Even though my professor is interesting I must admit that I wish to have a modern philosophy professor like yourself. I struggle with ADHD and your lectures have the ability to hook me up for hours. 👽♥️♥️♥️
You're amazing, I wish every Professor taught the way you do. For students who have majors that are nothing like that of Philosophy expertise, it's hard to engage & enjoy the information presented in Philosophy courses. However, if we all had Professors like yourself, that are charismatic, enthusiastic and well versed in the art of communicating difficult theoretic discussion, from an instructor / teacher/ professor position. I have to say; like watching your video, it would be enjoyable, while creating a desire toward understanding philosophical belief, theory and ideas. Your teaching methods bring an engaging presence, and with it the desire of understanding and comprehending, exceptional knowledge being passed down from generation to generation by the Philosopher's you enlighten us about. Thank you -
I love your videos... Would you ever be willing to post your reading lists for this series? It would make it so much more useful to me if I could read exactly what the students had.
How would John Locke respond to these propositions? - Despite the fact that morality from culture to culture may be different, all humans some form of a conception of good and bad, therefor, we all have a natural and innate idea of there being a good and bad. - Humans, when coming to conclusions of certainties of knowledge, let's use in the field of science for example, seem to pre-suppose without question that the past will replicate the future (example: a rock thrown downwards will always go downwards and never float upwards, assuming the conditions are the same), so therefor we all have an innate idea and natural disposition that makes us think the future will resemble the past.
Locke answers your first question in Book I, ch 3 of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and plenty of general arguments against the prospect of *any* innate ideas can be found in ch2. Your second question is a good one, and I'm not sure exactly how Locke would have responded to it as this question ends up being a real game-changer for Early Modern Philosophy. It doesn't seem that Locke (or anyone else at the time) was particularly aware of this argument, at least until Hume introduces it and blows everyone's minds. There's a sixty year gap between Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" and Hume's "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" but there's definitely a shared empiricist sensibility (not to mention nearly identical titles) in the two works. I'd say that reading Locke's Essay alongside Hume's Enquiry would likely give you some sense of what someone like Locke would think about this "problem of induction."
@@adamrosenfeld9384 My guess for question two would be that one could argue that cause and effect is not really an idea in the human head for most, but maybe more so a natural instinct in the same way it is for other animals (such as a dog, for example, being scared of a person because said dog experienced bad relations with them in the past and pre-supposes said person will do the same in the future), so maybe it can't really count as an innate idea. Although, if I remember correctly Kant argues that it's a conception we come to through the idea of space and time, which I guess we would need experience to understand and create, therefor it not being innate. I think for my first question once could say that the existence of sociopaths/psychopaths defeats the idea that all have a conception of good vs evil. Thanks for the response!
@@mt70092 Good guess! That's awfully close (if not right on) the Humean take (or at least *my* take on the Humean take)! One tiny tweak I might offer is that "cause/effect" *IS* an idea, but this idea isn't exactly the same thing as an instinctual tendency to expect the future to resemble the past. We come to the *idea* of "cause/effect" after lots of experience once we start engaging in epistemological reflection on our experiences. So while the *instinct* might be innate, the *idea* isn't. This distinction between "ideas" and other sorts of bodily or even some mental capacities (like instincts etc.) is a subtle but important one for Locke, and worth attending to. Lots of my students struggle with it. Kant's take is weird (though perhaps correct!), in no small part because he's playing with "a priori" in an unusual way, so the notion of what counts as "before" and "after" experience gets a little complicated. I think by the time Kant has a hold of this sort of question, the conversation has changed in some significant ways that make it even more difficult to put into conversation with earlier thinkers.
@@adamrosenfeld9384 Yeah, Kant I do think had a pretty good response to Hume with his whole idea of the conceptual vs real world (I forget the exact terms used by him) being pretty interesting even if odd to consider and comprehend. The concept of innate ideas in my opinion has the issue in that it can constantly modify its argument to almost any degree and this whole idea of ideas laying dormant in the mind seems kind of hollow as I think it could just as easily and more sensibly be explained that humans have the ability to come to knowledge or at least propositions of said things., not that these ideas are simply dormant in the mind. Also, thank you for the videos on John Locke's essay, I'm getting into epistemology over the summer again and was told to start with Locke>Berkley>Hume>Kant, and then Schopenhauer or Hegel. Your videos seem to clarify the essay to an excellent degree.
how would Locke explain the fact a newborn baby wildebeest will run from a lion, that clearly seems to be an innate idea. The innate fear of spiders or snakes also seems to be strong arguments for innate ideas. Those are instincts, but wouldn't that still be an idea? if not what is an instinct? (3 min later it comes up... haha) an instinct is a reaction to an external stimuli, that seems to be an idea and different than digestion or breathing where the brain has special areas to control these things, as well as the organs themselves have mechanisms to aid them.
