A Bird Is a Word: Having Locke's Ideas

Having Ideas

     What does it mean to have an idea?  Does it require we have some image in the theatre of our mind?  Where do ideas come from? Can we make our own or do they all come in through the senses? For contemporary philosophers 'having a idea' usually implies some sort of disposition; something like, if a circumstance arose where a collection of beliefs and images were appropriate then I could have conscious access to the idea.  So why disposition?  Well, I think it has something to do with the fact that we can't simultaneously hold all of our ideas at the fore of our consciousness (how confusing would that be?) but we need to explain how we can access ideas we've had in the past. 

    One thing about dispositions is that they imply that you've had the idea before but you've relegated it to some place in your memory for future use (appropriate circumstances/context or maybe just daydreaming...).  So, at some point the idea "got into you"...unless of course you were born with it; but that's a different topic.  

      If I tell you to put the idea of a bird in your mind, what happens?  You probably get some sort of image of a bird.  Now think about where you got your idea of the bird.  The story is probably something like, when you were a kid out with your parents, there was a bird in your visual field and your parents indicated it and told you to call it a bird.  The point is that you had some sort of sensory experience that initially "produced" in your mind the idea of a bird.  And because you don't always go around with the idea of a bird at the front of your consciousness, the idea of 'bird' is stored somewhere for later use.   The main point for Locke's purposes is that it all started with you having a sensory experience of a bird, which incidentally, is a word.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Py0UpbVMOc&feature=related

     For Locke all ideas had their origins as sensory experiences...well, mostly.  Sensory experiences provide the raw material from which the activities of our minds can form new more complex ideas by comparing, compounding, and abstracting from the raw material. So, we can compare this type of 'having an idea' (havingE an idea) with the dispositional type (havingD an idea).   To make it more explicit 'havingE' an idea means something like seeing a picture of something in your head whereas the 'havingD' an idea means that it is contained in your memory but you can only really 'haveE' the idea in your memory when you have already had it and pull it to the fore of your consciousness.

     For Locke there is really only havingE ideas; we can't haveE ideas we are not directly conscious of in the sense that we must perceive them in the theatre of our mind as an image.  For this reason we can interpret Locke as saying the experience of sensory perception and the experience of recalling something we previously experienced will in some way be the same sort of experience; they both involve conscious awareness of some image in the theatre of the mind.

     Ok, so lets get that straight one more time.  If I haveD an idea of a bird (which is a word) stored in my memory the only way I can haveE that idea is if I perceive it as an image in the theatre of my mind.  Also, I can haveE an idea of a bird if I'm looking at a bird--the physical properties of the bird produce in me a mental image of...a bird!  So here's the quextion: if both recalling an idea and havingE an idea produced in our minds through sensory perception both involve perceiving some mental image, how can we distinguish between the two types of experiences?

     In the term paper I'm working on this issue is a sub-issue, here's a little bit I've written on it so far, I apologize for the lack of ebonics...I hope you can still understand me :)

Btw, I enjoy writing in my blog way more than writing essays...why?  This essay is KILLING me!

The Relation Between Sensing and Having_E ideas

     It is quite apparent that Locke sees a close relation between sensing something and having_E an idea of that thing. However, this does not necessarily commit him to the view that this is the only way we can have_E ideas because he speaks of havingE ideas when we dream, remember, abstract, and think of things in their absence (Stuart 40). It is clear from several passages that Locke maintains there is—perhaps--a self-evident difference between having_E ideas produced by perception and having_E ideas by recalling them.

      To make his point Locke asks us to consider our mental contents while we look at the sun (I hope he knew not to look directly at the sun!) at T1 and contrast them with our mental contents at T2 when we recall looking at the sun back at T1. He tells us that if we do so we will “as plainly find the difference there is between any Idea revived in our minds by our own Memory, and actually coming into our Minds by our Senses, as we do between any two distinct Ideas” (IV.ii.14). That is to say, the difference between our mental contents at T1 and T2 will be as evident as the difference between two unrelated ideas. His conviction leads one to wonder why, if the difference is so obvious, doesn't he explain that in which it consists?

      In IV. xi. 5, Locke offers a possible criterion by which we can distinguish both types of having_E ideas. The “manifest difference difference” between the Ideas “laid up in my memory” and those that are the result of sensory perception is that the latter type “force themselves upon me” and “I cannot avoid having” them. So, if we cannot avoid having_E an idea then we must be in the act of perceiving through the senses; and if we can “at pleasure” have the ideas of the scent and colour or a rose, for example, then we are having_E an idea of something we previously sensed.

