My problems with empiricism....

I read Glaucon's first going up the page as I sometimes do. I now see that, in context, I agree with what you are saying and do not really feel challenged by it, but in a sense supported by it.

As this section makes clearer.

There is a link in another thread related to this.....

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2511763&postcount=46

it was originally posted by Dr. Mabuse.

 

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But it's not.
It is nothing but a description of a methodological approach to the acquisition of knowledge.

As you noted, with respect to the Rationalist POV, neither of these positions entail any theory of mind [TOR] in particular.
Although people often do like to compare Rationalism and Empiricism, the two are vastly dissimilar; where Rationalism 'builds' a structure deductively, Empiricism 'builds' inductively.

Well, then I suppose we get back to that old 'purity' question again.
Can there be a pure Rationalist, a pure Empiricist?
Methinks not.

 

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I am not thinking it is a full theory of mind, but a theory of mind as it relates to knowledge. Or to put it another way: a theory of how minds learn and know things. Included in my deduction is the idea that empiricism is not simply a description of a method, but a philosophy for that method to the exclusion of others. IOW what an empiricist would believe about his method.

Here's how I am making the deduction.

If the only knowledge we have is via experience, this means all the knowledge we have is via experience. If there were any counter examples then we have some other source for knowledge. Therefore if we look at an adult human, he or she has gained all of his or her knowledge via empirical methods. Hence no knowledge that adult human has came via any other method. This to me implies tabula rasa, very strongly.

Now above you refer to it as a mere descpription of a methodological approach. But whenever I look at any description of empiricism in any resource, it seems that empiricism includes the belief that it is the only way to get knowledge. And this seemed to be the problem the empiricists have with, for example, rationalists.

IOW I have never thought someone calling themselves an empiricist would say that empirical approachs are one method amongst others for gaining knowledge.

If I have misunderstood, that might the root of the problem.

And as above, implicitly rationalism is asserting that minds come into existence with knowledge not gained through experience. This does not qualify as a full theory of mind, but it rules out some theories - for example, one including tabula rasa. Empiricism, because it is explaining where all knowledge comes from comes a little closer.

I would say that this conclusion would be hard to reach purely empirically. Also, isn't rationalism impure. IOW, I thought rationalists did think one could learn via the senses, via experience, but in contrast thought that knowledge was also to some degree innate?

and a last question - one I think is critical -

if one allows for impurities in one's approach, by what method does one decide which impurities are OK?

Just to back up my claim that empiricism is not simply a description of a method, but in addition a claim about that method and all other methods, here are a couple more definitions of it......

And then today I found this:

In fact googling tabula rasa and empiricism gets a wide range of authorities connecting the two concepts.

 

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I just realized there is a problem with saying that evolutionary biology offers a fall back position for empiricism. And here it is....

Changes are 'learned' not in the brains/minds of individuals, but through success/failure. IOW behaviors that work have a better chance of continuing to exist and those that don't die off - the individuals are less successful. So it is not as if later generations do something that their ancestors learned - this would be Lamarkian - but rather their ancestors were like that - due to mutations - and because of these they continued to live. So it is not experience, but not being eliminated, that led to implicit knowledge. It is what they did not experience that led to something being implicit knowledge. Otherwise we are treating evolution as either Lamarkian or teleological.

Unless, a la Gregory Bateson, one wants to treat nature as a kind of mind, learning through trial and error.

 

Fair enough.
But, by that definition, so are all other approaches....
The difference of note however, is that Empiricism grants no priority to any axiom, beyond that which states it is illegitimate to assert any non a posteriori source of knowledge.

I agree. Contingent upon how strictly one chooses to define knowledge.

Not to me.
Again, contingent upon one's definition of knowledge.

Correct. Just as I've said.
In other words, a methodology is preferable to an ideology.

No. The problem is that the Rationalists begin from illicit a priori axiom(s).

True.
But, more importantly, it's description of our experience that is fundamentally more accurate.

But it's not subject to the empirical criterion. What's on topic here is nothing but a logical [or linguistic] matter.

