Noam Chomsky - Empiricism and Rationalism

Chomsky on Kant, Hume and the empiricist and rationalist traditions.

[@DertBagg]

In these comments, guys who'd rather dismiss the conversation than grapple with the concepts discussed.

[@coreycox2345]

There were a few times he went over my head. I must have come to the right place, Abraham Froman.

[@gorojo1]

With everything, it boils down to nuance. We get so caught up in attempting to adhere to a particular construct, it becomes dogma and looses all utility. Rationalism and empiricism are just movements, not constants.

[@randlemcmurphy6809]

wow. just wow. Bring on more

[@festus569]

Rene Guenon talked very well too about empiricism and rationalism when he criticized Rene Descartes in his books the Crisis of the Modern World and The Reign Of Quantity And The Signs Of The Times, Chapter 14 Mechanism and Materialism.

[@gravenewworld6521]

I love Chomsky's early work.

[@briansalzano4657]

"Philosophy overdose" has the full interview; I don't think Chomsky said much about Kant. I think Chomsky realizes that Plato's forms became Aristotle's categories, and Kant applied them to the mind. Chomsky argues that Plato was right about us having innate knowledge of universals, but that they're genetic (which says nothing about if they exist as "physical" or immaterial structures).

[@briansalzano4657]

Material or physical just means things we can detect; so by contrast an immaterial structure would obviously be something that we couldn't detect by empirical observation. Your second question is ambiguous; we first have to define what information is then ask why would it require a medium ? Conflating information with how it represented seems to be implied in your question. This is a long winded way of saying physicalism is meaningless.

[@briansalzano4657]

@rf4life How do universes exist ?

[@MCshaneization]

Great channel!!

[@phpn99]

Let's put this in context; Chomsky has issues specifically with theories of understanding in empiricism and rationalism, but he doesn't have issues with empiricism and rationalism per se.

[@sadbadmac]

@MisterLister68 lol it's crap thinking because you can't understand it. Scientists prove things empirically and those things are said to be true because they are also falsifiable. If you think an idea is wrong you are free to prove it wrong. Emphasis on prove.

[@boiboiboi1419]

@@sadbadmac emphasizes on prove, hence empiricism

[@saskk2290]

Things empirically proven are not falsifiable as a rule, but it should be said that no theory can be proven to be 100% true because the rules of science thankfully keep our hubris in check.

[@safalmukhia4699]

The discussion is about how knowledge is acquired. Chomsky is saying that there is knowledge that operates without ever being brought forward to conscious introspection. Whereas, the empiricist and rationalist position he points out take it that the contents of knowledge in the mind can be wholly inspected and analysed through introspection.

[@JonWeinand]

@@safalmukhia4699 This seems a much better interpretation, and I agree with your point largely. I do have a question and a reply I would like to put forward. Is Chomsky even claiming that there is knowledge that operates in this manner? It seems to me that he avoids this word, and I would have to guess deliberately, saying not that there is knowledge that operates without conscious introspection but rather that it is not possible to say we are able to perceive how certain aspects of the mind work. The physical analogy of the mechanisms of the liver and visual system suggest to me that he would no more call the mechanisms of mental conception to be "knowledge" than he would call the operations of the liver to be "knowledge". As empiricism and rationalism are traditions that use the term knowledge, and because they take that the contents of the mind can be known to introspection in this way, his own beliefs/ideas that this type of introspection is not always possible undercuts the idea of knowledge itself as a useful concept. It seems to me then that Chomsky makes a distinction between learning and knowledge, and that he is not discussing how knowledge is acquired, but how we learn. How knowledge is acquired is a point of contention for rationalists and empiricists because of how they view the mind operating, but Chomsky takes the functionalist approach of how we learn and act in the world. We can say something has learned something when it is able to perform some process, whether it is physical or mental. We say that people have learned how to drive a car or do multiplication. Successful learning means the person, animal, or whatever being is now able to do something it could not before. This comes about through practice and mental processes, and certain of these mental processes are not available to us as experiences, as you have rightly pointed out. We do not *need* to refer to something called knowledge when we talk about learning. And when someone does refer to knowledge, as in saying "I know this", are there any instances when this is not more clearly replaced with "I have learned this"? Leaving aside faithful assertions like "I know heaven is real", when one claims to know something, they inevitably mean that they have perceived something with their bodily senses (either firsthand or through the account of another) which led them to believe this or manipulated thoughts that led them to believe a new thought. If we ignore the mind/body distinction as Chomsky asks, then both of these instances are learning through experiences. We do not need to ask if there is any "truth" here- one can learn the epicycles of a geocentric universe as well as the orbits of the heliocentric solar system. We do not need to get into debates on "justified true belief", to say nothing of the nature of truth. We learn, and we are not able to experience all of how we learn. As you and the original poster note, Chomsky neither wholly agrees with nor wholly disagrees with empiricism and rationalism, but suggests something else. PS- Another alternative is of course to broaden the term knowledge so that we can say things like "the liver knows how to function" or "the visual system knows how to detect edges and motion" or "the mind knows how to construct conscious experience", but this feels unsatisfactory to me- it feels like ascribing self-consciousness to a liver.

