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How do we learn and acquire knowledge
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When we are born does our mind already contain knowledge or is knowledge something that we have to be taught throughout out life? This question is one that the studies of epistemology and innateness have questioned throughout time. While clarity can be gained on the subject, like all of philosophy, there are differing opinions on the matter. In philosophy, “epistemology is the study of knowledge” (Truncellito). The study of innateness falls under the idea of epistemology and focuses on the idea that we are all born already having knowledge, rather than being born having to learn everything in life. The theory of innateness is one that has been argued for centuries and it is argued to various extents of presence in the human mind.
Looking at the philosophy of innateness, one begins to question whether knowledge is something that we can come into the world possessing. Samet explains the theory in his article The Historical Controversies Surrounding Innateness as, “in the history of philosophy, the focus of the innateness debate has been on our intellectual lives: does our inherent nature include any
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David Truncellito explained in Epistemology from the Internet Encyclopedia of Psychology that “most of our knowledge is non-occurrent, or background, knowledge; only a small amount of one's knowledge is ever actively on one's mind.” (Truncellito) While non-occurrent knowledge does not necessarily mean that the knowledge has been there from birth, it is the idea that we store knowledge in the back of our minds and are not constantly thinking of every piece of knowledge we hold. The same way Plato argues that knowledge is being held in the mind from birth and the mind is waiting to be awakened on different subjects. One is waiting for the outside world to affect them in a way that causes their mind to bring forth this dormant knowledge that has been waiting to be
As Socrates and Meno were trying to find out the essence of virtues, Socrates said: “The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things1.” As he suggested, the soul has already known everything, and thus the acquisition of all knowledge is the process of remembrance, the process of the recalling what we have already known with the help of some hints.
Ideas are either innate (inborn or known from one's own nature), adventitious (come from outside me) or made by me.
Do we have innate ideas? Offer your view with reference to the work of Descartes and Locke
fully know where the nonphysical properties of our mind came from nor do we know if
During our lifetime, we can use our senses in connection with particulars to make explicit our implicit knowledge of the Forms. It follows that we must have first acquired this knowledge prior to acquiring the use of our senses, and therefore, prior to or at birth.
We have all been groomed to believe that we are born with instincts or innate ideas. Locke puts this topic into question and does not immediately reject it but does so with evidence. He believes that innate ideas- something that has been there from the beginning- are non existent. His argument that supports this, in Book I of An Essay Concerning Human Understan...
With rationalism, believing in innate ideas means to have ideas before we are born.-for example, through reincarnation. Plato best explains this through his theory of the forms, which is the place where everyone goes and attains knowledge before they are taken back to the “visible world”. Innate ideas can explain why some people are just naturally better at some things than other people are- even if they have had the same experiences.
- Chappell, Timothy. "Plato on Knowledge in the Theaetetus." Stanford University. Stanford University, 07 May 2005. Web. 08 May 2014.
...t find anything new. This description points out the hindrances on humans’ acquisition of knowledge because of our finite biological capacities.
In Plato’s Meno, Socrates suggested that knowledge comes from recollection, or, in Greek, anamnesis. He believes that the knowledge is already implanted in the human mind, and by recollection, men can retrieve back knowledge. There are two stages to this: first, a “stirring up” of true, innate opinions, then, a conversion of the knowledge (Gulley). Furthermore, Socrates believes that we acquired knowledge before this life. “As the soul is immortal, has been born often, and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not learned” (Plato 81c). Socrates holds the idea of reincarnation—as the soul reincarnates through many lives, it learns everything. Overall, the Doctrine of Recollection is based on two premises. The first is the immortality of the soul, along with its incarnations, and the second is the kinship of all nature (Ionescu).
Therefore, through the soul, that has been born before being placed into a physical human body, the human has knowledge. As a result of the soul being immortal and knowing everything, Socrates ties that idea of immortality with the theory of recollection, which claims that our knowledge is inside of us because of the soul and it never learns anything new, only remembers, consequently, serving as an evidence that the soul is pre- existent. Socrates uses the knowledge of the soul to explain that there is no such thing as learning but instead there is discovery of the knowledge that one has and does, by himself, without receiving new information. However, most knowledge is forgotten at birth since we are born without knowing, for example, how to add, subtract,talk, etc. Nonetheless, the knowledge we have, has to be recollected with the help of a teacher. Socrates is able to prove this argument to a degree by using Meno’s slave, who had no prior knowledge of geometry before, as an example of how humans have the knowledge inside of them, through the soul, and they know everything but all they need are a sort of guidance to be able to “free” the knowledge they didn’t know they had inside them all this time. (Plato,
Throughout the passage of time, philosophers have written and discussed many topics in philosophy. Sometimes, these philosophers agree on ideas or sometimes they make their own assumptions. There are two philosophers who had different ideas concerning where innate ideas come from and how we get these types of ideas. Rene Descartes and John Locke were these two philosophers with the opposing argument on innate ideas. The place where Descartes discusses his views were in the Meditations on First Philosophy and Locke's argument is located in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. By using these sources I will be able to describe the difference between these two arguments on innate ideas.
The principles of natural selection are suitable a metaphor for how knowledge within a discipline is developed. Natural selection is the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. The theory of its action was first fully proposed by Charles Darwin and is now believed to be the main process that brings about evolution. It is important to keep in mind that natural selection is different from evolution as evolution is the result of natural selection. The use of this metaphor signifies that only knowledge that is favored survives to be taught to the next generation and that only the best knowledge survives. In general, knowledge can be defined as justified true belief (Ichikawa). The
Empiricism (en- peiran; to try something for yourself): The doctrine that all knowledge must come through the senses; there are no innate ideas born within us that only require to be remembered (ie, Plato). All knowledge is reducible to sensation, that is, our concepts are only sense images. In short, there is no knowledge other than that obtained by sense observation.
• learning is linked to different sources of knowledge that may be either internal or