Recap, Hume on Human Understanding

This write-up is intended to recap some of our most productive areas of discussion over the last week in re Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding :

One of our earliest points of contention with Hume was whether or not everything is ultimately reducible to a single simple impression. The example in question was whether or not we could ever have the simple impression of “blueness” without it coming to us in a complex form—is the simple impression of blue original and basic, or is it simply an abstraction that comes about through the manipulation of our ideas? Although we did not get to a discussion of, say, the complexities of human language, our difficulty in establishing this sensation of “blueness” still speaks to the same anxieties that we had expressed in our discussion questions: if we cannot reduce to simple impressions even an item as simple as a paint chip from Home Depot, is Hume’s insistence on reaching a clarity in ideas through reducing them to their originating impressions threatened?

Another point of contention was Hume’s distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact; in particular, we seemed to have die-hard Lockeans who were unwilling to be brushed off in re innate ideas as Locke himself is in Hume’s footnote on p. 22. The debate hinged on the a priori (but not innate!) nature of relations of ideas, and it seemed that the problem was in accepting that we could have an ROI without an experience to match it (how can I have the geometric notion of a square without having encountered one?). What ultimately helped to dispel (most) of this disagreement was establishing ROIs as frameworks for structuring experiences, e.g. the principle of identity as an ROI that is necessary for sense perception to even be comprehensible and the ROI of the square as structuring our ideas of a square after these ideas have been occasioned by (and copied from) experience.

We also spent a great deal of time fleshing out Hume’s notions of constant conjunction vs. necessary connection. For some, this observation was commonsensical; having already accepted that the findings of science are at best probabilistic, they readily accepted that we could not know with absolute certainty any power of connection. Given this position, there was a question of whether or not we should abandon all attempts to reason in the world and live in distrust of all our observations of constant conjunction. We arrived at a position, though, like that presented by Hume on p. 41:

Nor need we fear that this philosophy, while it endeavours to limit our enquiries to common life, should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and carry its doubts so far as to destroy all action, as well as speculation. Nature will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever. Though we should conclude, for instance, as in the foregoing section, that, in all reasonings from experience, there is a step taken by the mind which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding; there is no danger that these reasonings, on which almost all knowledge depends, will ever be affected by such a discovery.

The principle of Custom or Habit is what compels us to carry on our daily life and reasonings without being paralyzed by the knowledge that we have no way of knowing that our classroom will necessarily exist tomorrow.

Of course, this argument for conjunction over connection was not accepted without question. One particular point of contention was the knowledge of modern science—don’t we know enough to determine by scientific laws why a pin prick causes bleeding? What we determined, however, was that the best science can do is continually subdivide the line between cause and effect by positing ever-smaller chains of cause and effect that never actually determine a necessary connection. We left class on Friday in a certain state of doubt regarding conjunction and connection; given the thought experiment of the wind and the trees, we batted around a few terminological and situational quibbles without coming down in any substantial way on whether or not the wind could be determined as the cause and the movement of the trees determined as the effect. It is likely, however, that we have not abandoned this question and will have reason to return to it in our continued readings of Hume.

Locke Discussion Recap

the week of February 15th to 19th

Mr. John Locke in all his white-haired glory

Due to extensive attention on Descartes (and a few occurrences of wintry weather), our coverage of John Locke was unfortunately truncated. For future reference, however, Caitlyn and I will attempt to recount the main points from our two classes on the Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

• John Locke was strongly egalitarian; he was opposed to the Cartesian value of reason because in his view, this simply replaced one set of dogmatic beliefs with another.

• Locke was a empiricist, believing that humans learn everything through experience. Empiricism rejects the notion of an "a priori" idea (something the mind can know without experience). Rationalists, such as Descartes, used universality--the idea that people all share some common knowledge--as the basis for innate ideas. Empiricists, such as Locke, refute this argument, citing "children and idiots" as counter examples.

• In lieu of innate ideas, Locke instead presents the idea of "tabula rasa." Though commonly translated from Latin as "blank slate," this concept does not suggest that the human mind is a void, but rather that it has the potential to receive, store, and develop ideas.

• In Locke's view, the human mind has two means by which to receive ideas: sensation and reflection. Sensation, he argues, is passive; the mind is involuntarily affected by the senses. In contrast, reflection is active internal process, in which the mind considers ideas previously acquired through sensation.

• To illustrate the difference between complex and simple ideas, we used the example of an apple. When one looks at an apple and perceives it to be an apple, this is actually a complex idea. A complex idea is a the combination of multiple simple ideas (for example, color, smell, visual appearance, etc.). These simple ideas cannot be created or destroyed; they are passive, wholly dependent on the object. Once the human mind acquires a simple idea, (for example, the apple is red) this simple idea cannot be "un-known." Conversely, this additionally means that humans cannot fabricate simple ideas (for example, humans cannot conceive of a color outside of the understood spectrum of light).

• A quality is the property of an object that causes an idea in the human mind. All objects have both primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities, such as solidity, bear resemblance to the object itself. Primary qualities cannot be changed. Secondary qualities, such as colors, sounds, tastes, and textures, resemble the primary qualities; however, they are malleable. It is with secondary qualities that humans generally interact, largely because they are easier to perceive.

