Nativism vs. Empiricism

Lesson 5

Rationalists/Nativists claim

Some (or all) knowledge is independent of our sensory experience. We must innately be endowed with such knowledge

Empiricists claim

All knowledge must ultimately be derived from our sensory experience

Nativism roots

Greek philosophy, Plato

Meno, Plato (427-347 B.C.)

Asked how it is possible that humans know so many things they do not know they know

Plato's answer to "Meno"

All knowledge is already present unconsciously in our souls

What does it mean for knowledge to be "innate"?

It is inborn and carried over from previous existence

According to Plato, how do we gain conscious knowledge?

Through anamnesis (recollection)

How did Socrates prove Plato's view in the dialogue

He questions an uneducated child and shows that he understands complex theorems of geometry even though the child did not realize he had the knowledge. The questioning helped the boy recollect the innate but forgotten knowledge

How is it possible that native speakers come to know things about their language in conditions of sparse evidence

Knowledge is innate

Native speakers know things about their language which:

they have never been taught and they have never experienced

Rationalism in the 18th century

Philosophers Rene Descartes (The Mediations) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (A Discourse on Metaphysics) argued for a Rationalist form of Nativism

What Did Rene and Gottfried argue?

Argued that humans have knowledge of concept that are not available to human sensory experience (concepts of God, infinity, and necessary truth)

Rationalism view

Humans are endowed by God with a rational soul which is equipped with certain innate ideas

Any human's sensory experience is only:

partial and contingent

According to Rationalists:

knowledge is necessary and universal

Who proposed the first idea of innate language?

Rationalists

Universal Grammar

language involved innate universal ideas and principles

Empiricism (response to Rationalism)

Ideas either come directly from sensory, our experience, or are derived from experience using general cognitive abilities such as abstraction, analogy, and definition

What did John Locke question in "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding"?

universal concepts

What did Empiricists question?

The possible origin of innate concepts

Locke argued that Nativism could or could not possible be true?

could not

Locke's Empiricist theory of acquisition of knowledge

All knowledge is based in experience

At birth the human mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa) on which experience writes

Our sensed are the origin for all concepts, ideas, and beliefs

For Empiricists, there must be something:

built into the mind that abstracts, analogies, or defines

Behaviorism

a development of empiricist ideas in the early to mid-twentieth century

Leading scholar in Behaviorist movement

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)

According to Skinner:

the mind is not observable so we should avoid talking about ideas and instead should stick with observable behavior

In Behaviorism, all learning can be boiled down to:

how behavioral responses to stimulus can be modified by reinforcement/punishment

Skinner applied his ideas to what book?

Verbal Behavior 1957

What did Skinner argue?

Children learn languages by receiving reinforcement for producing the right word or sentence in the right context

Progressive approximation (Skinner)

Over time, through reinforcement, children's language becomes better and more accurate

Modern Empiricism, name

Connectionism

Connectionism argues that:

human cognitive processes can be adequately modeled with artificial neural networks, modeled on the workings of neurons

Neural network

has a layer of input nodes, a layer of output nodes, and connections between them that may be mediated by layers of hidden nodes

Network set up for facial recognition

input nodes might detect facial features and the output nodes might be the identities of individuals

Noam Chomsky argues that:

innate knowledge is required to acquire a human language

Cartesian Linguistics (Chomsky)

reintroduced Universal Grammar

Universal Grammar, according to Chomsky

an innate body of prespecified, domain-specific knowledge about human language

Not placed by God, but an inherent part of human biology, specified in human genetics

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

constrains the course and outcome of language acquisition, equipped by UG

Consequences of Nativist view

Parents do not teach their children language (in the usual sense of explicit teaching) and children successfully acquire language because they posses UG and LAD

Do modern Nativists acknowledge that experience plays a crucial role in acquiring knowledge?

yes

Modern nativism in the case of language

you need unput from the environment to know which language you are acquiring. Experience determines the specific grammatical settings of your language and you learn particular words of you language from experience

What are the two schools of thought on how humans acquire knowledge that the study of language has been influenced by?

Nativism and Empiricism

What does Empiricism emphasize?

The role of the environment and experience, suggesting only general cognitive abilities are required for learning

What does Nativism emphasize?

The innate and domain-specific knowledge that humans bring to the task of acquiring language

Modern nativists furthermore acknowledge:

The important role experience plays in language acquisition

For Chomsky, Universal Grammar is:

the theory of the innate knowledge of language specified in human biology

Innate knowledge

the idea that some knowledge and ideas are present in the mind at birth

The opposite idea of innate knowledge, that all knowledge comes from experience

Empircism