I'm not 'conflating' anything. Without the ability to organise sensations, then what kind of ideas could you form of anything? It's not simply a question of 'recieving sensations' and 'learning by experience' - the mind has innate abilities and capacities of many kinds, which constitute ideas. Now, whether that means that we're born with ideas, is another question, but what I am arguing is that we are not born 'tabula rasa', as Locke says, and we don't accumulate knowledge solely through experience or sensory impressions.

The issue is our ideas come already organised. We don't "derive"a tree from the blur in the distance. Upon recognising it as a tree, we know it to be a tree. Despite being a priori, our ideas are an expression someone within an environment. If I was not present, in front of a tree, with my experience, I would not have an idea about the tree in question. At any given moment, anyone's ideas are their present experience. Experiences which were not given prior to themselves.

In way, we are born "tabula rasa," just not in the sense Locke argues. Prior to ourselves, we are not there yet. We haven't happened. A nothingness until we exist and experience in a given way. What we know is not defined until our experiences of knowledge exist. It's just the "tabula rasa" state is something we never something we exist with. At any given moment we are an experiencing being existing within an environment.

The "nothingness" of "tabula rasa" is only a fictional expression. Relevant to saying what is possible, but never a reflection of our actual states, despite our actual state being constituted by an existing environment.

Learn how to throw a rock well, and precisely. That takes some pretty hardcore math skillz. Once you're good at doing that, you'll be good at math, and then you just have to learn all of the stupid formulas, memorize them, and then they'll click eventually. I'd suggest throwing rocks while trying to solve math problems rather than thinking about it.

Also, synthetic a priori, kind of meaning half in the world, half in you. Like jigsaw puzzles, you just have to find out how they all fit. There is much pretending, and competition though, and the voices in your head are not your own, they're other peoples... and those people are all out for themselves and not you. You need to follow your nose, as it were to the right voices that inspire rather than repress you -- inspiration is energy which can be utilized for adventurous thinking and behavior.

I don't know why I replied to you particularly, I guess for the first part, but then just kind of trailed off to general comments.

Oh, and maybe you guys rely too much on your eyes, you'd have to have some in the backs of your heads to see what I see.

I'm not 'conflating' anything. Without the ability to organise sensations, then what kind of ideas could you form of anything? It's not simply a question of 'recieving sensations' and 'learning by experience' - the mind has innate abilities and capacities of many kinds, which constitute ideas. Now, whether that means that we're born with ideas, is another question, but what I am arguing is that we are not born 'tabula rasa', as Locke says, and we don't accumulate knowledge solely through experience or sensory impressions. — Wayfarer

I'm not disagreeing that the ability to organize sensations isn't less inherent in the nature of the mind than the sensations themselves. Without either there would be no mind. It would be like saying you could boil water without any water.

We really need to nail down a consistent definition for ideas and knowledge. I define knowledge as instructions for interpreting symbols. I know how to tie my shoes and speak English. I follow specific instructions stored in my long term memory to tie my shoes and speak English. The instructions are composed of sensory impressions (symbols) in a certain order that I try to repeat. I acquired these sets of instructions through numerous previous experiences, with each one adding new instructions to improve efficiency. My mind instinctively organizes these experiences for a purpose - to improve my efficiency in functioning in the environment.

Ideas are simply manipulated sensory symbols for some purpose - usually to improve my efficiency in functioning in the environment. I could say that the organization of sensations itself is an experience. I can reflect upon my own mental activity, which is one of the distinctions between humans and most other animals. Acquiring new knowledge through the organization of sensations itself is an experience because of this self-reflective perspective we have. We seem to be able to observe our mental activity, which is just the manipulation of sensory symbols, and form ideas and derive new knowledge from that.

Basically your post says 'hey, all we need to do is define 'ideas' and 'knowledge'! - and then you proceed to do that, as if you can compose a forum post, and basically wrap up the entire curriculum of philosophy. They're deep issues - Plato's dialogue on the nature of knowledge presents various definitions but ultimately leaves it an open question.

