It is not known if the mutations are random or steered by the organism.

It is not known if the mutations are random or steered by the organism. — Haglund

I believe what you've written is not true, but I don't know enough to make an effective argument..

It's a scientific dogma. On which Darwinian/Dawkinskian evolution is based. There also is an organism based version of evolution. Not popular though. It's Lamarckian evolution.

It's a scientific dogma. On which Darwinian/Dawkinskian evolution is based. There also is an organism based version of evolution. Not popular though. It's Lamarckian evolution. — Haglund

As I said, I'm not ready to have this argument.

As I said, I'm not ready to have this argument. — T Clark

Okay. It throws a new light on revolution though. Eeeh.. on evolution. Viva La Evolution Revolution!

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.

An interesting (observed, documented) phenomenon is that babies are born with very limited knowledge. I vaguely remember an experiment with new born animals. An optical illusion of depth was created and covered with glass. The little subjects were very reluctant to crawl beyond the point where the illusion began. Somebody did the same thing with human babies,

Human babies have been observed displaying surprise at confounding phenomena. The babies did not find balloons falling to the floor very interesting. When a helium-filled balloon was let go of and rose to the ceiling, the expression on the babies' faces indicated that they were shocked and appalled, as well they should have been.

The babies in these experiments were very young, and had not experienced much of anything yet, in the areas of optics and physics.

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.

By the time we are old enough to make half-ways decent subjects in the psych lab, we have already absorbed a lot of learning. A two-year old child is thoroughly contaminated by all sorts of experiences and learned information. Adults who try to parse out where anything in their brains came from are, of necessity, dealing with spoiled goods.

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.

This isn't any sort of new insight, of course. But we like to claim that we have control over our thinking, when--I think--we do not.

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

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.

Calling analytic truths trivial overlooks the significance of syllogistic logic and its truth preserving function.

You're scratching the surface of Kant, so it's a bit early for you to critique the Critique.

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

Baby ≠  Neonate. I don't know if neonates know anything. They do stuff. Do you have to know stuff to do stuff? That question has come up a couple of times so far in this discussion. Does a capacity to learn language constitute knowledge? Does an instinct or reflex to suck constitute knowledge? How about a natural tendency to be in interested in human faces or voices? Older babies certainly do know things.

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

Human babies are certainly different from other young animals. Do the physical capabilities animals are born with constitute knowledge? Do migrating monarch butterflies have justified true belief?

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

Is this background mental processing the same thing as intuition? It certainly isn't reason as that is usually described, although I think most of what we call reason does take place behind the curtain.

Some small birds know to take hide if the overlying shape is hawk-like but cry out for food if it's a friendly shape. The animal forms are already known by the brain at birth. Which seems logical as the brain developed in that particular body.

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

I've looked at 23 definitions, examples, and descriptions of synthetic a priori knowledge. People seem to be really confused about what it means, even if you are not. Here's something I got from a really great discussion of synthetic a priori knowledge by a professor of philosophy at Western Michigan University:

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

Some small birds know to take hide if the overlying shape is hawk-like but cry out for food if it's a friendly shape. The animal forms are already known by the brain at birth. Which seems logical as the brain developed in that particular body. — Haglund

I agree.

Using an omnipotent god as an example is quite a stretch — Harry Hindu

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.

So it seems to me that any benefit to the species is also a benefit to the individuals

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.
Smallpox also doesn't have a belief/instinct that reproduction is beneficial, so maybe my example reached too far away. It doesn't reproduce to fulfill an irresistible urge. So maybe I need to illustrate with a more relatable pestilence like a tapeworm or something.
I usually take a relational view of almost everything, so I'd ask: What is the goal of a given species? Reproduction seems only a means to that goal, but the goal itself seems missing. Extinction is inevitable, so the goal is somewhere prior to that. Did any species now extinct ever meet its goal?

What is the difference between an individual and a self? Do individuals exist?

"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?