Careful here. There might be a distinction between an innate **idea** and other sorts of innate capacities for action. Locke seems to have a fairly specific sense of "idea" that doesn't necessarily include all reactions to external stimuli. You might be interested in Vere Chappell's essay "Locke's Theory of Ideas," which doesn't answer your question directly, but definitely gets into the question of just what Locke means when he talks about "ideas." www-cambridge-org.libproxy.uncg.edu/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-locke/lockes-theory-of-ideas/FF669082E139FCBA27D249A059DC2BB8
@@adamrosenfeld9384 could not access the book :( Was thinking about it a bit more, if you define an "idea" in a way that you can only come to it rationally (or be a complicated concept, that idiots and children can't have) then argue that rational ideas appear to be learned not innate seems somewhat disingenuous, and could lead to the accusation of playing "word games". If there are innate abilities then there are some things the brain/body knows without learning, and it is not clear that this is limited only to "instincts" when you see a snake and are inherently afraid of it, you need to see the form, recognize it as something, then be able to conclude it is dangerous and react to it. this seems far more complex process than just touching something hot and jerking your hand away, as this process bypasses the brain entirely and you react before the brain registers the pain. It sure seems there is an idea going on, snake = dangerous therefor be scared then react to fear, and this is not learned. the fact the brain even has any concept of snake at all, clearly seems to imply there is knowledge that is not learned. the baby does not see oh black squiggly thing, and get curious, "what does that mean/do? lets go explore it, pick it up, taste it, feel it, etc." like it does with millions of other things. Just because these thoughts happen extremely quickly does not mean they were not thoughts and tied to ideas, even if it only happens on the unconscious level, which is debatable, if you have seen someone do a "double take" it seems like the unconscious recognized the object then they went and looked again to make sure and the conscious mind recognized it and reacted. Even if that was extremely fast thought, if you asked, "why did you run and get afraid?" would say, "because there was a snake" granted they have to have the mental faculties to communicate it. Just learning to communicate the reaction does not change the fact that the exact same thing happens in a child or idiot. Like most things I think there tends to be some truth in both, I would agree with Locke in that what a lot might call an "innate idea" is a rational conclusion and was learned. But would disagree that there is no innate ideas at all, so maybe somewhere between Plato and Locke, there are some things that are forms but not everything just a basic amount that gives us the building blocks to start building complex ideas and improve our chances for surviving a dangerous world. "My philosophy" tends to be a "middle ground" maybe this is the cop out of a skeptic not willing to make firm stands on issues or maybe it is just taking the best aspect of many ideas and attempting to make a coherent non-contradictory explanation of reality. This is attempting to pair rationalism with empiricism in a way that they agree with each other, with empiricism reigning supreme in the material world, and if your rationalism does not conform with reality (and there is not any errors in perception). you first assume you made a conceptual error, and rethink your ideas until they align with objective reality. But, there can be completely conceptual ideas that only take place in the mind and have to be rationally debated. So both rationalism and empiricism are correct depending on the context you are dealing with, conceptual or objective. To me it seems nonsensical to try to stuff everything in one box or the other when there seems to be a clear distinctions.
@@bobsmith-gn7ly It's possible that the sense in which "the body knows" something are distinct from the kind of knowledge that deals with "ideas" and that this is not simply playing word games, but actually picks out a meaningful and relevant distinction. Epistemologists sometimes refer to this as a distinction between "knowing how" and "knowing that," and point out that there are lots of species of "knowing how" that don't, strictly speaking, involve "knowing that." For example, a baby wildebeest can walk but doesn't necessarily have an idea of "walking" that involves the ability to make a judgement about whether or not they are walking. The latter case seems to involve having a *concept* of "walking" that the wildebeest might not possess (depending on our commitments concerning how non-human animal minds work). Similarly, your body "knows how" to digest food, but it seems to be able to do this well before you ever have a concept of "food" or "digestion." Having ideas and concepts seems like it might be a special case of knowledge that concerns a very specific sort of mental activity. Regarding having an idea without knowing that you are having the idea, this too, seems to involve a pretty loose sense of idea, one that conflicts with the sense that Locke is working with. See Ch 1 section 11-13 of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding for more on this, where Locke rejects the notion that we think and have ideas while unconscious.
