Errors of Philosophers

/8 Comments/in /by

Errors of Philosophers

I asked myself if there are any errors philosophers regularly commit, through the centuries and still today. This would be useful information to have. I came up with three. The first is that they seldom if ever acknowledge that positions they oppose generally have things to be said in their favor; they behave as if only their own position is remotely credible. But this is almost never true: there are always reasons that support other positions and account for adherence to these positions. Philosophers need to cultivate an attitude of mind that combines endorsing one position with recognizing the force of alternative positions. You may reject materialism, say, but you should not be oblivious to the genuine reasons that speak in its favor. The same is true of views like emotivism, idealism, Platonism, instrumentalism, eliminativism, skepticism, etc. There are reasons to accept such positions, even if you find them ultimately implausible. Blind dogmatism is never helpful or rational (this is really a plea for intellectual honesty). Second, philosophers have tended to treat the human being as privileged—as if this species alone is the proper subject-matter of the discipline. That is anthropocentric and non-evolutionary. We exist contingently and other animals are proper subjects of investigation. If you are interested in knowledge, say, you should consider animal knowledge of various kinds—and the same for other mental categories. You should also consider hypothetical cases of alien species to test your theories. If there were actually existent species superior to us, we would do well to study the philosophy they produce as well as our own. Our human philosophy has been speciesist and the narrower for it. I hear the Vulcans have some pretty interesting things to say. Third, and connected, philosophers have not been mysterian enough: they have been unwilling to accept human intellectual limitation (though some of been aware of the point). This has led them to adopt implausible reductive and eliminative positions (I write about this in Problems in Philosophy). A healthier attitude recognizes that we might be allowing ourselves to embrace absurdity instead of accepting limitation. These three tendencies have shaped philosophy from its earliest days, and still shape it today. We do well to keep them in mind as we go about our business.

Share

Because

/2 Comments/in /by

Because

Because is an interesting word. According to the Shorter OED, it was originally two words by and cause, after the old French par cause de (by reason of). To say “p because q” is to say “p by cause q”, where “cause” means “reason”. The Concise OED gives “for the reason that; since”. Roget’s Thesaurus gives us “on account of”, “in view of”, “on the grounds that”, “thanks to”, among others. Thus, “because” can be used to state the relation between premises and conclusion in a logical argument: if p entails q, q is true because of p—and hence “by cause” of p.  In other words, the because relation is a causal relation: premises are causal because they are one term of a because relation. The because relation coincides with (is identical to) a causal relation, as these words were originally meant—and as they still mean now. All uses of “because” are causal uses, i.e., specify reasons for something. There is no non-causal “because”: the logical use of “because” is a causal use—just look at the word. To be because of something is to be by cause of that thing. Semantically, then, reasons are causes. This is intuitively correct, since causes are productive, consequential, generative—as premises in an argument are. They bring things forth, make them the case, engender them. Some premises, especially in inductive arguments, are what we call evidence, and evidence produces generalizations and theories. All this talk should be taken literally and not dismissed on account of philosophical prejudices—as that all causes are physical events (or some kind of event). This is to say that logic is a causal science—a science of productive reasons. Grammar is similar: it too is a type of cause—productive, generative, fecund. Sentences have the grammatical form they do in virtue of the rules of grammar—“by cause of” these rules. Logic and grammar are indeed causally efficacious par excellence, given their power to produce infinitely many consequences. One might be forgiven for suggesting that logico-grammatical causation is the conceptually fundamental kind of causation. It certainly involves reasons, and that concept seems to belong originally to the rational realm—what is sometimes called the “space of reasons”. The concept of reasons has been extended to the non-mental non-rational world, and hence brought the concept of cause along with it. Maybe our ancestors took a while until they were ready to extend these notions outside the rational mind and apply them to brute unthinking nature—a form of anthropomorphic projection. In any case, these notions have a perfectly proper home in the characterization of logical and grammatical relations. One can imagine someone insisting that only these relations are correctly described as causal, the rest of nature being governed by mere constant conjunction or some such. No merely physical phenomenon can be the reasonthat something happens! Rocks don’t have reasons.

