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9. POWERS OF MIND: THE CORE OF EMPIRICISM

 

In this chapter I shall consider whether the essential concerns of empiricists can be characterised so as to be consistent with nativism. If they cannot, then empiricism should now be pronounced dead, given the strength of the nativist case.

 

The Problem of Unity

Which of the two main strands in empiricism (opposition to nativism, and opposition to the substantive a priori) constitutes its true core? Or should the essence of the empiricist project be described in some third way which would embrace both? Clearly the two strands are at least partly independent of one another. One could believe in the existence of substantial a priori knowledge without endorsing nativism. For example, one could believe in a special faculty of intellectual intuition, as many platonists have done. This would accord us knowledge of the abstract realm in a quasi-perceptual manner. Although the faculty itself would be innate (just as the faculty of vision is innate, even for an empiricist), the beliefs which it gives rise to would not be. Then since belief in the substantive a priori does not entail a belief in nativism, the sort of attack which empiricists mounted on the substantive a priori cannot merely have been part of their campaign against nativism.

            In contrast, knowledge which is innate would at the same time be a priori, at least in the sense of not being learned from experience. So to accept that there is substantial innate knowledge would commit one to belief in some forms of substantive a priori knowledge. It might then be suggested that the empiricist opposition to nativism may be motivated by their opposition to the substantive a priori. However, this would hardly warrant an attack on nativism as such, of the kind that we find in Locke. For an attack on the substantive a priori would not, on any account of the matter, be an attack on all forms of innateness. It would only be innate knowledge which would be undermined, leaving innate beliefs, concepts, and information-bearing mental structures untouched. Yet empiricists have characteristically denied all of these ideas also. So their motivation cannot have been a mere consequence of their opposition to the substantive a priori.

            It might be suggested that I have erred in characterising empiricism purely negatively, as involving both the denial of nativism and the denial of substantive a priori knowledge. Perhaps a positive characterisation might embrace both. Indeed so: that is just what I am now seeking. But we cannot take the obvious (and traditional) option, claiming that empiricism consists in the demand that all substantial knowledge must be grounded in experience. While such a demand does indeed rule out both innate knowledge and a priori knowledge, we should still be unable to explain the empiricist opposition to innate concepts, beliefs and information-bearing mental structures, none of which need count as knowledge. Since concepts, for example, might be innate although no knowledge is, the empiricist insistence that all knowledge must be grounded in experience cannot explain their belief that all concepts, too, must be derived from experience.

            Neither will it help to suppose that the basis of empiricism consists in the positive demand that all concepts should be acquired from experience. While this may be thought (wrongly, as we saw in chapter 4) to entail that there can be no innate beliefs or knowledge, it cannot explain the empiricist opposition to information-bearing mental structures. Nor is it obvious why it should be thought to rule out the possibility of substantive a priori knowledge. For it might be maintained that we can arrive at substantial knowledge of some aspect of the world by thought alone, despite those thoughts employing empirically-acquired concepts. For example, someone could claim that while mathematical concepts are abstractable from experience, mathematical knowledge depends rather upon a special faculty of intellectual intuition.

            Moreover, both of the above proposals would still leave us in need of an account of the motivation behind the positive demand. Why should one believe that all knowledge, or all concepts, must be grounded in experience? Indeed, for all that has so far been said, it may turn out on investigation that the positive characterisations given above serve merely to mask an underlying disunity of motive. In which case we should have made no progress with our question whether empiricists, while remaining true to their essential concerns, can be brought to an acceptance of nativism.

            A rather different proposal might be that it is phenomenalism which is the core empiricist commitment.  For if all knowledge and thought must in the end reduce to patterns within our own subjective experience, then presumably there can be no substantive a priori knowledge, nor any knowledge which is innate. Moreover, if the experience in question consists of unconceptualised and unstructured sense-data, as phenomenalists have traditionally maintained, then presumably neither concepts nor information-bearing mental structures can be innate either. But this suggestion has already been discussed, and rejected, in chapter 1. Rather, the fact that many empiricists have embraced phenomenalism is best explained in terms of their commitment to the two main negative strands already mentioned, together with their foundationalism.

