Rationalism
Rationalism, you'll remember, is the idea that at least some of our knowledge is innate. For Plato, all knowledge was innate. For Descartes, some specific ideas were innate such as our idea of God and the self. After Descartes, rationalism seemed to fall very much out of favor with the rise of British empiricism. But after Kant's critical philosophy and after it the rise of idealism, thoughts began to turn once again to the mind's role in knowledge. No longer did it seem unfashionable, or outlandish, to suppose that there might be something to the theory of innateness. Granted we don't talk much these days about innate ideas but rationalism is alive and well and gathering some very intriguing evidence in its favor.
Before we consider some of this evidence we should make a few distinctions. The debate among rationalists has always been about what ideas are innate. With the rise of psychology, questions began to be raised about the possibility of instinct being innate. Do humans even have instincts? Some say no. Either way, rationalists have never focused on their innateness. What we are concerned about within philosophy is the existence of innate ideas. Ideas are cognitive and require an active thought process. Instincts, on the other hand, are non-cognitive, mechanistic behaviors. As I mentioned above the debate now, among advocates of rationalism, is over the existence of innate structures or components to knowledge. The evidence I will present falls into this category.
Three further points need to be made before we proceed. First, when rationalists say that there is an innate component to the knowledge they are talking about the possibility of gaining knowledge. As the argument goes, if the mind did not have such innate dispositions, we would not be able to gain the knowledge or process it. It’s not the ideas per se that is innate but the mental structure to process the ideas. Second, most rationalists today concede that there is room for external factors to play a role in our knowledge. The debate is largely over how much of a factor each part plays.
Some scholars speculate that the innate component may account for anywhere from 40-60%. That leaves 60-40% for the environment. Third, all the evidence I present here is inconclusive and preliminary. In one sense, it has to be this way. It turns out that, by and large, John Locke was right. There's no way to conclusively prove innateness. If we cite evidence from young children (say 3-6 years old) well, they have that many years of sense experience from which they could have gained the knowledge we are speculating is innate. If we cite evidence from younger children (as young as a few months old) they still have some sense of experience to draw upon. Even if we were able to cite in utero evidence we would not solve the problem entirely. In all probability, sense experience does play some role in our knowledge. Rationalists just claim that it isn't the whole story.
One of the first pieces of recent evidence for innateness was offered by the linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky. The basic idea here is that there are certain principles inherent in language which are universal such that no matter what language is learned the way the language is learned is the same. In other words, the mind is set up to learn a language in a very specific way and we can observe that in the language itself. The way children learn the language, the way a language's grammatical structure is set, the very possibility for speaking language are all innate functions of the mind.
There are many examples of this phenomenon but some of them can be very esoteric and interesting only to linguists. By way of illustrating the basic idea let me use a much simpler example. This was not an example Chomsky himself talked about but it does illustrate the idea and may count as another piece of evidence for innateness. Languages have, what linguists call, primary color words. These are not to be confused with primary colors. A primary color word is a word that is used, primarily (that is first and foremost) as a name for a color. On the other hand, secondary color words are words whose primary use is to name a thing. For example, silver. It does name a color but its primary use is to name a metal. OK so the maximum number of primary color words is eleven; English has all eleven. Some languages only have two primary color words. This, of course, doesn't mean that the language only has two words for color just that the other color words are secondary. In every case where a language has only two primary color words, they are the same two. Can you guess what they are? Black and white. In languages with three primary color words, the third one is always the same: red. It’s the fact that this pattern is universal that leads linguists to speculate that it might be innate. Oh, in case you're curious about what the eleven primary color words are: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, gray.
Another interesting line of research on innateness is being conducted in the area of ethics. There is a tradition in ethics, called the moral sense tradition that reaches back to the 18th century that postulates that there is an innate component to our ability to make moral judgments. Among others who were advocates of this was the famous economist Adam Smith. In the 20th century, this theory has been revived by a work called The Moral Sense by James Q. Wilson. In this book, he offers more recent, psychological evidence that may point to the existence of a moral sense after all. That there might be scientific evidence for this would not have surprised the likes of Charles Darwin who was also an advocate of the moral sense. Oddly enough Smith's book The Theory of Moral Sentiments was published exactly 100 years before Darwin's Origin of Species. Anyway, in The Descent of Man, published in 1871, Darwin remarked that "any animal whatever endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience."
A surprisingly controversial piece of evidence for innateness comes from the study of differences between men and women. While some scholars speculate that these differences can be explained entirely by cultural influences there is a growing body of research that disputes this. Interestingly enough, this is cited in the Wilson book on the moral sense I cited above. In particular, he cites the studies done by Melford E. and Audrey Spiro of "a kibbutz, one of the Israeli collective farms." The stated goal of these farms was to eliminate all gender differences so from a very young age the children were housed together, they ate together, played together, took showers together, and worked together. In addition, they were dressed the same and in every conceivable way treated the same to eliminate any gender differences. For a while, this seemed to work. But even from an early age differences seemed to be present and come out; in particular in how the children played. For example, boys would be more likely to play rougher games than girls. As the children grew, the differences increased. The speculation was that the reason these differences couldn't be eliminated was because of an underlying inherent component to sex roles. More than culture was at work here.
