Article/Publication Details
Views: 741

NATIVISM, TRANSCENDENTALISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY: REVISITING THE NON-PLACEMENT OF THE SOURCE OF PHENOMENAL EXPERIENCE IN THE WORLD

Abstract
Nativism as a theory that interprets certain abilities and ideas as innate [The contexts we will consider prefer to speak precisely of innateness in the sense of New European philosophical discussions and avoid the notion of “a priori”/“a posteriori”, respectively, and we will stick to this terminological pair.], is considered by some contemporary philosophers as an echo of outdated philosophical approaches. Critics for the most part reproach it for being unscientific and metaphysical. In one of its most extreme forms, nativism is accused of mysticism and lack of evidence. At the same time, a number of very authoritative thinkers openly call themselves nativists and defend this trend in philosophy, cognitive sciences, linguistics and other fields of knowledge (Chomsky, McGinn, Lawrence and Margolis). The main aim of this paper is to analyse the contemporary polemic between empiricists and nativists. It will be shown that the main polemical knot around which the debate unfolds can be easily untied through a transcendentalist interpretation of nativism. In particular, an appeal to phenomenology can help to notice the importance of the idea of the non-essentiality of the source of experience to experience. Phenomenology, which preserves the idea of this non-essentiality, has in mind a radical break with the ontology of natural objects, and will not, in particular, deduce innate knowledge from evolutionary mechanisms, nor will it place it within the biological structure of organisms (e.g., the brain or the neural processes in it). It remains to be shown that most of the positions and refutations of modern nativism are based on a misunderstanding of the classical “overcoming” of the dispute between empiricism and rationalism by transcendentalism and transcendental phenomenology, as well as the requirement of transcendentalism and transcendental phenomenology not to place the source of experience in the same world in which we locate experience itself. The study is to consider what the modern nativist view must look like in its transcendentalist interpretation in order to be a worthy opponent to modern empiricism.

Keywords
nativism, empiricism, innate knowledge, naturalism, transcendentalism, argument from poverty of stimulus, argument from certainty, generative linguistics, innate grammar.

References

• Ariew, A. (1996). Innateness and Canalization. Philosophy of Science, 63 (S3), S19–S27.
• Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual Symbol Systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22 (4), 577–660.
• Bauer, R. H. (1979). Memory, Acquisition, and Category Clustering in Learning-disabled Children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 27 (3), 365–383.
• Bayne, T., & Montague, M. (2011). Cognitive Phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Brown, R., & Herrnstein, R. (1975). Moral Reasoning and Conduct. Psychological Monographs, 70, 14.
• Carey, S. (2000). The Origin of Concepts. Journal of Cognition and Development, 1 (1), 37–41.
• Chomsky, N. (1967). Recent Contributions to the Theory of Innate Ideas: Summary of Oral Presentation. In Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1964/1966: In Memory of Norwood Russell Hanson (81–90). Dordrecht: Springer.
• Chomsky, N. (1980). Rules and Representations. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3 (1), 1–15.
• Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.
• Cowie, F. (1999). What’s Within? Nativism Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Descartes, R. (1951). Meditations on First Philosophy. Cambridge: Newcomb Livraria Press.
• Dreyfus, H., & Hall, H. (1982). Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Fodor, J. A. (1983). Representations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Gelman, R. (2000). Domain Specificity and Variability in Cognitive Development. Child Development, 71 (4), 854–856.
• Goodman, N. (1967). The Epistemological Argument. In Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1964/1966: In Memory of Norwood Russell Hanson (102–107). Dordrecht: Springer.
• Husserl, E. (2009). Ideas to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Book I (A. Michailov, Trans.). Rus. Ed. Moscow: Akademicheskii proekt Publ. (In Russian)
• Kant, I. (1953). Critique of Pure Reason. Rus. Ed. Moscow: Ripol Classic Publ. (In Russian)
• Laurence, S., & Margolis, E. (2001). The Poverty of the Stimulus Argument. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 52 (2).
• Laurence, S., & Margolis, E. (2013). In Defence of Nativism. Philosophical Studies, 165, 693–718.
• Leibniz, G. W. F. (1996). New Essays on Human Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Levine, J. (1983). Materialism and Qualia: The Explanatory Gap. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 64 (4), 354–361.
• Lovaas, O. I. (1977). The Autistic Child: Language Development Through Behavior Modification. Irvington: Irvington Publishers.
• McGinn, C. (1999). The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World. New York: Basic Books.
• McNeil, M. C., Polloway, E. A., & Smith, J. D. (1984). Feral and Isolated Children: Historical Review and Analysis. Education and Training of the Mentally Retarded, 19 (1), 70–79.
• Prinz, J. J. (2004). Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and their Perceptual Basis. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Putnam, H. (1967). The ‘Innateness Hypothesis’ and Explanatory Models in Linguistics. In Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1964/1966: In Memory of Norwood Russell Hanson (91–101). Dordrecht: Springer.
• Skinner, B. F. (1957). The Experimental Analysis of Behavior. American Scientist, 45 (4), 343–371.
• Sober, E. (1999). Testability. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 73 (2), 47–76.
• Stich, S. P. (Ed.). (1975). Innate Ideas. Vol. 10. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.