Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Innatism (Locke’s argument against innate concepts (Leibniz defence of…
Innatism
Locke’s argument against innate concepts
One has the concepts involved in the proposition
Innate ideas must be universal
Newborn babies
God
Memory
Leibniz defence of innate concepts
Identity and impossibility are innate
Lacking word isn’t lacking concept
Innate knowledge snd concepts are dispositions in the mind
Intellectual ideas
Originate in reflection
Being
Unity
Substance
Duration
Locke
Doesn’t establish innate concepts
Confusion - not derived from experience
We must experience our own mind
Locke against innate knowledge
Other explanations?
Makes sense?
Idea
Range of mental phenomena
Complete thought
Sensation or sensory experience
Concept
Assumes innate knowledge is universal
Universal does not equal innate
Not everyone would remember through questions
Anticipates and objected four alternative definitions of innate knowledge
Knowledge we gain
(Locke) misuse
Capacity for knowledge is innate
What everyone knows and agrees to when they gain the use of reason
(Locke) why do we need to discover if innate?
Gained at some poimt after the use of reason
Truths that are assented to promptly as soon as they are understood
? Claims relying on sense experience
No satisfactory definition
Two arguments for innate knowledge
Plato Meno
To learn something you either already know it or you won’t know how to learn it
Learning is a form of remembering
Geometry
2ft x 2ft = 4sq.ft
8sq.ft?
Slave boy can get the right answer by responding to questions
Process of elimination
Knowledge must be innate
Gain knowledge from previous experience before birth
Leibniz, necessary truths
Not derived from experience
Experience doesn’t teach us how things must be
Discover truth in a priori reasoning
Impossible for the same thing to be and not to be
We need sense experience to form abstract thoughts
Responses to Locke
Reject C1
Conception of innate?
Plato and Leibniz don’t say innate is conscious
BUT
(Locke) If not conscious, what is it
Leibniz response
Commentary on and response to Locke
Misunderstood theory of consciousness
Wrong to claim P2
Disposition, aptitude and preformstikm
Rejects universal idea of ‘it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be’
Not necessary for thought
‘White is not black’
Accepts BUT applications of necessary truth
Unconsciously deploy our knowledge
Knowledge should be concsious
Locke can’t object there is nothing impossible about unconscious know,edge
Innate knowledge as a disposition
Not fully formed or explicit
More than capacity
Must need to actively engage
Potential knowledge
The mind as tabula rasa
Locke’s two sources of concepts
Sensation
Reflection
Hume on ideas and impressions
Sensation is different to concept
Perceptions
Forcefulness v liveliness
Reflections are weaker
Ideas are copies of impressions
Liable to confuse ideas
Concepts are copied by impression
Type of experience
Simple and complex ideas (Locke)
Basic blocks are simple impressions
Nothing but one uniform appearance or conception
Distinct
Unite or combine impressions
Abstraction
Originality
Issues with empiricist theory of concepts
Hume and Locke
No concept is more than a putting together of simple concepts
Derive from impressions
Challenging the copy principle
Weaken copy principle
Encounter in experience
Explain how and why the missing shade of blue is an exception
Similar impressions
Substance
Berkeley
Empiricist
Mental substance can be derived but the concept is not innate
Gain no idea of physical substance from sense experience
Concept is incoherent
Hume
Similar experience
A priori
Ability knowledge
Knowledge is part of the mind
In the mind from birth
Faculty of reason
Innate propositional knowledge?
Missing shade of blue