      But does this distinction always hold? One objection to this distinction is to question the passive-active dichotomy. When Locke speaks of ideas “forcing themselves upon” him the implication is that in perception we are passive agents; however, this it not true. Obviously, I have some control over whence I direct my sensory organs but Locke easily meets this challenge. He can simply reply that while we may be able to chose whence we direct our sensory organs, there is no way for me to “unperceive” the ideas that have been produced though sensory perception; and it is in this respect that we are passive. 

       This is certainly true in some instances but perceptual psychology has demonstrated that we are often blind to sensory objects to which we do not consciously attend. 

 Before reading further click on the link and do the selective attention test:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo&feature=related

The classic demonstration of this phenomena is observed in an experiment where the subject is asked to watch a video in which two groups of players—half wearing white, half wearing black—pass multiple basketballs between themselves. The ostensible task of the subject is to count the passes the white team makes. Since the subject is attending so strongly to their task, after watching the video when they are asked if they noticed anything unusual they do not report noticing a man in a gorilla suit that strolled right across the screen, despite the fact that he was in their visual field. The upshot of the experiment is that at least to some degree in perception we are not totally passive; if this were true subjects would notice the man in the gorilla suit.

      We do not always recall things “at our pleasure” is the other objection to Locke's distinction between how the two ways we come to have_E ideas in our minds is that . There are two related counter-examples to this assertion. The first is demonstrated by the impossible challenge of not thinking of monkeys when someone commands “don't think of monkeys”. If we interpret Locke in the strong sense of our being able to access ideas from our memory at our pleasure—that is we have total control of what we access--then we'd expect to be able to not think about monkeys when commanded not to do so! But, as most of us learned when we first encountered this paradoxical command, it one with which it is nearly impossible to comply. In fact, I would be willing to wager that at this moment the reader is vainly trying to block out images of monkeys!

      There are other instances where we have limited control over our thoughts, and in these case the ideas "force themselves" from within. Consider situations when you get a song stuck in your head—what's worse is that it's usually a song that you can't stand. Perhaps this is only anecdotal but it certainly seems like the harder I try to expunge the offending tune from my mind, the more entrenched it becomes. Certainly, I did not recall the idea of this song “at my pleasure”! Nightmares are another example of the lack of control we have over what ideas appear in our mind--for even after we wake up our attempts to will away the disturbing images from our minds are futile.

      One could argue that these counter examples do not entirely discredit Locke's position that there is an obvious difference between ideas produced through perception and accessing ideas that were “layed up” in the memory; however, I think that while we can maintain a distinction, to call it an obvious distinction is to overstate the case. What the above examples have demonstrated is that resting the distinction on the passive-active criteria does not apply to all cases.   I think Locke is correct in his premise that there is a distinction between havingE and idea as produced through sensory perception and havingE an idea as a recalling of a prior experience but I'm not sure that the criterion by which he distinguishes the two does the work he needs it too.  How should Locke make this distinction? Can we find a better way within his own work?

Mommy...Where Does Knowledge Come From? Locke's Empiricism

Overview   

     For the research paper for my 17th century philosophy class I've chosen for my topic Locke's notion of simple ideas and their role in his epistemology.  So, what's all this mumbo jumbo about?  And who is John Locke? As most of you may know, John Locke was trapped on a strange island with a bunch of other people when their plane crashed.  But what many of you might not know, is that prior to crashing on the island in Lost, John Locke was a prominent 17 century philosopher.

     Locke is the grand daddy of empiricism--the philosophy that the foundation of our knowledge is sensory experience.  His philosophy is in obvious contrast with the rationalists Descartes and Spinoza who believed pretty much the opposite--that the foundation of all knowledge is accessible through rational refection.

   A super skeleton sketch of Locke's empiricism looks like this  (reduced  from about 500 pages to 6 lines):  

1.  There are no innate ideas...have you ever met a baby that knew how to do maph?  He gives quite a few different arguments against innate ideas but you get the gist of it.

2.  So, all knowledge must originate as ideas caused by sensory experiences.  (Perceiving something produces an idea of that thing in my mind).

3.  The mind then acts on these simple ideas to compare, connect, and abstract from them to form more complex ideas.

     In my essay I want to explore a couple of interrelated issues.  (1).  What is a simple idea?  and is this an intelligible concept? (2).  if we can come up with an intelligible notion of a simple idea, can it do the work Locke needs it to do to support empiricism, or do we need to allow some degree of innate knowledge?  Anyhow, you're going to follow along as I do my research...

Lets get in stahted in hah....

Ideas in General and their Origin

     For Locke, if someone reflects upon the origin of many universal truths "they would have found them to result in minds of Men, from the being of things themselves, when duly considered; and that they were discovered by the application of those Faculties, that were fitted by Nature to receive and judge of them, when duly employ'd about them."  If we translate this from Locke's beautiful prose it reads that knowledge of general truths is derived from the ideas that those objects cause in our minds through sensory experience. Enough with the generalities, lets get down to the nitty gritty of how this works.

