I posted this previously in a thread about Plato’s forms. Since there were no responses, I thought I’d try again.
One of the things that always strikes me when I read philosophy is how often a theme found in one source shows up in another which might be from a very different culture and time—often transformed or shifted. One common theme comes from the understanding that not everything we know comes from learning, observation, or socialization. When we’re born, we are not blank slates. We come into the world already knowing things, or at least predisposed to see things in a particular way. As I see it, this understanding resides right at the intersection of metaphysics and psychology/ cognitive science.
This is how I interpret Socrates’ forms. Another manifestation of a similar insight is found in Kant’s discussion of a priori knowledge. This is from “Critique of Pure Reason”:
Space and time, along with what they contain, are not things, or properties of things, in themselves, but belong merely to the appearances of such things; thus far I am in agreement with the previous idealists. But these idealists, and among them especially Berkeley, saw space as a merely empirical representation, a representation which, just like the appearances in space together with all of the determinations of space, would be known to us only by means of experience or perception; I show on the contrary, first, that space (and time too, to which Berkeley gave no attention), along with all its determinations, can be cognized by us a priori , for space, as well as time, inheres in us before all perception or experience as a pure form of our sensibility and makes possible all intuition from sensibility, and therefore all appearances
One of my favorite takes on this issue comes from Konrad Lorenz in two publications; a book—“Behind the Mirror”— and an article—“Kant’s Doctrine of the A Priori in the Light of Contemporary Biology.” This from the book:
What a biologist familiar with the facts of evolution would regard as the obvious answer to Kant’s question was, at that time, beyond the scope of the greatest of thinkers. The simple answer is that the system of sense organs and nerves that enables living things to survive and orientate themselves in the outer world has evolved phylogenetically through confrontation with an adaptation to that form of reality which we experience as phenomenal space. This system thus exists a priori to the extent that it is present before the individual experiences anything, and must be present if experience is to be possible.
This selection is not at all exhaustive. Two other instances that come to mind are Jung’s collective unconscious and Lao Tzu’s naming as the origin of our everyday reality.
The way this issue is dealt with reflects worldview. For Plato, a priori knowledge (knowledge which we possess, but which we couldn’t have learned through experience) is accounted for by the primacy of essence. For Chomsky or Chalmers, it’s innate ROM developed through socialization.
Plato places the source outside, in the world, specifically the World Soul. Chomsky speculates that it could be biological.
Forms are the structures, patterns, and relations of a rational universe in which galaxies, stars, planets, environments and organisms exist.
Also organisms such as humans are products of this universe. We adapt and co-evolve with our environment, and identify some of the forms with our sense-organs, others by thought. We can know or predict them prior experience, because the universe is rational, and we have languages for rational thought.
Math is a language of the universe. That’s how Higgs could predict his boson long before it was observed. Also in art, dance, music, and sports can we discover or express the forms of the universe. Music, for instance, can make you feel connected to the universe.
Do you mean that the law of conservation of energy, for example, is a form? I don’t think that’s what Plato, Kant, or Lorenz were talking about. All three were talking about modes of human knowledge—What we all know without direct experience.
Maybe the most important characteristic of the kind of knowledge I’m talking about is that it doesn’t arise from either prior knowledge or reason. It is something inherent in our human nature or the structure of the world.
This is a good topic for discussion. The tabula rasa of empiricism is suspect. However I’m not sure where you want to take this. Are you leaning towards rationalism or do you have something else in mind?
Isn’t there the story of Socrates and Meno’s slave having to do with computing the area of a square? Socrates simply allowed the slave to recall what he already knew by asking appropriate questions.
According to Plato’s Meno, the story kicks off with Meno’s paradox: How can we find something if we don’t know what it is and if we know what it is, why look for it? Inquiry is impossible or unnecessary.
Socrates calls Meno’s slave who has no idea what geometry is and asks him to draw a square whose square is exactly double of a given square.
The slave guesses a few times and they’re wrong. Socrates considers this a good sign - recognizing one’s ignorance is the first step to knowledge.
Socrates then goes on to ask leading questions to the slave who eventually figures out that the square with double the area of a given square has the first square’s diagonal as the side. \sqrt{1^2 + 1^2} = \sqrt 2 and \sqrt 2 \times \sqrt 2 = 2. This is proof that all Socrates did was help the slave recollect what he already knew, thus solving Meno’s paradox. Socrates role here is as a midwife (of ideas).
Critics claim Socrates asks very leading questions to the slave and is this really proof that the soul is immortal and that we come with innate knowledge or is Socrates just a good teacher?
The idea that we have fundamental, inherent mental processes that act as an organizing structure for knowledge is central to my understanding of human nature. As I noted, I think that take is consistent with what Kant and Lorenz have written. Plato, as I understand him, instead thought that the pre-empirical structure was inherent in the world outside of us instead of inside. Either way, knowledge does not come only from empirical experience.