These reflections should prompt us to reconsider causal theories as they have been proposed in recent analytical philosophy. What is meant by “causal” in these theories? This question is typically avoided (or dodged) in presentations of the theories in question. We are supposed to know what is intended. Thus, we have the causal theory of perception, of memory, of knowledge, of reference, of action, of emotion. The general idea is that these concepts have causal definitions: the essence of the concept is captured by a causal condition. For example, the essence of perception consists in causation of an internal sense experience by an external object. The point I want to make is that such theories can be readily reformulated using the “because” locution and allied locutions. Instead of saying “A caused B” we can say “B because of A”: for example, the sense experience occurred because of the external object (not, say, because of a hallucinogenic drug). This comes to the same thing, does it not? And then we could paraphrase that as “The reason the experience occurred was the existence of the external object (not some drug)”. The heart of the theory (right or wrong) is preserved under these reformulations. The same goes for the other causal theories: causes become reasons—the reason for the belief in the case of knowledge is the fact believed, not an irrational whim. This enables us to see our way clear to including the causal theory of entailment (logical implication) with the other causal theories. All are causal in the broad sense I have been adumbrating. And note that I don’t mean a causal theory of inference, i.e., mental acts of a certain sort; I mean logical implication itself. It is quite obvious that chains of inference occurring in a human mind are causally connected, but it is quite another thing to claim that logical implication is causal, since it is not psychological and episodic. Still, it sustains the use of “because”, because premises are reasons for conclusions: it is because Socrates is a man and all men are mortal that Socrates is mortal. It is owing to those facts, by dint of them, in virtue of their existence. When a conclusion follows from a set of premises, it is a consequence of them, an “effect” of them—a resultant, an end-product, an outcome. It is thanks to the premises that the conclusion holds. It is true that there may be subvarieties of causation applicable in the different cases, but they are all united under the broad concept of cause, as this is ordinarily understood. The causation relevant to perception is not the same as that applicable to knowledge, but the concept of causation is flexible enough to include both; fundamentally, it is just the notion of dependence, derivation, determination. Causation is about lines of descent: what hinges on what, what gives rise to what. It isn’t necessarily about energy transfer or mechanistic contact or action-at-a-distance or a primitive inexplicable oomph. It’s about how things hang together in relations of subordination. It’s about what precedes and controls, what is prior and productive.[1]

[1] The reason people haven’t appreciated this is that they have been fixated on certain putative paradigms—never the best way to get the full measure of a concept (or type of fact). This comes from a desire to make the abstract and general into the concrete and particular. Many metaphysical concepts suffer from this problem, or we suffer from it in our grasp of such concepts.

Share

A New Metaphysics

/27 Comments/in /by

A New Metaphysics

I am about to propose a new metaphysics—a new metaphysical system. I say “new” with some trepidation, there being nothing new under the sun; but I am confident that nothing like this has ever been formulated before, or not in any tradition with which I am familiar—though there are faint echoes of it in Aristotle (it is quite anti-Platonic).[1] I will begin by stating the theory as baldly, indeed stridently, as possible, so that no one is in any doubt about the pretensions of the theory. Then we can move to more careful formulation and motivation. I call the theory “logical causalism”, though “causal logicism” would also do; this may be abbreviated to “causalism”, as “logical positivism” was abbreviated to “positivism”. There are two main claims. The first is that logical entailment is a type of causation: premises have the causal power to produce conclusions. Entailment is (causally) generative, productive, consequential—a type of force, active and effectual. Logical consequence is a type of causal consequence, not something altogether different from ordinary causal consequence (bridges collapsing etc.) The second claim is that causation is a logical relation: it has a logical structure, a logical form, a logical essence. It is logically constituted. It works by combining a major premise and a minor premise—the former being a law of nature, the latter a particular fact. For example: all matches cause fires when struck (in suitable conditions); this match was struck; therefore, this match caused a fire. The conclusion is deducible from the premises and may be inferred from them. The antecedent facts (general and particular) logically imply the consequent fact. It is as if the match reasons thus: “I am a match and I was struck; all struck matches cause fires; therefore, I will cause a fire”. It doesn’t really reason this way, of course, but the causal sequence consists of a pair of facts that entail the final state of that sequence. Causation is a kind of logical procedure: it leads from premises to a conclusion—from cause to effect. It is as if the world is engaging in logical reasoning. The process is logical because it embeds a logical necessity—given the antecedent facts a certain fact must result. There is a logic to causation; it isn’t just random or brute or “one damn thing after another”. It is intelligible, as much as modus ponens is. Putting these two claims together, we can say that logic is causal and causation is logical. Deduction (or induction) is based on a causal power—the power to produce conclusions; and causal reasoning is based on a logical structure—the structure of a general law and a particular fact combining to produce a certain result.

