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INNATISM - at least some concepts/ knowledge are innate

Innate Concepts

This is the claim that our minds are already equipped, from birth, with certain concepts. These are called innate ideas or concepts.

Different innatists argue that different concepts are innate. Some of those suggested include: God, Universals, Numbers and Shapes.

Features usually associated with innate ideas:

They are there at birth, (or perhaps even earlier).

They are a priori, which means they are acquired independent of

experience.

They are universal, meaning they are owned by everyone.

They are clear and distinct, self-evident, infallible, and the foundation of all

our knowledge.

Epistemology 5: Innatism, Empiricism and Rationalism

Innate Knowledge

Innatists claim that we can have synthetic a priori knowledge about the world. This means we can have knowledge gained by reason, not by the senses, which is substantial and not just true by definition.

Plato – mathematical knowledge is innate

Plato argues that learning is just remembering things that we already have knowledge of, we just don’t realise it. He uses the example of mathematical or geometrical knowledge. Socrates asks Meno’s slave boy (who has never been taught geometry) a series of questions, leading him to figure out a geometrical theorem.Since the boy’s knowledge did not come from experience, it must have been innate.

Leibniz – all a priori truths are necessary and innate

Leibniz argued that there can be innate knowledge that we have, but are unaware of. An example is the claim

“It is impossible for the same thing to both be and not be”.

Everyone uses this knowledge all the time, but without really being aware of it: “Even if we give no thought to them, they are necessary for thought. The

mind relies on these principles constantly.”

In fact, Leibniz argues that all a priori knowledge is innate. Because we can work it out just by using our mind, it must have been there in our minds all along. That is, it must be innate. Leibniz argues that we come to know these innate


truths by “attending to what is already in our minds”, and he cites Plato’s Meno as an example of this.

LOCKE’S ATTACK ON INNATISM

Locke gave several arguments against the idea of innate knowledge, using common examples such as “It is impossible for the same thing both to be and to not be”.

Locke’s criticism 1: the theory of innate ideas is unnecessary

Locke uses Ockham’s razor to argue that if we can explain the existence of all our concepts without the need for supposing that innate ideas exist, then we should do.

Locke’s criticism 2: No knowledge is universal

Many people in Locke’s day argued that certain ideas must be innate because they are universally accepted. Locke says that whichever idea the innatist suggests (such as simple mathematical concepts), although it may be the case that most people share the idea, there are no ideas that everyone shares. For instance, he claims that “children and idiots” do not have these ideas. So the argument that they are innate because they are universal, fails.


CausationInfinity

Necessity2+3=5

Right and wrong

GodCircles

The innatist can respond by claiming that innate knowledge doesn’t require that everyone actually knows it, but that everyone would know it they used their reason correctly to work it out.

Locke responds by asking, if it really is innate, so we already have it, then why do we need reason to discover it?

In response, Leibniz points out that universality cannot be either a necessary or a sufficient condition for innateness. There could be ideas that everyone shares that are not innate, they all just happen to agree. And God could give innate ideas to certain people and not others. Leibniz is agreeing with Locke that universality is not a good argument for innateness. But he still thinks there are other good reasons for accepting innate ideas.

Locke’s criticism 3: the mind must be transparent.

In response to Locke’s criticism of universality, some innatists have claimed that there are innate ideas which “children and idiots” have, they are just not aware of yet. The ideas are in their mind from birth, but they don’t know they are there.

Locke argues that this can’t be the case. The mind must be “transparent”, so that any ideas which are in it, we are aware of (this doesn’t mean we have to be thinking of them, but that we have thought of them at some point). Otherwise, Locke asks, in what way can they be said to be “in the mind”?

Leibniz responds by arguing that we can have innate ideas which we are unaware of. (He was way ahead of his time here in effectively suggesting the idea of “subconscious” thoughts.)


Locke’s criticism 4: reliance on the non-natural

Most innatists of Locke’s time claimed that innate ideas are put into our minds by God. As we saw above in his first criticism, Locke believes that these same ideas can be explained naturally, without the need for anything supernatural like God. Plato’s answer is that the non-physical mind existed, containing this knowledge, before birth. Leibniz and Descartes argue that innate knowledge must come from God.

If we don’t accept these non-natural explanations, then it doesn’t seem like we can accept the existence of innate knowledge.

