My Essay on Empiricism And David Hume: Is our ideas really ours?

[EmperorCaligula]

Introduction and Thesis


This paper is about the idea that experience's what matters when it comes to human knowledge. The main point is that all human knowledge comes from experience. I will talk about three points: first that our minds cannot form any idea without prior experience; second that our moral beliefs are formed through cultural and lived experience; and third, that even instinctive responses and gut feelings are forms of knowledge that come from experience. These points support the idea that experience's the foundation of all human knowledge.


The idea that experience is the foundation of knowledge is not new. It was first talked about by people like John Locke, David Hume and John Stuart Mill. They said that our minds are like slates and that knowledge is built up from sensory impressions. This is different from the idea that certain truthsre available to the mind through reason alone which was talked about by people like René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. I will not try to prove that the second idea is wrong. Instead I will. Extend the first idea in three specific ways.


I. The Experiential Origin of All Ideas


The point is that our minds cannot form any idea without prior experience. David Hume said that there is a difference between impressions which're direct experiences and ideas which are copies of impressions that our minds work with. On this view thinking is not about creating ideas but about combining ideas that come from experience. For example we can combine the idea of a horse with the idea of a horn to get the idea of a unicorn. Both of these ideas come from experience.


A good example of this point is the case of people who are born blind. They do not just lack the ability to see they also lack the ideas that come from seeing. They cannot imagine a sunset or dream in color not because they lack imagination. Because imagination can only work with what experience has given us. This is not a scientific point it is also a philosophical one: the ideas we can think about are limited by the experiences we have had.


David Hume also talked about colors. He said that we can imagine a missing color by looking at the colors we have seen before. This supports the point that even our imagination is based on experience. We cannot imagine a new color because our ideas about colors are based on what we have seen.


Some people might say that certain ideas like truths are not based on experience. They might say that we can understand these ideas through reason. I would say that this paper is not saying that all knowledge comes directly from experience. The idea is that experience is the starting point for all knowledge not that every idea is a copy of a sensory impression.


II. Moral Beliefs Are Formed Through Experience


The second point is that our moral beliefs are formed through experience not through reason. This view is often called relativism, which some people think is a bad thing.. It is actually a modest and reasonable claim: that our moral beliefs are shaped by experience just like any other belief.


Consider two societies, one that hunts for food and another that farms. The people in the hunting society will develop rules about sharing food and being loyal to each other. The people in the farming society will develop moral rules, about property and taking care of the land. These moral rules are not just made up they are based on the experiences of the people in each society. The difference in rules reflects a difference in experience, not a difference in reasoning.


David Hume also talked about philosophy. He said that moral judgments are based on feelings, not reason. These feelings are developed through experience and social life. Some people might say that even if moral beliefs vary across cultures some moral truths are still accessible to reason. I take this point seriously. My claim is not that there are no truths but that our understanding of moral truths is based on experience. Even if it is true that hurting people for no reason is wrong our understanding of this truth is based on our ability to empathize with others, which is developed through experience.


This view suggests that we should be humble when it comes to judgments. Before we judge the beliefs of another culture we should try to understand the experiences that led to those beliefs. This is not saying that all moral views are equal but that moral understanding requires understanding the experiences that shape beliefs.


III. Instinct and Intuition as Forms of Knowledge


The point is that instinctive responses and intuitive judgments are forms of knowledge that come from experience. Some people might think that gut feelings are a counterexample to the idea that experience's the foundation of knowledge.. I would say that gut feelings are actually a form of rapid experiential processing.


When we feel uneasy in a situation it is not a mysterious feeling. Our brain is using a lot of experience that we have had much of which we're not even aware of. Research in psychology distinguishes between two types of thinking: automatic thinking and slow deliberate thinking. Gut feelings are an example of automatic thinking. They are not less based on experience than reasoning they are just a different way of processing experience.


This point can be extended to biology. Many of our responses like fear of heights or certain tastes are not learned in our lifetime. They are adaptations that were developed over time because they helped our ancestors survive. In this sense they represent learning that has been passed down through generations. This is experience-based knowledge that is not limited to a lifetime.


Some people might say that instinctive responses are not really knowledge even if they are reliable. I would say that the same point could be made about knowledge. Just because our visual system evolved to track features of the environment it does not mean that it is not knowledge. If we allow that perception can be knowledge then we should also allow that instinct can be knowledge.