@@adamrosenfeld9384 Thank you for the reply, I will review that section. I should have been more specific that I was talking about the subconscious mind, not the unconscious mind, I was using them synonymously, which was a mistake.
As far as I know recent(ish) psychological research (e.g. by prof. Paul Bloom) does seem to suggest that babies (If I remember right the experiments were carried out on babies who were at least a few months old) seem to have some basic innate knowledge of the physical world and even a basic sense of morality :-)
no it doesnt, and those "experiments" are a joke, i wouldnt consider what they are doin there as scientific at all. Wouldnt surprice me if the ones conducting the experiments are religious people, that would make sense.
in your third point of how people can assent you mention the example of "pentagon". Having a common understanding of what the word "penta-gon" implies, would people encourage to agree upon this definition. However, isn't there another/prior layer of "assent" necessary? Namely, the first person that sees a five sided building defines it as "pentagon" would then have to find assent with other to agree to the term penta = five sided.
Do you require assent for understanding that sun is hot? The focus is on one individual's understanding. One mind representative of all the minds which would live these specific conditions. Anyways, what he's saying is that if someone says cat in German and you don't understand German, then you might not understand a sentence with the German word for 'cat' in it. So understanding of these words or simpler ideas that form a bigger idea together, is needed to understand the first. The understanding of the bigger thing depends on the understanding of the smaller things that it's made of or based on. I hope that helps.
Professor, Is it possible, based on our current understanding, that Descartes may have been talking about those ideas that come up only when we meditate? In other words, when we quiet the mind.
Even though my professor is interesting I must admit that I wish to have a modern philosophy professor like yourself. I struggle with ADHD and your lectures have the ability to hook me up for hours. 👽♥️♥️♥️
You're amazing, I wish every Professor taught the way you do. For students who have majors that are nothing like that of Philosophy expertise, it's hard to engage & enjoy the information presented in Philosophy courses. However, if we all had Professors like yourself, that are charismatic, enthusiastic and well versed in the art of communicating difficult theoretic discussion, from an instructor / teacher/ professor position. I have to say; like watching your video, it would be enjoyable, while creating a desire toward understanding philosophical belief, theory and ideas. Your teaching methods bring an engaging presence, and with it the desire of understanding and comprehending, exceptional knowledge being passed down from generation to generation by the Philosopher's you enlighten us about. Thank you -
45:36 What I feel after going through the primary material without prior notice. Thanks for this professor!
I'm really glad to have found this lecture, you're an amazing and entertaining professor
Thank you for sharing Professor it's so good to Kindle our minds to think than to just shower the summary of the essay. God bless
You’re an incredible lecturer. Thanks for this. Preparing for a presentation on this essay.
Great discussion! Thanks for recording and sharing.👏
this episode brought to you by red bull :D
great lecture...thanks professor Rosenfield!! This helped tremendously with my philosophy class ;)
I love your videos... Would you ever be willing to post your reading lists for this series? It would make it so much more useful to me if I could read exactly what the students had.
thank you so much!! this was so much easier to follow than my online lecture! My actual lecturer just confused me for an hour and this helped a lot :)
How would John Locke respond to these propositions?
- Despite the fact that morality from culture to culture may be different, all humans some form of a conception of good and bad, therefor, we all have a natural and innate idea of there being a good and bad.
- Humans, when coming to conclusions of certainties of knowledge, let's use in the field of science for example, seem to pre-suppose without question that the past will replicate the future (example: a rock thrown downwards will always go downwards and never float upwards, assuming the conditions are the same), so therefor we all have an innate idea and natural disposition that makes us think the future will resemble the past.
Locke answers your first question in Book I, ch 3 of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and plenty of general arguments against the prospect of *any* innate ideas can be found in ch2.
Your second question is a good one, and I'm not sure exactly how Locke would have responded to it as this question ends up being a real game-changer for Early Modern Philosophy. It doesn't seem that Locke (or anyone else at the time) was particularly aware of this argument, at least until Hume introduces it and blows everyone's minds.
There's a sixty year gap between Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" and Hume's "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" but there's definitely a shared empiricist sensibility (not to mention nearly identical titles) in the two works. I'd say that reading Locke's Essay alongside Hume's Enquiry would likely give you some sense of what someone like Locke would think about this "problem of induction."
