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LOCKE’S ATTACK ON INNATISM

LOCKE’S ATTACK ON INNATISM. Text source: Essay Concerning Human Understanding , book 1, chapter 2. THE DOCTRINE(S) OF INNATISM. The patron saint of innatism is Plato (see his dialogue Meno ); its great early modern (17th C) champion is Descartes .

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LOCKE’S ATTACK ON INNATISM

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  1. LOCKE’S ATTACK ON INNATISM Text source: Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book 1, chapter 2

  2. THE DOCTRINE(S) OF INNATISM • The patron saint of innatism is Plato (see his dialogue Meno); its great early modern (17th C) champion is Descartes. • Innatism (a.k.a. ‘nativism’) credits the human mind with certain inborn or pre-programmed cognitive contents: contents that the mind comes equipped with prior to and independently of experience. • One might endorse an innatist account of ideas, or of knowledge, or (the most common innatist position) of both ideas and knowledge.

  3. KNOWLEDGE INNATISM • This doctrine asserts that knowledge of certain truths is innate (i.e., inborn, pre-programmed) in the human mind. (So we do not have to learn these truths from experience.) • It is often invoked to explain how we can have knowledge of certain propositions that seems to go beyond experience, either (i) because of its universal applicability, or (ii) because of its subject matter transcends experiential reality • Common candidates for innate knowledge: • Knowledge of the laws of nature, logical and mathematical truths, ethical truths, metaphysical truths concerning objects transcending experience (such as God, the soul, and Plato’s Forms)

  4. IDEA INNATISM (a.k.a. CONCEPT INNATISM) • This doctrine asserts that we have certain inborn ideas or concepts (ideas which are built into the mind prior to experience, rather than being derived from experience) • It is invoked to explain how we can have ideas (i.e. concepts) that do not correspond to anything in experience, and are not even constructable from materials that are given in experience • Common candidates for innate ideas: ideas of God, basic mathematical concepts, basic logical concepts, moral rightness and wrongness

  5. The attack on innate knowledge: Book 1 chapters 2 and 3 attack the theory of knowledge innatism. The attack on innate ideas: Book 1 chapter 4 argues that certain paradigmatic candidates for innate ideas (God, substance, identity) aren’t really innate at all Book 2 will present the positive theory of the origin of our ideas, showing how all the ideas we do in fact have are explicable in terms of experience. Since this theory is simpler than the rival theory of innate ideas, it should replace it. (‘Ockham’s razor’?) LOCKE REJECTS BOTH FORMS OF INNATISM

  6. “[A] first, ’tis evident, that all Children, and Ideots, have not the least apprehension of [these allegedly innate truths]: and the want of that is enough to destroy that universal Assent, which it seems must be the necessary concomitant of all innate Truths: it seeming to me near a Contradiction, to say, that there are Truths imprinted on the Soul, which it perceives or understands not … No Proposition can be said to be in the Mind, which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of. [B] For if any one may; then, by the same Reason, all Propositions that are true, and the Mind is capable ever of assenting to, may be said to be in the Mind, and to be imprinted: Since if anyone can be said to be in the Mind, which it never yet knew, it must be only because it is capable of knowing it; and so the Mind is of all Truths it shall ever know. Nay, thus Truths may be imprinted on the Mind, which it never did, nor ever shall know.” (Locke, Essay 1.2.5, my emphases)

  7. THE ATTACK ON INNATE KNOWLEDGE (Essay bk. 1 ch. 2) • Locke’s dilemma for the knowledge innatist: Is their claim (a) that everyone actually has this knowledge consciously all along, or (b) that everyone has the innate potential or capacity to come to conscious awareness of this knowledge? • If (a) then it is empirically false, since children and ‘idiots’ do not have the putative knowledge. (EHU 1.2.5) (Moreover, consider all the disagreements in ethics and theology.) (EHU 1.2, 1.3) • If (b) then the claim becomes trivial, for every proposition we come to know (including all those we clearly come to know only through experience) is “innate” in this trivial sense. (EHU 1.2.5)

  8. ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS • Discussion sections start meeting in week 2. • The syllabus and main bullets from lecture are posted at: http://www.thomas-holden.com/teaching/phil20c/ • Reading for Monday: • Locke on primary and secondary qualities • --Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding book 2 chapter 8, and book 2 chapter 21, sections 1-3 only, in Late Modern Philosophy, 30-33, 33-34

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