[@JohnLaudun]

This appears, perhaps, to be a BBC program, with the interviewer, in this moment, asking Chomsky how he fits within the larger philosophical tradition of understanding consciousness. Chomsky answers with regards to that tradition.

[@megalith2159]

It's from a BBC series 'Men Of Ideas', the interviewer is Bryan Magee. He also hosted a later noteworthy series ' The Great Philosophers'

[@carlsong6438]

We know the emotional theories of knowledge are wrong by investigating the mechanisms of knowledge empirically. - Noam Chomsky

[@-dash]

@@mikekane2492 Would you mind elaborating? To what degree of granularity are things like emotion, reason, and knowledge in fact observable? Perhaps we should define our terms, because I was under the impression those things were immaterial by definition...

[@Sirdud2SickK]

​@@-dash If I say an apple is hanging from the tree would you have me define the terms as if I could be speaking about an orange?

[@GiantsBaseball28]

What are the emotional theories of knowledge?

[@paulriccitelli9179]

@@Sirdud2SickK Chomsky defending British Neo-Platonists?….. hahaha……. Didn’t these people create eugenics?….

[@Josephus_vanDenElzen]

4:06 experience confirming to our mode of cognition

[@naturphilosophie1]

is there a modern edition of cudworths major work?

[@Banana_Split_Cream_Buns]

I love these types of videos for how intelligent they make me feel for having watched them. I also hate these types of videos for making me feel so dumb having watched them.

[@drummerschild6487]

Is anyone familiar with some of the particular philosophers he's referring to as the Cartesians and British Neoplatonists -- i.e. the people who anticipate Kant's insight about objects conforming to the mind (rather than the other way around)?

[@mudzy3713]

He mentions Ralph Cudworth I think!

[@drummerschild6487]

Thanks! It's really surprising to me to hear that this insight of Kant's (the so-called "copernican revolution" for phil) started a century before...

[@mudzy3713]

drummerschild Yet another proof of why we shouldn't blindly believe such superficial statements and to rather inquire by ourselves..

[@dharmadefender3932]

FH Bradley.

[@kithkin01]

Very interesting

[@gdn5001]

The thing with empiricism is that in its full form “knowledge comes only through the senses” it’s straight up wrong. But in its weaker form “knowledge comes primarily through the senses” it's obviously correct.

[@historicwine1283]

Not necessarily. That weaker form was essentially put forward by Hume, i.e. that knowledge is the result of elementary sensations being parlayed into something rather more complex and held together by some principle of association. The problem is that not even this small concession (i.e. that the human mind has a minimal innate structure in the form of associative mechanisms) actually accounts for the knowledge that humans are clearly capable of internalising.

[@fede2]

I don't know if it's "obvious"...

[@Google_Censored_Commenter]

I'd love to see an original argument that you can have knowledge come in anywhere else but the senses. Remember that under Hume's view, any and all ideas, even those of logic and maths, are mere copies of initial impressions we've had in the real world. And I think he is completely right about that.