@@adamrosenfeld9384 My guess for question two would be that one could argue that cause and effect is not really an idea in the human head for most, but maybe more so a natural instinct in the same way it is for other animals (such as a dog, for example, being scared of a person because said dog experienced bad relations with them in the past and pre-supposes said person will do the same in the future), so maybe it can't really count as an innate idea. Although, if I remember correctly Kant argues that it's a conception we come to through the idea of space and time, which I guess we would need experience to understand and create, therefor it not being innate. I think for my first question once could say that the existence of sociopaths/psychopaths defeats the idea that all have a conception of good vs evil. Thanks for the response!
@@mt70092 Good guess! That's awfully close (if not right on) the Humean take (or at least *my* take on the Humean take)! One tiny tweak I might offer is that "cause/effect" *IS* an idea, but this idea isn't exactly the same thing as an instinctual tendency to expect the future to resemble the past. We come to the *idea* of "cause/effect" after lots of experience once we start engaging in epistemological reflection on our experiences. So while the *instinct* might be innate, the *idea* isn't.
This distinction between "ideas" and other sorts of bodily or even some mental capacities (like instincts etc.) is a subtle but important one for Locke, and worth attending to. Lots of my students struggle with it.
Kant's take is weird (though perhaps correct!), in no small part because he's playing with "a priori" in an unusual way, so the notion of what counts as "before" and "after" experience gets a little complicated. I think by the time Kant has a hold of this sort of question, the conversation has changed in some significant ways that make it even more difficult to put into conversation with earlier thinkers.
@@adamrosenfeld9384 Yeah, Kant I do think had a pretty good response to Hume with his whole idea of the conceptual vs real world (I forget the exact terms used by him) being pretty interesting even if odd to consider and comprehend. The concept of innate ideas in my opinion has the issue in that it can constantly modify its argument to almost any degree and this whole idea of ideas laying dormant in the mind seems kind of hollow as I think it could just as easily and more sensibly be explained that humans have the ability to come to knowledge or at least propositions of said things., not that these ideas are simply dormant in the mind. Also, thank you for the videos on John Locke's essay, I'm getting into epistemology over the summer again and was told to start with Locke>Berkley>Hume>Kant, and then Schopenhauer or Hegel. Your videos seem to clarify the essay to an excellent degree.
Thanks for this lecture, helped me a lot :)
how would Locke explain the fact a newborn baby wildebeest will run from a lion, that clearly seems to be an innate idea. The innate fear of spiders or snakes also seems to be strong arguments for innate ideas. Those are instincts, but wouldn't that still be an idea? if not what is an instinct? (3 min later it comes up... haha)
an instinct is a reaction to an external stimuli, that seems to be an idea and different than digestion or breathing where the brain has special areas to control these things, as well as the organs themselves have mechanisms to aid them.
Careful here. There might be a distinction between an innate **idea** and other sorts of innate capacities for action. Locke seems to have a fairly specific sense of "idea" that doesn't necessarily include all reactions to external stimuli.
You might be interested in Vere Chappell's essay "Locke's Theory of Ideas," which doesn't answer your question directly, but definitely gets into the question of just what Locke means when he talks about "ideas."
www-cambridge-org.libproxy.uncg.edu/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-locke/lockes-theory-of-ideas/FF669082E139FCBA27D249A059DC2BB8
@@adamrosenfeld9384 thank you.
@@adamrosenfeld9384 could not access the book :( Was thinking about it a bit more, if you define an "idea" in a way that you can only come to it rationally (or be a complicated concept, that idiots and children can't have) then argue that rational ideas appear to be learned not innate seems somewhat disingenuous, and could lead to the accusation of playing "word games". If there are innate abilities then there are some things the brain/body knows without learning, and it is not clear that this is limited only to "instincts" when you see a snake and are inherently afraid of it, you need to see the form, recognize it as something, then be able to conclude it is dangerous and react to it. this seems far more complex process than just touching something hot and jerking your hand away, as this process bypasses the brain entirely and you react before the brain registers the pain. It sure seems there is an idea going on, snake = dangerous therefor be scared then react to fear, and this is not learned. the fact the brain even has any concept of snake at all, clearly seems to imply there is knowledge that is not learned. the baby does not see oh black squiggly thing, and get curious, "what does that mean/do? lets go explore it, pick it up, taste it, feel it, etc." like it does with millions of other things.