Correct.
The problem being that, for the Rationalist [as Descartes discovered..] the entire criterion of all knowledge is one axiom. This forces the Rationalist to discard what would be recognized as knowledge-content by any other system.
[In fact, this is, ultimately, why all the great 'system-builders', like Descartes, fail: all possible knowledge-content must be derivable, in principle, from some axiom of the system, despite experience....]


By 'purity' I meant that one must remain consistent in one's approach [as Descartes did..]. And so, it's not a matter of what one allows to be knowledge-content, but of what one must exclude. Again, this is a pragmatic matter.

Right.
And I read all of that as consistent with Empiricism being a methodological approach. All that is required is that one make no illicit assumptions that go beyond the scope of experience [thus, the importance of eliminating, or at least disregarding any a priori].

Empiricism is a dynamic approach whereas Rationalism is an engineering approach.

Again, all contingent upon how one chooses to define knowledge..
Both "knowledge" and "tabula rasa" need to be clearly defined here, to make any headway. I'm not sure which of the two would be easiest, though I suspect that it would be tabula rasa...

 

My point is that one can draw a conclusion about minds from the theory itself. IOW we think of minds as, in part, something that gains knowledge. If we assume, and everyone does except the radical skeptic, that minds have some knowledge, then Empiricism leads directly to a conclusion about the working of that mind, not in total, but in relation to that isseu.

It seemed to to Locke.

Sure, but the moment you are putting it forward as the best or only true methodology you have an idealogy. Empiricism, as far as I can see from reading empiricists, is not put forward as

Hey, here's a process one could follow.

It is always put forward, by empiricists, as the proper process. They are not merely descriptive.

It seems to me, as far as individuals, they are more correct. We do come into the world with innate ideas - methodological ones - it is good to imitate, for example.

But I don't think this is the case. It seems clear to me that individuals come into existence and learn much faster than simply via experience. They already have a batch of heuristic devices in place. Animals make this very clear.

At what age should one start doing this? Or to make that a statement. Evolution seems to have developed creatures that do not disregard a priori. Us included.

yes, I suspect the same. I do not think all of my knoweldge came via experience. I did not start at zero when I was born. I knew to look at mom's face. I knew to imitate her sounds. The whole was I used my sensory apparatus was not taught to me, though I certainly had to practice.

Note my last post before this one. I think it raises a nice challenge to the idea that all our knowledge has come via experience. Much of what we know and efficiently do, according to evolutionary theory, is there because of what we did not experience, extinction. Or because our ancestors, picking up a trait randomly via mutation, thrived. The problems they did not experience led these traits to be carried on.

 

glaucon:

i'm a little hung up on this matter of the tabula rasa and empiricism, so for sake of clarification, is this what you are saying?:

for the empiricist, knowledge is to be gained only via experience.

for sake of discussion, one can say that tabula rasa would refer to that which is without experience (and consequently, without knowledge).

therefore, the "mind" which has not (yet) experienced (and therefore, not acquired knowledge) can be said to be a tabula rasa.

BUT, i would be reasoning deductively in order to draw this (tautological) conclusion; IOW, i would not be employing empirical (inductive) methodology, but rather a rationalist methodology, to reach this conclusion from the preceding premise. i don't really require any sort of "evidence" gleaned through experience in order to state this, it can be rationally deduced.

i am assuming this is what you meant when you said this:

 

i largely agree; though at the same time, were one to conceive "you" (or "i") differently, one might think differently. what does it mean to say "when i was born"? i'm not alluding to reincarnation here, rather just conceptions of beings as other than unique and separate "selves."

 

Firstly, my apologies for my tardy response.
I've been struggling as of late with my 'worthiness'[sic] of being here, as well as with the frustrating unresponsiveness of the Site.

I agree with all you say.

However, the same conclusion cannot be legitimately arrived at by a 'pure' Rationalist. For the Rationalist, all of their knowledge is entirely contingent upon some non-experiential notion...

Well, I can admire Locke for many things, but his conception of the mind in general, and epistemology in particular, is not one of them..