[@iranjackheelson]

@@Google_Censored_Commenter The fact that much of our knowledge is innate is more than apparent... if you believe in evolution.

[@Google_Censored_Commenter]

@@iranjackheelson simply stating it isn't an argument. You're using the word knowledge as if its was obvious what is meant by it. But it isn't, that's why we have an entire branch of epistemology dedicated to it. Wanna continue the discussion? Substantiate which thoughts we have that are innate, and prior to experience. (good luck) Next, demonstrate that said thoughts are not just thoughts about rainbows and fiction, but constitute real, justifiable knowledge. How you're gonna accomplish this without verifying that the knowledge corresponds to the world of our experience, I have no idea, but supposedly you know how to do it. And finally, you must then show that whatever you come up with, isn't just a habit of the mind, or a pattern seeking process, a consequence of our biology. Which I can grant is innate in the sense that your cells have a blueprint for your brain's development that they follow, and said blueprint has built in pattern seeking processes, but no actual knowledge or thoughts. And this blueprint isn't some divine word of Go-- I mean evolution. You know evolution progresses through pragmatic means, purely by what's useful to aid survival, not what's true. I'll also add idk how you would argue any of this supposed knowledge is "accurate". How do you measure the accuracy of something without testing it in experience with the world? If you're gonna say you don't need to measure it, because it is "necessarily true" or "100% accurate by definition" or some bullshit, don't waste your time, that's not a serious answer.

[@karandeepsingh1656]

Merging Empiricism and Rationalism, knowledge may come primarily through senses but the ability to think about it, philisophise about it, and "FIGURE OUT" what is actually true, is an ability that I think is transcendent of senses. That is why I think that humans are the greatest species on the whole planet (in the whole universe so far). Animals HAVE acute senses, for example, elephants have the best sense of smell, raptors have best sight, but humans have the best reasoning ability. I think, that is what rationalism is all about. I can clearly see that humans are chosen by nature to be rationalists. If we aren't, we would not have invented science, the subject that deals with objects Objectively

[@sammyruncorn4165]

Look up orcas

[@karandeepsingh1656]

@@sammyruncorn4165 are they rationalists too?

[@lucasrandel8589]

isn't 'the contends of the mind' a bit misealding as terminology? The way he puts it makes it sound like Freud and others believed that trough intraspection we could understand the mind at the level of the neuron, wich of course can't be the case.

[@thias1970]

Full interview?

[@chomskysphilosophy]

+thias1970 kzbin.info/www/bejne/aX3UhnRtjJ6qnMk

[@ajeff5864]

+Chomsky's Philosophy thanks

[@augustlongpre64]

Is that David Attenborough?

[@V.Dreyse]

bryan magee

[@fergoesdayton]

Rationalist: 2,12,211,1112,.....now, what number comes next? Empiricist: Who do you think brought those numbers together in the first place?

[@jemandoondame2581]

r21111 eA human

[@BranoneMCSG]

Empiricist: How can I even begin to comprehend a pattern if I can not physically see the pattern?

[@zadeh79]

Wow. Great perspective.

[@landonech]

Gross oversimplification

[@heckinbasedandinkpilledoct7459]

Uh, mathematicians (pure rationalists).

[@spiritgoldmember7528]

TEAM RATIONALISM

[@8beef4u]

man he sounds like David Attenborough

[@veroman007]

there is only mind. the universe is small, the mind is endless. i am with the rationalists

[@leonlx564]

dogma, dogma, dogma. how disappointing.

[@tntdsc]

"the universe" is what we fancy it to be. i'm with hume

[@andrewmiller480]

I'm right there with you everything has a reason to be. Thier is no such thing as miracle's

[@ririismaela9388]

ohh we have a debate tomorrow about Rationalism and Empiricism

[@naturphilosophie1]

Kant

[@eatcarpet]

Basically I think Chomsky is close to a Popperian.