Just because these thoughts happen extremely quickly does not mean they were not thoughts and tied to ideas, even if it only happens on the unconscious level, which is debatable, if you have seen someone do a "double take" it seems like the unconscious recognized the object then they went and looked again to make sure and the conscious mind recognized it and reacted. Even if that was extremely fast thought, if you asked, "why did you run and get afraid?" would say, "because there was a snake" granted they have to have the mental faculties to communicate it. Just learning to communicate the reaction does not change the fact that the exact same thing happens in a child or idiot.
Like most things I think there tends to be some truth in both, I would agree with Locke in that what a lot might call an "innate idea" is a rational conclusion and was learned. But would disagree that there is no innate ideas at all, so maybe somewhere between Plato and Locke, there are some things that are forms but not everything just a basic amount that gives us the building blocks to start building complex ideas and improve our chances for surviving a dangerous world.
"My philosophy" tends to be a "middle ground" maybe this is the cop out of a skeptic not willing to make firm stands on issues or maybe it is just taking the best aspect of many ideas and attempting to make a coherent non-contradictory explanation of reality.
This is attempting to pair rationalism with empiricism in a way that they agree with each other, with empiricism reigning supreme in the material world, and if your rationalism does not conform with reality (and there is not any errors in perception). you first assume you made a conceptual error, and rethink your ideas until they align with objective reality. But, there can be completely conceptual ideas that only take place in the mind and have to be rationally debated. So both rationalism and empiricism are correct depending on the context you are dealing with, conceptual or objective. To me it seems nonsensical to try to stuff everything in one box or the other when there seems to be a clear distinctions.
@@bobsmith-gn7ly It's possible that the sense in which "the body knows" something are distinct from the kind of knowledge that deals with "ideas" and that this is not simply playing word games, but actually picks out a meaningful and relevant distinction. Epistemologists sometimes refer to this as a distinction between "knowing how" and "knowing that," and point out that there are lots of species of "knowing how" that don't, strictly speaking, involve "knowing that." For example, a baby wildebeest can walk but doesn't necessarily have an idea of "walking" that involves the ability to make a judgement about whether or not they are walking. The latter case seems to involve having a *concept* of "walking" that the wildebeest might not possess (depending on our commitments concerning how non-human animal minds work). Similarly, your body "knows how" to digest food, but it seems to be able to do this well before you ever have a concept of "food" or "digestion." Having ideas and concepts seems like it might be a special case of knowledge that concerns a very specific sort of mental activity.
Regarding having an idea without knowing that you are having the idea, this too, seems to involve a pretty loose sense of idea, one that conflicts with the sense that Locke is working with. See Ch 1 section 11-13 of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding for more on this, where Locke rejects the notion that we think and have ideas while unconscious.
@@adamrosenfeld9384 Thank you for the reply, I will review that section.
I should have been more specific that I was talking about the subconscious mind, not the unconscious mind, I was using them synonymously, which was a mistake.
"something can't be and not be at the same time" *the taoists enter the scene*
Is there a diff between your image generating mind and your physical brain.
As far as I know recent(ish) psychological research (e.g. by prof. Paul Bloom) does seem to suggest that babies (If I remember right the experiments were carried out on babies who were at least a few months old) seem to have some basic innate knowledge of the physical world and even a basic sense of morality :-)
Thanks for the lectures by the way, they're great :-)
no it doesnt, and those "experiments" are a joke, i wouldnt consider what they are doin there as scientific at all.
Wouldnt surprice me if the ones conducting the experiments are religious people, that would make sense.
in your third point of how people can assent you mention the example of "pentagon". Having a common understanding of what the word "penta-gon" implies, would people encourage to agree upon this definition. However, isn't there another/prior layer of "assent" necessary? Namely, the first person that sees a five sided building defines it as "pentagon" would then have to find assent with other to agree to the term penta = five sided.
Do you require assent for understanding that sun is hot? The focus is on one individual's understanding. One mind representative of all the minds which would live these specific conditions. Anyways, what he's saying is that if someone says cat in German and you don't understand German, then you might not understand a sentence with the German word for 'cat' in it. So understanding of these words or simpler ideas that form a bigger idea together, is needed to understand the first. The understanding of the bigger thing depends on the understanding of the smaller things that it's made of or based on. I hope that helps.
Professor,
Is it possible, based on our current understanding, that Descartes may have been talking about those ideas that come up only when we meditate? In other words, when we quiet the mind.
Life is full of mysteries “3
Good lecture! Descartes is not an absolute rationalist.
can you pls. publish the powerpoints (if any) that go with the lecture?
51:20
9:05
11:50
Vulgar!
Fast talker poor explanations. Needs to study more. A good teacher doesn't act like this.