IV. Induction and the Limits of Empirical Certainty


The idea that experience's the foundation of knowledge has an important consequence: it means that our knowledge claims are always probabilistic, not certain. This is because of the problem of induction. Even if we have seen something happen times before it does not mean that it will happen again. We cannot be sure that the future will be like the past.


This is not a thing. It is a recognition of the limits of what experience can tell us. We should be humble. Recognize that our knowledge claims are always provisional. Our best theories are the ones that are best supported by the evidence we have. We should be willing to change them if new evidence comes along.


I have argued that experience is the foundation of all knowledge. This includes not our factual beliefs, about the world but also our moral beliefs, our intuitions and our instinctive responses. In each case the source of knowledge is experience, not reason. This view is humble it recognizes that we can never be fully certain of anything. But it is also comprehensive it provides an account of the sources of human knowledge. The right attitude to take is one of trusting experience while also being willing to change our minds if new evidence comes along.





(no AI was used in the making of this)

 

[tired as fuck]

The second point is that our moral beliefs are formed through experience not through reason. This view is often called relativism

ehh not really. Moral relativism argues that there is no hierarchy of moral systems, ie, no way to compare any two of them and say which is "better". It's philosophically illogical.

Some questions I have:

Can we know through the experiences of others (both in our lifetime and the ones who preceded us)? In other words, is knowledge only first person experience, or can it also be third person experience?

For instance, suppose someone tells me that they've witnessed a shooting in a park. Do I now know that a shooting happened in a park, or do I merely know that someone told me there was a shooting in a park? Is the first option knowledge or faith?

An extension of this question: if all knowledge stems from experience, hence from perception and the other senses, then do others exist outside of our perception? Does one exist outside of one's perception (ie whilst sleeping or being unconscious)? (note that this question can be answered negatively without the previous one being necessarily negatively answered.)

Assuming experiences of others are not knowledge, then are instincts and gut feelings not knowledge, but some form of faith?

Regarding induction, what about mathematics and physics? Many physical phenomena (like Newtonian movement) are explained through the use of mathematics, thus, logic. Logic itself is the foundation of mathematics. We can know things in mathematics that we cannot experience in the real world, very abstract concepts without visual referents. The question is, is logic a form of knowledge? If so, is it outside of perception? Given a finite set of rules for logical discourse, can a logical discourse be constructed without the need of perception of physical referents?


as always, thank you for these thought provoking threads. Kinda sad that you have to specify it's not AI written, we live in a society bruh.

 

[dumbozhina]

you should read kant.

 

[EmperorCaligula]

ehh not really. Moral relativism argues that there is no hierarchy of moral systems, ie, no way to compare any two of them and say which is "better". It's philosophically illogical.

Some questions I have:

Can we know through the experiences of others (both in our lifetime and the ones who preceded us)? In other words, is knowledge only first person experience, or can it also be third person experience?

For instance, suppose someone tells me that they've witnessed a shooting in a park. Do I now know that a shooting happened in a park, or do I merely know that someone told me there was a shooting in a park? Is the first option knowledge or faith?

An extension of this question: if all knowledge stems from experience, hence from perception and the other senses, then do others exist outside of our perception? Does one exist outside of one's perception (ie whilst sleeping or being unconscious)? (note that this question can be answered negatively without the previous one being necessarily negatively answered.)

Assuming experiences of others are not knowledge, then are instincts and gut feelings not knowledge, but some form of faith?

Regarding induction, what about mathematics and physics? Many physical phenomena (like Newtonian movement) are explained through the use of mathematics, thus, logic. Logic itself is the foundation of mathematics. We can know things in mathematics that we cannot experience in the real world, very abstract concepts without visual referents. The question is, is logic a form of knowledge? If so, is it outside of perception? Given a finite set of rules for logical discourse, can a logical discourse be constructed without the need of perception of physical referents?


as always, thank you for these thought provoking threads. Kinda sad that you have to specify it's not AI written, we live in a society bruh.

