This article considers six types of Platonic Innatism and compares them to the nativisms of early modern writers. I first dismiss a type of innatism similar to the target of the first book of Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding and then discuss four types of innatism that might be considered “live options” for the one Plato employs in his theory of recollection: a Kantian “constructivist” innatism, a Cartesian “dispositional” innatism, a Leibnizian “content” innatism, and (...) a Malebranchian “transcendent” innatism. Finally, in closing, I discuss “condition innatism”. Though this last position is frequently referenced in Platonic scholarship, I argue that the position is incoherent. (shrink)

. Moral innatism, connatural ideas, and impuissance in daily affairs: James Q. Wilson's acrobatic dive into an empty pool. Criminal Justice Ethics: Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 77-82.

This article will consider the claim that the possession of concepts is innate rather than learned. Innatism about concept learning is explained through consideration of the work of Fodor and Chomsky. First, an account of concept formation is developed. Second the argument against the claim that concepts are learned through the construction of a learning paradox developed by Fodor is considered. It is argued that, despite initial plausibility, the learning paradox is not, in fact, a paradox at all as (...) it rests on eliding the distinction between recognising something and recognising it as a something. The plausibility of eliding this distinction rests, in turn, on begging the question as to whether concept possession is a necessary condition for recognition of objects, events, properties etc. Fodor's positive arguments for innatism, as set out in LOT2 are considered and parallels with his account of stereotype formation and associationist accounts of concept formation are considered. The explanatory persuasiveness of this revised account of concept activation through the generation of stereotypes is weak. The article then examines the distinction between concept possession and concept mastery in greater detail, arguing that innatists have difficulty in accounting for the phenomenon of concept mastery, including within the contexts of formal and professional education. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to offer a critical analysis of the political projections that Antonio Damasio has put forward of his specific conception of homeostasis. By starting from a complex conception of homeostasis, one that focuses not only on the maintenance of life but also on flourishing, Damasio argues that certain cultures are contrary to the homeostatic imperative. I will suggest that, even if we adopt the complex interpretation of homeostasis (rather than the deflated one that is usual (...) in most evolutionary approaches), resorting to the concept of homeostasis would lead to a condemnation of modern capitalist societies, not from an ethical or political point of view, but from a strictly evolutionary one (i.e., a point of view that takes into consideration the preservation of the conditions under which our species can survive in the future). (shrink)

James of Viterbio is one of the rare medieval authors to sustain a thoroughly innatist philosophy. He borrows from Simplicius the notion of idoneitas (aptitude, predisposition) so as to ground a cognition theory in which external things are not the efficient and formal causes of mental acts. A predisposition has the characteristic of being halfway between potentiality and actuality. Therefore, the subject that has predispositions does not need to be acted upon by another thing to actualize them. External things only (...) “incline” the mind to make use of a stock of cognitive schemes. Consequently, in order to avoid an infinite regress James must adopt innatism. Following the lead of late Neoplatonism, he goes as far as including, not only conceptual schemes, but also perceptual schemes among the inbuilt stock. As a result, James’s theory, while it echoes certain preoccupations and themes that are common in the thirteenth century, proves to be one of a kind. (shrink)

Plato in the Meno is standardly interpreted as committed to condition innatism: human beings are born with latent innate states of knowledge. Against this view, Gail Fine has argued for prenatalism: human souls possess knowledge in a disembodied state but lose it upon being embodied. We argue against both views and in favor of content innatism: human beings are born with innate cognitive contents that can be, but do not exist innately in the soul as, the contents of (...) states of knowledge. Content innatism has strong textual support and constitutes a philosophically interesting theory. (shrink)

The evidence concerning the existence of Epicurean gods has invited ever-growing attention, and has resulted in discussions of increasing sophistication. I aim to provide a roadmap to this controversy, and to argue for the following three claims. First, in the debate concerning ‘realist’ and ‘idealist’ readings of the Epicurean thesis that gods exist, there is no principled way of deciding which one to favour without having to compromise on some aspect of a minimally Epicurean position. Second, positing an innate disposition (...) to form the concept of god is not going to carry the day for an ‘idealist’ reading, though it does capture an important insight about the ethical orientation of the Epicurean theory. Third, in accor- dance with this ethical orientation, we have reason to suspect that Epicurus was genuinely uninterested in what the correct ontological position might be. (shrink)