            A final suggestion might be that the basic concern of early empiricists was with matters of justification. Perhaps all that unifies opposition to nativism and to the substantive a priori is that neither belief in innate concepts or knowledge, nor the belief that we may obtain substantial information about the world through reason alone, is sufficiently justified to be acceptable. In one way this proposal converges with my own hypothesis, to be developed shortly. But I do not see how it can serve, on its own, to capture the nature of the empiricist objections to nativism and the substantive a priori. For we should still want to understand just why all claims to such knowledge must be insufficiently justified.

 

An Historical Hypothesis

My own suggestion is quite different. I propose that the core of empiricism should be seen as lying in the idea that epistemology is constrained by science, and by psychology in particular. In my view, the most basic empiricist commitment is to the thesis that claims to knowledge should only be granted on condition that they can be rendered consistent with our best theory of the powers of the human mind, and of the mind's natural modes of access to reality. No knowledge-claims are to be allowed, except where we can provide at least the beginnings of a naturalistic account of the processes through which that knowledge is acquired. (A natural process is one which falls under causal laws. It is one which can in principle be subsumed within the laws of nature, whether those laws are known by us or not, and whatever form they might ultimately take - it is not presupposed that all natural processes are physical, for example.) But this is not to say that epistemology then becomes absorbed into natural science.¹ Rather, it is to place an additional normative constraint on epistemology - namely, that we should be able to see how our claims to knowledge might be fitted into the framework of a natural science.

            On this account, the basic reason why early empiricists denied the existence of innate knowledge and concepts, was because the only theory available to them at the time, of the process through which an item might come to be innate, was a non-natural one, namely direct intervention by God. Although the early empiricists would have granted that intervention by God was conceptually possible, it conflicted with their overall attempt to fit our idea of ourselves and our knowledge into a broadly scientific framework.

            If this were really the reason why the early empiricists rejected nativism, then why did they not say so? It may be that what I am calling their core commitment formed such a fundamental part of their outlook as to be almost invisible. Alternatively, their real argument may not have been easily expressible in public, for political reasons. Most early empiricists were also theists, and even those who were not had to respect the immense political power of the Church.² An attack upon nativism on the grounds that it required us to believe in God's intervention in the human mind might have seemed like a direct attack upon theism. For if God exists, why should he not intervene in the natural world if he chooses to do so? There is really no argument for insisting that natural events admit of naturalistic explanations, except the success of science in the long run. I suggest that instead of facing this issue head-on, and openly declaring their commitment to the explanatory adequacy of science, the early empiricists may have chosen either to argue against nativism on quite other grounds, or to assume its falsity and render the hypothesis of Divine intervention unnecessary, by providing an alternative account of the genesis of human knowledge through experience.

            Note that my proposal is consistent with reliabilism as a theory of knowledge. For the thesis in question belongs to epistemology, being concerned with what we may reasonably believe ourselves to know (that is, with second-order knowledge), rather than with first-order knowledge as such. An empiricist can grant that there may, as a matter of fact, be knowledge of which we can provide no naturalistic account. For we may have true beliefs which are in fact caused by some reliable process, but where the process in question is unthinkable in terms of current science. In such a case we would indeed have first-order knowledge, but an empiricist will insist that we nevertheless have no right to rely upon the beliefs in question. Those beliefs should at least be suspended (we should hold back from the second-order belief that they constitute knowledge) until we can begin to provide some naturalistic account of their mode of acquisition.

 

Explanatory Advantages

The main advantage of my proposal is that it enables us to unify the early empiricist objections to nativism and to the substantive a priori (particularly platonism). In both cases knowledge-claims were rejected because there was available no naturalistic account of the belief-acquisition processes involved.³ In the case of nativism, the hypotheses that either knowledge, concepts or information-bearing mental structures are innate, were rejected because they seemed to require non-natural intervention in the human mind by a veracious God. In the case of the substantive a priori, the objection was that there could be no naturalistic explanation of how reason could have acquired the power to generate knowledge of anything outside of itself. It would apparently have required God's intervention to ensure that the structure of our reason accurately mapped the structure of the appropriate mind-independent realm. The platonist hypothesis of a special faculty of intellectual intuition, for example, was rejected because we cannot even begin to give an account of the psychological structure of such a faculty, or of how there could be causal contact between necessarily-existing abstract entities and the human mind. Yet the only other alternative open to a platonist, namely the suggestion that our knowledge of the abstract realm is innate, brings us back to a non-natural model of belief-acquisition once again. God's intervention would apparently have been needed to ensure that our innate beliefs were true of the abstract realm.