Hopefully, this was a helpful summation. Please let us know if there are any questions or glaring errors in our report.

--Dancin' Anson and Caitlyn "Socks" Kennedy

Is "non-conscious thought" possible? (questions after Locke)

In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke writes: “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.” (1.II.5)

Although the immediate target of Locke’s remark is the doctrine of innate ideas, and particularly the supposition that certain ideas may be innate without having ever been perceived (as in the minds of children and idiots), his remark nonetheless has farther-reaching implications for the meaning of thought and its relation to consciousness. For in order to counter the claim that certain a priori ideas lie latent within the mind until such occasion as they are made drawn out into active and explicit recognition, he must deny the very intelligibility of such a thing as “unconscious idea.”

While this might strike us a perfectly reasonable and unobjectionable claim, there are certain cases raised by recent neuroscientific research that suggest a perfectly coherent way of understanding thought as an activity that is not primarily or originally an operation with consciousness. That was the point I wanted to make in class yesterday when I referred you to this article on a study that showed predictive patterns of activity in the brains of test subjects prior to their becoming aware of their own supposedly conscious and deliberate decisions to act.


Now clearly the data provided by this one study are open to multiple interpretations, and we should not be too quick to dismiss Locke’s argument on the basis of this evidence. For one thing, although the study was able to produce discrepancies as great as seven seconds between the time of observable brain activity and awareness of choice in test subjects, it is obviously not the case that the delay is so pronounced in all decision-making activities (think of split-second reactions, for example). These results were produced under very controlled conditions that (from what I could gather from the study itself) were meant to exaggerate the delay as much as possible. In any case, I wonder whether you think that these measurable activities in the brain that exist prior to our awareness of them should count as “thoughts” in any meaningful sense. Suppose that one of these subjects were interrupted just after having registered a predictive pattern of brain activity, but just prior to becoming consciously aware of it—would we say that this person had thought?

I’m curious to hear what you all think.

Richard Swinburne and an Argument for Substance Dualism

As promised, here is Dr. Larry Lacy's paper on the subject of Richard Swinburne's argument for substance dualism and Lacy's critique and alternative. This is an argument based on enduring subjects of experience.


Swinburne and Substance Dualism -

Anson Jeng and Caitlyn "Socks" Kennedy's summary of Locke's Essay on Human Understanding

John Locke’s Essays Concerning Human Understanding

In John Locke’s Essays Concerning Human Understanding, he explores how individuals acquire knowledge and understanding as well as other issues of epistemology. In contrast to earlier philosophers, in particular those of the Cartesian persuasion, Locke strongly rejects the idea that humans carry an innate center of knowledge. He argues that no individual is born with pre-existing truths. This concept of tabula rasa (Latin for “blank slate”) favors the nurture side of the nature versus nurture dialogue. Locke attempts to show that people are born with no knowledge whatsoever, and that all the knowledge we acquire must first be experienced.

Locke systematically refutes the idea of innate truths from several angles. He first argues that if one truth is innate, then all must be, and, conversely, that if one truth is adventitious, all other truths must follow suit. Locke secondly uses mathematical proofs as the counter for more theoretical maxims, such as “whatsoever is, is” and “it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be.” He reasons that, in order to accept a mathematical proposition as true, one must first understand the ideas of which the proof consists. This furthers his belief that our realm of knowledge is built on ideas that we have gathered, stacked onto each other to create new ideas.

Locke proposes that there is a sequence of events that lead to our acquisition of knowledge. First, the senses let in ideas, and the mind becomes familiar with them, lodging some in the memory and giving them names. The mind abstracts these ideas while learning the function of language. Finally, these ideas grow together in the mind, building on some, contrasting with others. This growth subsequently increases the ability of reason, which allows more truths to be gathered and deduced.

In confronting the debate regarding ideas that we seem to find within our minds, Locke suggests that we obtain knowledge through either sensation or reflection. Sensation is composed of the ideas brought to us through the senses, while reflections are those ideas that we find in our mind. Locke is adamant that reflection is not merely a discovery of a pre-existing truth, but an act of reason, a search through ideas we have obtained through experience to deduce a greater truth not discoverable through simple sensory experience.

While Locke’s position on the attainment of knowledge represents a polar opposite to Descartes’, the two share similar views on the categorization of ideas. One of these similarities is the concept of negation. Locke uses the example of silence, which is simply an absence of sound. He additionally uses the analogy of a snowball in the same manner as Descartes’ beeswax (from the Second Meditation) to demonstrate that secondary qualities are transient and primary qualities are representative of the snowball (beeswax).

Questions

1. In what ways do Locke and Descartes contradict each other? In what ways are they similar?
2. What effect did the concept of tabula rasa have on later philosophical schools?
3. Does Locke’s assertion that knowledge is obtained only through things outside ourselves oversimplify the nature versus nurture argument? Does this simplification discount the authority of God as established by Descartes?

Descartes Meditations 4, 5, & 6

Unfortunately, due to the snow days we were forced to compress our discussion of Descartes’ last three meditations into two days. However, we were able to hit on a majority of the most significant arguments from this section of the Meditations.