Our disagreements concern points of some importance. There is the question whether the soul in itself is blank like a writing tablet on which nothing has as yet been written – a tabula rasa – as Aristotle and the author of the Essay maintain, and whether everything which is inscribed there comes solely from the senses and experience; or whether the soul inherently contains the sources of various notions and doctrines which external objects merely rouse up on suitable occasions, as (...) I believe and as do Plato and even the Schoolmen, and those who understand in this sense the passage in Saint Paul where he says that God's law is written in our hearts (Rom. 2:15). The Stoics call these sources Prolepses, that is fundamental assumptions or things taken for granted in advance. (shrink)

In this paper I critically assess a proposal called ‘Universal Moral Grammar’ and its implications for legal theory. I explain its relevance with respect to Natural Law approaches to legislation and our moral capacity. I present objections to this proposal and offer behavioral evidence concerning its plausibility as a scientific theory of moral competence. An important conclusion of the article is that lawyers and legal theorist have now the responsibility to look beyond their field, and start taking a more proactive (...) role in the interdisciplinary study of social behavior.Resumen:En este artículo se discute una propuesta denominada “Gramática moral universal” y sus implicaciones para la teoría del derecho. El autor explica la relevancia de esta propuesta en relación con los enfoques iusnaturalistas sobre la legislación y la capacidad moral. A su vez, el estudio presenta diversas objeciones a esta propuesta y ofrece evidencia conductual relativa a su plausibilidad como una teoría científica de la competencia moral. Una conclusión importante del artículo, según el autor, es que los juristas y los abogados contemporáneos tienen la responsabilidad de ir más allá de su propio campo y de empezar a tomar un papel más activo en el estudio interdisciplinario de la conducta social. (shrink)

The objective of this chapter is to trace the influence of Stoic dispositional innatism on the early development of Herder’s concept of force through an examination of two of the most likely sources of transmission of this tradition: Leibniz and Shaftesbury. The interdependence of soul-forces, the obscure, and dispositional innatism is then explored in Herder’s plan for an aesthetics that genuinely comes to grips with the lower, sensuous regions of the soul that he presents against the backdrop of (...) his critical engagement with Baumgarten. (shrink)

This chapter clarifies the different varieties of dispositional nativism (DN) that John Locke addresses. In the light of this clarification, the chapter then identifies the basic structure of Locke's arguments and assesses their strengths and weaknesses. It points out that Locke's polemic fails to undermine nativism. The chapter analyzes Locke's reasoning for dismissing nativism in its cognitive form. It explains Locke's arguments against the postulation of innate ideas. The chapter examines three problems with Locke's argumentative strategy. In light of the (...) three problems, the chapter concludes that Locke's attack on non‐cognitive dispositional nativism (NCDN) fails because it either establishes that nativism and empiricism are indistinguishable but it has the undesired effect of collapsing empiricism into nativism; it fails to establish that empiricism and nativism are indistiguishable and, hence, Locke's polemical strategy is undermined. Consequently, Locke's arguments neither undermine nativism nor shift the burden of proof on the nativists’ shoulders. (shrink)

This essay argues that Berkeley’s doctrine of notions is an account of concept-formation that offers a middle-way between empiricism and innatism, something which Berkeley himself asserts at Siris 308. First, the widespread assumption that Berkeley accepts Locke’s conceptual empiricism is questioned, with particular attention given to Berkeley’s views on innatism and ideas of reflection. Then, it is shown that Berkeley’s doctrine of notions comes very close to the refined form ofinnatism to be found in Descartes’ later writings and (...) in Leibniz. Finally, it is argued that Berkeley denies a principle common to both empiricism and innatism, namely, that all conceptual knowledge amounts to the perception of ideas. By denying this―at least in the case of the concepts of self, causation, substance, and virtue―Berkeley is able to provide a synthesis of conceptual empiricism and innatism. (shrink)

Jonathan Haidt’s _Moral Foundation Theory _has been criticized on many fronts, mainly on account of its lack of evidence concerning the genetic and neurological bases of the evolved moral intuitions that the theory posits. Despite the fact that Haidt’s theory is probably the most promising framework from which to integrate the different lines of interdisciplinary research that deal with the evolutionary foundations of moral psychology, _i) _it also shows a critical underspecification concerning the precise mental processes that instantiate the triggering (...) of our evolved moral intuitions, and that _ii) _that underspecification coexists with and overspecification of the structure of human nature when it comes to exploring alternatives to capitalist societies. (shrink)

One of the several good questions asked by Robin Mills in this short but rich book concerns the explanation of change in the intellectual climate of a particular time and place. In mid-seventeenth-...