A modern response to this is that there are forms of innatism that don’t rely on anything supernatural. Chomsky argues that our ability to rapidly learn language is only possible if we all have an innate idea of grammar. Others argue that we all have an innate sense of morality. Many people believe that through evolution, we have developed innate instincts to interpret and respond to the world in certain ways. This non-supernatural form of innatism is often called nativism.

Locke’s criticism 5: Self-evidenceThe innatist might claim that innate knowledge is “self-evident”. That is, we agree that it is true as soon as we think of it.

But, this seems to be the case for lots of knowledge that is not innate. For example, “white is not black” is self-evident. But our knowledge of it seems a posteriori (based on sense experience).


OTHER RESPONSES TO INNATISM:“Innate” knowledge is actually a posteriori

The empiricist could respond to suggestions of innate knowledge by claiming that these examples are gained not by reason, but by sense experience.For instance, the slave boy was basing his knowledge on his experience of squares. Some philosophers, such as Mill, have argued that all mathematical knowledge is actually based on experience. For instance, I know that 2 + 3 = 5 because I have seen 2 things and 3 things, and when I put them together I have seen that they make 5. Mill claims that there is no a priori knowledge. All knowledge is a posteriori. If sense experience is required to know these propositions, then they are not innate.

The empiricist can respond to Plato by claiming that our concepts of universals really are based on sense experience. For example, by experiencing lots of beautiful things, we can form the concept of the beauty by working out what these things have in common. And we have the concept of two by experiencing two things. Although this may seem plausible for the case of small numbers like two, I can have the concept of the number 8,346,231 without ever having seen a collection of that many things!Similarly, the empiricist may convince you that you have derived the concept of circle from your experiences of circular things. But Descartes responds to this by pointing out that he can form a concept of a thousand-sided shape, even though he has never experienced one, and he can’t even imagine one.

“Innate” knowledge is actually analytic

Another way the empiricist can respond is to claim that these proposed “innate” propositions are only analytically true. They are true just because of the meanings of the words, so they tell us nothing new about the world. For Leibniz’s example of “the same thing can’t both be and not be”, again if you understand all the words in this sentence, then you know that the claim is true. This truth isn’t something separate from the definitions in the sentence. Epistemology 5: Innatism, Empiricism and Rationalism

If these truths are not synthetic but analytic, then the innatist has failed to prove that there is innate synthetic knowledge.

EMPIRICISM- The view that all concepts/ knowledge are derived from sense

experienceConcept empiricism claims that all of our concepts are based on sense experience. This means that we can’t have a concept unless we have first had a corresponding sense experience.

An obvious initial response to this claim is to point out concepts we may have that we have never experienced in reality. For example, I have a concept of a unicorn, but I have never seen or heard or touched a unicorn.

But the concept empiricist can respond by saying that although I have no sense experience of a complete unicorn, my unicorn concept is made up of other concepts that I have acquired through sense experience. My concept of a unicorn is just the addition of my concept of “horn” (which I have acquired through sense experience) to my concept of “horse” (which I have also acquired through sense experience).

Hume considers the power of the imagination to create novel ideas and concepts, and concludes that rather than creating new concepts, our imagination is just mixing and adapting concepts that we already have:

“…although our thought seems to be so free, when we look more carefully we’ll find that it is really confined within very narrow limits, and that all this creative power of the mind amounts merely to the ability to combine, transpose, enlarge, or shrink the materials that the senses and experience provide us with.”

Mind as a tabula rasa

An assumption common to empiricists (such as Locke and Hume) is the claim that when human beings come into the world they know nothing at all. Their minds are like blank slates (tabula rasa in latin): nothing has yet been recorded on them.

This will only occur if the individual possesses sense organs in sound working order and that are


capable of allowing them to gain experiences from the external world.

One reason for accepting the tabula rasa theory is that new born babies don’t have any ideas but what they get from their limited experience of things like warmth, cold, thirst, pain and so on. More ideas come from more experience, and when they can talk they only talk of things they have come across since they used their senses.

Both Locke and Hume are committed to the view that if a baby were born without any sense organs (or with no ability to be aware of sense experiences) then, should they survive, they would never come to possess any knowledge.

