Impenitent wrote:
are you saying you do not perceive the impression (of the thing-in-itself) but rather its category?
-Imp
Yes. In philosophy this has become widely known as "Referencing" All terms are considered to have reference points out there in the world. There is a casual connection between the things out there and the way we can refer to them. In other words, we can reduce meaning to information in order to solve problems. Something computers do very well.
However, in relation to philosophy of mind I am saying this is not the complete picture. Far from it.
...hasty generalizations aside...
I don't think that this impression of category is the complete picture either...
Wyman wrote:
Each categorization happens sub-consciously and automatically. It is only after this automatic categorization that our attention is focused this way and that. The automatic categorization is conditioned by past experience - I think being conditioned by past experience is knowing how to perceive things.
If Mary, above, were a circus bear riding a unicycle, no one would say that she had knowledge of a proposition about riding.
conditioning... it's a habit...
inductive error...
-Imp
I'm comfortable with 'habit' at least for most of it. I'm not up on Hume enough to use his terms correctly, as I sense you are, I'm just using ordinary language.
Wyman wrote:
Each categorization happens sub-consciously and automatically. It is only after this automatic categorization that our attention is focused this way and that. The automatic categorization is conditioned by past experience - I think being conditioned by past experience is knowing how to perceive things.
If Mary, above, were a circus bear riding a unicycle, no one would say that she had knowledge of a proposition about riding.
conditioning... it's a habit...
inductive error...
-Imp
I'm comfortable with 'habit' at least for most of it. I'm not up on Hume enough to use his terms correctly, as I sense you are, I'm just using ordinary language.
Hume pretty much uses ordinary language because his theories are grounded very much in the human condition.Certainly learning through experience is very important to Hume and we shouldn't underestimate Hume's legacy when it comes to the cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind.
I see Hume as being an empiricist and a skeptic, rather than an empirical skeptic. With induction there is no error as such. Rather, there is no logical necessity when it comes to cause and effect. This doesn't exclude the possibility of some other type of necessity operating within the mind.
I'm comfortable with 'habit' at least for most of it. I'm not up on Hume enough to use his terms correctly, as I sense you are, I'm just using ordinary language.
Hume pretty much uses ordinary language because his theories are grounded very much in the human condition.Certainly learning through experience is very important to Hume and we shouldn't underestimate Hume's legacy when it comes to the cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind.
I see Hume as being an empiricist and a skeptic, rather than an empirical skeptic. With induction there is no error as such. Rather, there is no logical necessity when it comes to cause and effect. This doesn't exclude the possibility of some other type of necessity operating within the mind.
I would disagree as to 'impressions' and 'ideas' which are barely defined terms in his work. I remember reading him and thinking 'when is he going to clarify these terms' and never found it. I guess it's supposed to show through in the way he uses them. Impressions are clear and ideas are less clear; it's a matter of degree. His discussions of habit, cause and effect, induction, complexes of ideas, etc. all hinge on that usage.
The arguments are simply dealing with semantics. In this case it's all about the sequence of events. Much like the, so called, chicken/egg paradox. In that case, as if there was in fact a sequence. There was not, they both came about at the same time, very gradually, with evolution. Such that an egg and chicken as you now know them, did not actually exist along that evolutionary chain of events. One could ask, looking backwards in time, "at what point were they not a chicken or an egg, rather some permutation of a chicken or an egg."
The same thing goes for the piano analogy. Once there was no piano. And to play staccato or legato had no meaning whatsoever. It became a method, an artistic preference. Which came first staccato or legato?
To 'know how' to play a piano, however any particular individual might play it, with notes staccato or legato, one has to 'first' 'know that' the piano has keys, and foot pedals, and 'that' to operate them in a certain combination yields such a sound. From that point on it's a matter of preference, as to how one wants to play a particular note. To 'know how' always begins with 'knowing that.' From that moment when you first open your eyes for the very first time 'knowing nothing.' You first open your eyes to 'know that' you exist, then you finally focus to 'know that' other things exist. Before you can 'know how' to drink from your baby bottle, you have to 'know that' it and your hands exist, 'that' it needs to be in your mouth, 'that' your hands can aid that being the case, at which point you then 'know how' to drink from a bottle. You simply 'know that' some other entity uses their hands to give you the bottle, not that you necessarily acknowledge it with any words, you simply mimic. Actually you don't "know that" or "know how," at least not in those words, as you know not of words, or their association with anything that you've done.
