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CONCEPTSNote: Topics 5 and 6 are all about the debate between empiricism and innatism (or rationalism).

Topic 5 covers the question of where our concepts (or ideas) come from – the debate between concept empiricism and innatism.

Topic 6 covers the question of where our knowledge comes from – the debate between knowledge empiricism and rationalism.

Concept EmpiricismThe view that all concepts (or ideas) are derived from sense experience.

Main philosophers: Locke and Hume

Concept InnatismThe view that at least some of our concepts are not derived from sense experience but are innate.

Main philosophers: Descartes and Leibniz

CONCEPT EMPIRICISMThe view that all concepts are derived from sense experience

We need to start by clarifying the distinction between concepts and sense experiences. I am currently aware of the tea I am drinking because I can taste, smell and see it. But I am also able to think about tea (to think about the concept of tea) when I have no sense experience of it. This is an important ability, as it allows us to recognise tea again in the future, to have beliefs about tea, to develop knowledge about tea, to distinguish tea from biscuits, etc.

Epistemology 5: ConceptsPage 1

Concept 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. Only if this occurs will the mind gradually acquire ideas/ concepts as the experiences are imprinted upon it.


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 concepts.

Impressions and Ideas

Ideas are mental items or properties such as thoughts, images, etc. But, where do they come from? What causes the ideas that we have?

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


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.

ideas; 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 this


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)Together

causesSimple impression(the smell of tea)

Simple impression(the taste of tea)

Complex impression(painting of a cuppa)

causes

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

PROBLEMS WITH CONCEPT 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. Wittengstein 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


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.

CONCEPT INNATISM there are at least some innate concepts

The doctrine of innate ideas

The main objection to concept empiricism is simply to point out that there are some concepts/ ideas that we have prior to any sense experience. This means 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. But all they have to do is find one innate idea that does not derive from sense experience to prove concept empiricism to be false.

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.


We will now explore some of these suggested ‘innate ideas’: God, Universals, Causation, Numbers and Shapes.

God as an innate idea

Descartes puts forward the idea that our concept of God must be innate. He argues that his own idea of God can only have appeared in his own mind if there is, in fact, a God. Much like the hallmark stamped on a silver spoon, or the logo on a T shirt, reveals its maker, the idea of God within Descartes’ mind reveals his maker – God.

For this reason, it has become known as Descartes’ ‘Trademark Argument’.

He claims that his concept of God, “was born and produced with me at the moment of my creation. And, in truth, it should not be thought strange that God, in creating me, should have put in me this idea to serve, as it were, as the mark that the workman imprints on his work.”

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)


Criticisms of Descartes’ Trademark Argument:

Premise 1 claims that the cause must be as perfect, or as real, as the effect. But we can think of examples where this doesn’t seem so,

such as a bonfire that is caused by a match. If Descartes’ causal principle does not apply in all cases, then the rest of the argument fails.

Premise 4 claims that we have the idea of God as a perfect being. Apart from the obvious response that some people may not have an idea of God,

we can argue that even believers don’t have a concept of a perfect being. Many philosophers have argued that humans cannot conceive of something which is infinite. If Descartes doesn’t really have the idea of a perfect being, then again the argument fails.

Universals as innate ideasPhilosophers use the term ‘universal’ to apply to properties that are shared by many different particular things. For example, we can think of lots of different beautiful things. But beauty itself is a universal. Plato argues that sense experience only gives us concepts of particular things, not of universals. So our concepts of universals must be innate. Another example from Plato is the concept of being equal. Because two things we can experience can never be exactly equal, we must not get our concept of equality from experience, so it must be innate.

Causation as an innate ideaKant argues that we are born with pre-existing conceptual schemes which help us to make sense of the world. This conceptual scheme is like a framework in our mind that helps to organise our sense impressions into concepts. Kant claims that this conceptual scheme is made up of innate ideas including causation, unity, necessity, substance, space and time.

Numbers and shapes as innate ideasPlato argues that numbers are universals and are therefore innate. Although you may have sense experience of various instances of two things (eg. A pair of gloves), you never have sense experience of ‘two’ itself.


2

Similarly, our concept of ‘triangle’ or ‘circle’ may be innate. No real objects are perfectly circular. So our concept of ‘circle’ must not derive from our sense experience- it must be innate.

EMPIRICIST ARGUMENTS AGAINST CONCEPT INNATISM

Alternative explanation 1: No such concepts as innate ideas

Hume suggests that if we can’t trace a concept back to an experience then it is not actually an idea at all. Even if a word seems to have a concept attached to it, we need to be able to trace it back to an experience, even if the line back is quite a complex one. If we can’t do this, then Hume argues that we must reject the concept as empty or non-existent.

E.g. Self

Hume’s most famous example is the idea of my ‘self’. He claims that if you look into yourself you never find any impression of something that corresponds to your idea of self. But if the idea has no source in sense-data then it cannot be a proper concept. Hume concludes that the idea is an illusion, and that the words ‘I’ or ‘self’ are really just names for a life-long series of sensations.

E.g. Morals Another example is morality. Hume argues that concepts of good and bad cannot be traced back to particular sensations, but only to the ‘inner’ sensations that are our own emotions. So there is no such concept as ‘goodness’.

Alternative explanation 2: Examples of innate ideas can be re-defined in terms of experience

GodHume argued that our idea of God can be explained by empiricism. We have the concepts of goodness or power, derived from sense experience. And we merely


Who am I?

extend these concepts indefinitely until we arrive at the concept of infinite goodness or infinite power.

UniversalsThe empiricist can argue that although we may never be able to directly experience universals, we can form concepts of them by abstracting from our experiences. For instance, by experiencing lots of beautiful things, we can form the concept of the beauty by working out what these things have in common. So we do form our concepts of universals based on sense experiences, even if we don’t directly perceive the universals themselves.

CausationHume argues that our idea of causation is derived from sense experience. We believe that one thing causes another because of repetition. Every time we perceive the first event, the second event follows. So based on these sense experiences, whenever we experience the first event, we come to anticipate the second. This feeling of anticipation is what we refer to when we use the word “causation”, and it is based on our sense experience.

Numbers and shapesThe empiricist can respond to Plato by claiming that our concepts of numbers really are based on sense experience. 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.


So, the empiricist can argue against innatism by giving alternative explanations for each of their examples of concepts that are supposedly innate.But Locke also gives a series of arguments which attack the very idea of innatism:

Locke’s attack on innate ideas (and Leibniz’s responses)

Locke was writing in 1690, when most people accepted the existence of innate ideas. To argue against this, he went through each of the arguments usually used by innatists, and argued that they are inadequate for showing innatism to be true. Shortly afterwards, Leibniz published a response to Locke, defending innate ideas.

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 ideas are universally held.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

Beauty

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.

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.


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trcreligionandphilosophy.files.wordpress.com · Web view05/01/2018 · For Hume, my ideas of ‘white’ and ‘cold’ are faded copies of sensing white or cold by, for instance,