I'll try to answer those questions to th best of my abilites


1. Can we know through the experiences of others?


The paper's framework actually supports testimonial knowledge without much strain. Since all ideas are combinations of prior impressions, testimony doesn't give you a foreign impression but rather directs you to reorganize impressions you already have. When someone tells you about the shooting, you construct the idea from your own experiential stock of parks, violence, and fear, making the testimony a prompt rather than raw material. From outside the paper, reliabilist epistemology adds that knowledge only requires a reliably truth-tracking process and not first-person origin, meaning a credible witness qualifies. The faith/knowledge distinction then becomes a spectrum of reliability: faith is accepting testimony with no experiential basis for trusting the source, while knowledge through testimony is accepting it because experience has given you reason to trust the mechanism.


2. Do others exist outside your perception, and do you exist while unconscious?


The paper already commits to experience occurring below conscious awareness when it describes gut feelings as processing "much of which we're not even aware of," so it implicitly accepts that existence doesn't require conscious perception. You continue existing while unconscious in the sense that biological and experiential processing persists, including memory consolidation, nervous system activity, and the embodied adaptations the paper's biology argument relies on. The other minds problem is trickier, but the paper's own moral section assumes other minds throughout, invoking empathy and shared social life without arguing for them, so it is already implicitly committed to their existence. The best experiential justification is inference to the best explanation: the most coherent account of other people's complex, responsive behavior is that they have inner lives like yours, and that inference is itself grounded in experience.


3. If third-person experience isn't knowledge, are instincts faith?


The resolution lies in a distinction the paper gestures toward but doesn't fully name. Faith involves consciously accepting a proposition without sufficient evidence, but instinct is sub-doxastic, operating entirely below the level of belief or propositional content, meaning you don't believe you're afraid of heights but simply are, without any act of acceptance. The paper already blurs the line between biological process and knowledge when it argues that perception counts as knowledge despite being an evolved system rather than a consciously learned one, and instinct follows the same logic, just compressed across evolutionary rather than individual time. The better category for instinct is embodied biological knowledge, reliable without being consciously held, and therefore neither knowledge nor faith in the traditional sense but something the paper's framework uniquely accommodates through its extension of experience into biology.


4. Is logic a form of knowledge, and can it operate without perceptual referents?


The paper's Humean framework handles elementary mathematics reasonably well since basic concepts like number and shape are abstracted from experience, but it breaks down for advanced mathematics where objects like imaginary numbers or transfinite cardinals have no experiential referent even in principle. The most honest extension of the paper's position is that logic and mathematics are the grammar of experience rather than its content, with experience supplying the raw material and logic supplying the rules for combining and extending it consistently, which the paper already implicitly relies on every time it makes an inference. A formal system can indeed generate theorems through pure syntactic manipulation once axioms are in place with no perceptual input required, but the axioms themselves need justification and the meaningfulness of the system requires some connection back to experience, otherwise it is symbol manipulation rather than knowledge. Kant's resolution fits neatly here: mathematical and logical structures are not learned from experience but are the conditions that make experience intelligible in the first place, which strengthens rather than threatens the paper's empiricism by distinguishing between the form of knowledge contributed by the mind and the content contributed by experience.




and You're welcome brother, and unfortunately I have to specify their was no AI since anything thats thought provoking or intellectual gets accusation of AI which I dont want cuz I work hard on these and takes plenty of research, and ofc if you have any questions or suggestions Im here

 

[EmperorCaligula]

you should read kant.

I read Kant but I think he was just describing the problem more elegantly rather than solving it, though I agree with his intuition that the mind contributes structure to experience rather than passively receiving it in his book Critique of Pure Reason int he Transcendental Aesthetic section

 

[tired as fuck]

The paper's framework actually supports testimonial knowledge without much strain. Since all ideas are combinations of prior impressions, testimony doesn't give you a foreign impression but rather directs you to reorganize impressions you already have. When someone tells you about the shooting, you construct the idea from your own experiential stock of parks, violence, and fear, making the testimony a prompt rather than raw material. From outside the paper, reliabilist epistemology adds that knowledge only requires a reliably truth-tracking process and not first-person origin, meaning a credible witness qualifies. The faith/knowledge distinction then becomes a spectrum of reliability: faith is accepting testimony with no experiential basis for trusting the source, while knowledge through testimony is accepting it because experience has given you reason to trust the mechanism.

Your reply contradicts the Humean concept of induction, though. The fact that someone gave faithful testimony in the past does not automatically make his current testimony truthful. Moreover, the information received is not simply a "prompt" to reorder impressions, it is strictly new information because you did not know that there indeed was a shooting in the park prior to that, but at the same time you have no way to verify the testimony.

