It seems useless. Synthetic knowledge is nothing but regular old empirical knowledge and analytic knowledge is trivial. People wave a priori knowledge around like it's a magic wand, but it's just fancy words for regular old stuff. — T Clark
Do babies "know" anything?
The neonatal brain is set up to acquire information, which it does immediately to a very limited degree. So, babies do not "know" who mama is until they have some good experience with mama, which one hopes happens post haste. In the days, weeks, and months that follow more information is acquired. — Bitter Crank
My guess is that newborn animals come loaded with the equivalent of "read-only memory" that enables them to start acquiring necessary information from the start. Some knowledge, but not very much, is built in. — Bitter Crank
A problem with "intuition" is that our brains (apparently) perform many functions which our conscious attention cannot observe. So, when we "sleep on a problem" we sometimes wake up with the solution in hand. Intuition? Or should we call it background mental processing?
Sometimes our reasoning is conscious and quite deliberate. Much of the time, it seems, whatever we call thinking and reasoning goes on through extensive unconscious operations working with decades of stored information. — Bitter Crank
That's not correct. Empirical knowledge is known a posteriori, not a priori.. The roots of those words, prior and post, reference how the knowledge is obtained: before or after experience.
You're conflating synthetic with a posteriori. Synthetic references a truth about the world, analytic a definitional truth. — Hanover
Hume didn’t use Kant’s terminology, but he did effectively say that we can have a priori knowledge only of a limited class of statements--statements whose negations are contradictions. All other kinds of statements can be known only on the basis of sense experience. The problem is that sense experience is insufficient for justifying many of the claims that philosophers (among others) have been wont to make. Hume’s explicit target is traditional “metaphysics,” as practiced by (what we now call) rationalist philosophers. Metaphysics, as a discipline, seems to be defined as a set of substantive claims (i.e., synthetic statements) that are purportedly known by reason alone, and not on the basis of sense experience. Hume’s conclusion is that all such work is mere sophistry, and that it should be “committed to the flames.” — Kent Baldner
Well, I'm questioning if the sum of two and two is objectively four (a priori truth), and I need to stretch pretty far to do this. The god isn't the point. The point is the possibility somewhere different where that sum is seven or something, or better, a universe utterly devoid of 'quantity', thus reducing 'two' to a meaningless thing where any sum of two and two is at best not even wrong. That's still a stretch. 2+2=4 is sort of a symbol of a priori knowledge, even if humans would probably not figure it out without experience.Using an omnipotent god as an example is quite a stretch — Harry Hindu
This gets back to my suggestion that 'reproduction is beneficial' might be a lie. Sure, reproduction makes a species fit, but is being fit beneficial? So say smallpox goes extinct (just to pick something the extinction of which you personally are not likely to mourn). On the surface it would appear that it would not be beneficial for the smallpox species, but only if smallpox actually has a goal. It's evolved to be fit, but doesn't actually have a goal to be that way. Is any purpose actually not served by its extinction? Nature doesn't care. No smallpox 'individual' cares in any way we humans can relate.So it seems to me that any benefit to the species is also a benefit to the individuals
"Oh, I wish that I could be Richard Cory" -- Paul SimonWhat is the difference between an individual and a self? Do individuals exist?
Well I'm neither, so perhaps I'm doing something right.The hard problem of consciousness is resolved by abandoning dualism and physicalism.
You might do well to include institutional facts in your list. — Banno
That is, your attempt to understand the synthetic a priori is being impacted by your evaluation of differing philosopher's views. — Hanover
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I'll try to make clear what makes sense to me. I'm with Hume, at least as I understand him based very limited experience. It doesn't make sense to call knowledge a priori if it's dependent on knowledge based on experience. I don't see how that is different from what is called a posteriori knowledge. — T Clark
Does a capacity to learn language constitute knowledge? — T Clark
Older babies certainly do know things. — T Clark
Do migrating monarch butterflies have justified true belief? — T Clark
Do the physical capabilities animals are born with constitute knowledge? — T Clark
Capacity is not equivalent to achievement; so, no: the capacity to learn language is not knowledge. — Bitter Crank
Even 1 year olds have accumulated too much to be called a blank slate. — Bitter Crank
It's not entirely out of the question to say we have some instinctual knowledge, but because we are so knowledge acquisitive from the get go, it's hard to tell. — Bitter Crank
Monarch Butterflies aren't hatched out with on-board maps, but they apparently possess some sort of cueing system that tells them it's time to move south, and to maybe guide flight with an inborn pattern of light waves. A cueing system isn't knowledge. — Bitter Crank
It doesn't make sense to call knowledge a priori if it's dependent on knowledge based on experience — T Clark
Agreed, but maybe it's more complicated than that. Pinker and Chomsky think that grammar is inborn — T Clark
Then explain what you meant by babies are aware of quantity
— Harry Hindu
They are aware of quantities of things. — T Clark
Right, which is to say that conscious experience/awareness of things are quantifiable - but only by first establishing a category for things first. You must have a category of trees before you can attribute more than one thing as being part of the category of trees.Which is just another way of saying that conscious experience is quantifiable, — Harry Hindu
You seem to be implying that quantities of things is something that is mind-independent that minds are made aware of via the senses.
As I said, quantities of things are dependent upon there being mental categories that quantities of things would be a part of. — Harry Hindu
As I said, the sum of two and two is true in this universe. Whether it is not true somewhere else is irrelevant. Something else would be true in the other universe, like 2+2≠ 4, but that has no bearing on whether or not it is true in this universe. We're talking about two different universes, and just like some knowledge of me (I am a white American male) cannot apply to you, or be true about you (you might not be a white American male), the same thing that may be true for one universe may not be true in another, but this has nothing to do with whether or not it is true in this universe.Well, I'm questioning if the sum of two and two is objectively four (a priori truth), and I need to stretch pretty far to do this. The god isn't the point. The point is the possibility somewhere different where that sum is seven or something, or better, a universe utterly devoid of 'quantity', thus reducing 'two' to a meaningless thing where any sum of two and two is at best not even wrong. That's still a stretch. 2+2=4 is sort of a symbol of a priori knowledge, even if humans would probably not figure it out without experience. — noAxioms
:brow: Seriously? You really think that there was ever a chance that you could have been a bug? Are you claiming that there is a soul that is separate from the body in that your soul could have been put in a different body? I think that you problem is dualism. As I said, your problem can be resolved by abandoning dualistic thinking. Your Paul Simon quote isn't saying anything other than "I wish that I could be a different I"."Oh, I wish that I could be Richard Cory" -- Paul Simon
The 'I' in that line is the self, and 'Richard Cory' is an individual. The line only makes sense if they're different things, and the self wants to 'be' a different individual than the impoverished employee in the factory. The related question is: "Why am I me?". It seems baffling. There's so many other things you could be like a bug or perhaps even a dust mote. There's so many more of those other things, so why am I not only a human (top of most food chains), but one with the leisure to be pondering philosophy on a forum during the 2nd gilded age of Earth. What sort of lottery have I won? — noAxioms
If babies are shown to respond to novelty, then why would they show more interest in multiple objects that look the same? It seems to me that they would show interest in unique things, not things that are the same.Babies have been shown to respond to novelty. Seeing something new interests them and they will look at it longer than something they've seen before. The baby sits in it's mothers lap and the psychologist puts a single item in front of it. The baby will look at it. Then it is repeated until the baby becomes less interested as measured by the amount of time it will look at the item. Then the baby is shown more than one of the same item and it again will show increased interest by looking longer. This is repeated more times with different numbers of items. — T Clark
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