Mencius, referred to as second sage in Chinese philosophy history, grounds his theory about original goodness of human nature on psychological components by bringing in something new down ancient ages. Including the principles of virtuous action associated with Confucius to his doctrine, but by composing them along psychosocial development, he theorizes utterly out of the ordinary that makes all the difference to the school. In his argument stated a positive opinion, he explains the method of forming individuals' moral awareness by (...) means of inseparable integrity of feelings and thoughts, saying human being are born innately good. According to Mencius, heart-mind correlation is the motivational complement of inner incentives. Knowledge and virtue, which are extensions of inborn goodness, comprehended intuitively; then affective motives respond to circumstance, what is learned transmits to cognitive process and eventually behavior emerges. Comparing during the years of Warring State period he lived, in western geography Aristotle, who is one of the pioneers of Greek philosophy, argues deductive and inductive methods in mental activity. On the other hand, Mencius uses analogical reasoning throughout his self-titled work. This essay is an attempt to assert that most postulates of developmental theories, which have been considered an integral part of modern psychology, begin with Mencius in early era. Secondly, this study also aims to discuss the main paradigm of Mencius across emotivist-rationalist opposition, which keeps emotion above thought as well as reason above emotion. (shrink)

In this treatise, al-Fārābī refers to mental acquisition of certain elementary principles of knowledge or cognitions that are the primary basis of any demonstrative process; and this means that cognitions, which are in our intellect, are independent of all experience. The innate character of cognitions is treated in his other works, as is their nature, e.g., whether they are content-ideas or dispositio.

In the Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, Condillac argues that humans develop reason only once they have discovered the function of signs and the use of language in their encounters with others. Commentators like Hans Aarsleff and Charles Taylor believe that a precondition for this discovery is the presence of a special human capacity: the capacity to reflectively relate to what is given in experience. The problem with this claim is that it returns Condillac to a form of (...) innatism from which he was keen to escape, because it assumes that human minds are reflective qua original endowment. I argue that Condillac attributed limited value to explanations based on the static analysis of innate natures and instead opted for a dynamic examination of developmental trajectories enabled through species-specific embodied experiences. Through this dynamic approach, he was able to do two things at once: explain how it is possible that human cognition is of a unique superior kind, while at the same time defending the view that humans are like any other species in that they form species-specific mental features through their experiential engagement with the contingent circumstances of life. (shrink)

In his essay against Eberhard, Kant denies that there are innate concepts. Several scholars take Kant’s statement at face value. They claim that Kant did not endorse concept innatism, that the categories are not innate concepts, and that Kant’s views on innateness are significantly different from Leibniz’s. This paper takes issue with those claims. It argues that Kant’s views on the origin of the intellectual concepts are remarkably similar to Leibniz’s. Given two widespread notions of innateness, the dispositional notion (...) and the input/output notion, intellectual concepts are innate for Kant no less than for Leibniz. (shrink)

The article discusses the varying conceptions of the faculty of ‘the understanding’ in 18th-century British philosophy and logic. Topics include the distinction between the understanding and the will, the traditional division of three acts of understanding and its critics, the naturalizing of human understanding, conceiving of the limits of human understanding, British innatism and the critique of empiricist conceptions of the understanding, and reconceiving the understanding and the elimination of scepticism. Authors discussed include Richard Price, James Harris, Zachary Mayne, (...) Edward Bentham, Isaac Watts, Dugald Stewart, John Norris—as well as Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Reid. (shrink)

