Rationalism assumes that we have apriori knowledge and/or can gain knowledge without the senses.
Empiricism assumes that all knowledge comes via the senses.
Evolutionary theory, it seems to me, would say that learning by species is empirical - via selection. Individuals are kind of experiments and if what the species has learned - hunting at night, being long necked - is off, these traits and behaviors will be whittled away. Ones that work will be ‘noticed’ via survival and kept. So on the large scale, the system learns empirically, an unconscious trial and error.
But…
this means we are born with innate knowledge, as are other animals. There are many things we can do and learn to do because it is already built in. Babies are not simply learning via trial and error (until that age they can take in pearls of wisdom from Mom and Dad) but know stuff already. In many animals, whose young have to be up and running, literally, much sooner than us, you can see innate knowledge right off the bat. The deer fawn who can take steps, if shaky ones immediately while amniotic fluids are still dripping off their bodies. This involves all kinds of knowledge of prioreception and depth vision and coordinations between data from each.
A tangent to this is that this means that we do have innate knowledge and going against this also bears some onus. Whereas a purist empiricist would say that we should only believes things demonstrated empirically. If as individuals we already know stuff, this is not the case. This does not mean all innate knowledge is correct, but it is not simply random. The entire system has been learning for millions of years.
I would say man has the least amount of innate knowledge and understanding in the animal kingdom. To compensate us for this handicap, nature has endowed us with an extraordinary capacity to learn from others, culture, and learn from our own experience. A spider doesn’t learn how to build webs, or why it should build webs, it just does and knows. The same can’t be said of humans, we must from others, or on our own, through trial and error, how to and why we should build shelters, and are shelters are evolving faster than our genes. A dear doesn’t learn how to walk, it just does, only man must learn how to walk. So, we probably do have some innate knowledge, like an infant will reach for its mother to console it and not a toaster oven, but I’d say we have comparatively little innate knowledge, and that this knowledge can be explained by natural processes, I don’t think we are born with knowledge of God, or Plato’s forms, etc. What is born more naked in the animal kingdom than man?
Consequently, what animal is more capable of inventing and adorning its flesh with fine and useful things? Man is like an empty vessel, the weakest and most helpless of all natures creatures, and yet with time, he is capable of becoming them all, and mastering them all, chameleon that he is. We are all things and we are nothing, a creative nothing. Born with the weakest nature, and the greatest capacity for nurture, or self nurture. However, I believe many of our appetites and emotions are innate, most of our knowledge and understanding is not, it is acquired via our interpretations of our observations, 1st hand, and our interpretations of other peoples interpretations, 2nd hand. 1st hand is for the strong, 2nd hand is for the weak.
I agree to some extent. We can learn more. But I think we have all sorts of built in knowledge and beliefs. There are very great differences between babies, how they learn, what scares them, what they are drawn to, how they relate to the different sexes and so on. Also innate beliefs do not have to arise immediately, they can express later on. Separated at birth same cell twins often have remarkably similar beliefs and interests. As far as God, there is growing evidence that this is an innate belief…
I think most of what you’re talking about, moreno, is not genuine, innate knowledge, but innate emotional and instinctual reactions to learned knowledge. For example, I think man innately fears death, but does that mean we’re born with knowledge of what death is? Probably not. I think our attraction to the opposite sex is innate, but does it follow we’re born with knowledge of male and female, or are we merely born with an intinctual attraction designed to be triggered upon meeting a member of the opposite sex, upon learning what the opposite sex is? I mean, little boys don’t know the major difference between boys and girls, unless they’re told it, or shown it, yet they may be attracted to their aura. In other words, we have to learn most or all of what we know about the opposite sex, but we are innately attracted to what we learn, in still other words, instincts and emotions are more innate than knowledge and understanding.
Actually, I would argue that the evidence shows that we are predisposed to religion (as per the referenced article), not that it is “innate”, per se. Religious belief is far too diverse to be pre-programmed into us. In my opinion (and I am hardly an expert) the definitive text on this issue right now is Pascal Boyer’s book “Religion Explained” in which he presents a very well researched and cogent argument that essentially shows how the various subsystems that have evolved in our brains come together to basically make religion inevitable. We are simply predisposed to creating religion and this fits well with the empirical fact that there is no culture known to man without some form of religion. The book is also notable in that Boyer debunks a lot of the ad hoc theories about where religion came from (i.e. “it is comforting”, “it explained the world at a time when there was no science”, etc.)
This is not entirely true, there are a few exceptions, I heard from wikipedia there is or was this Atheist tribe in Africa, and they didn’t become atheist upon meeting westerners, appearently they were always atheist. Unfortunately, I cannot produce this article, as I read it a long time ago.
