What is the source of knowledge? Where do basic beliefs come from? Empiricism maintains that basic beliefs are the products of experience therefore all knowledge begins as primitive experience (ideas, imagination, intuition are all products of experience). Hence the Empiricist view as a major part of the scientific theory as hypotheses are tested against the external world rather than accepting them as a priori, or intuition. Empiricists believe that people are born with tabula rasa, or a blank slate, and it is through experience, observations of the external world, that human develop beliefs. Extreme Empiricism theorizes that all propositions should be reduced to "protocol sentences", "X at location Y at time T observed P", or "I observed Shelly in the cafeteria at noon." Such is to render a synthetic assertion genuine as it tests if or not it can be reduced to express a direct experience.
The position which contrasts with Empiricism, is Rationalism as it theorizes that truths can be known without experience, it is something innate or comes from tradition. However, to use the example of Shelly, knowing that she is a girl, or blond, or short, requires pre-existing rationalist knowledge and anything that does not require pre-existing knowledge is to primitive to be informative and therefore not knowledge at all (like a pain in my arm or an itch on my nose do not really inform me about the external world like how I got the pain or why my nose is itchy).
Pragmatism marries the two theories together with the idea that knowledge is that which works. Charles Piece, one of the fathers of the scientific method, argued that while experience is paramount to knowledge, rationalist beliefs allow one to go further with observations. Using Shelly again as an example, the sentence "Shelly was eating lunch at the cafeteria." Uses rationalist theory to deduce that Shelly was indeed eating lunch because we had the experience of observing her eating at noon, or lunchtime. If Shelly had symptoms of severe food poisoning and passed out in her bedroom, one could say "Shelly was eating lunch in the cafeteria." The observation was actually only that he saw Shelly in the cafeteria at noon, but it is from innate rationalist knowledge that he, even if he never saw Shelly in the cafeteria before and had no memory or other experience of her ever eating lunch, deduced she was eating lunch. This belief helps doctors save Shelly as they were able to go to the cafeteria and find out what they served for lunch that day. Pragmatism is one part instinct to one part experience which illustrates that it is possible for Empiricism and Rationalism to produce knowledge together it terms of knowledge being something that works.
OK... let me think about the Pragmatism stuff while I write up the rest...
ReplyDeleteI think the Empiricism stuff is good. Note that this is Foundationalist Empiricism, right? (Usually the most popular kind, but there could be Coherentist varieties as well.) That's all good - Familiarity in that, as well as in basic beliefs. Rationalism is good too, though the real reason they say empiricist perceptions are too primitive isn't because they don't answer the 'why', but because they can't even get anything more than "pain now" - the part about "it's in my arm", etc., Rationalists say is rational knowledge not 'contained' in the perception itself.
I think the Pragmatist stuff is not quite on the right track here - they don't really want to sign on with Rationalism, because Rationalists talk about truth being discoverable without experience. Pragmatists can make leaps of judgment like you described, but they do it (or should do it) on the basis that it works out in 'reality'. They don't know it 'before' it works out - the working-out is where truth & knowledge get made, for them. Right? So, instinct might be a source of beliefs, but what turns those 'mere beliefs' into knowledge?