Impressions and Ideas

For Hume, my ideas of ‘white’ and ‘cold’ are faded copies of sensing white or cold by, for instance, originally seeing and feeling snow. Because my original experience of snow was forceful and vivid, it impressed upon me, like a stamp, a copy of itself. Hume gives this argument to show that ideas depend on sense impressions:

“If it happens, from a defect of the organ, that a man is not susceptible of any species of sensation, we always find that he is as little susceptible of the correspondent ideas. A blind man can form no notion of colours; a deaf man of sounds. Restore either of them that sense in which he is deficient; by opening this new inlet for his sensations, you also open an inlet for the ideas;


John Locke (1632-1704)

Locke claimed that the mind is a tabula rasa at birth – a white paper, or blank slate - which becomes filled with ideas from the experiences that we have. All our ideas come from two sources: sensation (experience via the senses) and reflection (awareness of our own thoughts).

David Hume (1711-1776)

Hume claimed that our ideas are ‘faint copies’ of these original sense impressions. All ideas depend on sense impressions which, in turn, depend on the causes of those sense impressions (the objects and events in the world). This is known as Hume’s copy principle.

and he finds no difficulty in conceiving these objects.”Simple and complex concepts

For both Locke and Hume, simple concepts come from simple impressions, and complex concepts from simple concepts.

So, concept empiricism is the view that all of our concepts are derived from sense impressions, either directly (in the case of simple concepts) or by being made up of other concepts that are based on sense impressions (in the case of complex concepts).

Hume’s extreme form of concept empiricism

Hume’s empiricism is even more radical than this. He claims that for any idea you think you have, if you cannot trace its origin back to your own sense experi-ence, then you don’t really have that concept at all. Although you may have a word for it, that word doesn’t actually mean anything. Hume claimed that many of the “concepts” discussed by other philosophers were meaningless, and used


Simple impression

(the sight of the colour brown)

Simple idea(the idea of

brown)causes

Simple impression(the colour brown)

Complex idea(the idea of tea)

TogethercausesSimple impression

(the smell of tea)

Simple impression(the taste of tea)

Complex impression

(painting of a cuppa)

causes

this strong form of empiricism as a tool for rejecting these ideas (for example, “god” and “the self”).

INNATIST RESPONSES TO EMPIRICISM

Problem 1: Sense impressions are not necessary for ideas

Ideas are supposed to be copies of sense impressions. Without sense impressions there can be no ideas. But should we accept that sense impressions are necessary for ideas?

Example 1: Hume’s “Missing shade of blue”

If someone has seen a range of blues from which one is missing would they be able to form an idea/ concept of the missing shade (we have used grey to illustrate the point):

The problem here for the empiricist is that if you can form an idea of the missing shade of blue it means that it is possible to form an idea which has no corresponding impression, and this goes against their principle that nothing can exist in the mind that has not come through the senses. And yet it does seem plausible to suggest that one would be able to imagine the missing shade. If we can form this idea without having had an impression, why shouldn't we be able to form others?

Empiricist response: we can form the idea of this shade because it is actually a complex one. On this view, the missing shade would be formed from the simple idea of blue-in-general and the concepts of dark or light.

Further Objection: but now it seems that all blue ideas would be complex –


so we’d never be able to have a simple idea of blue: is this plausible?

Example 2: logical connectives

We have seen that Hume wanted to argue that philosophers who discuss ideas which cannot be derived from sense impressions are ultimately talking nonsense. Meaningful talk had to have its roots in reality, which is to say, in our actual experience. Hume can be seen as suggesting that the meaning of a word is given by a series of images or other sense impressions, but this doesn't seem to be the case. After all, as you are reading this sentence now, are there a flood of related images in your mind? Possibly not - yet the sentence seems to be meaningful. Take this last sentence: what images, or sense impressions might be related to the words ‘the’, ‘possibly’, ‘seems’, ‘not’, ‘yet’, ‘to’, ‘be’ or ‘meaningful’?

Words like ‘all’, ‘some’, ‘if’, ‘then’, ‘is’, ‘is not’, ‘either’, ‘or’ and ‘so’ seem essential for formulating ideas, categorising and giving reasons. But these logical connectives appear to have no associated sense impressions.

Problem 2: Sense impressions are not sufficient for ideas

There are good reasons for thinking that merely experiencing sense impressions is not sufficient for acquiring ideas. Consider what we all know about learning. It seems to involve more than just having experiences. Most learning involves teachers because sense impressions alone could not have done the work. Wittgenstein’s ‘tove’ exampleSuppose someone said ‘This is tove’ whilst holding up a pencil. If sense impressions are sufficient for acquiring ideas you should acquire the idea of tove from your sense impression of the pencil. But the sense impressions are not sufficient because ‘This is tove’ could mean anyone of the following: ‘This is a pencil’, ‘This is wood’, ‘This is one’, ‘This is hard’.

