensations itself is an experience because of this self-reflective perspective we have. We seem to be able to observe our mental activity, which is just the manipulation of sensory symbols, and form ideas and derive new knowledge from that.
Well, I'm great at throwing rocks, and bad at maths. So much for your theory. O:)
I doubt it.
Been awhile then, eh?
No. That's not all my post says. Defining these terms would certainly be a starting point and would build a good foundation for what we are talking about. If you have better definitions then by all means, provide them instead of just putting words in my mouth.
If your only argument is that my explanation is to simple then I take that as a compliment. For every explanation of some phenomenon, there could be a large number of possible and more complex alternatives because one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified (Occam's Razor). Plato didn't have access to the information we have today. We've come a long way since Plato.
I'm curious about how the issue of innate ideas (nativism) is related to metaphysics. Are one's metaphysical commitments actually the driver here? Or could it go the other way?
It sounds like (in your case) materialism comes first here... unless you're a lot more Nietzschean that you look. Right?
Leibniz's mature thinking was that principles can't arise from instances of experience (he's pretty close to expressing the problem of induction here, I think). So he's zeroing in on the innateness of our ability to identify necessary truths.
You seem to be saying language is like a mid-wife to ideas? I don't know. Maybe that deserves a thread.
But space is a relation between objects. Time is a relation between events. Wouldn't you say that a relation is fundamentally an idea?
The perception of space is a biological process not an idea, which is not to say that ideas can't influence what we perceive. Animals also perceive space, and many animals are far superior to us in their perception. Space as a relationship between objects (which I think is correct) is a conception, which may be ontologically correct but this conception arises from our ability to perceptive.
But, likewise, I don't believe that all ideas arise from experience. Once we accept something like experience it seems clear to me that ideas permeate said experience -- experiences change with a change of thought, our perceptions are guided by what we usually classify as mental phenomena, and we organize said perceptions into and with ideas.
And then with respect to knowledge: granting the above it would suggest that there is such a thing as a priori knowledge insofar that knowledge and ideas overlap -- just using the bare-bones notion of a priori to mean "without experience". But here the same question rises: which ideas would count as knowledge, and which of the ideas which we count as innate would also count as knowledge?
The best guess I can give is knowledge not based upon what is sensible. But again this seems to take for granted so much to me. Why, for instance, do we consider mathematical statements non-sensible? Mostly because we are taught there are 5 senses, and we likewise then develop a notion of interiority and exteriority to classify these things. But there's not a justification for such a division, it's just the way we talk. There's something to be said for saying I have a sense of my own body, a sense of my mental state -- so why not also have a sense for what is mathematical? Not necessarily a separate sense where we just posit a sense for anything, but it doesn't seem implausible to me to reclassify our internal lives, our mental lives, as sensible. I don't know what use such a classification would have, and clearly it would be confusing to presume such a classification in conversation, but insofar that we are asking after the nature of ideas and knowledge then it seems worthwhile to question these sorts of presuppositions.
There is evidence that primates are innately afraid of snakes. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/are-primates-hard-wired-to-be-scared-of-snakes/
To the extent that its evolutionarily advantageous to be born with certain ideas or knowledge, it would stand to reason that such would exist.
For those who have owned dogs, I'm sure you've noticed innate abilities to hunt, to shepherd, to retrieve, and to do all sorts of things. If that can exist in dogs, why not people as well?
It seems to me that all ideas would be due to a combination of experience AND "brain dispositions" so to speak.
I agree with what you say about Leibniz. If the experiences of all the monads are coordinated then there must be a set of common principles governing the coordination, and it's not much of a step from there to saying that since the experiences are 'inner' to each monad, and since the principles are 'inner, to the experiences; there should be a (God-given) 'inner' ability to penetrate from the experience to the principle that underlies it. (I'm not suggesting that Leibniz does follow this line of thought, just that it seems to make sense to me just now, in the moment I am thinking about it; but I could be way off target in my 'thinking out loud', here).
I do tend to think that linguistically formulated ideas have their precursors or prototypes in pictures or 'visualized' (I like Whitehead's "prehended" in this connection) actions and movements. It doesn't seem as though abstraction, generalization or negation can be expressed concisely and unambiguously in an image or visualization, though; so the ability to formulate ideas linguistically would seen to expand the conceptual toolkit and ambit enormously.
OK then, I meant 'simplistic'.
It's really more your hard-core materialists who deny that. For them, knowledge should be thought of as being about how to. Knowledge of red is competence in using the word, right?
Thanks for all the responses guys! Lots of food for ponderating.
