All knowledge is from experience

Copyright (C) 2019 Dennis Joe Darland

Some facts are necessary logically, however we only learn logic from experience. Our ideas of objects (including logical objects) are primarily learned. A few ideas need (it seems) to be innate, for us to be able to learn (so Jerry Fodor argues – actually he thinks many ideas are). Still, we learn how to connect even these ideas to words from experience. Otherwise all languages would use the same words for these ideas. Also, the study of logic has advanced a great deal since Frege. How would this be possible if it were innate (analytic). No, the knowledge of even logic is of ideas which have evolved and its propositions (relations of ideas) are synthetic, even though the corresponding facts may be necessary. Our logical intuitions come from much practice (experience) with the rules we have discovered. It might be that we need to devise a new logic to deal with quantum phenomena. We may even find the innate ideas do not exactly correspond to reality. I think our minds are powerful enough to learn the correct ideas, although it may take a long time (if we have that time).

Return to Dennis Joe Darland