'Knowing that' always fuels 'knowing how,' whether anyone acknowledges it or not. So that "knowing how" is simply a whole bunch of "knowing that's" scrunched together, and simply rephrased. After all it would in fact be a long process of accounting all the "knowing that's" that constitute any particular "knowing how," right?
"Epistemological particularism is the belief that one can know something without knowing how one knows that thing.[1] By this understanding, one's knowledge is justified before one knows how such belief could be justified. Taking this as a philosophical approach, one would ask the question "What do we know?" before asking "How do we know?"" --Wikipedia--
"We know that" something is true, yet we don't "know how," we know it.
Isn't it simply a question of acknowledgement, as we take things for granted, a matter of complacency, so to speak?
Actually this reminds me of the "tree in the forest not making a sound if no one is there to acknowledge it." Total Bollocks!!
From that moment when you first open your eyes for the very first time 'knowing nothing.' You first open your eyes to 'know that' you exist, then you finally focus to 'know that' other things exist.
I take your point, but respectfully disagree. You think one can know that you exist and that other things exist out of the cradle? I've always thought (read) that it takes some time for a child to learn how to 'individuate' within their perceptual field - i.e. conceptualize objects. As I posted earlier, they cannot even distinguish colors for weeks. They gradually learn to recognize a 'face' shape and respond to that early on, at the distance one would experience while breastfeeding and looking up at their mother. But they don't even recognize mommy for a good while. They respond to things like being wrapped in a blanket, being caressed, feeding, bright lights, black and white contrasts. And they can't finally conceptualize in a manner that approaches full understanding of linguistic concepts until something like four years. That's when they start asking about god and death and a million other questions - and when you can't conceptualize nonexistence, talk of existence is meaningless.
Having said all that, your points are well taken and I'll have to think about the issues you brought up - especially the chicken/egg and tree falling analogy which I don't have an answer for. I suspect I have to define 'know how' better, at least.
Wyman wrote:
Having said all that, your points are well taken and I'll have to think about the issues you brought up - especially the chicken/egg and tree falling analogy which I don't have an answer for. I suspect I have to define 'know how' better, at least.
The falling tree thing will only serve to take us back into Mary's room
I would disagree as to 'impressions' and 'ideas' which are barely defined terms in his work. I remember reading him and thinking 'when is he going to clarify these terms' and never found it. I guess it's supposed to show through in the way he uses them. Impressions are clear and ideas are less clear; it's a matter of degree. His discussions of habit, cause and effect, induction, complexes of ideas, etc. all hinge on that usage.
For Hume everything that comes to us is by way of impressions and ideas. There are no innate ideas. The difference between the two is the degree to which they force themselves upon our consciousness. So I guess you could use the term "clear" and "less clear" because Hume would say that impressions have a stronger impact than ideas. From Hume's point of view we can have complex impressions and ideas along with simple ones.
From that moment when you first open your eyes for the very first time 'knowing nothing.' You first open your eyes to 'know that' you exist, then you finally focus to 'know that' other things exist.