Perhaps a more concise and better expressed version is: the question you ask inherits a lot of answers which I think, insofar that we are interested in knowledge and ideas, should be questioned. We've already accepted, by answering the question, what counts as innate, what an idea is, what experience is, and knowledge too when it's at least within the confines of reasonble inquiry to have beliefs on these topics which differ before we even come to the debate on whether or not there are innate ideas or a priori knowledge.
How do we know that these other ideas are "unconscious"? Our brains are modular and we could have several different parts forming different concepts with different data.
It doesn't matter what form thoughts and ideas take - only that they have form. What matters is what they represent (the of) and we can have different forms represent the same thing. 2 + 2 = 4 AND two plus two equals four are written in different symbols but mean the same thing. I experience a 475 wavelength of EM energy as the color blue. Some other system could represent it differently, but we are both representing the same thing and can therefore talk about the same thing and have ideas about the same thing even though our thoughts would take a different form. In order for information to be processed you need the information to take some form.
Just as sensations and the ability to organize them are inherent features of the mind, so is attention. The attention is what directs the organizing of sensations and does so for some purpose, or goal, which also seems inherent in the mind. It's not the different forms information takes that distinguishes one process being conscious and another as unconscious, it is the presence of goals and a focus of attention - or the amplification of certain signals over others - that distinguishes one system as conscious and another as not conscious. The presence of attention is what seems to create this cartesian theater, as the attention "observes" this information architecture made up of sensory symbols, which is better than looking at the information that just one sense provides at a time. This information architecture provides real-time information from all the senses at once, which provides more detail and allows the organism to fine-tune their behaviors. Human consciousness seems to allow us to fine-tune our instinctive behaviors which can often lead to to trouble in complex social environments.
I'm not familiar with modularity in brains. We can tell that math isn't straightforwardly innate because there wouldn't be any such thing as a math class if that was true. That's one prong of Locke's attack. The other prong is to say that if Leibniz (and others) are saying that humans have a potential to acquire knowledge, then the thesis is trivially true.
Leibniz says it's something else. He uses the tabula rasa image, but says we should imagine it as marble with streaks running through it. Any statue can be cut from plain marble, but the streaky kind will reduce the number of possible outcomes... in like manner, the mind has an innate tendency to think along certain lines.
But do the streaks lean us toward the truth? Descartes says we can rely on that because of God's benevolence. For Leibniz, it's more that the human mind is a reflection of the divine mind.
Then you're not familiar with modern theories in neuro science and psychology.
Quoting Mongrel
Exactly - just as the number and kinds of sensory devices you have reduce the number of possible outcomes in your mind and create an innate tendency to think in sensory impressions (symbols). Do the symbols lean us toward the truth? Darwin says we an rely on that because of natural selection also fine-tuning the mind to interpret these symbols in ways that allow the organism to survive and procreate in a dynamic environment.
Ok then point out what my explanation doesn't explain. What is missing? Isn't it simply the fact that most people have an emotional investment in their own experiences and minds - as if they are all-important, eternal, etc. and that is why they make this so needlessly complex - in order to evade any emotionless explanation that doesn't put their mind up on some pedestal? Like I said, "For every explanation of some phenomenon, there could be a large number of possible and more complex alternatives because one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified."
Our justice system seems to have confidence in our senses and minds as eye-witnesses to crimes are often the deciding factor in determining the innocence and guilt of others.
Right! 'Darwin says', so it must be true! Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of the principle of natural selection, never accepted that h. sapiens intellectual abilities could be explained by Darwinian principles.
Darwinism Applied to Man
Point is that you must have had confidence in basic principles of reasoning in order to accept evolution. Therefore it doesn't make sense to say that observation of the ways of evolution provides you with that confidence.
We've already been over this, Wayfarer. Several others mentioned mathematics also which I already showed that you need a visual experience of symbols, like numbers, to do math. Try doing math without having seen any numbers, or a number of things, to then add, subtract, multiply, and divide. How would you know to perform these operations without seeing symbols like +, -, *, and /?
If there are many more examples then why don' you provide them. People have already tried to use math as a means of debunking my explanation and they failed.
Quoting WayfarerI could say the same thing about what you said about Plato. - "Right, 'Plato says', so it must be true.
The difference between Darwin and Plato is that Darwin's theories are falsifiable (remember what I was talking about in regards to Occam's Razor?) and have been tested and still hold true. The field of genetics reinforces the theories of Darwin.
The difference between Darwin and Wallace is that Darwin put more work into his theories. We also have this modern field of science called evolutionary psychology which has provided more insight into how our minds evolved and why they are structured the way they are presently. It seems obvious to me that natural selection shapes my mind presently as I learn new things - adopting new ideas that seem to hold true and allows me to make accurate predictions, and those that I drop when I learn that they don't - kind of like how genetic information is either kept as part of the gene pool or dies out as a result of not being compatible with the environment.
