Synthetic a priori

>We usually talk about animalistic instincts as being innate, but are they really? If a child who had never been fed when hungry, felt the feeling of hunger, would they know innately what causes it?

When would a child not know that eating cures hunger?

And الله knows best.

>>Exhibit A: Why no one takes the humanities seriously any more
>please I love my classical rules of inferences too much.
>Please do not tell me about paraconsistent arithmetic. I am too much of an undergraduate for this. Please let me live in my little rationalist bubble.

go back to facebook if you cannot stand logic

In reality they're the same thing

>When would a child not know that eating cures hunger?

Because of causality. It's not given that a child will understand that if a room is cold, it is because the window is open in winter.

Using reason to understand causality requires a mind that can do abstractions, which a child clearly cannot do.

Thank you. I had a brain fart.

>Using reason to understand causality requires a mind that can do abstractions, which a child clearly cannot do.
causality is a product of the mind

He's talking about realizing the causality.

Though, a child can do that. Even babies realize pretty quick that screaming gets them what they want.

Whether this is learned knowledge or instinct is another question, though some rather brutal experiments have shown that a baby left unattended, will shut up eventually. ...and baby's that experience longer delays in gratification scream longer, and are more aggressive when they grow up.

>Whether this is learned knowledge or instinct is another question

Instinct (mostly), there have been studies showing that the bright colour of baby birds mouths help assist/manipulate the mother into feeding them, as in the mothers instinctively respond to the open mouth and cries, and the babies do it from birth pretty much.

Piaget studied the development of children, and he found that the "categories" of causality, unity and others that Kant calls "a priori" actually develop over time, and thus are not innate.

Might try and look for some links on that.

OP here. That's interesting, thanks for the suggestion.

In fact, that was Piaget's main motivation when he started out: he wanted to show how Kant's categories were not innate (and this position had pretty much been adopted by most academics around that time) but they were actually developed through experience. His theory came to be known as "genetic epistemology" as in the way knowledge is developed.

I don't think Kant meant they were innate. The capacities are innate but the knowledge is like any other and it must be learned. We didn't go into primary school knowing our multiplication tables, but we had the capacity to learn them and apply them in ways that inherently make great intuitive sense. Its the fact that they link between math and the world or morals and the world makes sense that makes it synthetic a priori.

>Its the fact that they link between math and the world or morals and the world makes sense that makes it synthetic a priori.
nice rationalist fantasy

I think he only meant that they are both synthetic a priori in that they both must be learned but are also intuitive to analysis. As Kant put it, "Since mathematics derives from our own sensible intuition, we can be absolutely sure that it must apply to everything we perceive, but for the same reason we can have no assurance that it has anything to do with the way things are apart from our perception of them."

Which is why he comes up with formulas for ethics such as, "The Formula of the Law of Nature", "The Formula of the End in Itself", "The Formula of the Kingdom of Ends", and ye grand old Categorical Imperative.

Mind ye, Kant was thiest as fuck.

If you can count three apples without anyone teaching you, you are doing synthetic a priori. I dunno if you can.

>Authorities then moved her in the first of what would become a series of institutions for disabled adults, and the people running it cut her off from almost everyone she knew and subjected her to extreme physical and emotional abuse.[3][4][9] As a result her physical and mental health severely deteriorated, and her newly acquired language and behavioral skills very rapidly regressed.[3][4]
this is so depressing

You have 7 sheep. If you find 5 more sheep, you objectively have 12.

Truly you people are the biggest cancer

Most feral children stories are.

Her life might have been a bit better, if they had found her after they discovered so many languages-less children in Latin America (as a result of being deaf and having no access to sign language speakers) that they actually had to set aside a special school for them.

Kinda surprised they didn't send her there later in life though, or at least bring her a teacher from said.

