/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14915292]

Locke claims that human are without innate ideas. What does this mean? What does he
propose instead? What arguments does he give to support his position?

[Anonymous No.14915297]

>>14915292
Read him bro. He gets his points across clearly, albeit wordy.

[Anonymous No.14915300]

>>14915297
I tried, I can't stand reading that book. I wish there was a modern translation.

[Anonymous No.14915311]

>>14915292
Well, you're clearly without them, anon.

[Anonymous No.14915314]

>>14915300
I say this as kindly as possible but don't expect everything to have been written for a 21st ce ADD reader.

[HLP !NOtRw2tMr2 No.14915316]

>>14915292
>What does this mean?
It means that he's retarded.

[Anonymous No.14915323]

>>14915292
What about Socrates who claims that all knowledge is just us remembering things from our past lives.

[Anonymous No.14915345]

>>14915323
That's Plato not Socrates.

[Anonymous No.14915403]

>>14915345
what's the difference?

[Anonymous No.14915851]

>>14915292
I think its about experience, You cant imagine something you don't have the potential to experience in this world. You can only recycle past stimuli into fantasy which is an experience by itself. Like you can't imagine a color you cant visualize...

[Anonymous No.14915864]

>>14915403
The difference is that Socrates is plato’s account for philosophical shitposts

[Anonymous No.14915951]

>TWIN STUDIES OUT OF LEFT FIELD
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH NO PLATO CAN'T HAVE BEEN RIGHT AGAIN NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[Anonymous No.14915980]

>>14915345
>That's Plato not Socrates.

[Anonymous No.14915992]

>>14915323
Genetic memory hasn't been disproven.

[Anonymous No.14915996]

>>14915292
Blank slate tards are literally worse then flat earthers

[Anonymous No.14916037]

>>14915851
But all the aesthetics in art, in general, are not something from this world, you don't see nature constructed as a roman architecture or any geometrical shapes just randomly placed around the Earth, where this shape comes from if they weren't experienced before?

[Anonymous No.14916052]

>>14915292

Locke is cringe

[Anonymous No.14916069]

>>14915292
Ideas as the same as consciousness are something "generated" not "given", is like an empty jar and you start pouring visual images and consciousness on it.

That's why we start generating consciousness by making mistakes over and over, nobody is born without mistakes, it's the same principle of ideas. You don't have "ideas", you have "images" as "image" is everything without a synthesizer, but after we start to live, we start to synthesize the "external world" with the "internal world" and that's when ideas become alive but you don't "have the idea" in you, is generated.

[Anonymous No.14916150]

>>14916037
Are you sure about that? You can find the forms of architecture in nature. If you find any shape you can find a natural analogue. If you ask any architect he will tell you he is inspired by nature, even human nature.

nature inspires art, but art does not inspire nature except in that we are nature.

[Anonymous No.14916155]

>>14916037
I didn't say specifically it's about something you have experienced before, its about things you have the potential to experience. Simply because something does not seem to have a connection on the surface level, doesn't mean that it doesn't have a connection. A rock has a shape. Find a stone in a river and it might be oval-shaped, recycle those images inside your head and you will probably result in the image of a perfect circle, or better yet, look at the moon, sticks can be cylinders, you follow me? A blind person will probably be able to understand color if he were to touch a spectrum of colors that's been under the sun, I'm not sure about that, maybe not. He can definitely visualize things like shapes though. A deaf person can feel the vibrations on his body if you put him near a speaker... But unless you were born with the brain wiring to "taste" music, like some weird people claim, you probably wont be able to understand that. If our consciousness is directly entwined with this specific reality we live in, then can we really imagine something that doesn't conform to it? Then, is anything we imagine really, new?

[Anonymous No.14916170]

>>14916037
>But all the aesthetics in art, in general, are not something from this world,
Philosophy is severely lacking analysis of the relation between evolutionary forces in literally creating humans and any ontology that isn't the meme tier unexamined materialism that most people who really accept the implications of evolution tend to have.

I tried to write some stuff about this a few years ago but I'm an uneducated retard

[Anonymous No.14916190]

>>14916150
Please tell me where all the geometric shapes come from in the observable world.

Inspiration is not the same as seen as a triangle and replicates the triangle. Inspiration is exactly what I'm saying, is not from this world, humans are not producing anything, we are just mirroring something.

All the technology and things that we are seeing here are just a less perfect replica of heaven, we are mirroring heaven for the body, why? I don't know.

[Anonymous No.14916222]

>>14916155
But the idea of "shaping" into perfection something is not a potentiality, the search for perfection in the observable world is just compensation of the incapability of attaining perfection in the un-observable world or the moral one.

Magenta color doesn't exist, that color is not in the rainbow, is a compensation of the brain to fill the gap between colors as the brain can't see the nothing.

