Noogony is a general term for any
theory of knowledgeEpistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge...
that attempts to explain the origin of
conceptsThere are two prevailing theories in contemporary philosophy which attempt to explain the nature of concepts . The representational theory of mind proposes that concepts are mental representations, while the semantic theory of concepts holds that they are abstract objects...
in the
human mindMind is the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will and imagination, including all unconscious cognitive processes. The term is often used to refer, by implication, to the thought processes of reason. Mind manifests itself...
by considering sense or
a posterioriA Posteriori is the title of the musical project Enigma's sixth studio album, released in September 2006. In December 2006, the album was nominated in the Best New Age Album category in the 2007 Grammy Awards....
data as solely relevant.
The word was used, famously, by
KantImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg...
in his
Critique of Pure ReasonThe Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy...
to refer to what he understood to be
Locke'sJohn Locke was an English physician and philosopher regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political...
account of the origin of concepts. While Kant himself maintained that some concepts, e.g.
cause and effectCausation may refer to:* Causality, in philosophy, a relationship that describes and analyses cause and effect* Causality * Proximate causation* Causation , a key component to establish liability in both criminal and civil law...
, did not
arise from experience , he took Locke to be suggesting that
all concepts came from experience.
Historically, Kant presents a caricature of Locke's position, not a completely accurate account of Locke's epistemology.
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Noogony is a general term for any
theory of knowledgeEpistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge...
that attempts to explain the origin of
conceptsThere are two prevailing theories in contemporary philosophy which attempt to explain the nature of concepts . The representational theory of mind proposes that concepts are mental representations, while the semantic theory of concepts holds that they are abstract objects...
in the
human mindMind is the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will and imagination, including all unconscious cognitive processes. The term is often used to refer, by implication, to the thought processes of reason. Mind manifests itself...
by considering sense or
a posterioriA Posteriori is the title of the musical project Enigma's sixth studio album, released in September 2006. In December 2006, the album was nominated in the Best New Age Album category in the 2007 Grammy Awards....
data as solely relevant.
The word was used, famously, by
KantImmanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg...
in his
Critique of Pure ReasonThe Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy...
to refer to what he understood to be
Locke'sJohn Locke was an English physician and philosopher regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political...
account of the origin of concepts. While Kant himself maintained that some concepts, e.g.
cause and effectCausation may refer to:* Causality, in philosophy, a relationship that describes and analyses cause and effect* Causality * Proximate causation* Causation , a key component to establish liability in both criminal and civil law...
, did not
arise from experience , he took Locke to be suggesting that
all concepts came from experience.
Historically, Kant presents a caricature of Locke's position, not a completely accurate account of Locke's epistemology. Locke's actual theory of knowledge was more subtle than Kant seems to render it in his
Critique. As Guyer/Wood note in their edition of the
Critique:
Presumably Kant here has in mind Locke's claim that sensation and reflection are the two sources of all our ideas , and is understanding Locke's reflection to be reflection on sensation only. This would be a misunderstanding of Locke, since Locke says that we get simple ideas from reflection on the "operations of our own Mind," a doctrine which is actually a precursor to Kant's view that the laws of our own intuition and thinking furnish the forms of knowledge to be added to the empirical contents furnished by sensation, although of course Locke did not go very far in developing this doctrine; in particular, he did not see that mathematics and logic could be used as sources of information about the operations of the mind.