Now the metaphysical picture is as follows: the entire world (reality) consists of logic and causality. The two are essentially identical and they run through everything—the mental, physical, mathematical, and moral. The mental is subject to causation and hence the logic inherent in it; ditto the physical.[2] The mathematical concerns facts that have causal explanations: e.g., the number 4 is even because it is divisible by 2 and all numbers divisible by 2 are even. The latter two facts causally explain the former fact—they give rise to that fact; make it the fact it is. Mathematical facts have the power to produce other mathematical facts (a proof seeks to uncover these facts). The fact that a triangle has three sides is causally connected to the fact that it has three angles: the two facts lead to each other, generate each other, are the reason for each other. In the case of morality, we can say that according to utilitarianism an action is good if and only if it is caused to be so by maximizing utility: this is what explains or grounds the goodness of the act. The deontologist will give a different explanation of what makes an act good (it’s good because it falls under moral rules). Causation extends beyond what we have come to call efficient causation modelled on a limited class of cases, as when a sculptor shapes a statue. Causation tracks reasons-why; the reason why something is the case is properly described as the cause of it (see below). The world does not divide into a causal part and non-causal part (as Aristotle recognized); it is shot through with causality in every nook and cranny. Everything has a reason for being—and that includes logic itself. The cause of the validity of an argument is that it instantiates certain logical laws; these laws cause (explain, ground) the validity of the argument. The only uncaused things are things that exist without reason—the basic facts of the universe. It isn’t that logic only exists in the realm of language and thought, and causation only exists in the changing world of matter and mind; logic and causation jointly penetrate everywhere. Thus, logical causalism is a monistic metaphysics: all reality is unified around its two pillars. Existence is coterminous with logic and causation—existence is logico-causal. The only things that escape them are non-existent: the nonexistent has no causal power and it need not obey any logic (it can be nonsensical). Every real existent thing has logic and causality woven into it. We thus have mental causation, physical causation, mathematical causation, and moral causation—as well as logic of these types. Everything obeys the laws of logic, and everything is subject to causation. We may not understand causation that well (see Hume), but we know it is everywhere. And logic and causation work together, not being separable in their essence.

I mentioned Aristotle: he too had a very expansive conception of causation. His four types of cause reach into everything—the mental, the physical, the mathematical, the moral. But I am not aware that he ever thought of the syllogism as causally grounded: he didn’t add logical causation to his list of causes. Still, I think he was right to use the concept of cause in a highly inclusive manner. We need a concept of cause (causal explanation) commensurate with our concept of a reason, and that concept is everywhere. The natural (metaphysical) kind Cause is as broad as reality itself; it is as broad as the concept of an object or a property or the concept of a concept. It enables us to unify all the heterogeneity of the universe. We actually need it to unify Aristotle’s four causes: what do material causes, formal causes, final causes, and efficient cause all have in common? They are all causes, of course—productive, generative, reason-providing. And what ties them all together instead of leaving them in a jumble? Logic, naturally: it is only logical for nature to harmonize the four causes into a coherent package. You can’t have the final cause of a table being to hold things up and the material cause being composed of air or fire. Something has to explain the harmony of the four causes, and that will be a logical cause. Aristotle could have chosen to regard logical consequence as a species of causation, but evidently he didn’t (he seems rather Platonic about logic). In any case, such a view is not part of the tradition stemming from Aristotle. The obsession with so-called efficient causation (the label itself is hardly pellucid—aren’t all his causes equally efficient?) in post-Hume philosophy precluded recognition of a broader notion of causation. In its classical meaning it referred to causation by a separate agent on the body in question, as in a sculptor shaping a statue, which clearly covers only a subclass of cases—it says nothing about the intrinsic causal power of a tree to grow, for example. Nor does ordinary language provide any warrant for enforcing such a narrow conception of causation upon us. And once we widen the concept in the natural direction, we can see our way clear to accepting a causation-based metaphysics. Logic has traditionally been supposed to apply universally, but has not been supposed to be causal itself; I am adding that wrinkle. First, we must pull logic away from language and mind, placing it in the objective world; then, we must subsume it under a causal umbrella, thus producing a monistic logico-causal metaphysics. The world is all that is the case logically and causally.[3]