            My proposal also coheres well with the fact that the early empiricists immersed themselves in enquiries which were quite explicitly psychological. It is because they thought that the theory of knowledge had to be fitted into a broadly scientific outlook, and rendered consistent with our best scientific theories, that they regarded epistemological and psychological questions as belonging essentially together.⁴ Many commentators, in contrast, have regarded the close conjunction of psychological with epistemological enquiry as being seriously confused. They have said that it is one thing to ask how the mind actually works, and how beliefs are actually formed, and quite another to ask what we can know, and how. The one is a factual, the other should be a normative, enquiry. On my reading of empiricism, however, these questions are intimately related to one another. For if epistemology is constrained by psychology, then you cannot begin to settle the question what we can know, without at least sketching the outline of the various faculties and psychological processes which are involved in the acquisition of our beliefs.

            My account also fits neatly with the ways in which both Locke and Hume explain the motivation of their work, as I shall show in a moment. Berkeley, however, might seem to represent something of a problem for my reading of empiricism, given the central place accorded to God in his philosophy - though even here the role of God is limited to supplying the data of experience; God is not supposed to intervene directly in the human mind. But in fact, Berkeley's motives were indeed different. He adopted empiricist premisses in order to serve his own theological purposes, rather than as part of an attempt to fit our view of ourselves and our knowledge into a broadly scientific framework. Instead, his project was to defend theism from what he took to be the twin threats of materialism and atheism. He therefore ought not to be counted as an empiricist at all, on my account.

            Now consider the case of Locke. In the Epistle to the Reader of the Essay he tells us how, in the course of discussions with friends on an unspecified topic, they came to feel that if they were to make progress with it they should first examine their own mental powers. The task which Locke then set himself, was to see what subjects the human understanding was or was not fitted to deal with. In the Introduction he then writes in similar spirit, thus:

 

This was that which gave the first rise to this Essay concerning the understanding. For I thought that the first step towards satisfying several inquiries the mind of man was very apt to run into was to take a survey of our own understandings, examine our own powers, and see to what things they were adapted.

 

The project, as I see it, was to attempt to settle disputes concerning the extent of human knowledge by first providing an outline of the faculties of the human mind, and of the mind's natural modes of access to the world, and then to regard knowledge-claims as constrained to be consistent with that account. This is precisely what I am maintaining to be the core empiricist commitment.

            (A problem for this reading of Locke's project, is that it has seemed to many commentators that the naturalism, and rejection of nativism, of the Essay are inconsistent with the doctrine of Natural Law which lies at the centre of Locke's Two Treatises of Government. For example, at one point in the latter he speaks of Natural Law as being 'written in the hearts of all mankind',⁵ and certainly God plays a crucial role in Locke's moral system as a whole. Now one response to this, would be to concede that the two works are indeed inconsistent, perhaps appealing to Locke's incohate perception that they are, to explain why he was so insistent that the Two Treatises be published annonymously. But in fact, Locke's considered view is not that the principles of Natural Law are innate, but rather that they may be known by all mankind through the natural use of reason. Similarly, he thinks that we may arrive at knowledge of God by means of rational reflection on observed facts about the world. Indeed, Locke's project throughout was to show that human knowledge - whether of science, or of theology, or of morals - is a natural phemomenon, arising from the application of our reason to the data given to us in experience.⁶)

            Similarly Hume, in describing the main aim of his work in the Introduction to the Treatise, argues that there is a sense in which the science of human nature lies at the foundation of all the sciences, and that we may hope to make progess with the latter by studying the former first. Now he can hardly have meant (can he?) that we should expect particular discoveries in physics or chemistry to be consequent on advances in psychology. Rather, he is more plausibly read as saying that claims to knowledge, in general, have to be rendered consistent with the powers of mind ascribed to us by our best psychological theories; which is again the core empiricist commitment. Even more explicitly, in the opening section of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume writes:

 

The only method of freeing learning, at once, from these abstruse questions [of metaphysics], is to enquire seriously into the nature of human understanding, and show, from an exact analysis of its powers and capacity, that it is by no means fitted for such remote and abstruse subjects.

 

Here again the project is the core empiricist one, to constrain knowledge-claims by our best theories of the mind's natural modes of access to reality.⁷

            Notice that on the account being proposed here, the traditional empiricist insistence that all knowledge must be grounded in experience turns out not to belong to the foundations of empiricism as such. Rather, the early empiricists stressed the role of experience in the acquisition of knowledge because experience was the only belief-acquisition process of which they could begin to give a naturalistic account. So my proposal not only unifies the empiricist opposition to nativism and to the substantive a priori, but also sees these as flowing from the same underlying commitment as does the empiricist lauding of experience.