     The contents of the Mind are ideas.  Er'body has a variety of ideas in their mind, such as Whiteness, Hardness, Sweetness, Thinking, Motion, Man, Elephant, Army, Drunkenness, Sippy-cup, Chains, Things that are Off the Chain, etc...How do all these ideas get into our mind?  Locke demonstrated that they can't be innate, so whence did they come?  

     Here he famously axes us so suppose the mind to be "white paper, void of all characters, without any Ideas"...all the ideas that fill our mind came from one source: experience.  All knowledge is founded on it and derived from it.  "Our observation employ'd either about external, sensible Objects; or about the internal Operations of our Minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our Understandings with all the materials of thinking".

     So basically our knowledge has two subsources: sensation which gives us ideas through the perception of external things; these ideas include things like yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet...and anything else we call sensible qualities.  Sensible ideas are the result of the ideas that are produced in our mind through a causal relation to an external object.  For example, the chair causes in my mind the ideas of brown, wood, chair, etc..

     Reflection is the other source "from which Experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas is the perception of the operations of our own Minds within us" as it acts on the raw ideas is has received from perception to produce new ideas.  Basically, we can get new ideas when our mind manipulates, mixes, abstracts, and compares whatever ideas we already have (from perception). Acts of the mind include: perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing which give rise in us new ideas (about other ideas). 

     There are no other sources of ideas beyond sensation and reflection.  Ideas arising from sensation arise from without and concern external objects whereas reflection involves ideas about our mind's own operation.  Locke challenges us to "search our Minds" for ideas that didn't come from one of these two sources.

     Pay attention! The more numerous and varied the objects you come in sensory contact with the more simple ideas you will have; there is a parallel for ideas arising out of reflection--the is a direct relation to the amount of reflection one does and quantity of ideas one has about the operation of his own mind.  Also, there is a direct relation to the degree of clarity your ideas have with the the degree of attention you put into observing external objects and your mental operations.  If you don't pay attention your ideas will be unclear and your knowledge will rest on a shaky foundation--so pay attention!

     On our first ideas: At what point in our life do we have our first ideas? "When he first has any Sensation" then it is to these first sensorily derived ideas that we employ the mental operations of perception, remembering, consideration, reasoning, etc...In time the mind (can) reflects on its own mental ideas.  This means something like the having thoughts like "I am looking at the elephant", "I like elephants", "I am thinking about myself looking at the elephant", "I like thinking about myself looking at elephants" and so on...Through this process the mind gets more ideas--ideas from reflection.

The important point is that we need the initial sensory ideas first before the mind can go to work on them, after that, through continual reflection and more sensory ideas the sky is the limit.  Our minds are idea factories!

       Hint at a criterion for simple idea (finally, Yay!):  In receiving these basic ideas from sensory perception our minds are passive.  So long as our perceptual apparati are in good working order there is little we can do to avoid the intrusion of these first sensory ideas into our mind; and no one can be wholly ignorant of what he does when he thinks.  These are the simple ideas--the one's that the mind can do nothing to avoid or blot out, no more than "a mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate [...] the objects set before it."  Ok, Locke, I'm going to hold you to that!

Time to take a break and work on the proposal for my Kant paper...due tomorrow : )

Carnap Part 3 and My Blog's Identity Crisis

Hello Friends,


Today I'm going to wrap up the overview of Carnap, and in future posts I will go into more detail.  On Tuesday I have to give a presentation on his paper "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" and I'll be using you guys as a practice audience.  I know! You can hardly wait!
    
Before I begin, as usual, I have to go off on a tangent.  After tracking the stats of my blog it became apparent to me that many of you don't read the philosophy entries (gasp!) but luuuvs you some anecdotal stories about my life.  So, I'm going to do my best to accommodate both groups of readers (yes, there are some that read the philosophy content).  The problem is that I realized that I can use the philosophy content aspect of my blog to strengthen my application package when I go through the next round of grad school applications in January.  But, then again, if an applications panel actually decides to read my blog they might find some things that could moderately move their decision in the wrong direction.  Hmmm, anyway, I guess I'll come to that bridge when I cross it...In the meantime, here's a quick status update on my life:

I finally feel like I've settled into a sustainable routine.  Studying every day from the moment I stubbled out of bed until my eyes could read no more was not effective.  After some trial and error I have, for the time being, found a precarious balance between studying, class, gym, and free time.  Of course I haven't had to write any major term papers yet so we'll see how long this balance lasts!  Nevertheless, after overcoming the initial shock of using my brain academically for the first time in longer than I care to admit, I'm getting some confidence back and feeling that this is indeed some thing I can do, not just want to do. 


