Words&Dirt

“Kant tried to forge a synthesis of empiricism and rationalism which, in rough outline, works well in today’s nature-nurture debate.  The mind not a mere associator of sensory impressions (as in the empiricism of his day and the connectionism of ours), nor does it come equipped with actual knowledge about the contents of the world (as in some versions of the rationalism of his day and in the Extreme Nativism of ours).  What the innate apparatus of the mind contributes is a set of abstract conceptual frameworks that organize our experience––space, time, substance, causation, number, and logic (today we might add other domains like living things, other minds, and language).  But each of these is an empty form that must be filled in by actual instances provided by the senses or the imagination.  As Kant put it, his treatise ‘admits absolutely no divinely implanted or innate representations….There must, however, be a ground in the subject which makes it possible for these representations to originate in this and no other manner….This ground is at least innate.’  Kant’s version of nativism, with abstract organizing frameworks but not actual knowledge built in to the mind, is the version that is most viable today, and can be found, for example, in Chompskyan linguistics, evolutionary psychology, and the approach to cognitive development called domain specificity.  One could go so far as to say that Kant foresaw the shape of a solution to the nature-nurture debate: characterize the organization of experience, whatever it is, that makes useful learning possible.”

––The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, by Steven Pinker, pg. 160

“It was like the mouth of a cave, because the moonlight shone into it a little way just as if inside the opening there were the inside of the hill; but it wasn’t.  And out of it was coming a procession of ghosts.

Mary felt as if the ground had given way beneath her mind.  She caught herself with a start, seizing the nearest branch for reassurance that there still was a physical world, and she was still part of it.

She moved closer.  Old men and women, children, babes in arms, humans and other beings, too, more and more thickly they came out of the dark in the world of solid moonlight–-and vanished.

That was the strangest thing.  They took a few steps in the world of grass and air and silver light, and looked around, their faces transformed with joy––Mary had never seen such joy––and held out their arms as if they were embracing the whole universe; and then, as if they were made of mist or smoke, they simply drifted away, becoming part of the earth and the dew and the night breeze.

Some of them came toward Mary as if they wanted to tell her something, and reached out their hands, and she felt their touch like little shock of cold.  One of the ghosts––an old woman––beckoned, urging her to come close.

Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say:

‘Tell them stories.  They need the truth.  You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well.  Just tell them stories.'”

––The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman, loc. 5792-8