We started our discussion with an overview of Descartes’ explanation for the existence of error in a world created by a perfect God. Descartes’ argues that error comes about through an interaction between our understanding and our will, in which our will to apply our understanding to something outstrips the bounds of our understanding. Therefore, we concluded along with Descartes that error can only be avoided when we check our will and keep it from seeking things that we cannot have a full understanding of. This seemed self-explanatory to the class and there were no major objections.

Next, we addressed the concept of moving from our thoughts or understanding to an object. Descartes suggests that there is an object out there that is in our thoughts such as the triangle. We were presented with the question about what is it in objects that we understand clearly and distinctly? Also, what is it in the material body that we understand clearly and distinct? We concluded that extension helped us derive a clear and distinct perception of the material body, as the essence of extension is measurability. Consequently, anything with properties that can be quantified we can understand clearly and distinctly. However, the objection was brought up that this is still dubious because all information that we receive from the world comes through sense perception. For example, even though we can measure the extension of a body with a yard stick, our reading of the yard stick depends on our perception of visual data, while furthermore, the yard stick itself was produced by another human who was relying on sense perception to make it.

Sense perception, however, is the link that helps us move from thoughts to comprehending objects. Sense does not just lead us to believe a perception but helps us understand that there is a cause for our perception. Descartes argues that God would not deceive us through our senses, because he is perfect and deception is an imperfection. This would seem to be his answer to the objection in the previous paragraph, but the class did not find it to be a very convincing one.

Objective Reality

So regarding the question I asked today in class about the existence of the dog that I see in front of me (assuming I'm delusional), I wanted to further examine it.

So let's assume I'm sitting here, and I look over and see this dog. It is clearly standing there, wagging its tail and all, and I know this through my sense perception. To then confirm that it actually does exist, or to quantify it, I then get out my yardstick, and measure it. Well sure enough, that dog measures out to be two feet long. I have therefore qualified its existence. At least to myself. If you look over, and see nothing (because of course I'm delusional), you would say "I see no dog, I cannot measure it" or such. In this case, there is no reality of the dog for you, but there still is for me.

Thinking then on that, it seems to me that reality becomes a purely subjective and individual practice. Either that or reality is something that we ourselves may measure and qualify, but to have true proof of existence, we need a consensus for. The reality of objects is either subjective or dependent on the multitude.

Professor Grady went on to explain that I may see this dog through some mistake, because God is not systematically deceiving me, and therefore I cannot systematically be wrong all of the time. I understand that this is what Descartes is arguing, but I'm not buying it. I feel like there's some sort of problem here. I don't see how, if I can see and measure this dog, and you can't, therefore leaving the object to be both real and not, reality is not objective. Or is this something that can be explained only in the case of totally rational and sane beings?

Descartes Overview

Last week we summarized Descartes' first meditations, and hopefully helped with discussion regarding dualism as well as proof of God's existence. While we spent a class period on Descartes' argument for God from the magnitude or reality of causes, we didn't really touch that much on Cartesian substance dualism. As Descartes was one of the most famous proponents of the position, I had hoped to spark some debate on this neglected metaphysical conception. We did get a nice discussion going for the proof of God, though, so I'm glad to see that we aren't simply "swallowing the medicine."

I think the major point of contention on this proof was probably a confusion or conflation of the term "reality." Several people simply did not seem convinced that something can be more or less real than something else, and certainly not that ideas are more real than physical objects. When we began talking about the quantity of reality that certain things had, and that if a thing has a minimum of some property, it has nothing and is nothing, I began to see the logic behind Descartes' argument more clearly. Not to say I would endorse it, but I can understand his reasoning, at least.

What about the conception of the infinite as a positive idea? We didn't really get to a satisfactory resolution of that issue, so I'm hoping people have done some thinking on it and can continue discussion. I still hold that, much like Lewis' moral argument, arguing that we do not meet the standard implies the existence of that standard. Beyond that, all I can say is that I seem to be directly aware of a positive conception of infinity, rather than a negation of finitude or a simple addition ad... well, ad infinitum.

Rather as a side note, for those interested in the idea of infinity, I would recommend researching the work of David Hilbert. He has some fascinating thought experiments on the nature of an actually infinite set, rather than a potential infinite. Here's a link to an overview of one of the more famous problems, Hilbert's Hotel.

Arguments for Substance Dualism?

What do people think about substance dualism? I talked with my friend Larry Lacy this weekend about this. He's a retired philosophy professor who taught here for about forty years, and he gave me a very interesting kind of series of arguments for it. I asked him to send me his paper on it, and I'll post it when I get it.

Measuring consciousness

I saw this article on new research into the brain activity of patients in "vegetative" states in the New York Times earlier this week, and thought some of you might find it interesting, especially in relation to our discussion of Descartes. If, as Descartes argues, the essence of the human soul rests in the mere fact of thinking, then any discovery that shows evidence of mental life in such patients raises all kinds of complex ethical concerns about their autonomy and human dignity.

One more thing: brace yourself for the terrible Descartes pun at the end of the article, and don't say I didn't warn you!