In this chapter, John Locke's anti‐Cartesian stances on the difference between body and space, on whether the soul always thinks, on the possibility of thinking matter, all connect back to the basic opposition to Cartesian overreaching in regard to essences. The chapter presents a summary of Locke's anti‐Cartesianism, which seems to fit with his own representation of his Cartesian inheritance, which, notoriously, is that it is minimal, consisting only in anti‐scholasticism. The only acknowledgment that Locke wishes to give Descartes is (...) that reading his work helped him to shake off the influence of Aristotelianism. Descartes was not the only target of Locke's anti‐innatism, but he was surely a central one. Locke attacks the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas because it poses a threat to his central empiricist commitments. Interestingly, he also sees the central tenets of Cartesian ontology as a threat. (shrink)

In the Philosophy of Cognitive Science, it is a common held view that the modularity hypothesis for cognitive mechanisms and the innateness hypothesis for mental contents are conceptually independent. In this paper I distinguish between substantial and deflationist modularity as well as between substantial and deflationist innatism, and I analyze whether the conceptual independence between substantial modularity and innatism holds. My conclusion will be that if what is taken into account are the essential properties of the substantial modules, (...) i.e. domain specificity and informational encapsulation, then it seems to be such independence. However, if what is taken into account is the function of the substantial modules, then it seems to be a conceptual connection from modularity to substantial innateness. (shrink)

The argument against innatism at the heart of Cognitive Gadgets is provocative but premature, and is vitiated by dichotomous thinking, interpretive double standards, and evidence cherry-picking. I illustrate my criticism by addressing the heritability of imitation and mindreading, the relevance of twin studies, and the meaning of cross-cultural differences in theory of mind development. Reaching an integrative understanding of genetic inheritance, plasticity, and learning is a formidable task that demands a more nuanced evolutionary approach.

We suggest that innatism and constructivism may differ only in their time scale.

Due to his innatist theory, James of Viterbo brings original answers to a number of late-thirteenth century questions concerning cognition. While he maintains a certain distinction between the soul and its faculties, and among these faculties, he rejects the Aristotelian distinction between agent and patient intellects. Thanks to its predispositions to knowing, the mind is able to be an agent for itself. Correlatively, James rejects the usual conception of abstraction. Neither does the intellect act on the phantasms, nor the phantasms (...) on the intellect. The intellect simply actualizes a conceptual scheme at the occasion of adequate sensory representations. Since the innate predispositions are the intrinsic principles of cognitive acts, James maintains with Giles of Rome the notion of intelligible species. But he agrees with Godfrey of Fontaines that an act of intellection is nothing else than the fully actualized species itself. He also concedes to Henry of Ghent that the form of an intelligible object need not be ontologically received in the intellect, but can just have an “objective” presence. Finally, thanks again to his theory of predispositions, he has an easy solution to the vexed problems of the knowledge of substance essences and of the self. (shrink)

Questions about learning and discovery have fascinated philosophers from Plato onwards. Does the mind bring innate resources of its own to the process of learning or does it rely wholly upon experience? Plato was the first philosopher to give an innatist response to this question and in doing so was to provoke the other major philosophers of ancient Greece to give their own rival explanations of learning. This book examines these theories of learning in relation to each other. It presents (...) an entirely different interpretation of the theory of recollection which also changes the way we understand the development of ancient philosophy after Plato. The final section of the book compares ancient theories of learning with the seventeenth-century debate about innate ideas, and finds that the relation between the two periods is far more interesting and complete than is usually supposed. (shrink)

This paper argues that Locke has a representative theory of sensitive knowledge. Perceivers are immediately aware of nothing but sensory ideas in the mind; yet perceivers think of real external substances that correspond to and cause those ideas, and they are warranted in believing that those substances exist (at that time). The theory poses two questions: what warrants the truth of such beliefs? What is it in virtue of which sensory ideas represent external objects and how do they make perceivers (...) think of those objects? Both the epistemic and semantic issues need to be addressed. This paper urges that Locke's basic account of warrant is roughly reliabilist. The causal origin of sensory ideas assures that, in general, sense based beliefs are true. Locke defines the limit of this warrant by the theoretical point that we cannot discuss skeptical doubt without assuming the truthfulness of our perceptual faculty. Turning to the semantic question, the paper argues that ideas are mental modifications or entities. They are not intrinsically representative (satisfiable), but rather represent only by virtue of their causal origin. They merely “track” the presence of substances and their qualities. Ideas nevertheless prompt perceivers to think of their causes. This is roughly because sensory ideas have a specific mental role, namely, to serve as marks for distinguishing substances and their respective qualities for purposes of action. The paper suggests that, for Locke, the challenge posed by the semantic veil of ideas is to explain this externally directed marking function within bounds of his anti‐innatism. But it concludes that his answers to the twin questions fit together reasonably well. (shrink)