The paper already commits to experience occurring below conscious awareness when it describes gut feelings as processing "much of which we're not even aware of," so it implicitly accepts that existence doesn't require conscious perception. You continue existing while unconscious in the sense that biological and experiential processing persists, including memory consolidation, nervous system activity, and the embodied adaptations the paper's biology argument relies on. The other minds problem is trickier, but the paper's own moral section assumes other minds throughout, invoking empathy and shared social life without arguing for them, so it is already implicitly committed to their existence. The best experiential justification is inference to the best explanation: the most coherent account of other people's complex, responsive behavior is that they have inner lives like yours, and that inference is itself grounded in experience.

The resolution lies in a distinction the paper gestures toward but doesn't fully name. Faith involves consciously accepting a proposition without sufficient evidence, but instinct is sub-doxastic, operating entirely below the level of belief or propositional content, meaning you don't believe you're afraid of heights but simply are, without any act of acceptance. The paper already blurs the line between biological process and knowledge when it argues that perception counts as knowledge despite being an evolved system rather than a consciously learned one, and instinct follows the same logic, just compressed across evolutionary rather than individual time. The better category for instinct is embodied biological knowledge, reliable without being consciously held, and therefore neither knowledge nor faith in the traditional sense but something the paper's framework uniquely accommodates through its extension of experience into biology.

How do you know they have inner lives like I do? How do I know others exist in such a way solely through perception?
Moreover, if you accept that gut feelings and instincts are innate (because you described them as being so) then, simply put, you believe that experience isn't the only way to know. What you're doing here is to simply use synonyms and hide behind semantics.

The paper's Humean framework handles elementary mathematics reasonably well since basic concepts like number and shape are abstracted from experience, but it breaks down for advanced mathematics where objects like imaginary numbers or transfinite cardinals have no experiential referent even in principle. The most honest extension of the paper's position is that logic and mathematics are the grammar of experience rather than its content, with experience supplying the raw material and logic supplying the rules for combining and extending it consistently, which the paper already implicitly relies on every time it makes an inference. A formal system can indeed generate theorems through pure syntactic manipulation once axioms are in place with no perceptual input required, but the axioms themselves need justification and the meaningfulness of the system requires some connection back to experience, otherwise it is symbol manipulation rather than knowledge. Kant's resolution fits neatly here: mathematical and logical structures are not learned from experience but are the conditions that make experience intelligible in the first place, which strengthens rather than threatens the paper's empiricism by distinguishing between the form of knowledge contributed by the mind and the content contributed by experience.

the self-evidence of axioms isn't justified through experience, though. Abstract Structures like groups, rings or fields do not relate back to empirical observations and knowledge. Kant is also a proponent of innate knowledge so you seem to not have a consistent framework for knowledge.

 

[EmperorCaligula]

Your reply contradicts the Humean concept of induction, though. The fact that someone gave faithful testimony in the past does not automatically make his current testimony truthful. Moreover, the information received is not simply a "prompt" to reorder impressions, it is strictly new information because you did not know that there indeed was a shooting in the park prior to that, but at the same time you have no way to verify the testimony.


How do you know they have inner lives like I do? How do I know others exist in such a way solely through perception?
Moreover, if you accept that gut feelings and instincts are innate (because you described them as being so) then, simply put, you believe that experience isn't the only way to know. What you're doing here is to simply use synonyms and hide behind semantics.

the self-evidence of axioms isn't justified through experience, though. Abstract Structures like groups, rings or fields do not relate back to empirical observations and knowledge. Kant is also a proponent of innate knowledge so you seem to not have a consistent framework for knowledge.