And my point is that you must have had some sensory experience in order to reason. If you didn't then what form does your reasoning take? What is it that you would reason about?
As I have said before (I find myself repeating myself here to both you and Wayfarer), both sensory symbols and the process that manipulates them are both inherent in the mind. You cannot have one without the other and still have a mind.
It's like saying you can boil water without any water. It's like saying the process of boiling exists a priori to some thing with the capacity to be boiled. It makes no sense. One cannot exist without the other. To even say you are being rational or logical is to say that you are processing information in some way. To separate the process from what is being processed makes no sense.
One way of ensuring that instincts don't get you into trouble in a changing environment would be to learn what behaviors are better in certain situations. This is what experience is. It would be best to start of with a blank slate and then learn what the current conditions are in your environment, and what you learn about the environment becomes the norm for you.
We see how humans can be born into virtually any environment or culture and adopt that environment or culture as the norm. The norm for every human born is that every environment can be different for each one.
To be highly adaptable to any environment would provide a benefit to that organism, but to be highly adaptable means that you shouldn't have any, or have a very limited, number of assumptions, or built-in knowledge, in order for you to learn the conditions as they are now and as they change. Innate knowledge in these circumstances would include instinctive behaviors like how to breath, which works in a stable oxygen-rich environment that doesn't change. Human newborns don't even seem to know that they have limbs and how to use them but discover this knowledge through experience. So it would seem to me that acquiring knowledge through experience trumps innate knowledge because the environment is inherently dynamic.
Take away the divine truth-confirmation, and that amounts to saying that humans are prone to thinking a certain way, or there are basic similarities in the way people think. Perhaps the average deflationist would agree?
It's interesting to contrast all of this to Quine's take. He affirmed that that ability to apply logic to new situations has to be apriori. But wouldn't inscrutability of reference mean that it's impossible to say whether people generally think the same way? So statements of logical principles might mean different things to different people.
As to whether 'statements of logical principles might mean different things to different people', it might be relevant to note that formal logic developed in both Western and Indian philosophy, and that many of the basic outlines were similar, even if the details were different. After all, it's hard to imagine how the Law of Identity or the Law of the Excluded Middle could could vary between cultures, isn't it?
Principles are expressed by utterances of sentences. One is free to take it on faith that a particular expression is understood in the same way by two different people. Question is: can you prove it?
Besides which, logical proofs, like if B>A and C>B then C>A don't require individual assent, i.e. it's not a matter of opinion whether the proposition is true.
What is agreement? We shake our heads up and down at one another?
Quoting Wayfarer
Inscrutability of reference addresses reference, not truth, so this is a different issue.
The ridiculous thing about people that think that there is an internal is that they have zero deferences. They're entirely transparent as if they're the only ones in the world. I can tell people what they're going to say before they say it, and then tell them that I can read minds. It really mind fucks them.
I prefer the former.
What's this supposed to mean Wosret?
I can't literally read minds, but if I get to know you I can guess at your reference material, influences, and dispositions and then contexts will arise where there are only so many things to say to that, or where a reference would be perfect as a reply, then I'll know what they're going to say.
The rest I'd prefer not to give away if you don't already know.
Our experiences do not defy knowledge. The supposed inaccessibility of the "first person" is a myth. I can know when someone is happy or sad, what they are thinking or feeling, in the sense knowing what they living. It's no more difficult than knowing about a rock in front of me.
In either case, I have an experiences which is a showing of something else-- a rock, a person's feeling, respectively. Knowledge wise, experiences aren't "private (i.e. outside what it is possible for someone to know)."
You're thinking that all I'm saying is bull shit, and I'm sensing a lot of "pfffft"s too.
Such reasoning is based on a flawed premise. Just because someone doesn't know what you are thinking in a moment, doesn't mean that no-one can. There are other times, other people, who might know what you are thinking. And you have other thoughts which someone might know.
The illusion is the shallow notion that someone not knowing what you are immediately thinking amounts to no-one ever knowing what you are thinking. It's tricky illusion too. For anyone defending the idea experiences must be "private" in terms of knowledge, it especially mesmerising because there is an immediate reaction to think of anything at all, which an opponent usually doesn't know.
What you have is not proof of a secret inner world, but rather a description that you happened to think something and another person didn't know what it was. All it says is they didn't know that thought. It doesn't show no-one could ever know it.
Oh, well I'm glad that you were only pretending not to believe me then.
No, we speak
When you deny the reality of your own secret inner world, you have acted in self-deception, thus demonstrating to me, the reality of your own secret inner world. To reveal yourself to me is to release yourself from such deception.
