Empiricism

Empiricism Aristotle Thinks knowledge is knowledge of the world The senses are the route to knowledge nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu

Empiricism Aristotle Is an inspiration to Empiricism His Empiricism is less extreme than Plato’s Rationalism

Empiricism Heroes of Empiricism Locke Berkeley Hume

Empiricism Empiricism can take a skeptical approach to the concepts we discussed before: A priori / a posteriori knowledge Analytic / synthetic statements Necessary / contingent truths Innate / acquired ideas Let’s look at some of the extreme doubts that have been raised

Knowledge A Priori Definition: Something is known a priori when it is a true belief whose justification does not depend on evidence from sense experience. Something is known a posteriori when its justification does depend upon sense experience

Knowledge A Priori Most fundamental a priori knowledge is of logic If logic can be understood as a posteriori then the others may also be vulnerable Most empiricists accept logic as a priori but also say it is trivial or vacuous it isn’t real knowledge it is just rules for thinking

Knowledge A Priori Mill disagrees Logical laws like the Law of Non-Contradiction A statement and its negation can’t both be true are generalisations from our experiences We generalise by induction Just like the swan example We may be wrong! Inconceivable!!

Knowledge A Priori An objection to Mill Laws of logic are known a priori because they just describe relations amongst the meanings of the terms used in them Someone says ‘this is a dog and it is not a dog’ That person doesn’t know what ‘not’ and ‘and’ mean

Knowledge A Priori Against that objection: We don’t think the LNC (‘not A and not-A’) is just about our thoughts It’s about how the world is We have the LNC as a thought because of the way our minds work Having the LNC is good because that’s how the world is If our minds worked so that we didn’t think LNC, it would still be how the world worked

Knowledge A Priori Against that objection: If a priority is just about meaning then it’s the same as analyticity There are doubts about analyticity

Analytic Statements Definition: A statement is analytic when its truth may be known simply by knowing the meaning of the constituent terms A statement is synthetic otherwise

Analytic Statements Quine disputes the distinction 1951 ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ Definition of analytic depends on knowing how two terms can have the same meaning Not uncontroversial Definition also depends on implicit concept of ‘meaning’ being coherent Also problematic

Analytic Statements What is a ‘meaning’? It isn’t some kind of thing in the world Not the referent of a term ‘Evening star’ and ‘morning star’ both refer to Venus, but they don’t have the same meaning Not the set of all objects to which the term applies Renates (things with livers) and cordates (things with hearts) happen to be the same things, but ‘renate’ doesn’t mean what ‘cordate’ means

Analytic Statements How do two terms ‘have the same meaning?’ Is it by having the same definition? ‘A bachelor’ = ‘an unmarried man’ To find that the two are synonyms you have to know what you mean by meaning What’s the definition of bachelor = what set of words would have the same meaning as that word So define synonymy in terms of definitions and definitions in terms of synonymy

Analytic Statements How do two terms ‘have the same meaning?’ Quine says that all such attempts to define meaning or synonymy have the same problem of circularity

Analytic Statements Maybe there’s just no such thing as ‘meaning’ Quine also proposes the Radical Indeterminacy of Translation Consider an anthropologist trying to learn a new language ‘Gavagai!’ Does it mean ‘rabbit’, ‘dinner’, ‘undissociated rabbit parts’? No evidence can possibly distinguish the senses Therefore there is no distinction to be made

Innate Ideas Definition: An idea is innate if it does not derive from our experience of the world An idea is acquired otherwise

Innate Ideas Empiricists are very skeptical of innate ideas Locke had two arguments Innate ideas would be possessed by all humans Yet there are idiots and savages who could not assent to ‘everything that is, is’ Innate ideas would be possessed at all ages Yet children can’t even have these ideas Thus the mind is a blank sheet or tabula rasa

Innate Ideas Leibnitz replied After Kant, most accept innate concepts The mind is like veined marble It is so structured that certain ideas will arise in it with the appropriate experiences After Kant, most accept innate concepts Space, time, causality, etc. But innate beliefs are another matter

Innate Ideas Are there innate beliefs? Folk physics Folk psychology Infants discover the permanence of objects Folk psychology Infants discover that other people have minds like theirs

Innate Ideas Are innate beliefs knowledge? Can the innateness indicate a justification? Are they innate because they are true? Perhaps a non-deceiving God put them there Do God’s purposes require us not to be deceived? Perhaps true beliefs are evolutionarily advantageous Sometimes false beliefs are more advantageous Strangers want to attack you. (Let’s assume that’s false.) It’s good to be altruistic

Innate Ideas Are innate concepts correct? Their innateness doesn’t tell us that they correctly represent the world Are they innate because they are correct? Perhaps a non-deceiving God put them there Do God’s purposes require us not to be deceived? Perhaps correct concepts are evolutionarily useful They only need to organize things