Another area where cultural influence was believed to reign supreme only to be questioned by scientific research is IQ. This too has generated controversy ever since the 1994 publication of The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. However, they merely confirm what researchers have known for years about intelligence. Despite popular opinion to the contrary IQ is: measurable, intractable, and heritable. Again, the debate is largely over what proportion of IQ is innate and again, the range is anywhere from 40-60%. Given our definition of intelligence as the ability to think abstractly and handle concepts, this innateness would not have surprised Immanuel Kant. After all, an important component of any IQ test is the ability to manipulate shapes in two and three-dimensional space. Space, of course, was a category of the mind and, for Kant, innate.
My treatment of each of these pieces of evidence for innateness has, of necessity, be brief. I simply mean to show you that the question of innateness is alive and being studied and interesting results are being put forward in defense of some sort of rationalism. If you find any of this interesting, and I hope you do, I encourage you to look into it further. I will mention a few other tantalizing pieces of evidence for innateness and be even briefer in their presentation. In Richard Pipes' book Property and Freedom, published in 1999, he addresses the question of whether property or more correctly, acquisitiveness, is innate. He concludes that there is a strong innate component to this that can be observed not only in animals and young children but also cross-culturally as well. Other cross-cultural studies have been conducted on attractiveness. It turns out that there are some faces (with particularly good symmetry) that are considered attractive regardless of what culture is judging them.
As we pointed out when discussing John Locke, the key to innateness is universality. Of course, this alone does not prove innateness. In other words, it is a necessary condition but not sufficient. However, the question remains. What accounts for the universal nature of these phenomena? To address this from an empiricist standpoint we need to find something common in sense experience which is causing these various phenomena to be universal. What's the common element that explains why all people are by nature acquisitive? What's the common element in a culture which explains sex differences? And so on. Absent any common cultural element we may be forced to reexamine rationalism as a viable option. Certainly, after Kant's critical philosophy we can do so on a firmer basis. Remembering the work I cited in the previous chapter from neurologists concerning how the brain works, it seems that we can conduct this investigation not only from a philosophical but from a scientific basis. In the 17th century, science began to split away from philosophy with the work of Newton. Now we are seeing a reunion of science and philosophy due in large part to the philosophical implications of many scientific theories. However, in the early part of the 20th century, it was the philosophers who desired to unite with science and cast off for good the metaphysical speculations of the past. The very metaphysical speculations which are now fascinating scientists all over again!
Before we consider some of this evidence we should make a few distinctions. The debate among rationalists has always been about what ideas are innate. With the rise of psychology, questions began to be raised about the possibility of instinct being innate. Do humans even have instincts? Some say no. Either way, rationalists have never focused on their innateness. What we are concerned about within philosophy is the existence of innate ideas. Ideas are cognitive and require an active thought process. Instincts, on the other hand, are non-cognitive, mechanistic behaviors. As I mentioned above the debate now, among advocates of rationalism, is over the existence of innate structures or components to knowledge. The evidence I will present falls into this category.
Three further points need to be made before we proceed. First, when rationalists say that there is an innate component to the knowledge they are talking about the possibility of gaining knowledge. As the argument goes, if the mind did not have such innate dispositions, we would not be able to gain the knowledge or process it. It’s not the ideas per se that is innate but the mental structure to process the ideas. Second, most rationalists today concede that there is room for external factors to play a role in our knowledge. The debate is largely over how much of a factor each part plays.
Some scholars speculate that the innate component may account for anywhere from 40-60%. That leaves 60-40% for the environment. Third, all the evidence I present here is inconclusive and preliminary. In one sense, it has to be this way. It turns out that, by and large, John Locke was right. There's no way to conclusively prove innateness. If we cite evidence from young children (say 3-6 years old) well, they have that many years of sense experience from which they could have gained the knowledge we are speculating is innate. If we cite evidence from younger children (as young as a few months old) they still have some sense of experience to draw upon. Even if we were able to cite in utero evidence we would not solve the problem entirely. In all probability, sense experience does play some role in our knowledge. Rationalists just claim that it isn't the whole story.
One of the first pieces of recent evidence for innateness was offered by the linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky. The basic idea here is that there are certain principles inherent in language which are universal such that no matter what language is learned the way the language is learned is the same. In other words, the mind is set up to learn a language in a very specific way and we can observe that in the language itself. The way children learn the language, the way a language's grammatical structure is set, the very possibility for speaking language are all innate functions of the mind.