It is fair to say that causation used to be under a cloud in analytical philosophy. Hume was thought (wrongly) to have undermined the coherence of the concept, and logical positivism fought shy of it for lack of verificationist approval. But that changed sometime in the 1960s when causal theories became all the rage. All well and good, but efficient causation was the preferred causal concept, though not much scrutinized (is all causation really from other bodies?). I am recommending casting off the suspicion more radically (along with the empiricism that leads to it): causality is ubiquitous, protean, and indispensable. Logic, too, has cast off earlier inhibitions, allowing in the modal, epistemic, practical, deontic, etc. It has become a lot less anal. True, causation is somewhat mysterious, especially to the empiricist (anal) mind, but that shouldn’t stop us from using it to bring order to an otherwise chaotic universe. Mysterian logical causalism is not to be ruled out of court a priori. Indeed, there is nothing to stop us being naturalist mysterian logical causalists.[4]

[1] For some background, see my “Causal and Logical Relations”.

[2] Classical mechanics has a logical flavor to it, being largely a priori; and psychology (folk and scientific) is inextricably bound up with logic because the role of rationality in mental life.

[3] That would include God, if he were to exist—he is clearly the logical and causal being par excellence.

[4] Seriously, did anyone ever truly believe that an all-encompassing metaphysics would be free of mysterious elements? Do you think the ultimate truth about the whole universe would be transparently given to the human mind (brain) at this precise moment of evolutionary history? Is Berkely’s metaphysics mystery-free, or Leibniz’s, or Descartes’? Is a totally physics-based metaphysics devoid of mystery? Hardly.

Share

Thugs

/13 Comments/in /by

Thugs

I have noticed an increase in thuggery from the Trump gang. He of course is a thug in the mafia mold (though physically cowardly). They all want to be tough guys. The aim is to instill fear. This is the next stage in installing a dictator. No one in power is standing up to it. They seem to be relishing it. The language is getting coarser, the body language more menacing, the targets more vulnerable. It is utterly detestable. There is real evil afoot.

Share

Consciousness and the Fetus

/2 Comments/in /by

Consciousness and the Fetus

The brain grows gradually in the fetus, going through various stages of development. This development is now well mapped out embryologically. But nothing is known about the inner consciousness that accompanies this brain growth. It is reasonable to believe that it goes from simple to complex, primitive to sophisticated—how could it not? It has often been supposed, on good evidence, that the fetus itself passes through stages resembling its prehistoric ancestors—the fish is often mentioned. Could it then be that the ontogeny of consciousness recapitulates the phylogeny of consciousness? Could the earliest stages of fetal brain development resemble the earliest stages of ancestral brain development? Might the consciousness of the fetus in its early life be like the consciousness of the first organism on earth to develop consciousness? We don’t know what this consciousness was like, or what the fetus’s early consciousness is like; but it is not unreasonable to surmise some homology (perhaps a feeling of comfort or discomfort). Then, as consciousness develops in the fetus, there is a mapping onto the evolutionary development of consciousness in ancestral species, leading up to the consciousness of species close to the human. The old forms of consciousness are preserved in the genes and have their moment in the sun as the fetus develops. Thus, the fetus lives through millions of years of phenomenological evolution, getting a taste of what things used to be like long ago. All this is forgotten as the adult human brain takes shape, but it was there nonetheless. The fetus in effect knows the consciousness of our earliest ancestors. Yet this knowledge is not preserved, memory being what it is. If only it could be recorded and then uploaded into the adult brain! We would learn a lot about the evolution of consciousness from the inside. The fetus knows more about the evolution of consciousness than we adults will ever know.[1]

[1] The human fetus doesn’t know what it is like to be a bat, since echolocation was not a feature of our ancestral line, but it might know what it is like to be a fish or lizard.

Share

Causal and Logical Relations

/9 Comments/in /by

Causal and Logical Relations

Is this an untenable dualism? Are the two relations really that distinct? Isn’t one a special case of the other? The OED defines “cause” as “a person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition” and “reasonable grounds for a belief or action” (notice it doesn’t say “event”). The operative notions are “gives rise to” and “grounds”—what gives rise to or grounds what is left open. We might paraphrase this using the concept of a reason: a cause is a reason for something. We could say a cause is what leads to something, has it as a consequence, entrains it. Thus, causal relations are ubiquitous and topic-neutral: where there are reasons there are causes. Consider the classic syllogism about Socrates and mortality: we can paraphrase it as “the cause of Socrates’ being mortal is that Socrates is a man and all men are mortal”. That’s the reason he is mortal, what brings it about, makes it the case. We could equally say, “Socrates will die because he is a biological being and all biological beings die”. Similarly, we can say that the cause of Socrates’ death was that he drank hemlock and any man dies who drinks hemlock. The cause is a combination of a general law and a particular fact. The logical syllogism is a way of stating a causal relation. The corresponding causal statement “the cause of Socrates’ being mortal is his being a man and the law that all men are mortal” could be formulated in the classic syllogistic style. There is nothing mutually exclusive here. Premises give rise to or ground conclusions, and causes give rise or ground things of various categories. Causes have consequences and so do premises.

