Dec 10, 2022 09:04 PM
(This post was last modified: Dec 10, 2022 09:16 PM by C C.)
Towards a Planet-Wide Census of Legs, Eyes, and Minds
https://justinehsmith.substack.com/p/wal...g-thinking
EXCERPT: . . . “Are there,” this user asked, “more eyes or legs in the world?” [...] As I am about to show you, I think this question has profound implications for our understanding of certain fundamental matters at the heart of our ongoing debates about scientific realism. In particular, while I’m still on the fence about eyes, I don’t think legs, strictly speaking, exist, and I think the non-existence of legs offers an instructive illustration of the limits of the “manifest image” of the world.
Moreover, I think this difference has vast consequences for our understanding of certain prejudices that run throughout the history of philosophy. For example, it becomes clear why René Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” sounds like a serious and laudable stab at explaining the nature of our existence, while Thomas Hobbes’s retort, “Why not: ‘I walk, therefore I am’?” sounds like facetious trouble-making.
In a Hobbesian spirit, then, let us make some trouble... (MORE - details)
Exclusive 3:16 interview with John Locke
https://www.3-16am.co.uk/blog/exclusive-...john-locke
INTRO: John Locke is a British philosopher, Oxford academic and medical researcher. Locke’s monumental "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" is one of the first great defenses of modern empiricism and concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to a wide spectrum of topics. It thus tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim to know and what one cannot. He's a political revolutionary whose cause ultimately triumphed in the Glorious Revolution.
EXCERPT: [...] 3:16: Don’t we have innate ideas, such as Chomsky’s language faculty, and so forth?
JL: I know not this Chomsky fellow Richard. However, the taking away false foundations is not to the prejudice but the advantage of truth. Now I say innate, imprinted, impressed notions are certain propositions which, though the soul from the beginning, or when a man is born, does not know, yet by assistance from the outward senses, and the help of some previous cultivation, it may afterwards come certainly to know the truth of. I say these natural notions are not so imprinted upon the soul as that they naturally and necessarily known , even in children and idiots, without any assistance from the outward senses, or without the help of some previous cultivation.
3:16: I see. But that just shows that if there are innate ideas we can’t access them. I think Chomsky might agree with that but before pursuing this issue further let me ask if you think we are limited in what we can in principle know?
JL: Yes, I think it’s useful to know the extent of our comprehension. If by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the powers thereof; how far they reach; to what things they are in any degree proportionate; and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities.
We should not then perhaps be so forward, out of an affectation of an universal knowledge, to raise questions, and perplex ourselves and others with disputes about things to which our understandings are not suited and of which we cannot frame in our minds any clear or distinct perceptions, or whereof (as it has perhaps too often happened) we have not any notions at all. If we can find out how far the understanding can extend its view; how far it has faculties to attain certainty; and in what cases it can only judge and guess, we may learn to content ourselves with what is attainable by us in this state.
3:16: If we can’t get universal knowledge why bother trying to know anything?
JL: If we will disbelieve everything because we cannot certainly know all things we shall do as wisely as he who would not use his legs but sit still and perish because he had no wings to fly.
3:16: Ok, so returning to innate ideas. Why don’t you think innate ideas are needed for understanding?
JL: It seems to me near a contradiction to say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or understands not: imprinting, if it signify anything, being nothing else but the making certain truths to be perceived. For to imprint anything on the mind without the mind's perceiving it, seems to me hardly intelligible. If therefore children and idiots have souls, have minds, with those impressions upon them, they must unavoidably perceive them, and necessarily know and assent to these truths; which since they do not, it is evident that there are no such impressions.
3:16: Couldn’t the innate ideas be unconscious?
JL: If they are notions imprinted, how can they be unknown? To say a notion is imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same time to say, that the mind is ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of.
3:16: Ah, I think Chomsky would disagree with that! What if I put it like this, that our capacity to know is innate but what we know isn’t?
JL: The capacity, they say, is innate; the knowledge acquired. But then to what end such contest for certain innate maxims? If truths can be imprinted on the understanding without being perceived I can see no difference between any truths the mind is capable of knowing in respect of their original: they must all be innate or all adventitious: in vain shall a man go about to distinguish them. He therefore that talks of innate notions in the understanding cannot (if he intend thereby any distinct sort of truths) mean such truths to be in the understanding as it never perceived, and is yet wholly ignorant of. For if these words "to be in the understanding" have any propriety, they signify to be understood. So that to be in the understanding, and not to be understood; to be in the mind and never to be perceived, is all one as to say anything is and is not in the mind or understanding. If therefore these two propositions, "Whatsoever is, is," and "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be," are by nature imprinted, children cannot be ignorant of them: infants, and all that have souls, must necessarily have them in their understandings, know the truth of them, and assent to it.
3:16: Ok, so you’re saying that when we start we know nothing and learn from there?
JL: We come into the world without any idea or principle , either speculative or practical. All our ideas arise from sensation or reflection.