[@solaria5513]

He disagrees with the Paradox of Tolerance more than anyone that ever existed. he absolutely isn't

[@spacefertilizer]

@@solaria5513 I think he referred to Popper in the area of philosophy of science, not a political sense.

[@bodbn]

What a kant Chomsky was.

[@JonSebastianF]

Who are these British Neo-platonists that Chomsky refers to?

[@tntdsc]

Cudworth

[@JonSebastianF]

@@tntdsc Ralph Cudworth

[@kieronmcnulty6177]

Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, Nathaniel Culverwell, Benjamin Whichcote et al also known as the Cambridge Platonists. He's mentioned Cudworth elsewhere

[@JonSebastianF]

@@kieronmcnulty6177 Thank you so much :D

[@jacksonstgeorge1284]

I would argue that Chomsky's understanding of Hume's conception of the mind is inaccurate. Hume certainly used a theatre analogy, but only for the conscious mind. They are not "ideas" parading across the stage, but rather perceptions (both of impressions and ideas). In this analogy Hume does not engage with the idea of the unconscious mind as it was not a discussion concerned with such, he was literally discussing what of the self can be perceived. Does anyone know where in his writing Hume discusses the unconscious? As an inherently unperceivable part of reality, I would assume that he just doesn't. Any help would be appreciated.

[@JonWeinand]

Hume does not discuss the unconscious because as a concept it was only just starting to become widespread. It seems he lived about a generation before its common use (at least in German philosophy), with philosophers such as Schopenhaur and Hegel using it in their work. He may have had ideas that dealt with what we now call the unconscious, but I can't help you there.

[@jesselopes5196]

@@JonWeinand This is the story we all hear but I recently read in Boswell Samuel Johnson talking about ideas in the unconscious. Chomsky's point, however, is that for Hume ideas are either being perceived or not and if they're not they're not doing anything in the mind, they're just latent, waiting to come on to the stage through one of the laws of association. That's totally correct. Chomsky's view of the mind, by contrast, is that there are non-associationist interactions of ideas behind the stage, as it were, and consciousness gets maybe a glimpse of a fraction of the results.

[@Senecamarcus]

…

[@amihart9269]

That's because you've read Kant and Hume. Read Hegel and you'll see why that's wrong.

[@iranjackheelson]

@@amihart9269 explain briefly here please

[@amihart9269]

@@iranjackheelson They are outdated philosophers. If you think "anything can be proven right or wrong" you don't understand how objective truth is arrived at through the dialectic. Empiricism is also a faulty philosophy which can lead you to believe in all sorts of nonsense.

[@iranjackheelson]

@@amihart9269 Ok but you're tryin to say Hegel somehow shows "anything can be proven right or wrong" is false. How so?

[@amihart9269]

@@iranjackheelson Because Hegel believed there was an objective _direction_ towards knowledge. Do you think our scientific understanding of the world is the same as it was in the year 1000 BC? Do you think the standard model of particle physics is an equivalent understanding of the world to ancient people who believed the universe was made up of the four elements of water, wind, earth, and fire? Hegel understood that the knowledge contained in human society has an objective direction towards developing forwards to greater and greater reason. And this is driven by the dialectic, in the sublation of contradictory ideas to form anew idea which contains parts of both, and the negation of the negation, spiral of development of knowledge. Marx would then go onto complete this system by giving a material basis.

[@FeeelingAlive]

Ideas, thoughts, come and go...they are NOT the REAL. To enter the Realm of The Heart...the feeling, IS within the realm of the REAL. The MIND vs The HEART...The MIND IS part of the BODY...but NOT the HEART... (Heart with a "capital H", obviously. Not the heart of emotions, but the Heart which can feel Truth.

[@user-dh5vx8ob7y]

the interview needs to learn history

[@zadeh79]

All the greatest minds were empiricists. Aristotle, Galileo, Gauss, Euler, Pascal, Wittgenstein, Einstein, Von Neumann, Feynman (only 123 IQ). Empiricists tend to me the more inventive types driven by high intuition.

