You might be after the ‘myth of the given’, which is Wilfred Sellars’ coinage in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. ‘Given’ is just the english translation of ‘datum’, and so the claim is something like ‘It is a myth that there is any such thing as pure data.’
The slightly more complicated point is that foundationalist theories of empiricism (for example) involve the claim that while most knowledge is justified by inferences of some kind, there is a foundation of knowledge that is justified simply by the way we get it (e.g. through the senses, intellectual intuition, etc.). Sellars’ argues that no such foundation is possible, and so far as I can tell his argument is more or less accepted today, for whatever that’s worth.
Hm. One interpretation sounds like the philosophical position of a priori knowledge,* but you might mean knowledge existing independent of a mind, which I don’t know of a shorter phrase to describe.
*I think this is actually somewhat well validated, under the name of “instinct,” and humans appear to have lots of instincts.
One example would be that people tend to think that their senses automatically give them information, while in fact senses and their interpretation is a very complex process.
Another would be (from what Root-Bernstein says) that very good scientists are fascinated by their tools—they’re the ones who know that the tool might not be measuring what they think it’s measuring.
One example would be that people tend to think that their senses automatically give them information, while in fact senses and their interpretation is a very complex process.
And indeed, to capture this notion is why Kant made the distinction between analytic and synthetic a priori knowledge in the first place.
*I think this is actually somewhat well validated, under the name of “instinct,” and humans appear to have lots of instincts.
Instincts wouldn’t be a case of a priori knowledge, I think just because they couldn’t be considered a case of knowledge. But at any rate, ‘a priori’ doesn’t mean ‘innate’, or even ‘entirely independent of experience’. A priori knowledge is knowledge the truth of which does not refer to any particular experience or set of experiences. This doesn’t imply anything about whether or not it’s underived or anything like that: most people who take a priori knowledge to be a thing would consider a mathematical proof a case of a priori justification, and those are undoubtedly derived by some particular person at some particular time using some particular means. (I’m not endorsing the possibility of a priori knowledge, just trying to clarify the idea).
The illusion of transparency is a tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which their personal mental state is known by others. Another manifestation of the illusion of transparency (sometimes called the observer’s illusion of transparency) is a tendency for people to overestimate how well they understand others’ personal mental states.
What you describe is more like “a tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which” their senses are accurate and assume that they are a true representation of external reality.
Is there a name for the bias that information can just happen, rather than having to be derived by someone using some means?
You might be after the ‘myth of the given’, which is Wilfred Sellars’ coinage in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. ‘Given’ is just the english translation of ‘datum’, and so the claim is something like ‘It is a myth that there is any such thing as pure data.’
The slightly more complicated point is that foundationalist theories of empiricism (for example) involve the claim that while most knowledge is justified by inferences of some kind, there is a foundation of knowledge that is justified simply by the way we get it (e.g. through the senses, intellectual intuition, etc.). Sellars’ argues that no such foundation is possible, and so far as I can tell his argument is more or less accepted today, for whatever that’s worth.
Hm. One interpretation sounds like the philosophical position of a priori knowledge,* but you might mean knowledge existing independent of a mind, which I don’t know of a shorter phrase to describe.
*I think this is actually somewhat well validated, under the name of “instinct,” and humans appear to have lots of instincts.
One example would be that people tend to think that their senses automatically give them information, while in fact senses and their interpretation is a very complex process.
Another would be (from what Root-Bernstein says) that very good scientists are fascinated by their tools—they’re the ones who know that the tool might not be measuring what they think it’s measuring.
And indeed, to capture this notion is why Kant made the distinction between analytic and synthetic a priori knowledge in the first place.
Instincts wouldn’t be a case of a priori knowledge, I think just because they couldn’t be considered a case of knowledge. But at any rate, ‘a priori’ doesn’t mean ‘innate’, or even ‘entirely independent of experience’. A priori knowledge is knowledge the truth of which does not refer to any particular experience or set of experiences. This doesn’t imply anything about whether or not it’s underived or anything like that: most people who take a priori knowledge to be a thing would consider a mathematical proof a case of a priori justification, and those are undoubtedly derived by some particular person at some particular time using some particular means. (I’m not endorsing the possibility of a priori knowledge, just trying to clarify the idea).
Seems like a version of the Illusion of transparency (possibly in reverse):
What you describe is more like “a tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which” their senses are accurate and assume that they are a true representation of external reality.
Second the question.