RI Empiricism 2023

Sources of KnowledgeEmpiricism

Overview●Intuitive Appeal of Empiricism●Locke –Arguments against Innate Ideas●Hume –Hume’s Fork, Relations of Ideas VS Matters of Facts●Counterarguments against Empiricism

Huge bodyof knowledge and widely respected authority on knowledge Intuitive AppealsThe Wise TravellerCommon SenseScience Gaining knowledge through many experiences Gaining and justifying knowledge through our senses

Against Innate Ideas I•John Locke: first of the 3 great British empiricists•Locke: what does it mean for an idea to be innate? That it be in the mind?•But for idea Pto be in the mind = one consciously knows P"No proposition can be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, which it never yet was conscious of" (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book I, Chapter II, Section 5, p. 61). •Locke’s test: Innate ideas must be ideas that one is conscious of. If one is not conscious of these ideas, then they are not innate.

Against Innate Ideas I•But there are no ideas or principles such that they are already in one’s mind from birth and one consciously knows them.•E.g.: “It is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be.” •Locke: Babies don’t seem to know this consciously.“They are so far from being brought into the world with us, so remote from the thoughts of infancy and childhood, that I believe, upon examination it will be found that many grown men want them.” I am, and I am not. I am mighty!

Against Innate Ideas II•Locke: there are no such things as innate ideas because if they did, then babies would show some signsthat they have settled ideas•i.e. ideas which are not confused and unchanging:“For, bating perhaps some faint ideas of hunger, and thirst, and warmth, and some pains, which they may have felt in the womb, there is not the least appearance of any settled ideas at all in them; especially of ideas answering the terms which make up those universal propositions that are esteemed innate principles.” (emphasis mine)•Babies don’t seem to show such signs of innate knowledge.•Rather, they seem to GAIN knowledge by DEGREES:“One may perceive how, by degrees, afterwards, ideas come into their minds; and that they get no more, nor other, than what they experience, and the observation of things that come in their way, furnish them with” (emphasis mine)•E.g. learning multiplication tables, Pythagoras’ theorem

Against Innate Ideas II•Indeed, what does Locke hold about babies in particular?•Locke: Babies’ minds are tabula rasa, i.e. blank slates•That explains how babies can gain knowledge by degrees •And how do they gain knowledge? From EXPERIENCE•Explains why babies like to use all their senses to gain knowledge•Think of babies eating their own ‘snot’!! And licking the ground etc.

Against Innate Ideas III•Locke: if there were such innate ideas, then they have to be “universally known and naturally agreed”so that they can be ”subjects of universal and undoubted truths” and not the “unavoidable occasion of perpetual uncertainty”.•One e.g. of innate ideas is Identity•But people’s ideas of Identity are different! •E.g. Cartesian idea of a unified self vs Humean‘bundle of thoughts’•So how? Which is true? Which is innate?•Or are there two different ideas of identity, both innate? Consider also how a baby doesn’t appear to recognize him/herself when first encountering a mirror (like a cat)

Counterargument I: epistemic progress•Is Locke making a strawman out of the Rationalists’ argument?•Rationalist: the lack of universal agreement is because we are still in the process of arriving at the C&D idea, •i.e. we are progressing to a better understanding of the idea/form•Also, one/all sides could be wrong and the idea nonetheless remains C&D even though we don’t know it•Descartes: our Will is more powerful than our Intellect –we want to know more than our intellect (currently) allows us and that is where we fall into error•Explains ‘progress’ of knowledge. E.g. scientific paradigms?

Sense Data –Source of Knowledge•If knowledge does not come from innate ideas, then where?•Locke: sense experience!•“In experience all our knowledge is founded; and from experience knowledge ultimately derives itself.”•Qn: Does this mean that the mind is notinvolved at all? RationalismEmpiricism You