[@JohnSmith-xq6cv]

All the noble prizes in the 19th century were coming out of Germany and idealism of labor and human will.

[@khalidnezami3660]

While there were many great empiricist thinkers, yet Plato, Stoics, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Hegel were all rationalist, and Einstien being a scientist doesn't mean he's an empiricist, Descartes and Liebniz were scientists and yet rationalists as well, while Einstein is quoted to have supported rationalism.

[@NoName-ze4qn]

@@khalidnezami3660 I can't believe Einstein supports rationalism. Rationalism is the foundation of pseudoscience.

[@hanansheikh5016]

@@khalidnezami3660 Einstein didn't support rationalism. He was more of a Kantian transcendental idealist.

[@boringname3657]

@@NoName-ze4qn The father of contemporary physics supports an idea that is the 'foundation of pseudoscience'. The cognitive dissonance...

[@kangarooninja2594]

I'm not particularly knowledgeable on this subject, or philosophy at all, really. But isn't he arguing for a computational theory of mind? And hasn't that fallen out of favor? Or is at least less accepted now?

[@Dutch_Engineer_Piff_Dahnk]

Noam doesn't know what he's talking about, and the interviewer tried to set him straight Rationalism is the philosophy that knowledge can be discovered by thinking. Empiricism is the philosophy that knowledge can only be discovered by observation and measurement. Noam is a rationalist, but doesn't know the difference

[@nabeelnaqvi1415]

Not entirely, perhaps that was the case with early empiricism and rationalism, but even there we find exceptions. In the rationalist tradition, we have Spinoza who though he held that reality had an underlying logical structure did not hold that all real truths can be discovered by thinking, which is why he did real scientific research, for instance, on rainbows. The empiricists, upto Hume have held against the existence of innate ideas but that tradition changes with Kant and his synthesis of the two traditions. Thus, you find, even in the works of the 20th century empiricists such as Russell, mentions of synthetic a priori propositions, (infact Russell felt that this was necessary to counter the problem of non-demonstrative inference), thus empiricism developed from "all knowledge is derived from experience" to "knowledge is primarily derived from experience." This position, though objectionable, is not as extreme as the early empiricism of Locke, Berkeley or Hume.

[@kamoans]

On Kant? He carefully side-stepped the question on Kant. It's understandable - Kant is difficult :).

[@landonpowell6296]

Kant is difficult mostly because he's a shit writer, to be fair.

[@kamoans]

@@landonpowell6296 That's what those who do not understand him prefer to think. Understandable :).

[@landonpowell6296]

@@kamoans Kind of the opposite. If you understand Kant, you understand how simply he could have communicated his ideas.

[@kamoans]

@@landonpowell6296 Yes, I had a student like that, He thought he could do better than any of his professors and any writer :).

[@lespaul5734]

@@kamoans It's quite known that Kant is hard to read, whether you understand him or not. Many philosophers were more understandable than he was.

[@carlosstafford8306]

I was an actor. I don’t find him convincing. He seems to float between the theories, and rambles between ideas instead of saying anything meaningful. Answer Hume, don’t merely declare him wrong!

[@mjhzen8313]

I agree with Chomsky, when he talks politics. When he talks philosophy, that's another story.

[@benbell9170]

Interesting! Because his political views come directly from his philosophy!!

[@JakeShields09]

This is a very difficult concept to grasp. I feel like I understand it, but not well enough to explain it to someone else. Rationalism pairs with Idealism, and Empiricism pairs with Materialism. Science would make it seem that Materialism and Empiricism have won the war if you will, but many concepts can not be explained by science, and never will be.

[@DrR1pper]

Would the fact that scientific discoveries (i.e. the discovery of objective truths) are reliant on both rationalism and empiricism, thus proving your point that the truth lies between the two? For instance, formulating (and then testing) scientific hypotheses for testing as a means of rationalising pre-existing empirical data to refine and build a scientific theory. It would appear to me that the formation of any scientific theory is ultimately reliant on both (empiricism and rationalism). However i am unsure whether it is possible to come up with hypotheses in the absence of being exposed to pre-existing empirical data. I would argue that being exposed to pre-existing empirical data is required in order to think up ideas and hypotheses to test. In other words, that it always starts with empiricism. Not sure if that entirely made sense. Please let me know if it does or does not. Thanks!