Of course, a few exceptions are insufficient to disprove this rule, but I’ll say- there probably is no God, at least the way it is traditionally conceived i.e. omnibenevolent, omnipotent, etc, and there probably is no specific God gene, however, humans (some more than others) are born with some capacity to self deceive, and the ability to imagine and fantasise. One of the most comforting and profound ideas man can conjure out of the aether, is God, or the perfect entity, all knowing, all powerful, all just and all loving. Coupled with mans capacity to self deceive, and the realisation of how cruel and unkind reality can be, and you have a recipe for mass, socially sanctioned schizophrenia, which is all religion is.
You might say that the exceptions (if any) prove the rule.
So probably there is no omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being? How about we agree that definitely, beyond a shadow of doubt, there is no such being, given that these properties are logically incoherent.
By those in the know, with the courage to see reality for what it truly is, and the ability to discern fact from fiction, religion can become a weapon, a means of mass mind control and hypnosis, as retards who are willing to self deceive, tend to be more suggestable, so you can add a few things to this God delusion, like if you’re the king, you can say I am God, or I am Gods chief representative on earth, so accept my authority, and accept these increasingly high taxes. When you think about it, trusting in God is a lot like trusting in the king, the two delusions are mutuality compatible and complementary.
You may believe in God, ghosts, and our state approved morality, just so long as you don’t begin believing you’re God, or that God told you to murder public officials, those would be unacceptable delusions, and we would have to execute you, or throw your ass in an assylum. Yes, religion is but the propegation and regulation of how much, and what kind insanity is tolerable to the community and to the state
It could be that evolution selected for these schizophrenic traits, as a certain amout of imagination and fantasy, can be quite beneficial, as reality can be rather painful, and strong religion and strong drink can alleviate some of this pain. Many atheists may not have been able to survive the dark ages, but now that man is entering more abundant, plentiful times, his need for religion is waning, and evolution will select men with more rational, sober traits, and many men will begin discarding the religion of their ancestors, as reality has become more pleasantly appealing.
we have innate instincts not knowledge. i vote for empiricism, rationalism for me is a scape goat where people say it is possible to learn absent of the senses and therefore elude their limitations as a human being which is not possible… but well humans are born to be optimistics.
So you’re calling instinct “innate knowledge”? That’s not the way I would go. Instinct is closer to innate preference, than knowledge. There’s no empirical or rational process going on, on the individual level, to produce innate behavior. It simply isn’t learned at all. There is only urge, desire.
No, these qualities (omniscience, etc) aren’t self contradictory, and even if they seem to be, we still can’t be certain that they are, as we may be too stupid to see that they are not, being intellectually finite , limited entities, I’m affraid there is no certitude for us, deductive or inductive, only likelihood.
What makes the notion of God unlikely, is that the universe, as far as we can tell, is bad, and in need of repair. Now, God may have some reason for making it bad (the only logically consistent way we could get x good, was if we got x bad), but we have no proof of that, all we have proof of is that it is bad, as far as eye can see, the ear can hear, and the mind can comprehend. In fact, it may even be worse than we can tell, God may have created a little good, only so there could be a lot more bad.
Now, don’t even get me started on free will- there is no free will, I can’t choose to like eating concrete more than sugar, for instance.
No abstract, you said it yourself, remember? You said you’re an empiricist, not a rationalist, you don’t pull your ideas out of your hat, you attempt to align your ideas with experience, and it follows, some beliefs are more aligned with experience than others. The ones more aligened with experience we call scientific, philosophical or empirical, the ones more alligned with nothing, or with our emotional or instinctual drives, we call religious, retarded and schizophrenic. Our experiences come from two sources, the five senses enable us to experience the world, introspection enables us to experience the self. Introspection may be one and the same faculty as the rational faculty, this I have yet to deduce. I suppose the rational faculty can be introsepctive or extroverted, depending on whether it is analyzing internal, subjective phenomenona- how our reasons, emotions, senses and appetites appear to us, or objective, external noumena- if and how phenomena correspond with noumena.
Perhaps all internal states, even emotions, can correspond with noumena, as crazy as it sounds.
One of these issues is that we can grant that we were born with structures with of the mind, through an evolutionary processes. In fact, I have read some empiricist, dye in the wool like Humeans, who accept these ideas of conceptual structures like that. George Berkeley is a case and point of someone who accepted this. The difference is that they allow for these things not because they are exactly derived from experience, but it is because it has application to experience. It matters not where it comes from but that it maybe used in experience if it is not derived from experience.
The issue with this position, of the evolutionary variety, is that evolution (as some say the theory states) has no end goal. This means that if we do accept that there is an external world and indirectly interact with it, then this means that our innate structure is not trying to represent reality. IT is trying to represent things that allow for us to survive. Survival does not say much for how the world is itself.
