Quasi-Empiricism

Quasi-Empiricism

Let’s go boldly into the dark belly of the whale, where the mysteries are as thick as whale blubber. We will strain to see, but we may come back with some nuggets of gold. No one knows the origin of concepts, or their inner nature, or even their appearance (do they ever actually appear?); but we have our theories, which contain elements of truth. These theories have names: empiricism and rationalism (or nativism).[1] It is generally agreed that neither theory is sufficient by itself: ideas are not simply copies of impressions, but involve substantial transformations, indeed metamorphoses; and innate concepts need an eliciting stimulus, a sensory trigger. These are not minor amendments: the mind has to operate on sensory input to produce anything worthy of the name “concept”, converting a perceptual sow’s ear into a conceptual silk purse; and innate concepts (if that is the right word) will not graduate to the level of thought-constituent without substantial input from the senses. A percept is not a concept, and neither is an innate schema (let’s call it that). It is really a mystery how empiricism could be true, and equally a mystery how rationalism could be true. In fact, they both look incapable of being true, being species of miracle. Thinking isn’t perceiving, and neither is it some sort of genetically determined configuration in the embryonic brain. Concepts aren’t residues of fleeting perceptual encounters, and neither are they brute instincts like a tendency towards diabetes. They are more than either of those things. A concept is a constituent of a thought or it is nothing—a mere potentiality. We might as well say that concepts are innate in perceived objects (or impressions thereof), or that they are acquired from the genome—both of which are baffling pronouncements. Is whale blubber innate in the ocean or is it acquired from the ocean? Well, neither, or both, though it is tied to the ocean (that’s where the plankton live). Causality is not the same as constitution: concepts are somehow caused by objects via perception, according to empiricism; and they are also somehow caused by the genes via heredity, according to rationalism. But they are not reducible to either: objects don’t think, and neither does DNA. Causal chains, yes; constitution, no. It’s a whale’s belly in there.

What is strange is that no one has ever offered to fuse the two theories. Why not correct the deficiencies of empiricism and rationalism by amalgamating them? Each provides a necessary condition for concept existence, but only together do they provide a sufficient condition (plus a dose of mysterious blubber). We thus obtain what I am calling quasi-empiricism and quasi-rationalism. A concept is a combination of a sensory element and an innate element; it has a kind of double identity. For example, the concept square results from a combination of perceptions of square things and a genetic structure encoding squareness (in some way we don’t understand). The former interacts with the latter to produce a thought-constituent, helped by the cognitive system. Experience working on instinct gives thought. Not that any of this is well understood, or at all understood, but it is an evident fact. The innate schema doesn’t miraculously unfold over time of its own accord, but is elicited and shaped by input from the senses; while the experience is massaged by the innate structure to give what we recognize as a concept. Instinct and experience work together to produce thought: a thought is made of these two interacting elements. It’s not either-or but both-together. We thus have a grand synthesis of empiricism and rationalism. To be concrete, a concept like red has both an innate genetic component and an acquired experiential component; it is a synthesis of the two. A concept like even number likewise synthesizes innate endowment and sense experience (such as calculating experience with numbers). Both empiricism and rationalism are true, though without their exclusivity. That old dichotomy was a mistake. All thought has roots in the genes and in the perceived environment, the endogenous and the exogenous. Hence, quasi-empiricism and quasi-rationalism. We have no name for this composite theory, so we need to coin one; I will call it “empirical rationalism” for want of a better name—or “emp-rat”. In its most extreme form empirical rationalism holds that all concepts are both innate and acquired, non-sensory and sensory. Structurally, the theory is like Frege’s theory of sense and reference: a two-factor theory, a dual component theory.[2] It follows from it that all thought and knowledge (conceptual knowledge) is a combination of the senses and instinct—the passing show and the original position. All cognition is a gene-environment double act; none comes exclusively from the genes or exclusively from the environment. The traditional opposition between reason and sense-experience is therefore bogus. The innate shapes the acquired and simultaneously relies on the acquired. A concept is the upshot of both working harmoniously together. Epistemology is a tango performed by the genes and the sense organs. Each needs the other and the result is thought as we know it.

The old dichotomy runs through all subsequent epistemology, as each side stakes out its territory. But the epistemologists never thought to compromise and reach an agreement (like Catholics and Protestants). Ideology hardened. A dogma of empiricism was that nothing is innate; a dogma of rationalism was that the rational mind is free of sensory taint. But lurking beneath this ideological schism was the uncomfortable truth that sense experience alone is impotent to produce conceptual thought and instinct alone is similarly impotent. Sensation needs to be restructured, re-imagined, reconstituted; while innate programs need to be linked to the sensory systems and brought online. Abstraction won’t do to generate concepts from object-perceptions, and elicitation by experience does not do justice to the degree of transformation wrought on those innate genetic schemas (whatever they are). Both are mere potentiality without the other to fill them out. The concept red is a hybrid, and so is the concept two. It would not be alien to this viewpoint to admit degrees of empiricism and rationalism: the concept red might be more sensory than the concept two. Different types of concepts could combine the innate and the perceived in different ways and to different degrees, but all would involve a mixture of some sort. The essence of empirical rationalism is that all concepts are a bit of both, of necessity; concepts can’t live without both sources of sustenance. And notice that the theory goes right down to basic concepts: there are no purely sensory concepts and no purely ratiocinative concepts. The conceptual mind is simultaneously full of the genetic past and also of the sensory present (as well as the sensory past). “I think, therefore I have an innate genetic form and an acquired sensory history.” We can deduce, from the nature of thought, that thinkers are both innately programmed and open to experience. There are no blank slates and no experiential shut-ins—on pain of not being able to think at all. In concepts the innate and the acquired merge indissolubly together.[3]

[1] See my Inborn Knowledge (2015) for a discussion of empiricism and nativism.

[2] Some readers may recall my old paper “The Structure of Content” (1982), which develops a bipartite theory of meaning and content of a different sort. The basic general principle is that two things are better than one.

[3] It is true that people have recognized that organisms and organs are the result of both factors, but they have drawn the line at concepts for some reason—here they are purists. My position is that we can extend the usual nature-nurture, instinct-history, analysis to concepts. Everything cognitive is both.