Introduction: How hard is the "hard core" of a scientific program? / Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini -- pt. 1. The debate: 1. Opening the debate: The psychogenesis of knowledge and its epistemological significance / Jean Piaget -- On cognitive structures and their development: a reply to Piaget / Noam Chomsky -- 2. About the fixed nucleus and its innateness: Introductory remarks / Jean Piaget -- Cognitive strategies in problem solving / Guy Cellerier -- Some clarifications on innatism and constructivism / Guy (...) Cellerier -- 3. Artificial intelligence and general development mechanisms: The role of artificial intelligence in psychology / Seymour Papert -- 4. Initial states and steady states: The linguistic approach / Noam Chomsky -- 5. Cognitive schemes and their possible relations to language acquisition: Language and knowledge in a constructivist framework / Bäé́ Thom -- Appendix C: Localist hypothesis and theory of catastrophes: note on the debate / Jean Petitot. (shrink)

Mindfulness is examined using the Abhidhamma system of classification of phenomena (dharmas) as found in the Pali work Abhidhammattha-saṅgaha. In this model the mental factors constituting the aggregate of formations (saṅkhāra) are grouped so as to describe a layered approach to the practice of mental development. Thus all mental states involve a certain set of mental factors, while others are added as the training of the mind takes place. Both unwholesome and wholesome configurations also occur, and mindfulness turns out to (...) be a rather advanced state of wholesome constructed experience. Wisdom, the prime transformative factor in Buddhist thought and practice, arises only under special conditions. This system is then contrasted with the different parsing of phenomena presented in the Sanskrit Abhidharmakośa, where both mindfulness and wisdom are counted among the universal factors, which provides a basis for an innatist model of development; this is then critiqued from a constructivist perspective. (shrink)

A widespread historiographical portrayal represented Descartes' dualism as constituted in direct contrast with Aquinas' concept of soul-form. In the wake of the many studies that have opposed this prejudice in recent decades, this book reconstructs the fifteenth and seventeenth-century debate on psychology, focusing primarily on the Jesuit context and on the intersection between Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Augustinianism in early modern France. Beginning with a rigorous investigation of the theories of the separated soul, particular attention is then given to the indirect (...) derivation of the Cartesian cogito and innatism from angelological themes of the time. Indeed, in the years in which Descartes elaborates his metaphysics, the immediate proximity between souls and angels is somehow a matter of fact, in the light of which many of the argumentative choices of the Meditations, and even the relationship that closely joins the "thinking substance" with the body-machine, appear clear. -/- . (shrink)

The paper examines Simplicius's doctrine of propensities in his commentary on Aristotle's Categories and follows its application by the late thirteenth century theologian and philosopher James of Viterbo to problems relating to the causes of volition, intellection and natural change. Although he uses Aristotelian terminology and means his doctrine to conflict minimally with those of Aristotle, James's doctrine of propensities really constitutes an attempt to provide a technically rigorous dressing to his Augustinian and Boethian convictions. Central to James's procedure is (...) his rejection, following Henry of Ghent, of the principle that “everything that is moved is moved by another”. James uses Simplicius' doctrine of propensities as a means of extending the rejection of that principle, which Henry had limited to the case of the will, to cognitive operations and natural change. The result is a theory of cognition and volition that sees the soul as the principal cause of its own acts, and a theory of natural change that minimizes the causal impact of external agents. (shrink)

Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) deserves recognition as one of the most important English seventeenth-century philosophers after Hobbes and Locke. In opposition to Hobbes, Cudworth proposes an innatist theory of knowledge which may be contrasted with the empirical position of his younger contemporary Locke, and in moral philosophy he anticipates the ethical rationalists of the eighteenth century. A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality is his most important work, and this volume makes it available, together with his shorter Treatise of Freewill, in (...) its first modern edition, with a historical introduction, a chronology of his life, and an essay on further reading. (shrink)

This volume describes the current "main contenders," including neo-Piagetian, neo-connectionist, neo-innatist and sociocultural models.

