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Rationalism
By Massimo Pigliucci
www.loveofwisdom.org
Many meanings
• 17th and 18th centuries: freethinking, atheism
(as in J. S. Mill).
proves
natural existence
light guarantees of God
Two problems for Descartes
1. The Cartesian circle:
Hume’s fork
Hume on causality
Our perception of causality depends on:
• Priority (A comes before B);
• Contiguity (A happens near B);
• Necessary connection (A is necessary for B
to happen).
BUT, we don’t actually observe necessity,
all we have is correlations.
Problems with Hume’s account: we don’t actually
automatically infer causality from repeated
association; when multiple causes are at work, there is
no necessary connection (e.g., smoking and cancer).
The Kantian synthesis:
four kinds of judgment
A priori = ? Analytic
is reached
A posteriori = ? Synthetic
The possibility of synthetic a
priori judgments
A priori Analytic
A posteriori Synthetic
The world as we
The world as it is
observe it,
in itself
mediated by perception
experience
a priori categories
Hegel and dialectics
Thesis 1 Antithesis 1
(based on sense impressions)
The rise and fall of
logical positivism
The precursors:
• Russell, even theoretical entities such as atoms
are arrived at by the logical construction of
sense-data.
• Early Wittgenstein, since metaphysical
statements are not pictures of facts in the
world they are literally meaningless.
Doing away with metaphysics?
Verification principle: only statements that can
be verified empirically are meaningful. While
mathematics seems an exception, it really is
reducible to a series of tautologies.
Problems:
closer to analytic
experience
closer to synthetic
Massimo:
Picture of
Chomsky?
Chomsky and the revival
of innatism
Skinner and behaviorism: language is acquired by
continuous stimulus / response.
Chomsky: we have an innate ability to fit the
specifics of a language into a universal grammar.
Modern
Too few data neurobiology
Too many
are presented has identified
combinations
to the child parts of the brain
of words are
generated that recognize specific
aspects of language
Rationalism in ethics
(modus tollens)
Massimo: