9 b. locke, leibniz

Starter:

• Look at the ‘Rationalism versus Empiricism’ sheet.

• Label descriptions of Rationalism R

• Label descriptions of Empiricism E

• Pair opposed descriptions

Another starter

• Look at the ‘Key Themes’ section in your Hume handout. It’s on page 6, mainly.

• Write a paragraph explaining the key ideas of empiricism.

• Look at the ‘Problems of Empiricism’ section in your Hume handout. It’s on pages 7 and 8.

• Write a paragraph explaining the key problems of empiricism.

From Hume to Locke

Answers to Problem of Induction sequencing activity

• H - The question that I initially asked was: what is the nature of all our reasonings concerning matter of fact?

• U - Our reasonings are based on the relation of cause and effect. And what is the foundation of all our reasonings about cause and effect?

• M - I answer in one word: Experience• E - Experience shows me that such and such an object has always had

such and such an effect, which leads to the inference ‘From causes that appear similar we expect similar effects’”.

• R - But however regular the course of things has been, that fact on its own doesn't prove that the future will also be regular.

• E - So “No arguments from experience can support the resemblance of the past to the future, because all such arguments are based on the assumption of that resemblance.” Inductive argument assumes a Principle of Uniformity which we can only offer a inductive (circular) argument for.

• X - Our habitual assumptions of regularity and connection are just that, assumptions: “In all reasonings from experience, then, there is a step taken by the mind which is not supported by any argument.”

Answers to Missing Shade of Blue activity

• D - "There is, however, one contradictory phenomenon, which may prove, that it is not absolutely impossible for ideas to arise, independent of their correspondent impressions.

• A - Suppose…a person…to have become perfectly acquainted with colours of all kinds, except one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with.

• V - Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest; it is plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting...

• E - Now I ask, whether it be possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his senses?

• Y - I believe…that he can: And this may serve as a proof, that the simple ideas are not always, in every instance, derived from the correspondent impressions;

• H - though this instance is so singular, that it is scarcely worth our observing, and does not merit, that for it alone we should alter our general maxim."

Locke: keywords/buzzphrases

• no innate principles

• universal consent…defective…proves the opposite

• Children and idiots

• Imprinting…ideas stamped upon their minds in their very first being.

• white paper with nothing written on it.

• Whence come all the materials of reason and knowledge? …from experience

• SENSATION: through the senses external objects are conveyed into the mind by sensation

• REFLECTION: ‘the internal operations of our minds, which we perceive by looking in at ourselves

• fountains of knowledge

• The senses furnish the yet empty cabinet

• if a child never saw any other but black and white till he was a man, he would have no ideas of scarlet or green

• Ideas are formed by association.

Extreme Sensationalism

Extreme Sensationalism: Condillac

• Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715-1780) wrote about 60 years after Locke.

• His Traité des sensations (1754), tried to show that external impressions through the outer senses, can account for all ideas and all mental operations.

• Using the famous example of a statue endowed (at first) with no other property than a single sense, smell, he attempted to derive the whole of mental life.

Condillac’s statue

• “Imagine a statue organised inwardly like a man, animated by a soul which has never received an idea, into which no sense-impression has ever penetrated.”

• Unlock the senses one by one, beginning with smell.

Start with stench and stink… Smell attention the statue's smell-experience will produce pleasure or pain memory, the lingering impression of the smell experience upon the

attention this allows comparison and "as soon as the statue has comparison it has judgment" habitual association/ the powerful principle of the association of

ideas comparison of past and present experiences desire, which

stimulates the memory and imagination, and gives rise to the passions.

Your passions are smell, transformed.

Moving on from smell…

• Condillac then proceeds through – Hearing– Taste– Sight– Touch– singly and in combination, concluding that everything has its

source in sensation• which is not the same in all men (so that’s why we differ)• but by means of which all innate faculties and ideas are to be swept

away.

• Condillac's views are, clearly, the most extreme form of the tabula rasa perspective– He doesn’t even make use of the idea of reflection.

Ending with the But!• Is there some power inherent within the statue that explains how it

is able to do what it does?– What would the difference between this power and an innate idea be?

