Empiricism

Empiricism

J. Prinz

Concept empiricism

​Perceptual-priority hypothesis

Nothing in the intelect that is not first in the senses.

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The concepts that humans use are copied or built up from sensory states. What kind of priority is this one?

- Empiricists believe that perceptual representations serve as causal preconditions for concepts: concepts would not come into existence if the perceptual representations were not available to be copied or assembled.
-Concept Empiricism: All (human) concepts are copies or combinations

of copies of perceptual representations.
-Copying is properly conceived as a causal process.
-Concept empiricism is a thesis about the nature of mental representations or the vehicles of thought.

Multiple Choice

According to the definition of concept empiricism, concepts derive from perceptual representations. What are the possible accounts of perceptual representations?

• a) Pereceptual representations are preceivable propoerties

• b) Pereceptual representations are syntactic properties

• c) Pereceptual representations are a faculty

• d) All the previous ones

-If perceptual representations originate in the senses, we must understand what the senses are and how they (as a faculty) differ from the intellect.
-How should we characterize them?
-Sensory systems are modular: processing in perceptual systems cannot be influenced by information contained in other systems.
-However, the evolutionary grounds to hold that sensory systems are modular has been contested (we physically respond to sensory stimulus, but we also do it by will).
-Moreover, perceptual systems are not informationally encapsulated and hence not modular: beliefs, expectations, and high-level interpretations can affect what we perceive.

Fill in the Blanks

Another proposal to charachterize the senses is to appeal to their

Sensory systems' function: they are in the business of receiving inputs from the extramental environment, including one's own body.
-However, this proposal is not free from problems. E. g., the senses are not purely receptive but can also be used to actively seek out objects, as in cases of visual search, and they can issue commands to motor systems, as when we saccade to a bright light or recoil from a hot grill.
-Nevertheless, the receptivity proposal is right to say that the senses serve the function of responding to inputs.
-The modularity proposal is right to say that the senses serve functions that are domain-specific.

Senses are dedicated input systems

-The senses can be regarded as systems that respond to particular classes of inputs.
-Each sense retains a crucial degree of independence, processing its own preferred stimuli in its own preferred way.
-Each consists of their own sets of operations and representations, housed in separate neural pathways. (Systems)
-They are systems that receive inputs from outside of the brain. (Input systems)
-Each sense responds to a proprietary input class. (Dedicated systems)

Multiple Choice

Saying that each sense responds to a proprietary input class means that different senses are specially tuned to different kinds of physical magnitudes. How can we interpret this?

• a) Modalities necessarily represent different things.

• b) Modalities represent by responding to different kinds of magnitudes.

• a) + b)

• Neither a) nor b)

-Perceptual representations are representations in dedicated input systems.
-Dedicated input systems use disparate kinds of mental representations.
-Concepts are copies or combinations copies of perceptual representations.
Therefore:
-Modal-specificity hypothesis: concepts are couched in representational codes that are specific to our perceptual systems.

Multiple Choice

What kind of evidence supports concept empiricism?

• a) Empirical evidence from studies of individuals with conceptual abilities impaired

• b) Empirical evidence from Damasio's theory of convergence zones

• c) Empirical evidence from Barsalou's studies

• a) + b) + c)