You might object that logical arguments give rise to propositions as conclusions whereas causes are events that have events as effects. This is wrong on both counts. Logical arguments connect facts (states of affairs, situations) expressed by propositions (sentences, statements); and causation connects facts too, viz. general and particular facts (laws and individuals). Facts give rise to other facts, so they cause them (are the reason for them). We have been taught to have an overly propositional view of logical relations, as if they are somehow about language; and we have also been taught to have an overly simple “event” conception of causal relations, as if the causal relation locally links isolated events in time. But logical relations are not fundamentally about propositions or language but about objects and properties; and causal relations centrally involve general causal laws as instantiated by particular objects. We must not confuse epistemology with metaphysics: maybe it’s true that we manipulate propositions in our thought when thinking logically, and maybe all we perceive of causation are particular events separated in time; but these are epistemological points, not points about what constitutes logical and causal consequence—the metaphysics of logic and causation.

The practical syllogism is instructive here: the conclusion of such a piece of logical reasoning is an action not a proposition about an action. It is desirable to eat when hungry; I am hungry; therefore, I eat. This is pure causality: the general law combines with the particular fact to cause the act of eating. Not all logical reasoning issues in belief in a proposition; some issues in actual action, a type of occurrence. Indeed, we can generalize the practical syllogism to include what might be called the causal syllogism: immersing sugar in water dissolves it; this piece of sugar is immersed in water; therefore, it dissolves. The conclusion logically follows from the premises. Logic is a lot more far-reaching, capacious, than the standard logic textbooks would lead you to believe. There is such a thing as causal logic. Thus, logical consequence is a species of causal consequence, and causal consequence is logically structured. Logic isn’t about language-dependent non-worldly things divorced from the causal order; and causation isn’t about brute causal relations between isolated events (like beads on a string or successive flashes of light). Logic relates general and particular facts, and causation likewise relates general and particular facts. Logic and causation are identical! This is an identity theory couched at the level of underlying metaphysics. It isn’t that logical relations are abstract and other-worldly (think Platonic heaven); and it isn’t that causation is grubbily this-worldly (think Aristotelian form and matter). Causation is logical and logic is causal. The old dichotomy is a dogma of empiricism andrationalism—for both were wedded to a logic-causation dualism. The reason for insisting on the dichotomy was that epistemology was being confused with metaphysics—too much stress on what is revealed to the senses, or not revealed to them. In their nature they are closely entwined. Logic is closer to causation that we recognized, and causation is closer to logic than we recognized. Both involve an injection of necessity and the necessity is essentially the same—the necessity of “giving rise to” and “grounding”. It always felt uncomfortable to sharply separate the two given their intuitive affinity, and now we see that it was wrong to do so. Logic is woven into causality and causality is woven into logic. Logical relations are causal relations and causal relations are logical relations.

I am well aware of how radical this proposal will sound, but the novelty is largely a verbal matter. We must not use “logic” and “cause” in the narrow senses that have become customary in academic philosophy, especially post-positivist analytical philosophy. These uses accentuate a divide that is unreal from a loftier perspective; they have become tendentious technical uses. That is why I started with the dictionary, so that we could regain a sense of their ordinary meaning. Logic is about reasoning and rational connections; causation is about dependence and reasons for things: these concepts are broad enough to encompass each other, to make room for each other. Thus, the position is really quite untheoretical and commonsense.[1]

[1] The legal sense of “cause” nicely combines the logical and triggering connotations of the term: you can only arrest someone “for cause”, i.e., if there are grounds to arrest them—then an arrest can be triggered. It is the same with the locution “a good cause”: this suggests a justifying ground as well as something that can elicit action (“something deserving of support”, as the OED says). The word “reason” comes closest to “cause” as ordinarily understood. Causation is certainly not restricted to events of hitting or bridges collapsing or short circuits; it isn’t always about striking happenings, more or less spectacular. In the proper wide sense of the word, it becomes trivial that reasons cause actions, since they are precisely reasons for actions. The words “cause” and “because” are virtual synonyms.

