The Origins of Knowledge

Rationalism,Concept Innatism

The opposing view: Rationalism - key doctrines

• Innatism - there are/is innate concepts/knowledge; the human mind has certain inborn or pre-programmed contents that it comes equipped with prior to and independently of experience – + Apriorism - knowledge can be

acquired without the senses; – + Necessitarianism - philosophy

can uncover necessary truths. • Patron saint of rationalism is

Plato (e.g. his dialogue Meno).• Its great early modern (17th C)

champion is Descartes.• Leibniz also offers some

important arguments.

Starter: Examples of innate ideas

• Do people possess any of these ideas?• Are any of these ideas derivable from

experience?

• God exists• Material substance exists• Infinity • Murder is wrong• Things happen for a reason• A thing is itself

What would you know from each picture?And which kind of knowledge is most valuable?

• Pythagoras’s theorem is true, both in this universe and also in any imaginable one, whilst it only happens to be true that Bill Gates is worth $85.4 billion (2016 figures)

• What’s the philosophical difference between the two sets of knowledge-claims?

• Who would you have chosen to befriend in 1978?

Concept Innatism a.k.a. Idea Innatism

• concept innatism: there are some innate concepts or inborn ideas which are built into the mind prior to experience.• these ideas don’t correspond to anything in our experience.• these ideas are not derived from experience.

• common candidates for innate ideas/concepts:– ideas of God Descartes’ Trademark Argument– ideas of Substance The Cogito/mental beings, the Wax Example– basic mathematical The Slave Boy example– ideas of moral rightness and wrongness Leibniz, Plato– the idea of Causation Kant– basic logical ideas the idea that A=A or the Law of Identity

Two general arguments for concept innatismcertainty, component traces: not in experience

Plato: The components of some ideas can’t be found in experienceP1 Concept empiricism claims that all complex ideas are derived only from experience.P2 Yet we have some complex ideas that we can’t find component traces of in our experience.P3 So they must be innate in origin.

Leibniz: The certainty of some ideas can’t be found in experienceP1 All experience is contingent and inherently uncertain.P2 So experience never provides us with certainty.P3 Yet we have some complex ideas that seem certain or necessary.P4 So they must be innate in origin.

C So concept innatism is correct to assert that some ideas are innate.

Specific arguments for innate concepts:Descartes’ ‘Trademark’ argument

After performing the Cogito, Descartes looks inward at the contents of his mind. He finds that the other content of his mind is an idea of God.

P1 I have an idea of God (=Being with all perfections). P2 All ideas are either innate, sensory, or artificial.P3 The idea of God is not sensory (derived from the senses).P4 The idea of God is not artificial or manufactured. (!Hmm!)C. So I have an innate idea of God.

This notion of ‘God’ is like a trademark left imprinted on his mind by his creator. Hence Descartes argues that this means that God exists, as follows:

P1 I have an innate idea of God.P2 Whatever exists has an adequate cause.P3 The only adequate cause for my idea of God is God.C. So God exists.

Specific arguments for innate concepts:The Wax Example: physical substance is an innate idea

• The Wax Argument occurs in Meditation Two, where Descartes considers the nature of physical objects

• Take a really common example of something that people think they know about through their senses – wax. All its sensory properties are obvious.

• But wax melts and all of its physical properties change really easily. Yet we’d still know it was the same wax. How?

• If all of the sensory properties of the melted wax are quite different to the solid wax, we cannot know through our senses that it is the same wax.

• But we still judge that the wax has the qualities of extension, flexibility and changeability: we rationally assess confusing sensations.

• So if the wax isn’t ultimately known through the senses – or the imagination – then what’s the alternative? The wax must ultimately be known to us by the mind alone.

• Hence the concept of material substance is an innate one.

Specific arguments for innate concepts:The Cogito: mental substance is an innate idea

• Descartes takes the Cogito to show that the mind is present to itself: ‘I can perceive my own mind more easily and clearly than I can anything else’.

• So Descartes has a clear and distinct innate idea of mental substance.• He also offers two arguments that the mind and the body aren’t the same.

– P1 I can doubt my body exists– P2 I can’t doubt my mind exists.– C So mind and body are different things.

– P1 I can imagine bodies being divided.– P2 I can’t imagine minds being divided.– C So minds and bodies are different things.

• Things that have different qualities are different substances.• So the mind is a separate substance from physical substance.

Specific Arguments for Innate IdeasPlato on Forms or Universals

• Platonic Realism = the view that there is a transcendental world beyond the world of the senses (see the Simile of the Cave).

• This world of the Forms or Universals is populated by abstract ideas.

• Examples Plato gives: the concepts of Beauty, of Justice, of geometric shapes, of equal length.

• Argument for the Forms (e.g. of Beauty)– P1 We only experience particular examples of beauty: beautiful

roses, sunsets, faces.– P2 So there are no perfect examples of this quality in our

experience.– P3 But nevertheless we have an idea of beauty itself.– C So this idea cannot come from experience, and must therefore

be innate• We gain access to the Forms via a process of rational

contemplation.

Starter: Which chair, for Plato, is most real?