The challenge that previous success does not imply current truth is true but shows more than it should. Not only is knowledge gained via testimony compromised, so too is all knowledge, even yours, for every instance of knowability, including the most direct perceptual instances, is characterized by that same inductivist uncertainty to which the paper itself admits in section four. The paper acknowledges the fallibilist, probabilistic nature of all knowledge and thus knowing through testimony does not remove the possibility that one knows; rather it makes it on par with all other possibilities acknowledged in the paper. This is a genuine epistemological concern, but a practical impossibility. If you don't believe in the knowability of other minds via experience, you cannot even make this objection, because an objection relies on the existence of an interiority in the person you are objecting to that can recognize the objection; in fact, you are performing the belief in other minds that you are verbally rejecting. Furthermore, you rely on a concept of innate that means non-experiential, and precisely that concept is undermined by the paper's biology argument. An organism has been shaped by evolutionary pressure, a process driven exclusively by environment and experience over time, so it embodies acquired experiential selection. For that to be non-experiential suggests a significantly restricted conception of experience which you have failed to justify, and the axioms still require a mind capable of knowing self-evidence and a mind that has developed its cognitive architecture through experience. We have no justification for supposing this capacity was not developed via that mechanism and thus there's no reason to suppose that the mind's capacity for belief isn't subject to the very same induction problem that you present this argument as being subject to. Yes, I'll admit that referencing Kant was not aligned with a strictly Humean model, fair enough, but the central thesis that the mind provides a structure for experience is not incompatible with empiricism if we conceptualize the structure as an evolved cognition, which brings us full circle to the biology argument again. The architecture is not innate in a rationalist sense but rather experientially selected for.


and no tbf I dont have a consistent framework or a strict framework I kinda like experimenting with different systems and exploring, thought mostly I agree with Hume and Nietzsche, and Im working on making my own philosophic system, currently doing more research so I can write a long essay or a book about it

 

[tired as fuck]

and no tbf I dont have a consistent framework or a strict framework I kinda like experimenting with different systems and exploring, thought mostly I agree with Hume and Nietzsche, and Im working on making my own philosophic system, currently doing more research so I can write a long essay or a book about it

based, I'm doing more or less the same.

The challenge that previous success does not imply current truth is true but shows more than it should. Not only is knowledge gained via testimony compromised, so too is all knowledge, even yours, for every instance of knowability, including the most direct perceptual instances, is characterized by that same inductivist uncertainty to which the paper itself admits in section four. The paper acknowledges the fallibilist, probabilistic nature of all knowledge and thus knowing through testimony does not remove the possibility that one knows; rather it makes it on par with all other possibilities acknowledged in the paper.

I think knowledge is only that which is attained through logically deducted propositions, and direct first hand experience. So testimony in my view is not knowledge. You say that knowledge is probabilistic but that is incorrect, for first hand experience is not probabilistic: wrong knowledge is still knowledge.

If you don't believe in the knowability of other minds via experience, you cannot even make this objection, because an objection relies on the existence of an interiority in the person you are objecting to that can recognize the objection; in fact, you are performing the belief in other minds that you are verbally rejecting.

I can just assume that other minds exist, it can be an axiom of a system of though. A black box type of thing. But strictly speaking even if I did not postulate the certifiable existence of other minds, why should me objecting to a being that is of unknown existence be illicit? I see it as a Pascal's Wager of sorts. I also ask myself this: if a being other than myself made an assertion, it is capable of making assertions. The question is, does this not imply that that being is also capable of recognizing objections to its assertions? Does it take two different capabilities? If a being can perceive me in order to assert something in my direction, then is it not true that it can also perceive objections coming from my direction?

Furthermore, you rely on a concept of innate that means non-experiential, and precisely that concept is undermined by the paper's biology argument. An organism has been shaped by evolutionary pressure, a process driven exclusively by environment and experience over time, so it embodies acquired experiential selection.

You seem to be confused. I did not have first-hand experience of the supposed changes that led to me having such and such instincts. Perhaps my ancestors did, but I did not. Since my body comes pre-packaged with this great deal of antecedent experience, is it not fair to call it "innate" then? An Irish Elk did not experience first hand the female selection of greater and greater antennae, the moment he was born. But he did come with the genes for big antennae. Hence, shall we not call such a characteristic "innate" to the individual Elk?

For that to be non-experiential suggests a significantly restricted conception of experience which you have failed to justify

I justify it through the usual definition of first-hand experience.

the axioms still require a mind capable of knowing self-evidence and a mind that has developed its cognitive architecture through experience. We have no justification for supposing this capacity was not developed via that mechanism and thus there's no reason to suppose that the mind's capacity for belief isn't subject to the very same induction problem that you present this argument as being subject to.

