Innate and Learned Behaviors: Understanding Knowledge and Truth
Innate and Learned Behaviors
Although this division should be qualified, and to be more precise we have to create subgroups, we can talk, in general, about inherited or innate behaviors and learned behaviors.
Innate behavior patterns are engraved on the genes that each individual inherits from its parents. External stimuli only serve, at most, to trigger the behavior, which, once begun, develops in a stereotyped way (mechanical, automatic), not being able to be changed even if the external environment changes.
In contrast, learned behaviors depend more on the medium. Many of the behaviors of the higher animals are not as rigidly determined as what we have called innate and are susceptible to changes according to the stimuli they receive. Any innate behavior requires a database, and learning involves a more or less profound modification of these natural dispositions. Psychologists have distinguished different types of learned behaviors.
Behaviors are more effective because they have less rigidity and, therefore, are a result of increased learning capacity.
Knowledge from the Point of View of Psychology
The difference between innate and learned behaviors lies precisely in the role of each of these factors: in innate behavior, the genetic factor is the most important, and environmental stimuli serve at most to trigger genetically programmed behavior. In contrast, learned behaviors are environmental conditions that modify the behaviors. Especially in the case of learned behaviors, information gathering is essential to the survival of the animal.
This information is obtained through the nervous system. The more complex the system, the more and better information can be obtained. Higher animals have a highly complex nervous system.
The result of processing the information we call knowledge.
The phenomenon of knowledge is very complex. It is not limited to capturing stimuli; these stimuli must be processed to have meaning for the subject. Knowledge of the world begins with the pure abstraction of stimuli (sensation), which are interpreted in the brain (perception). This information is stored and becomes available for use (memory), and can also be manipulated in various ways to expand knowledge (imagination, intelligence).
Knowing vs. Learning
- Knowing
- Governed by an SN
- Is perceptual
- Language does not presuppose
- Has degrees
- It is not transmissible
- Is limited by our sensorineural apparatus
- Needs no justification
- Learning
- Governing a prayer
- Is conceptual
- Language presupposes
- Does not support degrees
- Is transmissible
- Can extend beyond our perception
- Needs justification
Truth
Formal Truth
We say that an argument is formally true or valid when it is right from the logical point of view, that is, when it follows a logically correct form, regardless of the content of the proposals. So this kind of truth is also called logical truth or simply validity. We also saw that they are only strictly correct deductive schemes.
Material Truth
Material truth refers to the contents or meaning of the propositions, i.e. the “matter” of that deal. Traditionally, philosophers have distinguished two types of material fact: the so-called ontic truth and the so-called epistemological novelty (or semantics).
Ontic Truth
We say that something is true, in the ontic sense, when it’s really what it is. We must distinguish between what appears to be, pure appearance, and what really is the true self.
Epistemological Truth
Epistemological (or semantic) truth does not refer to things, but to our knowledge of things. This is the truest sense of the term. We say that an assertion (statement, proposition…) is true when what it says agrees with the facts.
Theories of Truth
Truth as Correspondence
This theory sees the truth as it is commonly understood: a proposition is true if it agrees or corresponds with reality.
Truth as Coherence
Faced with the difficulties of the above theory, consistency holds that a proposition is true not because it corresponds to reality, but because it is consistent (or coherent) with all other propositions considered true.
Truth as a Positive Practical Action (Pragmatic Theory)
According to this theory, a proposition is true if it has positive practical effects for those who hold it. Positive effects should be understood as that which is useful for the survival and prosperity of the individual.
Epistemology or Theory of Knowledge
Realism
We have a natural tendency to believe that there is a world outside our minds that is, more or less, as we know it: this world is made up of objects that we perceive with our senses, whose existence is independent of whether they are known and therefore there are always the same way whether or not collected. This vision is called naive realism. There are, however, another form of realism, known as critical realism, which believes that reality exists independent of our mind, but considers it as it is captured by our senses.
Platonic Idealism
Against the realist position, which sees the material world, is the reality that is basically not material but spiritual or of ideal nature. Plato called the set of all material objects the sensible world (the world seen) because it is perceived by the senses, and to all the ideas, the intelligible world (the world understood), it can only be understood by intelligence. This is a faculty of the soul, which, as we have seen, belongs to this intelligible world. Thus, for Plato there are two realities: that of ideas is the true one because it is permanent, eternal, immutable, and absolute reality because it depends on nothing; the other, the material world, is multiple and temporary, shifting and perishable, and is a relative reality, as it depends on the intelligible and is like a copy or imitation of that.
Skepticism
Thinkers who believed that it is impossible to ever reach absolute certainty were called skeptics. We must distinguish two degrees of skepticism:
Radical Skepticism (or Pyrrhonian)
States that man is unable to reach any understanding. Reach this conclusion simply by analyzing what knowledge should consist of. If knowledge is understood that a subject grasps an external object to it, this is impossible since such an object would physically penetrate the subject’s mind. Pyrrho of Elis. According to him, we cannot attain knowledge of any object, since all we can grasp are the appearances of things, but not the same things, and these are displayed in one way to some and in another way to others. Hence the different views. The best, said Pyrrho, is the suspension of the trial, i.e. no action on anything.
Moderate Skepticism
Also believes that it is impossible to reach any understanding, but not because we have no capacity to know or because our claims are not true. Perhaps what we believe is true, but what we lack is a definitive criterion to know when our claims are true or not.
Dogmatism
The position contrary to skepticism is dogmatism. It is primarily used in religion to refer to that doctrine which is absolutely true, as revealed by God is considered. Since antiquity, a person was described as dogmatic who, contrary to the skeptic, accepts uncritically that man can reach absolute truth. Therefore, he is certain and infallible, without justification, of many more things that can reasonably be sustained. The dogmatic person tends to be uncompromising and intolerant of opinions opposed to his own, and that, being convinced of its truth, thinks that the opposite must be false.
Empiricism
This view says that at birth our mind is completely empty, like a blank paper or a whiteboard without writing. All that, after a while, it is ultimately sourced from the experience. There are two kinds of experiences:
External Experience
External experience is the feeling, and through it we know the colors, smells, etc. And finally, external objects to our minds.
Inner Experience or Reflection
Inner experience or reflection is the knowledge that the mind has its own operations, such as thinking, doubt, desire, joy, hatred, etc.
Rationalism
Rationalism, however, believes that genuine knowledge must be logically necessary and universally valid, and this only happens when the reason becomes clear that something must be the way it is and cannot be otherwise.
Kantian Apriorism
Apriorism is another intermediate position between rationalism and empiricism. It states that the knowing subject imposes cognitive structures on these data, adapting them to adjust their way of being. It is the position of Kant.