Kant and Locke

Over 200 years ago, Immanuel Kant revolutionized philosophy with his thesis that:

1) The possibility of human knowledge presupposes the active participation of the human mind, and

2) The mind determines the conditions of its own experience

Clearly Kant was right, that our mind is active, not passively waiting for experience.  The mind was built to understand our environment.  It actively categorizes our experience, and determines how we will react.  We now know these "categories of understanding" evolved over millions of years, and are transmitted from one generation to the next through our genes, in the form of our brains.  Furthermore, we also know that mental capabilities vary across the population, due to genetic variation.

Too bad Kant wrote too late for America's founding fathers, who believed instead the anti-innatist philosophy of John Locke that:

1) All human thought originates in the simple ideas of sensation and reflection, and

2) The pursuit of happiness—the genuine business of human life—demands only that religion, morality, and science be established to a degree that permits practical progress.

What does it mean that our thought arises from "sensation" (or senses)?  According to John Locke, for example, children learn the concept of “dog” when their mother points to a physical dog and says “that’s a dog”.  The sensation (seeing a dog) is directly stored in the brain as the "dog concept".

Of course, through many decades of experimental evidence, we now know this is completely wrong.  Kant was right, that we must possess innate, built-in “categories of understanding” called “modules”.  Otherwise, why would we focus our attention on the dog that our mother was pointing to, instead of the tip of her finger?

We humans have hundreds of brain modules – specialized information processors (regions in our brain) that allow us to learn certain specialized concepts.  For example, we have a “face recognition” module (without which we can’t recognize faces), and a human interaction module (which autistic children lack, leading them to regard other people simply as “objects”).  We have a language acquisition and speech module, which, if damaged, leaves us without words.

However, America was founded on the philosophy of John Locke, not Immanuel Kant.  What John Locke provided, in other words, was a practical philosophy for capitalism and democratic government.  People have the right to "life, liberty and property", and generally to conduct their business without government interference.  So if someone rises to the top and makes more money, this is fair, Locke would say, because we are all born as "blank slates" on a level playing field.  Their success must be due to hard work.

Of course, we now know that Locke was wrong about this, too.  Some people are born leaders, and are thus "entitled" (by their gene variants) to a disproportionate slice of society's resources (through their paychecks, influence, stock options, etc).  Some people are naturally more motivated than others. 

So if free will is a false assumption, leading to an unfair distribution of wealth, we need to rethink our form of government.  Generally, I still like the current system of meritocratic capitalism, although it's based on a false premise.  (Socialism and communism, on the other hand, were big disasters, since they were completely naive about human nature as it really is).  Yet, we need to level the playing field in a different way, by allowing for individual choice over genetic selection (anyone should be allowed to select "leadership genes" for their children, for example, once those gene variants are identified).  The difference is, the government should ensure that everyone has equal access to these choices.

Comments

[yotixon]

Hi all!

Very nice point of view! Respect!

[govokinolij]

Hello

Looks good! Very useful, good stuff. Good resources here. Thanks much!

Bye

[BlackSun]

I should clarify that I don't mean to say that we should tolerate the corruption that exists in governments. But I don't agree that governments need to do anything to address inequality. They just need to get out of the way and let people compete.

[BlackSun]

This is a HUGE leap. I disagree that there is any problem with the unfairness of the political system. In prehistory, genetics conveyed advantages on certain of our ancestors. The advantages have been further leveraged by each generation consolidating the gains of the previous. You make no justification for on the one hand believing in these innate differences, and on the other asking government to try to reduce them. Can you please make an argument for why you think this should be done?