Reason and Experience Flashcards
What is an analytic statement?
A statement which is true or false just from the meaning of the words.
What is a synthetic statement?
A statement which is true or false depending on the world.
Give an example of an analytic statement
All squares have four sides
Give an example of a synthetic statement
All tomatoes are red
What is a priori knowledge?
Knowledge of a proposition that does not require sense experience to be true
What is a posteriori knowledge?
Knowledge of a proposition that can be established through experience
Give an example of a priori knowledge
Bachelors are unmarried
Give an example of a posteriori knowledge
Snow is white
How are all analytic statements known?
All analytic statements are known a priori (do not require experience to be true)
What do rationalists believe?
That we have innate knowledge and that we have synthetic a priori knowledge about the world.
What do empiricists believe?
That we do not have innate knowledge, and that priori knowledge is analytic.
If we have knowledge that doesn’t come from sense experience, then where does it come from?
Rationalists would say that we have a form of rational intuition or we know certain truths innately as part of our rational nature
Who came up with the Tabula rasa concept?
Locke
What is Locke’s definition of an innate idea?
An idea which a person is conscious of from birth.
What is John Locke believe?
That all ideas were derived from experience
What is Locke’s argument against Innate ideas to do with consciousness?
That for an idea to be in the mind, the mind or person would have to be conscious of it. But we are not conscious of our ideas at birth.
What is Locke’s argument against Innate ideas to do with assented truths?
If we were all born with the same innate ideas, then there would be truths that we all assent to, but since there arent, there cannot be innate ideas.
How could Locke accept innate ideas? And why doesn’t this work?
If there were innate concepts, there could be innate propositions. However, there are no innate concepts which the mind has from birth, so there are therefore no innate propositions.
What is the rationalist argument against Locke’s argument? (we have no innate ideas because were are not conscious of them from birth)
Rationalists say that experience triggers our awareness of innate truths and concepts. Must be exposed to stimuli.
What example could rationalists use to illustrate the arguments that experience triggers awareness of innate truths?
Children would never learns a language unless they were exposed to it.
Argument against sense experience
Examples such as unicorns and god, they do not correspond to anything in experience.
How to empiricists respond to the argument that there are things which do not correspond to anything in experience
All complex ideas (Unicorns & God) are composed of simple ideas. And all simple ideas are composed of impressions.
What example may an empiricist use when arguing that complex ideas are composed of simple ideas.
Take the case of a unicorn, we have seen horns and we have seen horses. We just put them together to get a unicorn
Descartes is a …
Rationalist
Locke is a …
Empiricist
Hume is a …
Empiricist
Libeniz is a …
Rationalist
What things to rationalists believe we have synthetic a priori knowledge on?
Maths and morality
Quote from Locke about innate ideas
‘No proposition can be said to be in the Mind, which it never yet knew, which it was never conscious of.’
What is nativism?
the claim we have certain concepts or knowledge innately
How do we gain concepts according to Locke?
As we come to remember experiences through repetition we stater to label them. The senses let in ideas.
According to Hume, what are ideas?
faint copies of expressions
How does Hume think we acquire ideas?
By copying them from expressions
What are some simple concepts?
single colour, single shapes, single smells
How do we make complex ideas?
By uniting simple ideas
How do rationalists define innate knowledge?
Concepts or propositions whose content cannot be gained from experience, but which are triggered by experience
According to Hume what two things do we have knowledge on?
Matter of fact
Relations between ideas
According to Hume what is the foundation of knowledge of the matter of fact?
What we experience here and now
According to Hume, knowledge of matter of fact, beyond what we are experiencing here and now relies on..
induction and reasoning about probability
What is an inductive argument?
An argument whose conclusion is supported by its premises, but is not logically entailed by them
What is a deductive argument?
The conclusion is logically entailed by the premises, if the premises are true the conclusion cannot be false
What is an example of a deductive argument?
Premises 1: Socrates is a man
Premises 2: All men are mortal
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal
According to Hume, what must all matters of fact be grounded on?
Experience and the use of inductive reasoning
What is a priori demonstration?
Deduction that uses a priori premises, it doesn’t start with a premises derived from sense experience.
According to Descartes, how can we establish things?
Through a priori reasoning
According to Descartes, why can we doubt all sense experiences?
All our sense experience could be produced by an evil demon who wants to deceive you
According to Descartes, what is the only thing we can be sure of?
That we exist, because since we can doubt our existence, then we must exist. Doubting is a kind of thinking and if we think then we exist.