Carnap Overview Part 3


     In a nutshell Carnap said this:  The entities that we choose to embrace in our beliefs, be they abstract or physical, are reflections of the linguistic framework we have implicitly or explicitly chosen to adopt.  In other words, our beliefs about our experiences can be traced back to linguistic structures we have adopted.  The important implications of this idea are as follows:  a) all knowledge systems are legitimate, but some are preferable to others on the basis of pragmatics, fruitfulness, and simplicity b)  the linguistic frameworks we choose to describe our experiences and beliefs are (should be) selected on the basis of pragmatics, fruitfulness, and simplicity c)  we cannot know the absolute reality of physical or abstract entities.   These 3 issues are intertwined, however, I'll do my best to focus on each one in turn.
     
Quick defining of terms: by language I don't necessarily mean natural languages, but linguistic frameworks to describing our experiences.
     
Lets examine the first implication, that all knowledge systems are legitimate.  Before I begin I want to clarify the vague notion of "knowledge system".  What I really mean is the collection of beliefs, both experientially and logically derived, that can be traced back to the fundamental tenets (or axioms) of your knowledge system.   At the ground floor our knowledge system is comprised of linguistic frameworks.  Lets step away from these extremely abstract notions for a second and use an example to illustrate what I'm talking about.  

For a moment lets imagine we have a very very primitive language and we don't yet have a concept for physical things.  We experience "objects" but we have no language to describe the experience.  One smart guy in our group decides that these experiences we have of objects in space-time we will call "physical things/objects".   Then he goes on to list the qualities a physical thing must have to be a physical thing; namely it has a temporal and physical location and physical extension.  Now we have a linguistic framework for physical things, and we can verify if an experience is of a physical thing by empirically determining if it conforms to our framework.  The language framework is legitimate because there are clear axioms (rules) for determining what constitutes "physical thing". 
     
Well, almost.  There's one more thing we need, it's called the rules of inference.  We need a clear set of rules to show how the rules interact with each other and empirical data.  There are deductive rules and inductive rules, but this goes beyond the scope of this discussion.  An example of a rule of inference is the transitive rule--if A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C.  So, any language is considered legitimate if it's basic axioms and rules of inference are spelled out.  Languages are equally legitimate to the degree that the axioms and rules of inference are clear.  
     
Nevertheless, different languages can lead to different systems of belief for several reasons:  The basic axioms could be different or the rules of inference could be different, or both.  An (over-simplified) example where the axioms are different would be if in another language, Language 2, instead of a physical thing linguistic framework, they adopt an idealist framework.  That is to say, instead of saying the objects of perception exist independently of our minds as physical objects, things are actually just mental phenomena--they exist only in our mind.  Before you go calling this view crazy, there have been many prominent philosophers who held similar views, you may have heard of Berkeley and (arguably) Plato.  

We can say that both the linguistic structures account for our experiences.  So long as language 2 states that all sensory experience (touch, taste, smell, vision, sound) exists only in the mind then indeed this is a legitimate account of experience.  There is no way of knowing if one Language is true and the other is false because the net result is the same and there is not objective test we could ever do to provide evidence.
     
Despite this problem, we can make a decision based on pragmatics, fruitfulness, and simplicity to choose which language framework to adopt.  With Language 2 and its idealist account, things start to get complicated if we want to tender the reasonable hypothesis that things continue to exist even when we are not directly perceiving them.  Idealism in it's simplest form implies that if I look away from an object, it ceases to exist (because things only exist in my mind when I perceive them directly).  The framework starts to look complicated if we want to adequately account for this phenomena.  It will require adding more axioms to our framework.  So, in this quick and dirty example we can make the pragmatic decision to adopt the language framework of physical things, because it is simpler.  It is very important to note that we can never say of any competing language structures that one is true and one is false, so long as they both account for the phenomena we seek to explain.  Simplicity is not a measure of truth.  
     
One final note which I will revisit in a future post is the idea that we cannot know the absolute reality of physical and abstract entities.  For any given entity there will be a variety of different linguistic (mathematical in the case of theoretical physics and science) structures to account for the phenomena.  In the case of electrons, we cannot ask if electrons have metaphysical reality, but we can say, provided we antecedently adopt the physical things linguistic structure, that we can answer this question through empirical and deductive means.  Notice, how we answer the question depends on previously adopted linguistic frameworks.  If we ask, do numbers exist? There is no metaphysical answer, but given the usefulness of numbers in explaining and predicting experience we can say it is useful and fruitful to adopt a framework that encompasses numbers.  But do numbers really exist?  We can't know, we can only say it's a useful framework to adopt.