Anyway, the 'I' in that question is the self again, and the improbability goes away if you deny the existence of it. Nothing won the lottery. Of course the gilded human would ask this and the bug would not. There's no improbability occurring. It's why dualism makes so much sense to my lying intuitions, but makes zero sense to my rational thought.

Does the individual (Richard Cory say) exist? That's a question of persistent identity, which gets into all sorts of trouble as described by Parfit. But he also says it is unimportant. Our sense of identity (not the sense of self this time) is very pragmatic and allows us to function. Anyway, the current Richard Corey doesn't seem to be able to demonstrate to my satisfaction being the same individual as an hour ago. The law of identity seems open to violation, rendering it a mere language convention and not something real.

The hard problem of consciousness is resolved by abandoning dualism and physicalism.

Well I'm neither, so perhaps I'm doing something right.

Kant was responsive to Hume's extreme empiricism and his denial of knowledge of causation, a claim Kant claims is synthetic a priori and necessary for comprehension of the world.

That is, your attempt to understand the synthetic a priori is being impacted by your evaluation of differing philosopher's views.

You might do well to include institutional facts in your list.

You might do well to include institutional facts in your list. — Banno

I looked at the first post in your new thread. I'm not sure exactly how to deal with things that should be true, that we are obligated to think of as true. When I first started this thread, I thought about how how rights and morals would fit into the discussion. In particular, the American Declaration of Independence - We hold these truths to be self-evident. I avoided bringing it up specifically because I thought it would complicate and confuse things.

I'll pay attention to your thread and respond if I think I have anything to contribute.

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.

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

Hume is smarter than Kant. Kant was just an authoritarian.

Does a capacity to learn language constitute knowledge? — T Clark

Capacity is not equivalent to achievement; so, no: the capacity to learn language is not knowledge. Chidden who are deaf from birth (and are otherwise normal) can learn language, but not casually the way hearing children do. If they are not exposed to sign language, they will devise methods to communicate, but their language will probably be unique and deficient. (Oliver Sacks: Seeing Voices - A Journey Into the World of the Deaf; 1989). When a group of deaf adults who had not been taught sign language finally acquired it, their world became far richer in meaning -- plus they could communicate with strangers using ASL.

Older babies certainly do know things. — T Clark

Older babies knowing things (and continuing to add on to what they know) is a piece of our problem. We never get a cooperative, adult tabula rasa to experiment on. Even 1 year olds have accumulated too much to be called a blank slate. By the time we are old enough to think about all this meaningfully (between ages 25 and 95) we are packed, loaded, stuffed, saturated with all kinds of experience, knowledge, and new capacities we have developed (like the ability to estimate the value of a new abstract expressionist painting).

Do migrating monarch butterflies have justified true belief? — T Clark

I hope not. They have enough problems as it is.

Do the physical capabilities animals are born with constitute knowledge? — T Clark

This is a less clear-cut case than whether "capability = knowledge". Instinct involves performance, not just capacity to perform.

Animals build nests without being taught (presumably). Bird nests are unique to the bird species, and they build them that way the first time out. Squirrels' messy looking nests are actually dense, constructed of layers of leaves wound around a core where the squirrel rests and does whatever it does in there -- like figuring out how to get into impregnable bird feeders.

It would appear that nest building animals (birds, bees, squirrels, etc.) "know" how to perform nest construction. It's competent, untaught, and very consistent. 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.

Maybe instinctual knowledge was sacrificed by evolution where knowledge acquisition was critical. Primates seem to need instruction to survive. We aren't born knowing which berries to eat and which to leave well enough alone. It seems like many group predators (wolves, lions) have to learn how to cooperate.

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.

I saw a member of a natural tribe who said he didn't wanna use technology because that's the way to disaster and natural chaos and imbalance. That's not how God had meant us to function. I don't completely agree but he seems to be right. Is this innate a priori knowledge?

