Rationalism

Rationalism

1. rationalists can define innate ideas as that which the content cannot be gained from experience; triggered instead

2. Experience as a trigger

   • E.g. Birds only need to hear a little of the song of their species before able to sing - far too little experience to learn from experience
   • Leibniz - veined marble
   • criticisms
     • If experience is necessary trigger is it just saying that to have an innate idea is to have capacity to come to know idea?
       • Would reduce all ideas to innate ideas
       • E.g. have capacity to discover facts like height of mount everest - clearly not known innately

3. Innate knowledge of language

   • Chomsky: Knowledge of grammar is innate
     • poverty of stimulus argument - children learn linguistic grammar accuracy so fast and from poor info - knowledge cant come from experience
       • Children can construct and identify grammatically correct sentences
         • 1) on the basis of far fewer examples than they can classify 2) many sentences are ungrammatical 3) many mistakes children make are not corrected
           • example of 2) when speaking we say things like "the cat...look there- on the mat." - incomplete interrupted sentence
           • So children have innate knowledge of language that is triggered from exposure
     • Criticisms
       • Argue that this is not knowledge, children would have to have beliefs about it. Ability knowledge
         • could argue that innate ability generates innate knowledge

4. Plato thought our innate knowledge was knowledge of the forms (perfect ideas which exist independently of us)

   • Know 2 sticks are of equal length, have not gained idea of equality from experience but from form of equality
   • we recollect or remember out knowledge of the forms in apply concepts
     • E.g. Socrates talks to slave boy about theorem in geometry - slave boy knows nothing but gets right answer in response to Socrates's questions
   • criticism: could argue answer gained through reasoning - but then still rationalism

5. Mathematical knowledge - example of synthetic a priori

   • 2+2 always=4
   • Empiricists agree, but think analytic a priori
     • Could argue; how could mathematical discoveries then be made? can't discover if true by definition
   • Descartes could work out the size of the sun using maths - no sense experience needed

6. Ayers verification principle - criteria for meaningful statements

   • if a statement is analytic or empirically verifiable
     • Criticisms: principle itself meaningful - not analytic and not empirically verifiable. meaningless

7. Capacity to grasp ideas purely intellectually and work with them is crucial in science - Leibniz

   • "A corpuscle hundreds of thousands times smaller than any bit of dust" - can imagine