Fair enough. But then again, we're back at that old horse we've been beating for some time now: the method itself, versus the method as advertised..

Well, that's a hefty topic in and of itself [the "innate" I mean..].

Myself, I don't buy it. Unless one is prepared to grant the status of "innate" to abilities, then I'll have to disagree.

But, more to the point, those Rationalists cannot be correct: those axiom(s) are forever unknown [or undefined...].

Kind of a vacuous point no? One cannot entertain the notion of someone learning in the absence of experience...

And I fully agree with this.
However, this is not synonymous with the Rationalist POV. These 'abilities' [as I called them above] are not the same thing as an a priori axiom.

I don't know what you mean here at all.

Firstly, you're assuming the existence of any a priori [ no need to point out to you that this is fallacious...].
Secondly, even granting the first, evolution neither regards nor disregards.

..perhaps I'm misunderstanding you here...

Yes, I do think we're off into semantics land again.

Nonetheless, I'm not maintaining that when you were born you were 'starting from zero'. I fully grant you those 'instinctual' gestures and behaviour were indeed not 'given by [your] experience'.
But then again... that depends on what you mean by "given by experience"...

I fully grant that our ability to learn, to gather knowledge, is not limited specifically to the scope of the individual in question. However, this does not entail that we each are born with some magical notion of knowledge.
Indeed, I would maintain that, while you behaved such that you would look at your mother's face, or attempt to imitate her sounds, this was not yet "knowledge" to you...

 

Again, I must apologize to you as well for my tardiness.

Correct.

Correct [contingent upon what one elects to define as "knowledge"].

Note, the inclusion of the denial of knowledge here cannot be maintained by the Rationalist.

Fair enough.

Right.
However, you [in this case] are not a tabula rasa, so, the whole thing falls apart there.

I do, nonetheless, get your point.

The problem here is that I've made no mention [nor has any Empiricist worth their salt..] that knowledge can only come from inductively derived sources.
IOW, the empiricist doesn't deny non-experiential sources of knowledge [eg., logic], but rather that, for any knowledge-content to be such, it must be done so via experience.

So, still with Logic, while the Rationalist would say that it is a gift of god [Descartes..] or magically woven into our brains [Chomsky..], the Empiricist would deny this, preferring instead to assert that logic represents the systematization of experiential regularities. Where the Rationalist would say that Logic exists, the Empiricist would say that we made Logic.

Not quite.
Here again, we're dealing with neither with the Rationalist POV, nor the Empiricist POV. The two are not mutually exclusive with respect to the scope of content. Thus, my mentioning that the conclusion to be drawn, can be done so specifically within the confines of logic/linguistics.

Overall, I think it's important here to remember that the tabula rasa notion was introduced originally as part of a thought-experiment; it wasn't meant to serve as some sort of criterion for one's position on the "mind".

 

likewise, i don't really see how denial of experience can be maintained by anyone. certainly, one can assert something very particular, like "this entity has not seen star wars"; but can one assert, "this entity has not experienced," especially when we don't really know what "this entity" is? what is "mind"? can one reasonably assert that "mind" comes into being--not as something from nothing of course, but even as something transmuted?

definitions of "mind" seem every bit as problematic as definitions of "knowledge."

actually, that was just my sloppy and hasty wording--i wasn't so much referring to myself having done anything, as i was just the reasoning process of drawing a conclusion from the preceding premises.

again, i was a little hasty there--i wasn't so much implying that the empiricist does not employ deductive reasoning (i can't even imagine how one could even not employ deduction--this kind of reminds of early detective literature, especially conan doyle's sherlock holmes stories, in which they emphasize "deduction," but what they are really doing is inference, which is inductive. holmes, et al, certainly "deduce" plenty, but he often claimed this when he was actually inferring.), rather, i was trying to emphasize the problem with how the premises could be stated in the first place based upon experience: what experience could suggest the absence of experience?

still though, it seems that the notion of tabula rasa is primarily associated with thinkers who have espoused a largely empirical methodologies, from aristotle onwards.