 

Should we be Empiricists?

Let us now ask whether the principle of charity, as well as textual fidelity (broadly construed), favours my interpretation of the basis of the empiricist tradition. Put differently, this is to ask whether we have any powerful reasons for thinking that knowledge-claims should only be endorsed where we can provide some sort of naturalistic account of the relevant belief-acquisition process. Which is as much as to say: should we, today, be empiricists (given my proposed account of the core of empiricism)? Part of the point of asking this question is that it will enable us to approach the issue of what motivates what I am calling the core empiricist commitment. Why would anyone want to constrain knowledge-claims by our best psychological theories?

            One line of thought, is that not only is my construal of empiricism consistent with a reliabilist theory of knowledge, as I argued above, but that it may actually be entailed by such a theory. For when we do epistemology we want to know what we can know. This means, for the reliabilist, that we want to know which beliefs or belief-types are caused by reliable processes. But a process which leads you to form beliefs inconsistent with your other beliefs cannot in general be reliable, if we suppose that our beliefs are on the whole true. So a belief in the reliable acquisition of one of your first-order beliefs will not itself be reliably acquired (nor constitute second-order knowledge) if it conflicts with your other beliefs, including those of science. This then suggests that we can only know that we have knowledge of something, if we can provide at least the beginnings of a scientific account of how we know that thing - which is precisely empiricism's basic demand.

            It might be objected that it is one thing to say that my belief in the reliability of a given belief-acquisition process is not in conflict with my scientific beliefs, and quite another to say that I must therefore be able to provide a scientific account of that process. For surely a belief can be consistent with a body of scientific theory without being explicable in terms of it. The absence of conflict might plausibly be thought to be required by reliabilism. But it is the demand for scientific explicability which consititutes the core of empiricism, on my account, and which we are now attempting to justify.

            However, the distance between these two requirements may be smaller than it appears. For recall that the empiricist is insisting only on the beginnings of a naturalistic account of the relevant belief-acquistion process. It may then be that in many cases, at least, the reason why we cannot provide even the beginnings of such an account is that current scientific theory strongly suggests that there is no such process. So while reliabilism may not entail by itself the empiricist constraint on knowledge-claims, it will do so when put together with the thesis that current science does not recognise the existence of the belief-acquisition process in question.

            But can it really be reasonable to deny that we have knowledge of some subject-matter, merely because our present scientific beliefs provide us with no materials with which to frame a remotely plausible account of how we might have acquired that knowledge? Let us consider an example in some detail, as a test-case. Suppose that some person, or group of persons, claims to be prescient. That is to say, they claim to have intuitive (non-inferential) knowledge of the future. Of course many people have actually made such claims, but let us imagine an example in which it seems indisputable that the predictions very often turn out right. So these people apparently have true beliefs about the future which are not arrived at by inference from current tendencies. The question then, is whether we can give some account of the process by which those beliefs are acquired; and if not, whether we are justified in denying that these people may be said to have knowledge of the future.

            I can think of at least three hypotheses which an empiricist might propose, in order to account for all those cases of the apparent phenomenon of prescience which have actually occurred. First, it might be suggested that the people in question are predicting the future on the basis of a nonconscious inference from their knowledge of current tendencies, in which case there would be nothing mysterious about their powers. But this may turn out not to be the case. For it is imaginable that they can predict future events which could not possibly have been deduced from current tendencies, such as the accidental death of a particular person in a car-crash in two years' time, perhaps also predicting the date and place of the event.

            Secondly, there is the possibility of fraud. It may be suggested that those who claim prescience are covertly bringing about, themselves, the events which they predict. But again this might conceivably be ruled out, either because the events in question are beyond the causal powers of any individual or group of individuals (such as the appearance of a new comet in the sky on a particular date), or because we take steps to ensure that those who make the predictions have no opportunity to interfere with the course of events, perhaps by imprisoning them.