The issue is, is the capacity of knowing self-evidence innate or not? Does experience develop the mind's cognitive architecture? In a way yes, but not in the way that it acquires new capacities, but reinforces them. However, a toddler learns how to count and learns the self-evidence of numbers, and does it not then imply that the toddler has the capacity for knowing self-evidence and a cognitive architecture strong enough for understanding basic arithmetic? Language is mostly self-evident and completely tautological in nature, too. Probably to solve this matter once and for all one would have to commit a series of completely unethical experiments on humans, hence with the current legislation that matter will likely be unsolved. And also due to the nature of the social sciences, there would still be issues of replicability and predictive capacity. Hmmmm. In the absence of answers, the matter seems to remain undecidable from within our minds.

Yes, I'll admit that referencing Kant was not aligned with a strictly Humean model, fair enough, but the central thesis that the mind provides a structure for experience is not incompatible with empiricism if we conceptualize the structure as an evolved cognition, which brings us full circle to the biology argument again. The architecture is not innate in a rationalist sense but rather experientially selected for.

Well something must be innate, or else we'd have an infinite regression of experiential selection of finite traits which would eventually stop at 0, so something must have come out innately, methinks. That the mind provides a structure for experience is, like, one of the basic propositions of empiricism, the conceptualization of it as evolved cognition isn't strictly necessary for that. You're just going a step further, which is interesting but you'd have to disprove possibilities of innate functions like abstraction, imagination, composition, logic, self-evidence, perception of time and space...

 

[EmperorCaligula]

based, I'm doing more or less the same.


I think knowledge is only that which is attained through logically deducted propositions, and direct first hand experience. So testimony in my view is not knowledge. You say that knowledge is probabilistic but that is incorrect, for first hand experience is not probabilistic: wrong knowledge is still knowledge.

Being strictly first hand experience and logical deduction, that's a coherent position but it creates a problem you'd have to reckon with, which is that almost everything you know in practice comes through testimony. Every historical fact, every scientific result you didn't personally replicate, every piece of information you received through language rather than direct observation falls outside knowledge on that definition. That's not a refutation, but it's worth asking whether a theory of knowledge that excludes that much of what we ordinarily call knowledge is describing knowledge or just a very specific subset of it

I can just assume that other minds exist, it can be an axiom of a system of though. A black box type of thing. But strictly speaking even if I did not postulate the certifiable existence of other minds, why should me objecting to a being that is of unknown existence be illicit? I see it as a Pascal's Wager of sorts. I also ask myself this: if a being other than myself made an assertion, it is capable of making assertions. The question is, does this not imply that that being is also capable of recognizing objections to its assertions? Does it take two different capabilities? If a being can perceive me in order to assert something in my direction, then is it not true that it can also perceive objections coming from my direction?

You seem to be confused. I did not have first-hand experience of the supposed changes that led to me having such and such instincts. Perhaps my ancestors did, but I did not. Since my body comes pre-packaged with this great deal of antecedent experience, is it not fair to call it "innate" then? An Irish Elk did not experience first hand the female selection of greater and greater antennae, the moment he was born. But he did come with the genes for big antennae. Hence, shall we not call such a characteristic "innate" to the individual Elk?

The paper would say that wrong knowledge isn't knowledge at all, it's false belief, and the reason we can't always distinguish knowledge from false belief in the moment is precisely because experience is fallible. That fallibility is what makes it probabilistic.


On the Irish Elk, the concession is that it's innate to the individual, but the question is whether innate to the individual means outside experience altogether or just outside that individual's experience. The paper's claim is that experience is the foundation of knowledge at the level of the species and the organism over time, not necessarily within a single lifetime.

I justify it through the usual definition of first-hand experience.

The issue is, is the capacity of knowing self-evidence innate or not? Does experience develop the mind's cognitive architecture? In a way yes, but not in the way that it acquires new capacities, but reinforces them. However, a toddler learns how to count and learns the self-evidence of numbers, and does it not then imply that the toddler has the capacity for knowing self-evidence and a cognitive architecture strong enough for understanding basic arithmetic? Language is mostly self-evident and completely tautological in nature, too. Probably to solve this matter once and for all one would have to commit a series of completely unethical experiments on humans, hence with the current legislation that matter will likely be unsolved. And also due to the nature of the social sciences, there would still be issues of replicability and predictive capacity. Hmmmm. In the absence of answers, the matter seems to remain undecidable from within our minds.