I take your point, but respectfully disagree. You think one can know that you exist and that other things exist out of the cradle? I've always thought (read) that it takes some time for a child to learn how to 'individuate' within their perceptual field - i.e. conceptualize objects. As I posted earlier, they cannot even distinguish colors for weeks. They gradually learn to recognize a 'face' shape and respond to that early on, at the distance one would experience while breastfeeding and looking up at their mother. But they don't even recognize mommy for a good while. They respond to things like being wrapped in a blanket, being caressed, feeding, bright lights, black and white contrasts. And they can't finally conceptualize in a manner that approaches full understanding of linguistic concepts until something like four years. That's when they start asking about god and death and a million other questions - and when you can't conceptualize nonexistence, talk of existence is meaningless. This is all true, how a baby develops. Your sequence is longer that mine yet more concise, while mine was brief, leaving out much. But the point still remains. Do you have to know a language to 'know that' food comes from that bottle. Do you 'know that' your arm can hold the bottle, before you know how to hold the bottle? Isn't knowing how just a whole bunch of knowing that's condensed? All them "knowing that's" added up, yielding "know how?" Such that knowing how is merely a summation of knowing that's?
Having said all that, your points are well taken and I'll have to think about the issues you brought up - especially the chicken/egg and tree falling analogy which I don't have an answer for. I suspect I have to define 'know how' better, at least.
I would disagree as to 'impressions' and 'ideas' which are barely defined terms in his work. I remember reading him and thinking 'when is he going to clarify these terms' and never found it. I guess it's supposed to show through in the way he uses them. Impressions are clear and ideas are less clear; it's a matter of degree. His discussions of habit, cause and effect, induction, complexes of ideas, etc. all hinge on that usage.
For Hume everything that comes to us is by way of impressions and ideas. There are no innate ideas. The difference between the two is the degree to which they force themselves upon our consciousness. So I guess you could use the term "clear" and "less clear" because Hume would say that impressions have a stronger impact than ideas. From Hume's point of view we can have complex impressions and ideas along with simple ones.
I think you are expressing Locke's idea of the tabula rasa.
Things have moved on since then, and it is easily arguable that the brain at birth is far from empty, as it was once thought.
What we know in animals and instinct is also part of our reality. We come equipped with spacial awareness, grammar, facial recognition modules, nipple seeking urge, and more.
When we perceive we already have a structure upon which those impressions have to merge.
Lev Muishkin wrote:
I think you are expressing Locke's idea of the tabula rasa.
Things have moved on since then, and it is easily arguable that the brain at birth is far from empty, as it was once thought.
What we know in animals and instinct is also part of our reality. We come equipped with spacial awareness, grammar, facial recognition modules, nipple seeking urge, and more.
When we perceive we already have a structure upon which those impressions have to merge.
I think Locke's Tabula rasa was referring to the birth of animal life way back in the dawn of animal evolution. It certainly makes more sense that way.
I think you are expressing Locke's idea of the tabula rasa.
Things have moved on since then, and it is easily arguable that the brain at birth is far from empty, as it was once thought.
What we know in animals and instinct is also part of our reality. We come equipped with spacial awareness, grammar, facial recognition modules, nipple seeking urge, and more.
When we perceive we already have a structure upon which those impressions have to merge.
Yes, this was Locke's idea, but it also was taken up by Hume. I think you are right in terms of having progressed into a different era especially in relation to of philosophy of mind. Interestingly enough a few things remain in Hume's work that have so far proven almost ageless. One being the problem of induction and the other is expressed by materialists in philosophy of mind, viz. the self is an illusion.
A_Seagull wrote:
I think Locke's Tabula rasa was referring to the birth of animal life way back in the dawn of animal evolution. It certainly makes more sense that way.
I think it is relevant to his political philosophy: All men are created equal.
A_Seagull wrote:
I think Locke's Tabula rasa was referring to the birth of animal life way back in the dawn of animal evolution. It certainly makes more sense that way.
I think it is relevant to his political philosophy: All men are created equal.
What I was meaning is that any theory of perception, cognition and consciousness must start from nothing, a clean slate.
A_Seagull wrote:
I think Locke's Tabula rasa was referring to the birth of animal life way back in the dawn of animal evolution. It certainly makes more sense that way.
I think it is relevant to his political philosophy: All men are created equal.
What I was meaning is that any theory of perception, cognition and consciousness must start from nothing, a clean slate.
But that is false. A clean slate is simply not the natural state of a new born human. Our perceptual horizons are pre-figured. Without that structure all perception would be nothing but white noise and a confusion of light and dark.