How do you explain the physics of dreams? if in the observable world you see exactly the opposite where things that goes up goes down. We are divided into two worlds, there not such thing as "one reality". Ideas are just a clash between the two but it is not like we see things in nature and just try to replicate them. Perfection doesn't come from this observable world.

[Anonymous No.14916261]

Nature is not perfect because it comes with "horrific" and "beautiful" at the same time, nature is divided by the two, if humans produce beautiful things is because we see ourselves as horrific, so ideas are compensation and a clash between the perfect world and the unperfect one.

Perfect shapes are a mirror of a perfect world that is not in this nature and we are frustrated because to enter that world is to reject all your evolutionary traits, so humans are given proof of that world by giving over and over again unperfect or defected ideas to fail through time until we learn.

[Anonymous No.14916289]

>>14916190
>Please tell me where all the geometric shapes come from in the observable world.

Where don't they come from? Look macro or micro you will find geometric arrangements. A whole lot of it is in mineral formations. But even weather patterns exhibit geometric shapes. What example would you like?

>Inspiration is exactly what I'm saying, is not from this world, humans are not producing anything, we are just mirroring something.

So do you disagree or agree with Locke? You seem to be saying we also do not have innate ideas. You have a crackpot idea that there's some mystic dimension of possibility we are tapping into, but agree those ideas are not innate and are merely inspiration. That's all Locke claims. That humans cannot innately generate ideas.

[Anonymous No.14916312]

>>14916289
We don't have innate ideas, we think we have, but that's why you hear all the time people having the same ideas or dreams over and over.

A perfect cube or a pyramid, or a cylinder, we just see some less perfect forms and we sand it down into a geometric shape. But this will to sand reality into a perfect shape is not given by nature, the idea of sand things into a perfect shape (not just functional) is un-natural.

[Anonymous No.14916322]

>>14916289
No other animal in the world goes beyond function when producing tools, we go to the other level of physical functionality, if nature is functional, beauty is not, or not for the physical world. If the search for beauty is given then how you can say that not all the other ideas too?

[Anonymous No.14916334]

Locke a shit
>natural rights

blow it OUT your ass
Arguments irrelevant, don't have to listen to a motherfucker who's goddamn wrong

[Anonymous No.14916344]

>>14916289
I can even say the ultimate proof of this is that the most truthful ideas are the ones that oppose human nature, like survival and exponential way of living, as even if there's no such thing as positive knowledge and they tell you that the final way of living is to die in meditation you will reject it and prefer the concept, maybe ideas are just part of the survival and evolutionary life but not the truth.

In the end, the more we know the less we know and if the truth is in the opposite direction (ignorance) then maybe ideas are giving to keep validating the opposite over and over again.

[Anonymous No.14916441]

>>14916222
I don't think you can truly grasp perfection, just like you cant truly grasp some concepts like infinity, because I think they are static or stagnant and our world isn't. You think you are imagining a "perfect" circle, but it won't be perfect because you can't truly understand how unfeasible it is. It doesn't exist, you just get to a point that you cannot visibly differentiate between it and a perfect one. It's "effectively" perfect, but not truly.

Regarding the physics of dreams, I would argue that there would be no difference between dreams and fantasy, you conjure a scenario by rehashing many past experiences, and insert yourself into it, experiencing it anew. Can you imagine something you haven't experienced in some way, no matter how loosely connected, inside a dream?

But here is where I'm not that certain about myself:
You've really struck me with the Magenta color though, because that is supposedly a color that doesn't exist in nature, yet, exists in our consciousness. But, from what I've read on the internet, that's a weird topic, because colors as a whole don't really exist, it's just your brain's interpretation of the electromagnetic spectrum, there isn't really a property of "color" to photons, and we believe that the colors that we associate with individual wavelength's are "realer" than colors like "magenta", but they're not truly "realer". Also, color you see in the real world isn't a singular wavelength, but rather a combination or the reflected wavelengths. I'm not smart enough and I haven't studied this subject enough to explain it, so here's where I took this from:
https://www.quora.com/Why-can-we-see-magenta-if-its-not-a-real-color?share=1

So using your usage of color. We are born with the ability to visualize something that exists in a way that... doesn't exist. Color doesn't exist as a whole in the world, only the wavelengths themselves. Yet our consciousness interprets them in a way that doesn't exist. I think that actually debunks what I've said, because by itself, the consciousness'/brain's interpretation of color couldn't be anything other than "new" or innovative. So maybe consciousness and our brains' ability to process reality and stimuli, is by itself is innovative?

Fuck dude I got a headache.

