Insofar as language is learned and all ideas are expressed in learned languages it makes it seem as though all ideas are acquired by experience — John
Kant's crucial insight here is to argue that experience of a world as we have it is only possible if the mind provides a systematic structuring of its representations. This structuring is below the level of, or logically prior to, the mental representations that the Empiricists and Rationalists analyzed. Their epistemological and metaphysical theories could not adequately explain the sort of judgments or experience we have because they only considered the results of the mind's interaction with the world, not the nature of the mind's contribution. 1
Do you believe in such a thing as an innate idea? Or are ideas always built up from experience?
Leibniz believed that principles of math are a clue. Though he granted that knowledge starts with the senses, he didn't believe that's enough. He pointed to the expectation one has that a principle is universally true. Instances of sensory experience can't account for that kind of expectation. — Mongrel
And what sensory experience leads you to posit the square root of -1, pray tell! — Barry Etheridge
In order to have an idea, you must first had a sensory impression to compose that idea with. — Harry Hindu
And what sensory experience leads you to posit the square root of -1, pray tell! — Barry Etheridge
Where did the idea of God come from then? — John
Try doing either without any senses.That is a good example, but then you could have picked just about any concept in science or mathematics. — tom
Are you saying that these blind and deaf mathematicians were born knowing mathematics, or were they taught it? If the latter then how did they learn it - if not by using their available senses? Braille and sign-language are just different forms of language using different symbols for different senses.There have been notable blind mathematicians. In fact last time this came up, I think I discovered some notable deaf-mute mathematicians. But regardless, your depiction of what constitutes knowledge is so simplistic, that it is barely worth debating. — Wayfarer
But the "effects" of God are visible to the eyes. The effect (like your existence) is what needs to be explained and your mind seeks explanations for virtually every thing experienced. Declaring God not to be visible to the eyes is just and assertion made by believers to make their God unassailable by science. I don't understand how anything that you know or think of isn't a composite of elements taken from the senses. If God isn't a composite of elements taken from the senses, then what is it and how do you know it even exists?But God is not visible to the eyes, and the thought of God is not a composite of elements taken from the visible world, so your assertion seems to contradict itself. — John
Are you saying that these blind and deaf mathematicians were born knowing mathematics, or were they taught it? — Harry Hindu
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