There is some evidence that very young children have an elementary sense of quantity which may act as the foundation for our mathematical abilities.
As I understand it, the kind of ability you are describing is much more developed than what she is proposing.
Humans have achieved many impressive feats without language. Early in homo sapiens history, we managed to find sources of water without any concepts such as “liquid”, “thirst”, “hydration”, “quench”, etc. A thoughtful book around this idea is James Gibson’s The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. The environment provides affordances. An affordance is the possibility for an animal of an action on an object or environment.
Nescio. Hypothesis non fingo. I haven’t read anything on this topic. However I do find the tabula rasa of empiricism dubious. I’m nonetheless pleased that this domain is marked by fervorous exploration though it comes off as haphazard.
A matter that might be of interest to those who value subjectivity. I have no opinion on the matter. I just think tabula rasa simply doesn’t square with what we know (re Meno, Plato).
It appears to be a hard problem.
There are many child prodigies out there to confirm this. It doesn’t seem to be confined to quantitative reasoning though - music, language, making faces, etc. all seem to manifest at gifted levels. If you see them perform it’ll change you, at least should.
No I mean natural forces: the electromagnetic force, the strong and weak nuclear forces, plus gravity. Any real organism and environment is a product of these forces and the structures, patterns, and relations that arise when they bind atoms into compunds, materials, molecules, cells, photosensitive creatures etc. We are made of these structures, patterns and relations, including our faculty for thought. Thoughts are logical because the universe is logical. We’re not detached from it. That’s why we can know things without prior observation.
A fruit fly evades my hand as I try to catch it. It didn’t acquire its self-preserving instinct from previous observations. It can predict forthcoming events, and change its flight to avoid them, because it lives in a universe that is rationally structured.
With respect to knowledge, Kant was a methodological dualist by his own admission, an empirical realist given what he perceives, and a transcendental rationalist given what he thinks about what he perceives. Only by such combination is knowledge possible a posteriori.
For all real physical things appearing to the senses, whether immediate or merely possible, the fundamental inherent mental (…..) organizing structures are space and time, satisfying the empirical side; for those faculties which determine how things are to be thought, the structures are the categories, satisfying the rationalist side.
Kant denied the human intellect as tabla rasa, counter Locke, regarding knowledge independent of experience. He did, however, grant to human intelligence predisposition to certain pure principles independent of experience, and the faculty by which they are determinable, re: reason.
That’s true, and despite appearing to argue to the contrary, Locke himself would agree. As he says in Part 1 of his Essay:
“I deny not, that there are natural tendencies imprinted on the Minds of Men; and that, from the very first instances of sense and perception, there are some things that are grateful, and others unwelcome to them; some things that they incline to, and others that they fly…”
Nor would Hume:
“…though animals learn many parts of their knowledge from observation, there are also many parts of it, which they derive from the original hand of nature; which much exceed the share of capacity they possess on ordinary occasions; and in which they improve, little or nothing, by the longest practice and experience. These we denominate Instincts, and are so apt to admire, as something very extraordinary, and inexplicable by all the disquisitions of human understanding… Though the instinct be different, yet still it is an instinct, which teaches a man to avoid the fire; as much as that, which teaches a bird, with such exactness, the art of incubation…”
Your point is not so much an opinion but an established fact, that the mind is not a blank slate.
Although there are disagreements, as I understand it, many evolutionary biologists think humans, including pre-homosapien species, may have had at least the beginnings of language. Beyond that, the kinds of knowledge I discussed in the OP are not necessarily associated with language.
That being said, it is generally understood that humans have a “language instinct” of some sort. The exact scope of that capability is somewhat controversial.
As indicated in the article I linked, there is evidence that normal babies as young as three months already have pre-arithmetic intuition about quantity. Karen Wynn has done work on other capabilities, in particular moral judgment.
I think you’re right. What I’m most interested in are the mental structures and processes that “implement” these capabilities and how they developed. That’s why I like Lorenz so much.
Sure, mental processes enable us to identify the characteristics of the universe.
Are you suggesting that these characteristics (e.g. logical form, causality, parthood etc) are mental constructs? Kant is interpreted in many ways, but he is not a subjective idealist.
Our world? Ok, you are assuming two worlds: “our world” that we can make sense of, and a “universe” assumed to be illogical, irrational, unknowable.
That would be the “two-worlds-interpreration” of Kant. I prefer the “two-perspectives-interpretation”, because one world/universe is enough, and Kant is not a dualist.
If the universe was not rational, what could your cognitive faculties possibly make sense of? Your own thoughts about themselves? How could anything remain a second, or 14 billion years, if the universe behaved irrationally?