Nothing about the sense experience itself teaches us how we should judge it. Wittgenstein makes the point that sense impressions cannot determine how we ought to interpret them. Understanding an idea, interpreting an experience, drawing conclusions, etc. does not, as the empiricist view implies, occur in a social vacuum. Rather, learning presupposes Epistemology 5: Innatism, Empiricism and Rationalism

a ‘stage setting’ or context. This stage setting could include all sorts of local social conventions, but it might also point to typical innate learning strategies employed by humans.

INTUITION AND DEDUCTION THESIS

Rational intuition means the ability to understand something just by thinking about it.

Deduction means figuring out what must follow from certain claims. So, once you accept one claim as being true, deduction is the ability to move from that to other true claims, just by thinking about them.

So, Intuition and Deduction Thesis is the theory that we can gain knowledge by using our rational intuition and/or deduction (that is, we can gain knowledge just by thinking).

Philosophers who accept the intuition and deduction thesis are known as rationalists.

The main rationalist philosopher is Descartes, and we’ll now look at his main ideas in detail:

Descartes’ doubt In the Meditations Descartes places all his previous knowledge in doubt in

order to find a secure foundation which can’t be doubted.

First, the reliability of the senses as a source of knowledge is rejected because of illusions and hallucinations, then he employs the argument from

dreaming, and finally he imagines that an evil demon is deceiving him about everything, even about mathematical truths. Since all these things could be affecting him, everything he thinks he knows is in doubt.

A priori knowledge of the self

Having pushed this method of doubt to its ultimate limits,


Descartes now sees that there is at least one truth which cannot be doubted. He reasoned that if he was doubting everything, he could be sure of one thing: that he existed. For, if he was doubting, he must exist in order to doubt. Doubting is a form of thinking, so he must exist in order to think.

“Cogito ergo sum”; I think, therefore I am. He now has certain, undoubtable knowledge of his own existence. This knowledge is not derived from any kind of sense experience, but on his own reason and deduction.

“If there is a deceiving demon then ‘I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me. Let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it

about that I am nothing, so long as I think I am something.’ Hence, ‘I am, I exist’ is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.”

Having established his existence, Descartes now proceeds to investigate his nature or essence. He is not essentially a physical being, for, applying the method of doubt, he can doubt his own body – or indeed whether any external objects exist. The only attributes which he cannot deny of himself are mental ones, and hence he concludes that:

‘I am a substance whose whole nature or essence is to think and whose being requires no place and depends on no material thing’.

Clear and Distinct Ideas

From this one item of certain knowledge (i.e. the cogito), he derives a criterion a certainty- what Descartes calls clear and distinct ideas:

Knowledge of oneself is clear and distinct, self-evident. Generalising from this, Descartes concludes that whatever is clear and distinct is true and cannot be doubted: it is knowledge.

These clear and distinct ideas have nothing to do with the perceptions of the senses; instead they are purely intellectual like the basic, self-evident propositions of mathematics and logic.

A priori knowledge of God

He thinks that the existence of God is a clear and distinct idea, or is deduced from ideas that are clear and distinct. While he is aware of his own imperfections, he is also aware that he has within himself the idea of a


supremely perfect being. Descartes reasons that this idea must have been placed in him by a really existing perfect being – God.

Descartes presents the trademark argument in the form of a meditation- a process of thinking through the ideas and debating the issue within his own mind. But we can present his ideas as a formal argument like this:

Premise 1: The cause of anything must be at least as perfect as its effect.

Premise 2: My ideas must be caused by something.

Premise 3: I am an imperfect being.

Premise 4: I have the idea of God, which is that of a perfect being.

Intermediate Conclusion 1: I cannot be the cause of my idea of God

(from premises 1,2,3 & 4)

Intermediate Conclusion 2: Only a perfect being (that is, God) can be the

cause of my idea of God. (From premises 1, 4 and IC1)

Main Conclusion: God must exist. (From premise 4 and IC2)

When the question arises, “How do you know that a demon is not deceiving you into thinking that whatever is clear and distinct is always true?”, from now on Descartes can answer that God, being good and all powerful, would not allow him to be so deceived.