Capacity is not equivalent to achievement; so, no: the capacity to learn language is not knowledge. — Bitter Crank

Agreed, but maybe it's more complicated than that. Pinker and Chomsky think that grammar is inborn. If children learn a pidgin - a minimally grammatical mixture of several languages - they will turn it into a creole - a fully grammatical language. The example often used - in Nicaragua, they brought deaf children together into schools for the first time in the 1980s. Each child knew only informal signing they had figured out with their families. The second generation of students turned it into Nicaraguan Sign Language.

Even 1 year olds have accumulated too much to be called a blank slate. — Bitter Crank

The slate is not blank when we're born.

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

Which is one of the reasons I started this thread.

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

Apparently monarchs use very specific routes to go from the northeastern US to south of Mexico City. There are specific locations with a particular type of tree where they go. It is my understanding that it is very hard to get a hotel room in those areas in the winter. Some groups of butterflies are forced to stay in Motel 6.

It doesn't make sense to call knowledge a priori if it's dependent on knowledge based on experience — T Clark

This is correct, to a point. You put your keys on the table; there is then the experience, so you know you put the keys on the table. You know it because you did it. This is knowledge a posteriori.

You’re going to go get your keys, you know beforehand and therefore a priori the keys are on the table because you put them there, but you have yet the experience of picking them up from the table, so you don’t yet have the knowledge a posteriori that in fact they are there. This is what Kant calls “impure” a priori knowledge, insofar as there is an element of experience contained in it...you put them on the table before you went to get them from the table. This is the only form of a priori knowledge Hume grants, which he calls “constant conjunction”....a fancy word for “habit”......indicating simply that there never has been an occasion where you put keys on the table and they weren’t there when you went to get them. End of the simple story.

In Kant but missing from Hume and Enlightenment empiricists in general, on the other hand....and for whatever it’s worth....is the notion of “pure” a priori knowledge, that in which there is no element of experience whatsoever, and these are principles, most obvious in geometry and propositional logic. The beginning of a very complex story indeed, and to some hardly worth the effort and consternation, considering the result.

Do you agree that birds, for example, possess knowledge encoded in their genes?

The "human exception" tendency prefers to think that we learn everything, unlike 'lower' animals which are born with some knowledge. If the capacity to learn language and organize grammar is genetically encoded, then it would seem quite possible that our brains carry encoded knowledge.

What constitutes 'fair play' might be encoded, for instance. Dogs display a rudimentary sense of fair play (observed in laboratory experiments). Young children display a fair play ability early on (so I am told).

Agreed, but maybe it's more complicated than that. Pinker and Chomsky think that grammar is inborn — T Clark

That's a dogma just as the central dogma in biology.

The knowledge of an organism can be projected in genes.

The brain structure can be such that it follows knowledge and language, so not the other way round.

Then explain what you meant by babies are aware of quantity
— Harry Hindu

They are aware of quantities of things. — T Clark

Which is just another way of saying that conscious experience is quantifiable, — Harry Hindu

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.

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. Are (mental) categories mind-independent? If not, then quantities are not something mind-independent that one can be aware of, rather they are an integral part of the experience, hence conscious experiences are quantifiable, or members of a mental category are quantifiable.

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

I'll let you decide for yourself. Here is my understanding of the test the psychologists use.

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.

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

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.

"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

: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".

Why am I me? Because a unique arrangement of half of my mother's genes and a unique arrangement of half of my father's genes were fused together to make the unique me. We are all unique outcomes of different halves of our mother's and father's genes.

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

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.

What would happen if you showed the baby three red balls and one blue ball and a blue cube? How do you know if they would be interested in the quantity of balls or the quantity of the color blue? What if they ignored the balls and focused on the blue cube - being the novel thing in the whole group of things being shown to the baby?

It seems to me that a better experiment could have been performed to show if babies are aware of quantities. It seems to me that we would need to know how the baby forms categories, as in there being a quantity of balls or a quantity of the color red or blue.

Seems the world is filled with a priori knowledge. Hanging low on the tree. We just have to pick it! The high hanging fruits are somewhat harder to gather.