Language is clearly not completely instinctual, even if communication is. The key missing bit seems to be the assignment of names to objects. Everything tends to quickly cascade from there. Without that, the only unlearned communication seems to be conveyed by mimicry of past events, and, according to those who developed language later, the only thoughts are of images, and once learning language, it becomes near impossible to "think" that way again. So it seems, even thinking, as we understand it, requires language, and is similarly learned.

While I've heard about those strange cases in Latin America, not all of them managed to pick up sign language proper. Though, there was also a case where one deaf kid taught some other kids, so afflicted, some basics of sign language, and as a result, the kids in the school kind of invented their own unique sign language after he left, that's still somewhat in use and studied today.

In Genie's case, there was more than just not being able to communicate going on though. She had her brain deprived of almost all stimulus and social contact for the first thirteen years of her life, and that involves a whole host of other problems and lack of mental development, far beyond just language.

It's kind of amazing she didn't die - as that happens to a lot of neglected kids - even ones far less neglected than she was.

Somebody did once.

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Certainly there are animals who take care of themselves from birth without parental involvement, so there must be some instincts that enable a base survival. Its hard to say if that is "knowledge"

>Linguists later discerned that, in January 1971, Genie only showed understanding of her own name, the names of a few others, and about 15–20 words, and her active vocabulary at the time consisted of two phrases, "stop it" and "no more".

That is only a notation issue. It's still 7+5=12

Why? The existence of synthetic a priori truths is supposed to explain why your proposition is so compelling.

That's called counting you dimwit, and is only one aspect of math.

If you think it's as simple as that, please explain advanced algebraic mathematics in terms of empirical events in the real world.

Would you mind expanding on this? I'd love to know why he is wrong.

God that fucking Wikipedia article is thorough and depressing

>If a child who had never been fed when hungry, felt the feeling of hunger, would they know innately what causes it?
Hard to say. It could be that they eat and by eating realize that eating removes said feeling. Or it could be that they know to eat.

A better example for what you're getting at would be to look at nonhuman things, like cicadas. They have a pretty elaborate process they go through in spite of having a structural complexity closer to that of a calculator than a human, and almost certainly aren't just testing their way through the process.

Though that brings up the question "do I know all that I do?"; for example, a healthy baby can breathe right off the bat. Does this mean it "knows" how to breathe? Something else I presumably do is "exist"; does this mean I know how to exist? The fact that we're having this discussion suggests otherwise: I'd argue that having an animistic habbit etched into your body is not the same as knowing something. The habits you're born with are a matter of your circumstance, not your self, just like any part of your replaceable body.

You mean to say "the language which mathematics is communicated through is a matter of taste," or rather "notation is a matter of taste (or circumstance, chance, etc)". Phonetic and written symbols are arbitrary, but the actual things they're representing presumably aren't.

Yeah, but would a feral child know that lack of food causes hunger? Or that they are just hungry and therefore need to eat food.

>You have 7 sheep. If you find 5 more sheep, you objectively have 12.
>Implying the signified is the referent
>Implying there aren't other counting languages using identical symbols to represent different quantities

In decimal, 1+1=2
In binary, 1+1=10

and to look at it from the other way around,

In decimal, 10=1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
In binary, 10=1+1

The existence of mathematical objects outside of the mind is controversial. While philosophers like Plato viewed them as real, philisophers like Aristotle view them existing as a fictional representations in the mind. Kant I think is in the latter camp.

This means that mathematical objects are abstractions generated from mental interaction with the real world but are not present in the world. They are form without matter or instantiation.

Particular abstractions about real objects can be in service of the real sciences, but others may be as silly as thoughts about unicorns, which the same fictional type of existence as the mathematical objects. The abstraction of basic addition seems trivially relevant without rigorous demonstration. That is why it is synthetic a priori knowledge.