Learn how to throw a rock well, and precisely. That takes some pretty hardcore math skillz. — Wozret

Well, I'm great at throwing rocks, and bad at maths. So much for your theory. O:)

I doubt it.

I used to be able to skip a rock across water 14 times. So I guess that proves I can count.

Been awhile then, eh?

Fair while. Used to spend hours doing it.

I haven't done it in awhile either, but I throw and catch things a lot every day usually. I saw a documentary once that argued that we're so awesome at math and coordination because we got so good at throwing spears and rocks. Jumping over things, and doing various physical activities teach you plenty about physics and math, whether you have the words to express it or not. Another interesting thing, is like Homo Erectus and backwards couldn't rotate their wrists, as none of the other contemporaneous primates can. The mind follows the body, and the body follows the mind.

Basically your post says 'hey, all we need to do is define 'ideas' and 'knowledge'! - and then you proceed to do that, as if you can compose a forum post, and basically wrap up the entire curriculum of philosophy. They're deep issues - Plato's dialogue on the nature of knowledge presents various definitions but ultimately leaves it an open question. — Wayfarer

No. That's not all my post says. Defining these terms would certainly be a starting point and would build a good foundation for what we are talking about. If you have better definitions then by all means, provide them instead of just putting words in my mouth.

If your only argument is that my explanation is to simple then I take that as a compliment. For every explanation of some phenomenon, there could be a large number of possible and more complex alternatives because one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified (Occam's Razor). Plato didn't have access to the information we have today. We've come a long way since Plato.

In any case, however, these hinge beliefs seem to work pretty well. Hinge beliefs, or beliefs in general, that are horribly off-base would probably not be very conducive to survival and would thus be selected against. — darthbarracuda

I'm curious about how the issue of innate ideas (nativism) is related to metaphysics. Are one's metaphysical commitments actually the driver here? Or could it go the other way?

It sounds like (in your case) materialism comes first here... unless you're a lot more Nietzschean that you look. Right?

Insofar as language is learned and all ideas are expressed in learned languages it makes it seem as though all ideas are acquired by experience. I seem to remember that Kant made a distinction (and I think he was following Leibniz' own explicit statements in this) between ideas that are merely acquired by experience but cannot be confirmed or dis-confirmed by particular experiences and yet are self-evident by virtue of the general logic of experience itself, and ideas (in the form of beliefs and judgements) which may be confirmed or dis-confirmed by particular experiences.

I take this to mean that some ideas are intuitively self-evident to us and so are not dependent on language per se, although they do require a language for their formulation. It is language which allows us to make explicit what would otherwise be merely implicit and would be reflected only in our behavior and dispositions. — John

Leibniz's mature thinking was that principles can't arise from instances of experience (he's pretty close to expressing the problem of induction here, I think). So he's zeroing in on the innateness of our ability to identify necessary truths.

You seem to be saying language is like a mid-wife to ideas? I don't know. Maybe that deserves a thread.

It is not on this basis a concept but rather our ability to perceive, and we cannot perceive without this ability. It is not conceptual in that sense, it is necessarily a part of the hardware we born with. — Cavacava

But space is a relation between objects. Time is a relation between events. Wouldn't you say that a relation is fundamentally an idea?

Consciousness is always of something. It isn't clear that all thought and ideation are necessarily conscious. I think nativism is counting on the existence of unconscious ideas. If such a thing exists, how does that work?

The perception of space is a biological process not an idea, which is not to say that ideas can't influence what we perceive. Animals also perceive space, and many animals are far superior to us in their perception. Space as a relationship between objects (which I think is correct) is a conception, which may be ontologically correct but this conception arises from our ability to perceptive.

I wouldn't say I believe in innate ideas. Not that the thought hasn't tempted me, but more like it strikes me -- when I try to believe in such things -- as a befuddled belief. I can't readily identify what would count as innate and what wouldn't. What would the difference between innateness and, say, simply a strongly held belief be? At least for the purposes of identifying what beliefs you hold to be one or the other?

But, likewise, I don't believe that all ideas arise from experience. Once we accept something like experience it seems clear to me that ideas permeate said experience -- experiences change with a change of thought, our perceptions are guided by what we usually classify as mental phenomena, and we organize said perceptions into and with ideas.