Well, I guess you disproved it here, when you didn't understand what I was talking about:
Quoting Mongrel
What form does logic take?
I don't understand the question, Harry. Could you explain it to me?
The magical rabbit from Hades again emerged from my breath and choked out the remnants of yesterday's hangover.
Don't even try to pretend that you predicted I'd say that. I mean, if you did, wow, and maybe you did, I don't know, but I doubt it bruh.
Nope, you're fairly creative, and aware of how full of shit people are. Anyone with children, and anyone that loves some real living people more than themselves needs to have some fairly far reaching sight -- and gets to see everything that people do, just in more obvious, less complex or sophisticated forms.
I think you're being purposely obtuse, but I'll ask it a different way.
How do you know when you performing logic? Don't you have to have an experience of performing logically to know you are being logical?
You know you are observing an apple when your experience takes a certain form (visual, olfactory, tactile, gustatory). What form does your logic take in order for you to know that you are being logical - for you to be able to observe your own mental processes as being logical?
Totally honestly, dude... a few posts back in our exchange I began to suspect that you're a troll (saying nonsensical stuff just to get a rise out of people.) So we're having the same sort of experience with one another. That's kind of funny.
You asked me what form "logic takes." Earnestly, that question was meaningless to me. Weren't you really asking what form my experience takes when I note that I'm being logical?
Surely you aren't proposing that a logical principle is identical to any one experience of its application. One can only accept that at the cost of defying logic.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I would describe it as processional like a parade or constructive like a building project. Being logical has the character of walking one step after another. Or it's like mortaring bricks where each one is sturdily stacked on the last (which is why I would describe a really solid logical argument as a brick house.)
A "logical principle" is an idea. There are no logical principles outside of our heads. There are processes that are lawful in that they are consistent and causal and it is our minds that categorize these processes under "logical principles". I find that humans are often not logical. They have trouble integrating their beliefs from different domains of knowledge into a consistent whole. Remember what I said about our brains being modular?
Quoting MongrelNotice how you described a logical process visually. Thanks.
Yep.
So... anyway. I take it that the average member of this forum is pretty comfortable with nativism of the sort that Leibniz advocated (affirming a tendency to think along certain lines). Locke's view just doesn't account for expectations that are typical of us. In fact, I think one could argue that expectation in general is the key here.
That leaves me pondering expectation though. Like logic and math (the obvious markers of nativity), there's something kind of mechanistic about expectation. It's actually pretty easy to program a computer to perform expectation. Even zeroing in on hardware, one could argue that expectation is innate in computers.
So the question doesn't really have ontological implications of the sort that make any difference.
The universe itself functions along certain lines - causal and consistent. Our brains (and computers) are simply part of this process. When the same causes lead to the same effects (causal) - always (consistent), then there is no surprise that our minds work the same way as the rest of the universe. Water has a tendency to boil when it reaches a certain temperature. You might say that boiling is a relationship between water and heat. Thinking is a relationship between senses and brains.
What is it that thinks along certain lines? Which comes first, the mind/brain, or the ability to think along certain lines?
The "rules" by which the universe works isn't a priori to the universe itself. It is simply part of what the universe is and trying to sever the action from the thing is the result of the tendency of human minds to compartmentalize everything.
Well done, Harry. This is along the lines of objections that existed in Leibniz's time. The concern is that nativism isn't saying anything other than that people have a tendency to think. Definitely not a news flash. How can nativism distinguish itself?
Jim has a tabula rasa and Sue has innate ideas. They both believe the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. As we all know, Jim has a philosophical problem justifying his belief. Sue, equipped with innateness, doesn't suffer from this. Is this a bonus for nativism? I say no. All we've done is move the problem of justification upstream.
Also note that whatever one's stance, Jim and Sue have the same belief. What beyond myth-building do we achieve by explaining the cause of that similarity?
What's fascinating is that each view suffers from conundrums which the other side is eager to point out. It's a Mexican stand-off... which suggests that we're due for a synthesis.
Jim refers to his experiences of the sun rising hundreds of times as the justification of his belief. Sue cannot refer to any experience, but simply "knows" that the sun will rise without knowing where the knowledge comes from - similar to "knowing" how to breath.
It seems that Sue is the one that has the problem for justifying her belief. Justification comes from experience. What does Sue point to as the justification of her belief? When asked this, all she can say is, "I don't know. I just know the sun will rise."
Not only that but without experiencing the sun, or it rising, how does she even know what the sun is, or what the sun rising looks like to even say she knows this, or that she even understands what she says when she says, "I know that the sun will rise tomorrow"?