Forms and Concepts is the first comprehensive study of the central role of concepts and concept acquisition in the Platonic tradition. It sets up a stimulating dialogue between Plato s innatist approach and Aristotle s much more empirical response. The primary aim is to analyze and assess the strategies with which Platonists responded to Aristotle s (and Alexander of Aphrodisias ) rival theory. The monograph culminates in a careful reconstruction of the elaborate attempt undertaken by the Neoplatonist Proclus (6th century (...) AD) to devise a systematic Platonic theory of concept acquisition.". (shrink)

We dispute Penn et al.'s claim of the sharp functional discontinuity between humans and nonhumans with evidence in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) of higher-order generalizations: spontaneous integration of previously learned rules and concepts in response to novel stimuli. We propose that species-general explanations that are in approach are more plausible than Penn et al.'s innatist approach of a genetically prespecified supermodule.

The present paper investigates the seventeenth-century debate on whether the agreement of all human beings upon certain notions—designated as the “common” ones—prove these notions to be innate. It does so by focusing on Descartes’ and Locke’s rejections of the philosophy of Herbert of Cherbury, one of the most important early modern proponents of this view. The paper opens by considering the strategy used in Herbert’s arguments, as well as the difficulties involved in them. It shows that Descartes’ 1638 and 1639 (...) reading of Herbert’s On Truth—both the 1633 second Latin edition and Mersenne’s 1639 translation—was instrumental in shaping Descartes’ views on the issue. The arguments of Locke’s Essay opposing Herbert’s case for innatism are thus revealed to be ineffective against the case which Descartes makes for this same doctrine, since Descartes had in fact framed his conception of innateness in opposition to the very same theses as Locke was arguing against. The paper concludes by explaining how two thinkers as antithetical as Locke and Descartes came to agree on at least one point, and a truly crucial one: namely, that universal consent counts as a criterion neither for innatism nor for truth. (shrink)

The belief in innate knowledge has a history almost as long as that of philosophy itself. In our own century it has been propounded in a linguistic context by Chomsky, who sees himself as the heir to a tradition including such philosophers as Descartes, the Cambridge Platonists and Leibniz. But the ancestor of all these is, of course, Plato's theory of recollection or anamnesis. This stands out as unique among all other innatist theses not simply because it was the first, (...) but also because it is in some respects the strangest: Plato proposed not just a theory of innate knowledge, but of forgotten knowledge, and this, of course, goes hand in hand with his interest in the pre-existence of the soul. But my concern here is with another difference that makes Plato's theory unique, though it is not as clear as the previous one: in fact it has been for the most part over-looked by commentators and scholars. I wish to argue that while other theories of innate knowledge or ideas hold that much of what is innate in us is realized automatically and with ease, be it knowledge of moral principles, the idea of cause and effect or linguistic competence, anamnesis is concerned only with the attainment of hard philosophical knowledge, which most of us never reach. (shrink)

If a man born blind were to gain his sight in later life would he be able to identify the objects he saw around him? Would he recognise a cube and a globe on the basis of his earlier tactile experiences alone? This was William Molyneux's famous question to John Locke and it was much discussed by English and French empiricists in the eighteenth century as part of the controversy over innatism and abstract ideas. Dr Morgan examines the whole (...) history of this debate: Locke's own (negative) answer to the question, the contributions of Berkeley, Condillac, Diderot and Voltaire and the factual accounts of early cataract operations and modern laboratory studies. He shows how this debate is involved in the development and eventual separation of philosophy and experimental psychology after the eighteenth century and considers why the original question is effectively still unanswered. This is one problem-area with its intricate cluster of connected conceptual and technical difficulties which suggests the need for some reunion or at least collaboration between the two subjects. (shrink)