>>Particular abstractions about real objects can be in service of the real sciences
one day you will understand that ''real objects'' is also an abstraction.

the scientists love to think of themselves as good empiricists, and choose to spend their time trying to connect back their speculations to some empirical world, precisely because they know that their speculations are infertile, yet they cannot bear not to dwell in their mental proliferation, instead of remaining on pure empiricism which they despise (they think they would get bored).

science is based on induction far more than on empiricism. Empircism, in science, is here for the scientists to feel justify to claim that ''if my little deductive model is verified through my measurement, then my model describe some part of the universe'').
Induction is meant to fail, which leads people to have faith in refutability: if it does not work once, it will never work, which is still inductive, therefore completely dubious .
On the contrary, to be an empiricist means that you do not cling to your speculations, no matter their degree of formalization, and you cling even less to your fantasy of reality and explaining reality and communicating your explanations.
scientists know that their concepts and abstractions are purely induction, but they still cling to their formalization, this is why they choose to stuff their models with as many deductions as possible. scientists choose to think that, contrary to the inductions which are seen, by them, as personal, contingent, dirty, the deductions are less personal, cleaner, objective.

Since scientists and other rationalists have no justification of their claims, they choose the path of the (intellectual) terrorism in claiming that ''only the religious sheep and the degenerate empiricists, skeptics, relativists, solipsists do not agree with us; plus science give us rockets and cars and computers... see how science is good ! less pains and better pleasures for everyone, thanks to us, the good rationalists ! Science totally works guys, we are spot on defiling empiricism with our rationalism, trust us !''.

OK, but the "we can't know nuffin" position is equally if not more silly than the realist alternative.

you know nothing only through your mental proliferation, which indeed rules out philosophy and other deliriums like science and math. You know plenty of things in empiricism.
TO be an empiricist means that you do not cling to your speculations, no matter their degree of formalization, and you cling even less to your fantasy of reality and explaining reality and communicating your explanations. You do not even cling to your sensations, because those changes constantly against your will. sensations changes, just like your thoughts and tastes change. it is all rubbish.

I think we can agree that some propositions are interesting rubbish.

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I am an empiricist, I do not need to read this fantasy from a rationalist too butthurt by an empiricist beforehand.

what a retarded flow chart
it doesn't explain what branches represent what answers

A priori knowledge does not exist, so no.

Listen i know a lot of u guys like philophsy and shit and thats fine, but once you literal retards start claiming philophsy can deal with mathamitical problems u lose me and everyone. Do not have the arrogance to assume ur patethic philoposy can actually survive or deal with actual real world issues.

But no, all you first year philo students please enlighten me in how "you cant know nuffin" and how philophsy is still as good at explain9ng the world.

Why is his so full of retards that think the unfalisable ramblings of retards is fine?

Did you post that on your phone while on a rollercoaster or something?

Philosophy IS real world issues, precisely tuned at a finer, higher scale.

Philosophy has "solved" math ages ago because it bore the maths, just like how it bore the sciences and all other scholarly and intellectual fields. The ultimate resource on how it has solved math and the sciences is Nietzsche and his understanding of math and logic as tied to human language, a language being a set of symbols which we created, and perspectivism in general. Math and the sciences, while ultimately not aligned with the truth but rather associated with temporary ones, aspects of the full truth, were voluntarily pushed forward, accepted, and made to flourish because their results were useful to us, an act supported by a philosophy in itself.

A priori knowledge and the entire notion of it is a falsehood and always will be. Knowledge has to be understood not as something static like truth but as a resource of perspective currently in motion. The subject vs. objective dichotomy has already been superseded in philosophy, mind you —Nietzsche and then Baudrillard broke that dichotomy and established that they are instead interconnected polarities, not opposites. The realization stemmed from Nietzsche's perspectivism which ultimately affirms all things, both the supposed truth and the supposed lie. And so you have to understand knowledge in this way, too.

I would be surprised if 90% of what I said didn't go over your head, and that's fine, because in order to really "see" it you need to have read the works involved. But let's not kid ourselves here, anyone who says any rubbish like "philosophy can't survive or deal with actual real world issues" is philosophically uneducated and has not done the reading, or thinking.

Are there any animals that don't get to see their parents?