Where Does Language

Knowledge Com From?

Intelligence, e Innate,
Language Ideas,
Behaviour?

Group 5 (6 A)

• Alvin Nur Al-Fath 2223131227

• Diani Rahmasari 2223131235
• Dini Shafa 2223131259
How do we aqcuire knowledge?
Perfect circlehes, God, Language and the
reason for ‘Isms’
•The study of the nature and origin of
knowledge is a branch of philosophy
called ‘epistemology’.

•Does the human infant use intelligence

or innate language ideas, or both?

•The various philosophical isms,

Empiricism, Rationalism, Behaviourism, and to
extent Philosophical Functionalism are types of
explanations that have been given in response
Mentalism vs. Materialism

Are you a mentalist or a materialism? Take the quick

self- test!
The mentalist- materialist self test

1. Do human have bodies?

Yes No
2. Do humans have minds?
Yes No
3. Does the mind have some control of the body?
Yes No
4. Is it necessary to study mind in order to
understand human beings and their behaviour?
Yes No
 The Essence of Materialism
• Watson (1924) regarded mind and consciousness as
religious superstitions which were irrelevant to the
study of psychology. For him, there was thus only
one kind of stuff in the universe, the material or
mater. The study of physiology is the study of
psychology

The Essence of Mentalism

• In opposition to the materialism, the mentalist
holds that mind is of a different nature from matter.
• Two kinds mind and body relationships with respect
to environmental stimuli and behavioural responses
in the world are interactions and idealist.
Interactionism
Body and mind are seen as
interacting with one another
such that one may cause of
control events in the other.

Idealism
According to the radical
mentalist view, (subject)
idealism, the body and the rest of
the physical word are mere
construction of the mind.
Behaviourist wars: Materialism vs.
Epiphenomenalism vs. Mediationism

• Materialism
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism
which holds that matter is the fundamental
subtance in nature, and that all phenomena
including mental
phenomena and consciousness are result
of material interactions.

• Epiphenomenalism
Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental
events are caused by physical events in
the brain, but have no effects upon any
physical events.
• Reductionism
The concept of reductionism has
become an integral part of our
daily lives. "The terms 'analytic'
and
'reductionist' refer to a particular mental
attitude or manner of thinking that has
dominated the modern period"(I) and has
replaced the synthetic and hierarchical
pattern of thought.
• De facto behaviourism
It seems to us that many behaviourist have
been vague and noncommittal about their
beliefs on the mind- body issue.
 Objections to
behaviourism
Anti- behaviourism argument no 1:
insincerity and lying

• Clearly the basic for judgment depend on

something besides the observable situations
since that situations is identical in both
cases
• Without considering intentions, which are
states of mind, as the behaviourists would have
us do, notions such as insincerity, lying, and
the like are not meaningful.
• Without the existence of intentions, the
questions of insincerity or lying cannot be
explained by the behaviourist.
Anti- Behaviourist Argument No 2 : Speech
must not be based on Dreams
• a dream is a phenomenal experience in the
mind which occurs while the person is asleep.
• To explain the behaviouris relatively easy from a
mentalistic point of view.

Anti behaviourist Argument No 3: Toothache

and Dentist
• This is a mentalistic interpretation where a state
of mind, that of experiencing pain, is the precipitating
cause of what was spoken and the act of going to the
dentist. The explaination is simple, if you believe in
mind and that conscious experience can be acted on
Philosophical Functionalism
• Functionalism is foundational for those
cognitive sciences that would abstract from
details of physical implementation in order to
discern principles common to all intelligent
processing devices (Dennett,
1978; Fodor, 1980; Dretske, 198I).
• Functionalism is a Materialism. Even when
Functionalists do allow for mind and
consciousness, as odes Chalmers, for
example, they consider mind and consciouness
in physical terms. With their focus on behaviour
and brain, and on inaminate machine functions,
the Functionalists are the natural successors
 Objections to Philosophical
Functionalism
• Insincerity and Lying.
• Dreams and Speech.
• Tootache and Dentist.

Other objections to functionalism:

• Functionalism and Holism
• Functionalism and Mental Causation
• Functionalism and Introspective Belief
• Functionalism and the Norms of Reason
• Functionalism and the Problem of Qualia
- Inverted and Absent Qualia
- Functionalism, Zombies, and the “Explanatory Gap”
- Functionalism and the Knowledge Argument
 Empiricism
• Empiricism, in philosophy, the view that all concepts
originate in experience, that all concepts are about or
applicable to things that can be experienced, or that all
rationally acceptable beliefs or propositions are justifiable
or knowable only through experience.
According to the conception of most Mentalists, a
•
person is regarded as having a mind. This mind is
related to body but is not synonymous with it since has
a mind consciousness and consciousness can
use mind to control behaviour. In order to
understand a person's behaviour, including speech, it is
necessary to study what controls that behaviour, that is,
mind. Mentalism is characterized
• Empiricist view No. 1: intelligence is derived from
experience.