This article provides a rigorous defense of innate true belief in the Meno, to my knowledge, the first of its kind. While several commentators have proposed innate true belief in the past, the position has never been defended or explained in detail. Instead, the most thorough discussions of Plato’s innatism have opted for different innate objects. I defend my proposal against these recent alternatives by showing that the passages often thought to imply innate knowledge can arguably be better read (...) in other ways. I then argue that they should be so read, because of an “awareness condition” Plato had on knowledge at the time. (shrink)

This article addresses some Late Scholastic accounts (Suárez, Abra de Raçonis, Gamaches, Ysambert, Arriaga), of the “problem of transduction” in angels, as a possible source for the genesis of early modern occasionalism, particularly La Forge’s and Cordemoy’s. Indeed, if the “problem of transduction” is a structural issue of all the Aristotelian gnoseology, the impossibility of interaction between immaterial and material substance concerns, more generally, all spiritual substances, posing the issue about the principle of "transduction" already at the level of angels, (...) entirely immaterial creatures, unable to any relationship with the bodies. In order to answer to this peculiar version of the 'problem of transduction' Late Scholastic elaborate doctrines that are direct antecedents of occasionalist ones, and which likely directly influenced early modern occasionalism. To follow this investigative path, I will intersect three complementary argumentative lines. First, I will focus on Late Scholastic angelology, to point out how the need to solve the 'problem of transduction' in this peculiar context pushes the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Schools to a proto-occasionalist conception of angelic innatism. Secondly, I will identify in the debate on the angelic locutio of the key places for the elaboration of a model that sees God as the only efficient cause and the only guarantor of the mind's communications and contents. Thirdly, I will stress how the Late Scholastic angelological debates could be an important source for early modern dualism and the seventeenth-century occasionalism, notably for La Forge and Cordemoy. -/- . (shrink)

Is language an evolutionarily independent faculty from other cognitive capacities? In recent years two opposing views have clashed: the innatist view, of which linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky is the main exponent, which answers in the affirmative; the constructivist-empiricist one according to which, on the other hand, language is but the ultimate evolution-complication of non-linguistic capabilities already present in non-human animals. This paper presents and comments on the position of the scientist and philosopher Giorgio Prodi (1928-1987) who avoids this contraposition (...) by thematising an original aesthetic area that would be at the origin of both animal and then human cognition as well as properly human language. Unlike the constructivist view, however, for Prodi such an original aesthetic field can only ground language because it is co-extensive with the original space of biosemiosis. Lastly, the theme of co-evolution is analysed, the only evolutionary mechanism capable, according to Prodi, to account for both the similarities and differences of human language compared to the forms of communication of non-human animals and plants. (shrink)

In the First Chapter, I give an interpretation of Kant's characterization of a priori knowledge which sharply distinguishes Kant's from an innatist conception; in this way, I distinguish Kant's transcendental explanation of a prioricity from both innatist and naturalistic explanations. ;The arguments given by Kant to support his claim that we are in fact in possession of a priori knowledge rely on his criterion of a prioricity: if a truth is necessary then it must be justified a priori. I criticize (...) the criterion's failure to account for actual cases of being justified in believing necessary truths. Finally, I discuss whether Kant has arguments to show that there is a priori knowledge which are independent of the criterion. ;In the Second Chapter, I examine the similarities and differences between Kant's and Frege's conceptions of a priori knowledge. I argue that Frege, like Kant, concentrates exclusively on the ways we must justify our beliefs in certain truths . I show, however, that Frege does not have straightforward arguments to prove that we can and do know a priori any arithmetical or logical truths, and that he does not have any straightforward explanation of the a prioricity of the laws of logic. Finally, I argue that even though a priori items of knowledge play a privileged role in Frege's project, this role differs from the one that such items have in a Kantian-transcendental project. ;In the Third Chapter, I explore whether we can make sense of the notion of a prioricity and prove that there is a priori knowledge by adopting an approach to justification which differs from both Kant's and Frege's. This approach does not concentrate on the ways we must be justified, but on the actual ways we justify our beliefs. I argue that this approach faces enormous difficulties regarding a prioricity. The central difficulty is that the actual complete justification for a belief cannot be captured exclusively in propositional terms. If a belief is based on inference, practical abilities, tendencies or dispositions enter in its justification. . . . UMI. (shrink)