Share

Ringo and the Philosophers

/14 Comments/in /by

Ringo and the Philosophers

I was watching a TV special featuring Ringo Starr. He sang and played the drums a bit. It was quite nice in a low-key kind of way. My constant thought was: why is Ringo so limited? He’s a good drummer, but why is his technique so primitive (I’ve never heard him play a drumroll). All these years as a professional drummer and he hasn’t learned better technique! Then there is his singing: he’s a barely competent singer, with a limited vocal range—why not take some singing lessons and improve his voice? And why hasn’t he put some effort into learning to play guitar or piano or harmonica? He hasn’t really learned anything new in the last fifty years. What does he do with his time? He has written a few decent songs, but not many—why? Then there is his old bandmate, Paul M.: that lad has some musical ability, but he can’t read music. What? It’s not that hard: read a book on it or pay someone to teach you. Yet Paul just hasn’t got round to it. I’m sure it’s not beyond him.

I feel the same way about athletes. Lebron James is a great basketball player, but what other sports does he play? He obviously likes sports, so why not learn some other sports? I don’t think it’s lack of time; you won’t find him taking up tennis when he retires. I could thrash him at tennis and table tennis! Tennis players seldom play other sports (bit of golf maybe). Why the limitation? Why not extend your athletic ability into other domains? Wouldn’t Roger Federer enjoy taking up some new sports just for the fun of it—surfing, skateboarding, archery? It never seems to happen.

With philosophers it’s the same story: they stick to what they know. They are specialists. But if you like philosophy, why not branch out a bit? If you are good at it in one domain, you would surely be good in other domains. Why, indeed, are you not interested in the whole subject? These are high IQ people with big egos—why not have a go at something different? Even Bertrand Russell had a limited range of philosophical interests (no ethics or aesthetics or phenomenology or philosophy of biology). Wouldn’t it be interesting to see more from the Ringo Starrs of the philosophical world? Are people just afraid to branch out?

I am the opposite. I am a skilled drummer who learned to sing and play guitar (also harmonica). I write songs (I have about 80). I was a gymnast and pole vaulter, but I learned many other sports—I’m still learning new ones. I like playing sports, so I want to add new ones to my repertoire. But this is especially true in philosophy: I like to cover every part of the subject. I’m interested in philosophical questions, so I think about nearly all of them. It’s strange to me that others don’t feel this way: aren’t they even interested in the problems of philosophy they don’t specialize in? I suppose I can see why someone who specializes in practical ethics might not be very interested in logic or metaphysics, but how can you be interested in metaphysics and not be interested in logic and epistemology? Is it just the pressure of academic institutions that forces people into pigeonholes? What is the psychology of this? It’s as if everyone in philosophy is like Ringo Starr.

Share

Perception and Propositions

/0 Comments/in /by

Perception and Propositions

In order to have a theory of the origins of knowledge one needs an account of the origins of the proposition, i.e., propositional thought. How do we come to grasp propositions? It is notable that empiricists don’t venture an answer; they stick to the origins of concepts (“ideas”). They vaguely suppose that concepts combine in some unspecified way to produce propositional thoughts that correspond in some way with reality. They don’t suppose that perceptions (“impressions”) possess propositional content—rightly so. So, they don’t hold that thought content is abstracted from perceptual content: they don’t suppose that the content of propositional knowledge is a “faint copy” of the propositional content of perceptions. What would that even mean? Perception just doesn’t have propositional content prior to the formation of propositional thought (or knowledge). So, they have no account of the origins of our knowledge of propositional structure—our propositional competence. This will involve logical relations and knowledge thereof. For all they have said, the rationalists are right about this—it is a priori and innate. Therefore, empiricism is not true even of our most basic knowledge (“That’s red”). Perception alone cannot explain propositions. Suppose they abandoned their non-propositional view of perception and claimed that perception does embed propositions. Then they would face the question of where these propositions come from—for they can’t come from non-propositional perception. They would again fall into the hands of the rationalists who would insist that such propositional structure must be a priori and innate. Thus, propositions refute empiricism.[1]

[1] The case is rather like knowledge of language: you can’t derive knowledge of grammar from knowledge of the lexicon, so even if the latter were empirically acquired it would not follow that the former is so acquired. For example, in the case of non-linguistic knowledge, knowledge of the operation of predication cannot be derived from perception of physical objects, even if knowledge of red can be so derived.

Share