Molyneux's Problem: Empiricists vs. Rationalists on Human Perception and Innate Ideas, Study notes of Modern Philosophy

Download Molyneux's Problem: Empiricists vs. Rationalists on Human Perception and Innate Ideas and more Study notes Modern Philosophy in PDF only on Docsity!

British

Empiricism

Early Modern Philosophy

We identified Descartes as beginning the

period of Modern Philosophy.

From Descartes, will come two traditions

of Early Modern Philosophy:

1. British Empiricism (Locke, Berkeley, Hume)

2. Continental Rationalism (Spinoza, Leibniz)

Molyneux’s Problem Suppose someone blind from birth is suddenly made able to see. They already know the difference between a cube and a sphere by touch. Would they be able to tell the difference by sight alone?

Molyneux’s

Problem

The Rationalists will say yes. The Empiricists will say no. (By the way, although this is a really difficult thing to test experimentally, as far as we can tell, the Empiricists are right.) What’s the difference? They disagree about whether humans have innate ideas.

George Berkeley (1685-1753) Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713) Berkeley argues that there is no material substance on empiricist grounds- we never observe such a thing as “matter,” but only ideas. So Berkeley is a metaphysical “idealist”. Key idea: “To be, is to be perceived.” So, for Berkeley, the answer to the question “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” is that there is no such tree as that!

David Hume (1711-1776) A Treatise of Human Nature (1738) Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

The Copy

Principle

So, all of our perceptions are in some way constructed out of impressions, and we are therefore limited to the sense data we have had.

Hume’s Fork

In Section IV of the Enquiry , Hume divides all “objects of reason” into two classes: relations of ideas and matters of fact: Relations of ideas Matters of fact a priori a posteriori Analytic Synthetic Necessary Contingent ex. “1+1=2” ex. “Water is H 2 O”

The Problem of Induction

“Cause and effect” isn’t on the “relations of ideas” side of things. I clearly learn about such relationships only through experience. All reasoning about “matters of fact” is based on “cause and effect” type reasoning. But you can never see a “cause,” you can only speculate that one thing causes another. There are no deductive proofs for such things (like I might use in math or geometry.) But why should we rely on our experience? Well, because in our experience , experience is reliable.

The Problem of

Induction

This problem, and related problems, are still around. One way of stating this is that we know that science “works,” but we can’t really say why, and we can’t really prove that it does.