And then with respect to knowledge: granting the above it would suggest that there is such a thing as a priori knowledge insofar that knowledge and ideas overlap -- just using the bare-bones notion of a priori to mean "without experience". But here the same question rises: which ideas would count as knowledge, and which of the ideas which we count as innate would also count as knowledge?

The best guess I can give is knowledge not based upon what is sensible. But again this seems to take for granted so much to me. Why, for instance, do we consider mathematical statements non-sensible? Mostly because we are taught there are 5 senses, and we likewise then develop a notion of interiority and exteriority to classify these things. But there's not a justification for such a division, it's just the way we talk. There's something to be said for saying I have a sense of my own body, a sense of my mental state -- so why not also have a sense for what is mathematical? Not necessarily a separate sense where we just posit a sense for anything, but it doesn't seem implausible to me to reclassify our internal lives, our mental lives, as sensible. I don't know what use such a classification would have, and clearly it would be confusing to presume such a classification in conversation, but insofar that we are asking after the nature of ideas and knowledge then it seems worthwhile to question these sorts of presuppositions.

Do you believe in such a thing as an innate idea? Or are ideas always built up from experience? — Mongrel

There is evidence that primates are innately afraid of snakes. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/are-primates-hard-wired-to-be-scared-of-snakes/

To the extent that its evolutionarily advantageous to be born with certain ideas or knowledge, it would stand to reason that such would exist.

For those who have owned dogs, I'm sure you've noticed innate abilities to hunt, to shepherd, to retrieve, and to do all sorts of things. If that can exist in dogs, why not people as well?

I don't buy innate ideas OR ideas that purely obtain in response to experience, either.

It seems to me that all ideas would be due to a combination of experience AND "brain dispositions" so to speak.

I agree with what you say about Leibniz. If the experiences of all the monads are coordinated then there must be a set of common principles governing the coordination, and it's not much of a step from there to saying that since the experiences are 'inner' to each monad, and since the principles are 'inner, to the experiences; there should be a (God-given) 'inner' ability to penetrate from the experience to the principle that underlies it. (I'm not suggesting that Leibniz does follow this line of thought, just that it seems to make sense to me just now, in the moment I am thinking about it; but I could be way off target in my 'thinking out loud', here).

I do tend to think that linguistically formulated ideas have their precursors or prototypes in pictures or 'visualized' (I like Whitehead's "prehended" in this connection) actions and movements. It doesn't seem as though abstraction, generalization or negation can be expressed concisely and unambiguously in an image or visualization, though; so the ability to formulate ideas linguistically would seen to expand the conceptual toolkit and ambit enormously.

If your only argument is that my explanation is to simple then I take that as a compliment. — Harry Hindu

OK then, I meant 'simplistic'.

Rambling maybe, but I think idealists are comfy with the notion that knowledge is generally of something, so knowledge always starts with encountering stuff. Leibniz agreed with that.

It's really more your hard-core materialists who deny that. For them, knowledge should be thought of as being about how to. Knowledge of red is competence in using the word, right?

Thanks for all the responses guys! Lots of food for ponderating.

Heh. Rambly on my part. I'm trying to bite off too much.

Perhaps a more concise and better expressed version is: the question you ask inherits a lot of answers which I think, insofar that we are interested in knowledge and ideas, should be questioned. We've already accepted, by answering the question, what counts as innate, what an idea is, what experience is, and knowledge too when it's at least within the confines of reasonble inquiry to have beliefs on these topics which differ before we even come to the debate on whether or not there are innate ideas or a priori knowledge.

Consciousness is always of something. It isn't clear that all thought and ideation are necessarily conscious. I think nativism is counting on the existence of unconscious ideas. If such a thing exists, how does that work? — Mongrel

How do we know that these other ideas are "unconscious"? Our brains are modular and we could have several different parts forming different concepts with different data.