3:16: So what’s an idea?... (MORE - missing details)
https://justinehsmith.substack.com/p/wal...g-thinking
EXCERPT: . . . “Are there,” this user asked, “more eyes or legs in the world?” [...] As I am about to show you, I think this question has profound implications for our understanding of certain fundamental matters at the heart of our ongoing debates about scientific realism. In particular, while I’m still on the fence about eyes, I don’t think legs, strictly speaking, exist, and I think the non-existence of legs offers an instructive illustration of the limits of the “manifest image” of the world.
Moreover, I think this difference has vast consequences for our understanding of certain prejudices that run throughout the history of philosophy. For example, it becomes clear why René Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” sounds like a serious and laudable stab at explaining the nature of our existence, while Thomas Hobbes’s retort, “Why not: ‘I walk, therefore I am’?” sounds like facetious trouble-making.
In a Hobbesian spirit, then, let us make some trouble... (MORE - details)
Exclusive 3:16 interview with John Locke
https://www.3-16am.co.uk/blog/exclusive-...john-locke
INTRO: John Locke is a British philosopher, Oxford academic and medical researcher. Locke’s monumental "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" is one of the first great defenses of modern empiricism and concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to a wide spectrum of topics. It thus tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim to know and what one cannot. He's a political revolutionary whose cause ultimately triumphed in the Glorious Revolution.
EXCERPT: [...] 3:16: Don’t we have innate ideas, such as Chomsky’s language faculty, and so forth?
JL: I know not this Chomsky fellow Richard. However, the taking away false foundations is not to the prejudice but the advantage of truth. Now I say innate, imprinted, impressed notions are certain propositions which, though the soul from the beginning, or when a man is born, does not know, yet by assistance from the outward senses, and the help of some previous cultivation, it may afterwards come certainly to know the truth of. I say these natural notions are not so imprinted upon the soul as that they naturally and necessarily known , even in children and idiots, without any assistance from the outward senses, or without the help of some previous cultivation.
3:16: I see. But that just shows that if there are innate ideas we can’t access them. I think Chomsky might agree with that but before pursuing this issue further let me ask if you think we are limited in what we can in principle know?
JL: Yes, I think it’s useful to know the extent of our comprehension. If by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the powers thereof; how far they reach; to what things they are in any degree proportionate; and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities.
We should not then perhaps be so forward, out of an affectation of an universal knowledge, to raise questions, and perplex ourselves and others with disputes about things to which our understandings are not suited and of which we cannot frame in our minds any clear or distinct perceptions, or whereof (as it has perhaps too often happened) we have not any notions at all. If we can find out how far the understanding can extend its view; how far it has faculties to attain certainty; and in what cases it can only judge and guess, we may learn to content ourselves with what is attainable by us in this state.
3:16: If we can’t get universal knowledge why bother trying to know anything?
JL: If we will disbelieve everything because we cannot certainly know all things we shall do as wisely as he who would not use his legs but sit still and perish because he had no wings to fly.
3:16: Ok, so returning to innate ideas. Why don’t you think innate ideas are needed for understanding?
JL: It seems to me near a contradiction to say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or understands not: imprinting, if it signify anything, being nothing else but the making certain truths to be perceived. For to imprint anything on the mind without the mind's perceiving it, seems to me hardly intelligible. If therefore children and idiots have souls, have minds, with those impressions upon them, they must unavoidably perceive them, and necessarily know and assent to these truths; which since they do not, it is evident that there are no such impressions.
3:16: Couldn’t the innate ideas be unconscious?
JL: If they are notions imprinted, how can they be unknown? To say a notion is imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same time to say, that the mind is ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of.
3:16: Ah, I think Chomsky would disagree with that! What if I put it like this, that our capacity to know is innate but what we know isn’t?
JL: The capacity, they say, is innate; the knowledge acquired. But then to what end such contest for certain innate maxims? If truths can be imprinted on the understanding without being perceived I can see no difference between any truths the mind is capable of knowing in respect of their original: they must all be innate or all adventitious: in vain shall a man go about to distinguish them. He therefore that talks of innate notions in the understanding cannot (if he intend thereby any distinct sort of truths) mean such truths to be in the understanding as it never perceived, and is yet wholly ignorant of. For if these words "to be in the understanding" have any propriety, they signify to be understood. So that to be in the understanding, and not to be understood; to be in the mind and never to be perceived, is all one as to say anything is and is not in the mind or understanding. If therefore these two propositions, "Whatsoever is, is," and "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be," are by nature imprinted, children cannot be ignorant of them: infants, and all that have souls, must necessarily have them in their understandings, know the truth of them, and assent to it.
3:16: Ok, so you’re saying that when we start we know nothing and learn from there?
JL: We come into the world without any idea or principle , either speculative or practical. All our ideas arise from sensation or reflection.
3:16: So what’s an idea?... (MORE - missing details)