A priori knowledge of the external worldTo apply his new method of ignoring the senses and relying on a priori,

clear and distinct ideas, Descartes gives the example of a piece of wax:

‘Let us take, for example, this piece of wax. It has just been taken from the honeycomb; it has not yet quite

lost the taste of the honey; it retains some of the scent of the flowers from which it was gathered; its colour,

shape and size are plain to see; it is hard, cold and can be handled without difficulty; if you rap it with your

knuckle it emits a sound … But even as I speak, I put the wax by the fire and look: the residual taste is

eliminated, the smell goes away, the colour changes,


the shape is lost, the size increases; it becomes liquid and hot, and if you strike it it no longer emits a sound…

… So what was it in the wax which I understood with such distinctness? Evidently none of the properties arrived at by means of the senses’.

So, the perceivable properties of the wax give us no real knowledge about the wax itself. The only essential property of the wax is its extension: it is simply an extended thing which has length, breadth and depth (although these dimensions can change). But this is not something we perceive via the senses or the imagination, for we know the wax is capable of taking on many more shapes than we can ever actually observe or picture to ourselves. Descartes’ argument here goes like this:

1. My sense experience of the wax changes. Nothing I can sense is the same.

2. I know it is the same piece of wax.

3. Therefore, my knowledge of the wax is not based on my sense experience, but on deduction.

So Descartes concludes that ‘we know that bodies are not strictly perceived by the senses or by the faculty of imagination but by the intellect alone’.

So, Descartes has used pure reason (intuition and deduction) to come to know three propositions: that he exists, that God exists and that the external world exists.

He has gained this knowledge without any use of his senses, so it is a priori. But it does tell him meaningful new information about the world, so it is synthetic.

EMPIRICIST ARGUMENTS AGAINST INTUITION AND DEDUCTION

The ‘Cartesian circle’

A major problem with Descartes’ argument is that it


relies on circular reasoning:

We cannot trust our clear and distinct perceptions until we know that God exists; but we cannot prove God exists without relying on our clear and distinct perceptions.

Descartes’ answer to this notorious problem (known as the ‘Cartesian circle’) appears to be that there are some propositions which are so clear and distinct that, even without relying on God, they are self-guaranteeing. ‘Two plus two equals four’ or ‘if I think, I exist’ are such simple and straightforward propositions that I cannot possibly be mistaken as to their truth.

Tautology (analytic truths)

The difficulty for Descartes, however, is that such tautologous or near-tautologous propositions give us very little information. The knowledge he can establish without relying on circular reasoning is merely analytic: it merely tells us the meaning of the words within the proposition.

But as soon as we want to go further, to establish more substantial claims about the existence of God or the nature of the universe, then it seems that we are moving beyond these self-evident truths. Since they are not self-evident and we can’t rely on circular reasoning, we can’t really know that they are true.

So, Descartes seems to face a fatal dilemma. Either his knowledge begins and ends with thin and unexciting propositions such as ‘two plus two equals four’ or ‘if I am thinking, I exist’, which buy their truth at the cost of being relatively uninformative; or else it advances to more important and substantive truths at the cost of losing the kind of certainty and necessity which he was originally looking for.

Hume’s fork

Hume’s Fork is the name given to a distinction Hume draws between different kinds of knowledge.

“All the objects of human reason or enquiry fall naturally into two kinds, namely relations of ideas and matters of fact.”


By this, Hume means that there are two types of knowledge. All knowledge is either a “relation of ideas” or a “matter of fact”. He claims that any proposition which is neither of these is meaningless.

Relations of Ideas are the kinds of knowledge claims we use in maths (2+3=5) or in logic (something cannot exist and not exist at the same time). We do not gain this knowledge through sense experience, but through reason (just thinking about the concepts involved).

Matters of Fact are facts about the world and we gain this kind of knowledge through our sense experience. This sense experience might be direct (I look out the window to know that it is raining) or indirect (I read in a book that the battle of Hastings happened in 1066).

So, Hume is claiming that all synthetic knowledge is a posteriori. This means that we get knowledge about the world by experiencing the world. He is also claiming that all a priori knowledge is analytic. This means that there is some knowledge that we acquire without any sense experience. But it doesn’t tell us anything new about the world.

How would Hume use his fork against Descartes?


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