Well something must be innate, or else we'd have an infinite regression of experiential selection of finite traits which would eventually stop at 0, so something must have come out innately, methinks. That the mind provides a structure for experience is, like, one of the basic propositions of empiricism, the conceptualization of it as evolved cognition isn't strictly necessary for that. You're just going a step further, which is interesting but you'd have to disprove possibilities of innate functions like abstraction, imagination, composition, logic, self-evidence, perception of time and space...

The capacity being reinforced rather than acquired is still compatible with experience playing a foundational role. Reinforcement through experience is still a relationship between experience and cognitive development, just a weaker one than acquisition.


Consider an analogy. A camera doesn't know anything about the world, but it has a lens, a sensor, and a shutter mechanism that together make photography possible. The photographs it takes are entirely determined by what it points at, meaning the content comes entirely from outside. Now imagine someone arguing that the camera's existence disproves the claim that photographs are of the external world, because the camera itself had to already exist before any photograph could be taken. That argument confuses the condition for photography with the content of photography. The lens being innate to the camera doesn't make the photographs innate, it just makes them possible.
The same logic applies here. The claim is that the content of knowledge comes from experience, not that the capacity for knowledge comes from experience. These are two separate questions and conflating them is what makes the regression seem like a refutation when it isn't. You can fully grant that something innate must exist at the base, the cognitive equivalent of the camera's lens, without that concession touching the claim that what the mind actually knows is determined by what experience runs through that machinery. The innate structure is empty until experience fills it, and an empty structure isn't knowledge of anything. It's just potential.
The regression therefore doesn't terminate in innate knowledge, it terminates in innate capacity, which is a very different thing. And since the paper is making a claim about knowledge rather than about cognitive architecture, the regression argument, however valid on its own terms, is simply answering a different question than the one the paper is asking

 

[EmperorCaligula]

based, I'm doing more or less the same.

is it inspired by a certain philosopher?

 

[tired as fuck]

is it inspired by a certain philosopher?

dunno. It's a sort of solipsist dualism

 

[tired as fuck]

Being strictly first hand experience and logical deduction, that's a coherent position but it creates a problem you'd have to reckon with, which is that almost everything you know in practice comes through testimony. Every historical fact, every scientific result you didn't personally replicate, every piece of information you received through language rather than direct observation falls outside knowledge on that definition.

I'm fine with that, such things (Every historical fact, every scientific result you didn't personally replicate, every piece of information you received through language rather than direct observation) are used to trick people anyways.

That's not a refutation, but it's worth asking whether a theory of knowledge that excludes that much of what we ordinarily call knowledge is describing knowledge or just a very specific subset of it

It's describing knowledge under my definition.

The paper would say that wrong knowledge isn't knowledge at all, it's false belief, and the reason we can't always distinguish knowledge from false belief in the moment is precisely because experience is fallible. That fallibility is what makes it probabilistic.

I couldn't derive it from the OP.

On the Irish Elk, the concession is that it's innate to the individual, but the question is whether innate to the individual means outside experience altogether or just outside that individual's experience. The paper's claim is that experience is the foundation of knowledge at the level of the species and the organism over time, not necessarily within a single lifetime.

The individual's relevant timeframe is its lifetime. Everything before is innate because of semantics. Unless you wanna rewrite the definition of innate I guess.

Consider an analogy. A camera doesn't know anything about the world, but it has a lens, a sensor, and a shutter mechanism that together make photography possible. The photographs it takes are entirely determined by what it points at, meaning the content comes entirely from outside. Now imagine someone arguing that the camera's existence disproves the claim that photographs are of the external world, because the camera itself had to already exist before any photograph could be taken. That argument confuses the condition for photography with the content of photography. The lens being innate to the camera doesn't make the photographs innate, it just makes them possible.
The same logic applies here. The claim is that the content of knowledge comes from experience, not that the capacity for knowledge comes from experience. These are two separate questions and conflating them is what makes the regression seem like a refutation when it isn't. You can fully grant that something innate must exist at the base, the cognitive equivalent of the camera's lens, without that concession touching the claim that what the mind actually knows is determined by what experience runs through that machinery. The innate structure is empty until experience fills it, and an empty structure isn't knowledge of anything. It's just potential.
The regression therefore doesn't terminate in innate knowledge, it terminates in innate capacity, which is a very different thing. And since the paper is making a claim about knowledge rather than about cognitive architecture, the regression argument, however valid on its own terms, is simply answering a different question than the one the paper is asking

Innate capacity IS a form of knowledge though.