‘One and three chairs’, Joseph Kosuth, 1965

Plato’s ‘Parmenides’: ‘ – ‘You see a number of great objects, and when you look at them there seems to you to be one and the same idea (or nature) in them all; hence you conceive of greatness as one.’

The perfect chair

Perfect furniture

Mathematical objects

Perfect objects

The Idea of the Good

Intellectual ascent to the World of Forms

Direction of Causation

Using the Intellect to ascend to the World of Forms or Universals

Issues with Platonic Realism 1 The notion of The Forms or Universals is incoherent

• Incoherent: hard to see how we acquire knowledge of them– You could think of forms are being like general ideas. Yet we

only have particular experiences. If the forms are so abstract, how do we learn of them?

– (Plato’s answer is to do with the power of our rational intellects – is it satisfactory?)

• Incoherent: Difficult to conceive of– Forms are non-spatial and non-temporal. How can they then

possess shape? Consider: the form of an apple…doesn’t it have to possess shape of a kind?

– Does it make sense to say that things outside space and time ‘exist’?

Issues with Platonic Realism 2 notion of The Forms or Universals is incoherent, absurd

• Incoherent: Unclear how forms cause particulars to exist– Particulars are sometimes said to participate in the forms, and

the forms are said to inhere in the particulars. There’s a grain of each universal in all its particulars?

– Forms are sometimes called archetypes, meaning original models, of which particular objects, properties, and relations are copies. But how can a physical thing be a copy of something that is not physical at all?

• Absurd: Reductio ad absurdam arguments– If there is a form for everything, does this mean there is a form

for things that are revolting? – Imagine: the perfect turd, for instance. Would Plato be happy

that such a perfect (imperfect) thing existed?

Leibniz’s Arguments for innate ideas• ‘our systems…Locke’s is closer to Aristotle and mine to Plato…’• …Aristotle and Locke: mind is tabula rasa, inscribed/imprinted by

senses, experience vs. Plato: ‘the soul inherently contains various notions…roused up by external objects… on suitable occasions’. ILLUSTRATION: the Mind contains ‘living fires or flashes of light’ made visible by the stimulation of the senses, as sparks can be struck from a steel’ = ‘divine and eternal truths’.

• Necessity/Certainty argument against concept empiricism a.k.a. the Problem of Induction: particular instances can’t confirm a universal necessity; for it needn’t be the case that what has happened always will happen in the same way. ILLUSTRATION: North Pole/day length example experience produces contingent truths only.

• So necessary truths (of pure mathematics, arithmetic, geometry, metaphysics and ethics) “must have principles whose proof doesn’t depend on instances/the testimony of the senses”

• PROMPTED/PROVED: ‘…even though without the senses it would never occur to us to think of them’: ‘prompted by the senses’ vs ‘proved by the senses’ distinction

Leibniz’s Arguments for innate ideas• We can “read these eternal laws of reason in the soul”: the senses

prompt, and experiments corroborate reason, like checking procedures in arithmetic.

• Men form necessary truths only by using reason (animals remain ‘brute empirics’). Only reason can establish reliable rules, and construct necessary inferences.

• ATTACK ON LOCKE – ideas derived from Reflection’ are really just innate in our minds like veins in a block of marble. Such ideas include: being, unity, substance, duration, change, action, perception, pleasure.

• ILLUSTRATION: Hercules example: our minds are more inclined to take one shape than another although work is needed to ‘polish into clarity’. So: ‘Ideas and truths are innate in us as inclinations, dispositions, tendencies, or natural potentialities, and not as actual thinkings…’

• Experience ‘unearths things from within’. We dig up some objects of thought from our own depths. Really Locke admits this, with his notion of ‘Reflection’.

Opposites in Leibniz…

Leibniz in pictures…

Two general arguments for concept innatismcertainty, component traces: not in experience

Plato: The components of some ideas can’t be found in experienceP1 Concept empiricism claims that all complex ideas are derived only from experience.P2 Yet we have some complex ideas that we can’t find component traces of in our experience.P3 So they must be innate in origin.

Leibniz: The certainty of some ideas can’t be found in experienceP1 All experience is contingent and inherently uncertain.P2 So experience never provides us with certainty.P3 Yet we have some complex ideas that seem certain or necessary.P4 So they must be innate in origin.

C So concept innatism is correct to assert that some ideas are innate.

Arguments against (Concept) InnatismWhat the syllabus says

• Locke’s arguments– Universal consent does not exist– ‘Capacity to know’ is empty

• Concept innatism relies on non-natural things– the incoherence of the notion of Forms– the incoherence of the role that God might play

• Alternative explanations for such concepts– All such concepts are derived from experience only– OR In fact there are no such concepts (as they are

nonsensical or incoherent)

Locke’s attacks on innate knowledge‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ (1690)

Locke argues that the innatist faces a dilemma. If innatism means

(a) ‘universal consent’ or that everyone actually has this knowledge at their fingertips all along this argument is empirically false, since 1. children and ‘idiots’ do not have this knowledge. 2. there are many disagreements in ethics and theology.

(b) ‘capacity to know’ trivial or empty, as every proposition we come to know (even those we come to know through experience) is innate in this sense.