It doesn't matter what form thoughts and ideas take - only that they have form. What matters is what they represent (the of) and we can have different forms represent the same thing. 2 + 2 = 4 AND two plus two equals four are written in different symbols but mean the same thing. I experience a 475 wavelength of EM energy as the color blue. Some other system could represent it differently, but we are both representing the same thing and can therefore talk about the same thing and have ideas about the same thing even though our thoughts would take a different form. In order for information to be processed you need the information to take some form.

Just as sensations and the ability to organize them are inherent features of the mind, so is attention. The attention is what directs the organizing of sensations and does so for some purpose, or goal, which also seems inherent in the mind. It's not the different forms information takes that distinguishes one process being conscious and another as unconscious, it is the presence of goals and a focus of attention - or the amplification of certain signals over others - that distinguishes one system as conscious and another as not conscious. The presence of attention is what seems to create this cartesian theater, as the attention "observes" this information architecture made up of sensory symbols, which is better than looking at the information that just one sense provides at a time. This information architecture provides real-time information from all the senses at once, which provides more detail and allows the organism to fine-tune their behaviors. Human consciousness seems to allow us to fine-tune our instinctive behaviors which can often lead to to trouble in complex social environments.

How do we know that these other ideas are "unconscious"? Our brains are modular and we could have several different parts forming different concepts with different data. — Harry Hindu

I'm not familiar with modularity in brains. We can tell that math isn't straightforwardly innate because there wouldn't be any such thing as a math class if that was true. That's one prong of Locke's attack. The other prong is to say that if Leibniz (and others) are saying that humans have a potential to acquire knowledge, then the thesis is trivially true.

Leibniz says it's something else. He uses the tabula rasa image, but says we should imagine it as marble with streaks running through it. Any statue can be cut from plain marble, but the streaky kind will reduce the number of possible outcomes... in like manner, the mind has an innate tendency to think along certain lines.

But do the streaks lean us toward the truth? Descartes says we can rely on that because of God's benevolence. For Leibniz, it's more that the human mind is a reflection of the divine mind.

I'm not familiar with modularity in brains. — Mongrel

Then you're not familiar with modern theories in neuro science and psychology.

We can tell that math isn't straightforwardly innate because there wouldn't be any such thing as a math class if that was true. That's one prong of Locke's attack. The other prong is to say that if Leibniz (and others) are saying that humans have a potential to acquire knowledge, then the thesis is trivially true.

Leibniz says it's something else. He uses the tabula rasa image, but says we should imagine it as marble with streaks running through it. Any statue can be cut from plain marble, but the streaky kind will reduce the number of possible outcomes... in like manner, the mind has an innate tendency to think along certain lines.

But do the streaks lean us toward the truth? Descartes says we can rely on that because of God's benevolence. For Leibniz, it's more that the human mind is a reflection of the divine mind. — Mongrel

Exactly - just as the number and kinds of sensory devices you have reduce the number of possible outcomes in your mind and create an innate tendency to think in sensory impressions (symbols). Do the symbols lean us toward the truth? Darwin says we an rely on that because of natural selection also fine-tuning the mind to interpret these symbols in ways that allow the organism to survive and procreate in a dynamic environment.

If your only argument is that my explanation is to simple then I take that as a compliment. — Harry Hindu


OK then, I meant 'simplistic'. — Wayfarer

Ok then point out what my explanation doesn't explain. What is missing? Isn't it simply the fact that most people have an emotional investment in their own experiences and minds - as if they are all-important, eternal, etc. and that is why they make this so needlessly complex - in order to evade any emotionless explanation that doesn't put their mind up on some pedestal? Like I said, "For every explanation of some phenomenon, there could be a large number of possible and more complex alternatives because one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified."

Evolutionary justification for confidence? And whence confidence in evolution?

Because evolution by natural selection isn't inconsistent, biased "selection". It is simply a process that engineers organisms to master changing environments, like cockroaches and human beings. The most successful organisms are the ones that have spread to virtually every corner of the globe - to every diverse environment. You owe your existence and your ability to think abstractly and about the future, which are all ideas composed of sensory symbols, to this natural process.

Our justice system seems to have confidence in our senses and minds as eye-witnesses to crimes are often the deciding factor in determining the innocence and guilt of others.