There are many examples of this phenomenon but some of them can be very esoteric and interesting only to linguists. By way of illustrating the basic idea let me use a much simpler example. This was not an example Chomsky himself talked about but it does illustrate the idea and may count as another piece of evidence for innateness. Languages have, what linguists call, primary color words. These are not to be confused with primary colors. A primary color word is a word that is used, primarily (that is first and foremost) as a name for a color. On the other hand, secondary color words are words whose primary use is to name a thing. For example, silver. It does name a color but its primary use is to name a metal. OK so the maximum number of primary color words is eleven; English has all eleven. Some languages only have two primary color words. This, of course, doesn't mean that the language only has two words for color just that the other color words are secondary. In every case where a language has only two primary color words, they are the same two. Can you guess what they are? Black and white. In languages with three primary color words, the third one is always the same: red. It’s the fact that this pattern is universal that leads linguists to speculate that it might be innate. Oh, in case you're curious about what the eleven primary color words are: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, gray.
Another interesting line of research on innateness is being conducted in the area of ethics. There is a tradition in ethics, called the moral sense tradition that reaches back to the 18th century that postulates that there is an innate component to our ability to make moral judgments. Among others who were advocates of this was the famous economist Adam Smith. In the 20th century, this theory has been revived by a work called The Moral Sense by James Q. Wilson. In this book, he offers more recent, psychological evidence that may point to the existence of a moral sense after all. That there might be scientific evidence for this would not have surprised the likes of Charles Darwin who was also an advocate of the moral sense. Oddly enough Smith's book The Theory of Moral Sentiments was published exactly 100 years before Darwin's Origin of Species. Anyway, in The Descent of Man, published in 1871, Darwin remarked that "any animal whatever endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience."
A surprisingly controversial piece of evidence for innateness comes from the study of differences between men and women. While some scholars speculate that these differences can be explained entirely by cultural influences there is a growing body of research that disputes this. Interestingly enough, this is cited in the Wilson book on the moral sense I cited above. In particular, he cites the studies done by Melford E. and Audrey Spiro of "a kibbutz, one of the Israeli collective farms." The stated goal of these farms was to eliminate all gender differences so from a very young age the children were housed together, they ate together, played together, took showers together, and worked together. In addition, they were dressed the same and in every conceivable way treated the same to eliminate any gender differences. For a while, this seemed to work. But even from an early age differences seemed to be present and come out; in particular in how the children played. For example, boys would be more likely to play rougher games than girls. As the children grew, the differences increased. The speculation was that the reason these differences couldn't be eliminated was because of an underlying inherent component to sex roles. More than culture was at work here.
Another area where cultural influence was believed to reign supreme only to be questioned by scientific research is IQ. This too has generated controversy ever since the 1994 publication of The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. However, they merely confirm what researchers have known for years about intelligence. Despite popular opinion to the contrary IQ is: measurable, intractable, and heritable. Again, the debate is largely over what proportion of IQ is innate and again, the range is anywhere from 40-60%. Given our definition of intelligence as the ability to think abstractly and handle concepts, this innateness would not have surprised Immanuel Kant. After all, an important component of any IQ test is the ability to manipulate shapes in two and three-dimensional space. Space, of course, was a category of the mind and, for Kant, innate.
My treatment of each of these pieces of evidence for innateness has, of necessity, be brief. I simply mean to show you that the question of innateness is alive and being studied and interesting results are being put forward in defense of some sort of rationalism. If you find any of this interesting, and I hope you do, I encourage you to look into it further. I will mention a few other tantalizing pieces of evidence for innateness and be even briefer in their presentation. In Richard Pipes' book Property and Freedom, published in 1999, he addresses the question of whether property or more correctly, acquisitiveness, is innate. He concludes that there is a strong innate component to this that can be observed not only in animals and young children but also cross-culturally as well. Other cross-cultural studies have been conducted on attractiveness. It turns out that there are some faces (with particularly good symmetry) that are considered attractive regardless of what culture is judging them.
As we pointed out when discussing John Locke, the key to innateness is universality. Of course, this alone does not prove innateness. In other words, it is a necessary condition but not sufficient. However, the question remains. What accounts for the universal nature of these phenomena? To address this from an empiricist standpoint we need to find something common in sense experience which is causing these various phenomena to be universal. What's the common element that explains why all people are by nature acquisitive? What's the common element in a culture which explains sex differences? And so on. Absent any common cultural element we may be forced to reexamine rationalism as a viable option. Certainly, after Kant's critical philosophy we can do so on a firmer basis. Remembering the work I cited in the previous chapter from neurologists concerning how the brain works, it seems that we can conduct this investigation not only from a philosophical but from a scientific basis. In the 17th century, science began to split away from philosophy with the work of Newton. Now we are seeing a reunion of science and philosophy due in large part to the philosophical implications of many scientific theories. However, in the early part of the 20th century, it was the philosophers who desired to unite with science and cast off for good the metaphysical speculations of the past. The very metaphysical speculations which are now fascinating scientists all over again!