[@MegaLotusEater]

Berkeley was an empiricist and an idealist ...

[@Codex7777]

@@MegaLotusEater - Berkeley took empiricism to it's ultimate logical conclusion... and lost his mind in the process.

[@conniechen141]

Chomsky has lost my respect. He misrepresents empiricism here. He confuses perception with knowledge. The only way to arrive at conclusions is through investigation. Sorry, that's it man.

[@sterlingweston]

I definitely prefer Chomsky's philosophical contributions as opposed to his feeble attempt with politics.

[@marcweeks9178]

Fortunately, a claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

[@NoName-ze4qn]

Empiricism > rationalism Empiricism → true sciences Rationalism → pseudosciences

[@sadbadmac]

True, but I think that his point is that the view of empiricism that Hume in particular held was incorrect. With neuroscience and brain imaging we can empirically (dis-)prove theories, but Hume or Freud were 'forced' to rely on introspection and other behavioural measures that can not (reliably) assess the physical nature of mental processing.

[@boringname3657]

Philosophers didn't die for this

[@GeorgWilde]

amen brother

[@khalidkabli7405]

Islam is the only rational, logical, empirically consistent interpretation of reality, because it links humans to the first uncaused Creator of the universe or universes.

[@theyoungfolks8261]

Khalid Kabli boobs

[@coosoorlog]

Bewbs are the only rational, logical, empirically consistent interpretation of reality, because they link humans to the first uncaused creator of the universe of universes

[@angryreader8857]

Khalid Kabli Great interpretation of Islam.... usually it is taboo to even consider approaching religious (particularly Islamic) philosophy seriously.

[@davidcoffman321]

Guy Fieri is the only rational, logical, empirically consistent interpretation of reality, because he links humans to the first uncaused creator of the universe of universes

[@AlchemicalForge91]

Khalid Kabli that is the dumbest thing I have ever read

[@alburkha1]

This is mental masturbation; overly complex and isn't accessible enough to make it helpful for most people.

[@Studentofgosset]

+Googler5Ever I doubt "most people" are interested enough in the different theories of how concepts are understood by the mind to have read enough to understand it anyway. They would probably just dismiss it in a way that protected their self-esteem.

[@futureslugger]

+Googler5Ever This is very introductory stuff, dude. First year philosophy class.

[@skazzaks1]

+Googler5Ever Did you ever consider it isn't meant to be accessible for most people? Not everything is Taylor Swift. If you have a specific question about what was said, ask it, and people would be happy to explain to you what was going on, but anti-intellectualism? Bleh.

[@RahellOmer]

+Devon Fritz well, I would like to get a clearer picture of what Chomsky was trying to say. Could you answer me on that? ty

[@skazzaks1]

+Rahell Omer As just an intro (then you can look up the words after) A basic question in Philosophy is "How do we know stuff?" which is called "Epistemology". If you think about the question, it might not be immediately obvious to you - it is a hard question to answer. Throughout the years, people have proposed different answers. One was Descartes, who said that there is stuff in the brain, and we can get at knowledge just by looking in our brain ("I think, therefore, I am"). That is the a proof that we exist, just by using the rational nature of our brain. That is rationalism (in the title). Later came David Hume, who said our minds are totally blank, and only get filled in when we have experiences. You don't know what anything is until you have experienced it (that is empiricism). The interviewer is saying that Chomsky is proposing something more like Kant (which I think is true), where neither of these are the answer, but bridges both ideas: our mind already has structures in it (more rationalism) that take experiences (empiricism). Instead of us taking in experiences and our brain changing due to the type of experience, Kant said our experiences change according to the brain. Just like if you had red glasses on, your experiences would look red, you have a certain type of brain, which makes all experience's go through your brain's filter. What Chomsky is proposing is similar.