Nothing is more commonly taken for granted than that certain principles… are accepted by all mankind [so] they must have been stamped onto the souls of men from the outset…this argument from universal consent…that there are innate principles can be turned into a proof that there are none; because there aren’t any principles to which all mankind give universal assent. Consider those much vaunted logical principles ‘Whatever is, is’ and ‘It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be’, which are the most widely thought to be innate. They are so firmly and generally believed to be accepted by everyone in the world that it may be thought strange that anyone should question this. Yet…these propositions, far from being accepted by everyone, have never even been heard of by a great part of mankind…children and idiots have no thought - not an inkling - of these principles, and that fact alone is enough to destroy the universal assent that there would have to be for any truth that was genuinely innate…

Locke’s attack on innate knowledge:Universal Consent proves the opposite

It may be said that a proposition that the mind has never consciously known may be ‘in the mind’ in the sense that the mind is capable of knowing it; but in that sense every true proposition that the mind is capable of ever assenting to may be said to be ‘in the mind’ and to be imprinted! Indeed, there could be ‘imprinted on’ someone’s mind, in this sense, truths that the person never did and never will know…if the mere ability to know is [what the innatists are arguing for], all the truths a man ever comes to know will have to count as innate...[and this is just empty words].

Locke’s attack on innate knowledge:‘Innateness’ just means a capacity to form ideas

Leibniz’s response to Locke:The block of marble analogy:

• Innate ideas inside our minds are like shapes carved out of a block of marble by our sensory impressions.

• Our minds have a predisposition to uncover/sculpt one set of shapes rather than another.

• So having an innate idea doesn’t mean we have the capacity to form the concept, but that we have a predisposition for experience to uncover just that concept and no other.

• Key Phrase: ‘prompted not proved’: experience triggers innate concepts by uncovering them and we then see them to be true.

Marble expert: Michelangelo Buonarroti

“In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.” –

Michelangelo, ‘Awakening Slave’, end C15/beginning C16

Arguments against innate ideas: Plato’s account of Forms or Universals is incoherent

• Hard to see how we acquire knowledge of them – does his story about the Philosopher ascending from the Cave make sense?

• Difficult to conceive of: do Forms have shape? How can anything exist outside space and time?

• How do forms cause particulars to exist? Participation? Copying?

• Reductio ad absurdam arguments: is there a form for things that are revolting?

Arguments against innate ideas:the incoherence of the role God might play

• God’s existence is assumed: this encounters difficulties…

• God’s selection of innate ideas is hard to explain– The logic of the Euthypro dilemma may be helpful here:– a) Would God choose to implant an innate idea because it was

certain, or – b) would it be certain if he implanted it?– If a) God would be subservient to the certainty of the implanted

idea (so not omnipotent)– If b) God would be tyrannous (so not omnibenevolent).

Arguments against innate ideasAll such concepts are derived from experience only

• Locke: Leibniz is wrong to assume that because I exist and perceive I have innate notions of self, substance etc.

• Locke: ‘I can show... how men…can arrive at certainty about some things, purely by using their natural faculties without help from any innate notions or principles…’

• Paradigmatic candidates for innate ideas (God, substance, identity) aren’t really innate at all, but derived from our experience by generalisation and abstraction,

• Locke argues that in fact, we develop these concepts, such as they are, by reflection.

• This theory is simpler and more elegant than the rival theory of innate ideas: ‘Ockham’s razor’ should prevail.

Arguments against innate ideas: Examples of ‘innate concepts’ really derived from experience

• The notion of Substance– Mental substance or mind: against Descartes, Berkeley argues

that we derive our notion of self from our experience of self: we perceive, at first, then become aware that something perceives. (cf. Hume’s ‘Bundle Theory’)

– Physical substance: we form our notion of primary qualities such as extension, motion etc by abstracting from our experiences. Berkeley: our notion of matter is in any case contradictory, as it can’t be derived from our senses.

• God – our notions, such as they are, are derived from experience.– Dawkins: our early childhood experience is of the dominant

power of our parents, and we retain this notion, some of us, into adult life.

– In a pre-scientific world people sought an explanation for seemingly uncaused events and named this force ‘God’.

Arguments against innate ideas there are no such concepts

• It is difficult to derive some concepts exclusively from experience.

• But this does not make such concepts truly innate.

• Instead, they are incoherent, mere empty words, non-concepts

Hume: ‘Thought seems unbounded… yet Ideas [are] faint and obscure…ideas [are] feeble perceptions…not restrained within the limits of reality…Suspicion…philosophical words without meaning…‘From what impression…’…‘Consign it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.’

Arguments against (Concept) InnatismWhat the syllabus says you need to know

• Locke’s arguments– Universal consent does not exist– ‘Capacity to know’ is empty

• Concept innatism relies on non-natural things– the incoherence of the notion of Forms– the incoherence of the role that God might play

• Alternative explanations for such concepts– All such concepts are derived from experience only– OR In fact there are no such concepts (as they are

nonsensical or incoherent)

Homework

• 2014 15-mark exam question: ‘Are there innate ideas?’

• Plan this in detail: 6/7 paragraph essay…