[Anonymous No.14916452]

>>14915314
locke is pretty dense in the parts that aren't given to undergrads

[Anonymous No.14916536]

Innate ideas, by definition, are present at birth, since we must be born with an idea for it to be considered innate. I'd even argue that we may have some certain ideas/thoughts/perceptions while we are developing in the womb, it likely that we can hear or feel certain things (like a heartbeat), which gradually acclimates us for our births into a new environment.

(Or maybe at a certain point in our growth, when we're large enough or a certain part of our brain has formed, we become a conscious or thinking being, and have our first "ideas" then.)

Let's not forget that there are many animals which are born with a seemingly innate knowledge to hunt/eat/survive, and that we are animals too, albeit with impressively complex technologies.

Genetics in 50 years will be infinitely more reliable than Locke. Locke only philosophized (thought and wrote); scientists will soon have empirical evidence.

[Anonymous No.14916540]

>>14916441
Perfection as objective, not as something you attain, but the point is that this objective is un-natural, humans shouldn't aim for perfection as we are animals, why so?

If you never fly in your life, if you never levitated before, how can you dream of such a thing? Your dreams are opposed to your observable world. If you see a bird flying and you imagine you want to fly, imagination doesn't have any restriction on the physical laws or even the thermodynamic laws. In dreams, you can experience other laws that you never saw before.

About color, yes, color is "not real" just an interpretation, but this interpretation is not the color itself, is the emotion attained to that color, "emotion" gives life to color as to with ideas (images), emotions direct the kind of ideas you do or the colors you consume, so ideas without something to validate them are nothing. If ideas are innate that means you don't need any validation, any emotion attained to them, you can just generate them without a catalyst but that's not possible, therefore, ideas can't be innate, are given because (something) is directing them thru emotions.

[Anonymous No.14916625]

>>14916170
Oh, I've had those exact same thoughts recently. The the structure of the human mind is molded by natural selection is an absolutely massive issue that is naturally not part of much classic philosophy, so there's no distinction made between and within categories like 'a priori' vs 'posteriori' and how the relations can be seen from the perspective of individual experience forming memories/dynamic habits, from the perspective of certain biases toward forms of 'prior knowledge' arising out of random processes being filtered through generations, and certain kinds of possible experience being shaped by a combination of 'mathematical potential' which determines how structures form emergently and possibly 'laws of consciousness' which metaphysically determine how consciousness fundamentally relates to structure through time (which we don't know how to approach because of the 'hard problem').

[Anonymous No.14916640]

>>14916540
Okay, It seems we're veering off topic mostly.

I might have lost you somewhere along the way. Are you saying that humans are aiming for perfection?

If you never fly in your life, if you never levitate, you still possess the basic, inborn brain knowledge of what to feel when flying. That tug on your belly that you feel when you're on lift off, or on a roller coaster, doesn't magically appear when you do so for the first time. It's dormant, and unused, but its a mechanism that exists, granting you a certain feeling when gravity affects you in that special way. So, you take the bird, you see her fly, and your brain supplies you with the knowledge of what it feels like to be in the air. But you wont ever feel like that bird does when it flies, you won't understand how your wings flutter, and you won't grasp how your beak feels. Because you aren't that bird. So imagination does have restriction, once again, within the boundaries of your own, potential ability to experience things, which being a bird, isn't included in.

So we are definitely discussing the same thing I think, unless I'm retarded. I don't really like the use of the word emotion, since it is more ephemeral than a word I can relate to like sensation, but I'm assuming we are referring to the same thing. Yes, color is an interpretation. The "sensation"/"emotion" of the color is, everything, and the concept itself of "color" is nothing. The sensation of color, for you and me, exists, to the outside reality, it doesn't. The scientific phenomena of "color" exists in the outside words as the wavelengths of light, and expressed in the inner world as sensations. If you've seen what I wrote at the end of my earlier post, I'd think you'd understand we are agreeing sort of. If I understood, what you call "ideas" is basically what I consider to be the "essence" or "images" of imaginary phenomena like dreams and fantasies, made up of the "emotions" or "sensations? But the sensation itself is something without validation, isn't it? It's a lie, an interpretation of the truth of reality, yet to me and you it exists all the same, an illusion you truly can't ignore, so it, by itself, is validated by nothing, the sensation isn't validated by the reality. The feeling of tugging while riding a roller coaster doesn't exist in outside world. Only you, and you alone, feel it, just like Only I, and I alone experience it. Yet, we are still limited by what we can, and can't feel, and we can't feel being a bird truly. We can only put ourselves in the position of the bird and let the sensations flow.

I think the sensations themselves are innovative, but everything derived from them isn't...

[Anonymous No.14916663]

>>14915323
He is speaking of instinct (and archetype), reincarnation, the ascetic lifestyle and spiritual rebirth.

Maybe if you weren't such a brainlet you'd realise the religious element of Plato and so that he is more than just literal mathematical equation.