According to Descartes, what are the three things which can cause experiences
1) God
2) An evil demon
3) physical objects
What are the two distinguishable elements to our experience?
The data of the senses
The interpretation by this data by a set of concepts
What are the two empirical claims?
1) Complex ideas are built out of simple ideas
2) The simple ideas are copied from experience
According to Hume and Locke, what is innate?
The structure of our senses and our abilities to learn
What did Chomsky thing was innate?
our knowledge of language and grammar
What is the ‘poverty of language’ stimulus?
Children learn grammar so fast and from poor information, that the knowledge of grammar cannot be derived from experience.
How can empiricists accept that maths is known a priori?
they argue that it is analytic
What is a contingent truth?
a proposition is contingent if it could be false, if the world was different.
Is a posteriori knowledge contingent or necessary?
Contingent because a posteriori knowledge is knowledge of how the world is, and the world could have been different.
What is necessary truth?
A proposition is necessary if it is true and if i must be true. You cannot imagine a situation where it is false.
Is a priori knowledge necessary or contingent?
Necessary because a priori knowledge is analytic
What is a tautology?
Something that says the same thing in different words, so a trivial truth, it doesnt tell us anything new
What are the three ways we can be certain?
1) subjective, physiological meaning, something like a feeling
2) logical meaning, truth of proposition can be certain because it logically must be true.
3) bring (1) and (2) together.
What is knowledge according to Descartes?
What is ‘completely certain and indubitable.’
What is intelligible knowledge?
Experience of objects
How many concepts do we have according to Kant?
12
What is causality according to Kant?
the relation between cause and effect
According to Kant, how do we acquire concepts?
They are part of the structure of the mind
How many conceptual schemes are there according to Kant?
There is one conceptual scheme, and it is necessary for all experience.
Are our concepts known a priori or a posteriori?
A priori, because they are not derived from experience since they are what makes experience possible. Kant says they are part of the nature of the mind.
Who said that our knowledge of innate truths implies innate principles?
Leibniz
Who said that causation is constant conjunction?
Hume
Who thought that no ideas are universally assented to
Locke
What three powers does Kant think our mind has?
Sensibility - receptive to objects and events in experience
Understanding - mind has the power to think, judge, imagine (concepts)
Reason - power to make logical inferences
What is certainty?
A state where a person cannot doubt a given proposition because they are certain that is it indubidable
What is knowledge?
A justified true belief
What is innate knowledge?
Justified true belief that is part of our rational knowledge
What is introspection?
Its an internal condition.
Why might certainty be restricted to introspection?
Its an internal condition, we can doubt everything but what we feel, for example pain, we cannot doubt that we feel pain because it is how we are feeling, but can doubt what made us feel that pain.
Why might certainty be restricted to tautologies?
It doesnt tell us anything new, its always going to be true, for example ‘its raining or its not raining.’
What is an example of an inductive proposition
The pavement is wet outside, so it must be raining
What does it mean to say that we have an innate grasp of what the world is
We have knowledge or understanding of the world as part of our rational nature.
Why does Libeniz think that we cannot know necessary truths on the basis of experience?
Because experience only shows us how things actually are, and not how they actually must be
What are the issues with reaching a conclusion inductively?
The premisses do not guarantee the conclusion, there could have been other reasons for the conclusion.
What did Hume say about inductive conclusions?
He says we have no reason at all to accept the conclusion of an inductive argument.
What are the two questions in this course?
1) are all ideas derived from experience?
2) are all claims about the world justified a posteriori?
What did Hume think ideas were?
Copies of impressions
The sequence of representation in the case of the ship is not …
Reversible and so is subjective to the concept of causality
What is foundationalism?
The view that a belief is justified if it is ultimately inferred from basic beliefs
What is coherentism?
The view that a belief is justified if it is ultimately inferred from basic beliefs
What are relations of ideas?
Analytic statements
What are matters of fact?
Synthetic statements
What is constant conjunction?
The idea that we are used to something following something else, like a crash and then the sound of a crash
What are the categories?
Kants fundamental concepts which are necessary for the possibility if any experience of the world at all
What is conceptual relativism
Conceptual schemes are relative to communities
What is the adequacy of stimulus argument?
Hume’s claim that we can account for every idea in the mind on the basis of earlier experience
What did Kant say about space and time?
If we experience anything, it’s in space and time, so we must understand space and time in order to understand our experience.
We cannot experience anything without space and time, so they are necessary dimensions for experience so cannot be derived from experience
