Where Does Language

Knowledge Come From?

Intelligence, 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 to the question

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
a mind has 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

 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
are ideas 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.

Chomskys 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 is
not a grammar of any particular language but it
contains the essentials with which any particular
grammar can be acquired.

Chomskys Arguments for

Universal Grammar

Chomskys 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 Chomskys

Arguments for Universal Grammar
If Universal Grammar exists, as Chomsky
claims, as yet there is no credible
evidance which supports it. All of
Chomskys 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 reformulated version
is one 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 higherlevel 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.