The Empiricist view is that ideas are derived

entirely through experience (empeir is Greek for
"experience') Empiricists will then argue with one
another as to whether something more, such as
intelligence, is innate. Intelligence, thus, is not
considered as knowledge but as a means for acquiring
knowledge. Locke in the seventeenth century and more
recently Piaget in the twentieth century have argued that
intelligence develops out of experience, and then it is with
this intelligence that we can acquire knowledge through
experience. In Locke's radical view the mind at
birth is blank; experience then imprints ideas on it.
• Empiricist view No. 2: intelligence or its
basis is innate.

The contemporary philosopher Putnam

(1967) has held that humans are born with
intelligence, an innate intelligence that has
developed through evolution. Beyond this,
Putnam offers little that is specific as to the
nature of inate intelligence. Piaget took a
middle position between Locke and Putnam. He
did not argue, as did Locke. Nor did he argue,
as does Putnam. In any case Piaget
preferred to derive intelligence from
• Our own view is that children are born
with the essence of propositions and the
entities which they involve, as well as the
essence of the analytical operations of
inductive and deductive logic. It is
through the operations of these analytical
logical
procedures on the data which they experience
that children acquire their knowledge of the
world and then the language with which they
may deal with the world and the people in it.
 Confusion in terminology for
‘Empiricism’ and ‘Empiricist’

• The word 'Empiricist' (and 'Empiricism’)

has developed two distinct meanings. One,
the more philosophical-traditional, concerns
the mentalistic philosophical school, of which
Aristotle (4th cent. BC) and John Locke
(1690) were proponents. The other meaning
is that of placing a high value on facts and
subordinating theory and speculation in
accord with those facts.
 Particular vs. universalist ideas
• Another issue which divides Empiricists is the
question of whether the mind which represent
knowledge are universal (general) or particular. One
Particularist, James Mill (1829), held that there is no
such thing as a universal idea: only particular ideas.
While some theorists, like James Mill (1829) and Hume
• (1748), do not allow for the acquisition of principles
which are not themselves sense data (sense data can
combine to form complex ideas but these ideas contain
only the original sense data), other theorists, like Locke
and John Stuart Mill (1843) and more recent ones like
Putnam, do
 Rationalism
• Chomsky has greatly modified ‘Descartes’
original conception, however. Chomsky takes
the view that many basic ideas are already in
the mind at birth, he further claims that there ideas
are of a distinct language nature.
• Other modern Rationalists, like Bever (1970),
however, do not separate language from other types
of ideas. Rather, Bever says that innate ideas are of a
general nature. Such general and basic ideas in this
view serve to yield
language as well as other types of knowledge
such as mathematics. This is tenable point
of view.
• despite these divergences, all Rationalists
agree on the essential principle that
some
knowledge is innate in humans. Different
Rationalists, for example, have posited that
concepts such as ‘justice', ‘infinity’,
‘God', 'perfection', ‘triangle' are innate. They
argue that such ideas cannot be intelligibly
derived from the experience of an individual
human.
 Chomsky’s Faculties of the Mind
and Universal Grammar
• According to Chomsky, humans are born with
minds that contain innate knowledge concerning a
number of different areas. One such area or faculty
of the mind concerns language. Chomsky currently
refers to the set of innate language ideas that
comprises the language faculty as “Universal
Grammar”, or UG, for short. This UG is universal
because every human being is born with it; it is further
universal because with it any particular language of the
world can be acquired. Thus, UG not a grammar of any is
particular language but it contains the essentials with
which any particular grammar can be acquired.
 Chomsky’s Arguments for
Universal Grammar
Chomsky’s four main arguments for the necessity of UG
are :
• Degenerate, Meagre, and Minute Language Input.
• Improvished Stimulus Input.
• Ease and Speed of Child Language Acquisition.
• The Irrelevance of Intellegence in Language
Learning.

Besides these four objection, there is also one

additional objection; The Simultaneous Multilingual and
the Problem of Multiple Settings on a Single Parameter.
 Conclusion regarding Chomsky’s
Arguments for Universal Grammar

• If Universal Grammar exists, as Chomsky

claims, as yet there is no credible
evidance which supports it. All of
Chomsky’s arguments for Universal
Grammar have been shown to be
inadequate.
 It is Time for Emergentism to
Re-emerge
• An Empiricism which was popular in the early part of the
twentieth century and has returned in a is one reformulated version
called Emergentism (McLaughlin, 1992; Sperry, 1969;
Morgan, 1923). It is a form of the Mind Interactionism view
that was discussed earlier in this chapter. Essen
Body Emergentism is based on the view that certain higher- level
properties, in particular consciousness and intentionality, are
emergent in the sense that although they appear only when certain
physical conditions occur, such properties are neither explainable nor
predictable in terms of their underlying physical properties. The
properties of mind are genuinely novel bring into the world their own
causal powers. Thus, mind may have some control over behaviour,
which is in accord with the most commonplace of human
observations.