• How do we explain variation between similarly constituted individuals?– If we are all blank sheets yet have the same experiences, why are some

of us different?• Are we happy to give up some abstract ideas as meaningless?

– Aren’t we committed to retaining (somehow) ideas such as those of causation, selfhood, freedom?

• Do we have some ideas that don’t seem to have their origin in sensory experience?– What about Hume’s own admission that the ‘Missing Shade of Blue’

seems to be a idea we don’t have the antecedent impression of?– What about Leibniz’s claim that some of our ideas seem to be

necessarily true, so can’t be derived from experience?

Michelangelo, ‘Awakening Slave’, end C15/beginning C16

This statue is unfinished.

Leibniz uses the image of a statue inside our minds being carved out of a block by sensory impressions.

Michelangelo’s creative process

• “In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.” – Michelangelo

• …what’s the story of the statue that follows?

Michelangelo Buonarotti, ‘Pieta’, 1498-1500.

It now stands inside St Peter’s in Rome.

Opposites in Leibniz…

Leibniz in pictures…

Leibniz’s Argument, in brief1. our systems…his closer to Aristotle and mine to Plato…2. …Aristotle and Locke: mind is tabula rasa, inscribed/imprinted by senses

and experience vs. Plato: the soul inherently contains various notions…roused up by external objects… on suitable occasions.

3. ILLUSTRATION: Mind contains ‘living fires or flashes of light’ made visible by the stimulation of the senses, as sparks can be struck from a steel = divine and eternal:

4. In contrast, (Problem of Induction) particular instances can’t confirm a universal necessity; for it needn’t be the case that what has happened always will happen in the same way

5. ILLUSTRATED BY North Pole/day length example = experience produces contingent truths only.

6. So necessary truths (of pure mathematics, arithmetic, geometry, metaphysics and ethics) “must have principles whose proof doesn’t depend on instances/the testimony of the senses”

7. …even though without the senses it would never occur to us to think of them: ‘prompted by the senses’ vs ‘proved by the senses’ distinction

Leibniz’s Argument (cont)8. We can “read these eternal laws of reason in the soul”: the senses

prompt, and experiments corroborate reason, like checking procedures in arithmetic.

9. Men form necessary truths only with reason. So unreasonable animals remain ‘brute empirics’.

10. For only reason can establish reliable rules, and construct necessary inferences.

11. Locke admits this, really – Ideas derived from ‘Reflection’ simply come from what is innate in our minds. Such ideas include: being, unity, substance, duration, change, action, perception, pleasure.

12. These ideas are present in our minds like veins in a block of marble.13. ILLUSTRATION: Hercules example: our minds are more inclined to take

one shape than another although work is needed to ‘polish into clarity’. 14. Ideas and truths are innate in us as inclinations, dispositions, tendencies,

or natural potentialities, and not as actual thinkings…15. Experience ‘unearths things from within’. We dig some objects of thought

from our own depths. Really Locke admits this, with his notion of ‘Reflection’.

Assess the claim that all knowledge and ideas derive from sense experience. (30 marks)

• Outline the view - Define terms precisely and concisely

• Illustrate the view – 1 ½ - 2 sides.– Hume as exemplary empiricist– Condillac’s statue as extreme example of tabula rasa theory– Locke’s attack on innate ideas and Locke’s view of how we acquire ideas

• Evaluate: aim for 2/3 well-developed points – 11/2 – 2 sides– Strengths of empiricism – vividness, usefulness, a posteriori as majority of what we know.– Claim is correct: all our knowledge does derive…

• Consequences of Humean scepticism – double-edged?• Usefulness of Hume’s fork and limitations on what we know - ?• Avoids pitfalls of innatism/rationalism

– Claim is incorrect: some of our knowledge is non-experiential• Descartes’ attack on the reliability of our sensory experience• Missing Shade of Blue• Leibniz – we do have necessary knowledge – special role of maths etc – a priori knowledge exists• Wax Example: sensory knowledge is actually checked by intellect / Leibniz – ‘checking procedure’

• Conclusion: say what you think. Give reasons.– Empiricism is fatally flawed OR a priori/innate ideas exist but are trivial OR balance of sources of knowledge

exists OR Empiricism is correct and only a posteriori knowledge exists.