            It might finally be suggested that the predictions are framed with sufficient vagueness to give merely the illusion of accuracy. This idea is already familiar from astrology, which purports to predict features of people's character and life-history from the distribution of the planets at the time of their birth. For provided that the predictions are sufficiently vague and general, and concern topics which people want very much to hear about, and which occur fairly commonly, then there is a high chance that those predictions will come to be regarded as having been fulfilled. (If your horoscope for the week says 'Personal relationships run smoothly', you may, if you are inclined, regard it as verified by the fact that you get on well with your lover all week, ignoring the fact that if it had said the opposite you would equally have regarded that as true, in the light of the row you had with your mother on the Wednesday.) An empiricist could suggest that something similar may also be taking place in our imagined case of prescience. But again it may turn out not to be so. For the predictions in question may be quite precise, concerning matters which are perhaps unusual, and of no particular human interest. It would then be hard to see how our impression of success could be illusory.

            If a situation of this sort were to occur, it would be a serious embarassment to an empiricist, given my characterisation of their position. For we have not the faintest idea how there can be a reliable process for acquiring true beliefs about the future, except by inference from current tendencies. For how could a future event exert any kind of influence on the human mind? How could the mere fact that an event will take place at a particular time in the future, give rise to any process bringing someone to believe that it will? The idea seems barely intelligible. Yet in the example above, we would have powerful reasons for thinking that these people have knowledge of the future, based upon their past success. So in such a case, we could know that they have knowledge, having every reason to think that their beliefs about the future are in fact produced through a process which is reliable, although we cannot even begin to give an account of the nature of that process.

            Now in one respect this example provides a tougher opponent than empiricism has traditionally faced. This is because there is no obvious way of reinterpreting the content of the beliefs in question so as to render their mode of acquisition less problematic. In connection with logic and mathematics, in contrast, one standard empiricist move has been to deny that we are forced to interpret the propositions in question as being concerned with a mind-independent realm of abstract objects. If we can rather construe such propositions as being concerned with mental constructions of one sort or another, then there will be no special problem in explaining how there can be natural processes which lead us to have knowledge of their truth. In the case of propositions about the future, on the other hand, no such reinterpretation is available.

            We could therefore put forward a weaker version of the proposed core of empiricism, which might enable us to distinguish between prescience on the one hand, and the various forms of platonism on the other. We could say that no claims to knowledge should be granted where we cannot begin to give a natural account of the process through which we acquire that knowledge, unless the evidence for the existence of some sort of reliable process is overwhelming, and unless there is no possibility of reinterpreting the content of the beliefs in question, in such a way as to render their mode of acquisition less problematic. So in the end (if sufficient evidence of the sort described above were to emerge) we may have no choice but to accept that we can have knowledge of the future through prescience, even though we cannot begin to account for the mechanism involved.

 

The Adequacy of Science

In fact we may also respond to the example of prescience more directly. We can insist that it is merely imaginary, and that a genuine case of prescience will never really occur. For the empiricist need not be claiming to know a priori that all knowledge must arise through natural processes, of which we can in principle provide an account. Rather, their attitude should be seen as resulting from a more general commitment to the ultimate (or at least in principle) explicability of all natural phenomena, including that of belief-acquisition. This commitment may be supposed to receive its justification from past scientific success. An empiricist may therefore respond to our example by saying that they are prepared to bet that a genuine case of prescience will never in fact occur - precisely because we cannot begin to see how there could be any natural process underlying the acquisition of our beliefs in such a case.

            It may be objected that empiricists, as such, cannot be committed to the thesis that all processes in nature are in principle explicable by science, happening in accordance with causal law. For Locke, for one, believed that there are natural processes - particularly those connecting physical events in our bodies with ideas in our minds - which must forever outstrip our powers of explanation.⁸ But there are two points to be made in reply. The first is that Locke was unduly sceptical of our abilities to discover the hidden processes at work in nature, as subsequent scientific advance has shown. The second, and more important, is that he was working with a much more demanding concept of explanation than that presupposed here. In Locke's view, connections between events will only count as having been explained, if they have been made fully and rationally intelligible to us. He might then have been happy to agree that all processes in nature occur in accordance with causal laws which are in principle discoverable, even though appeal to these laws can never make events intelligible in the way that 'Anything red is coloured' is intelligible.

            Looked at in the way I am suggesting, empiricist constraints on knowledge-claims may be seen to stem from a more general belief in the ultimate adequacy of science. The sequence of thought would be this: if we were to possess knowledge on the matter in question (the future, say), then our beliefs would have to be caused by a reliable process; but if our current science is such that we cannot even begin to frame an hypothesis as to what that process might be, then this in itself provides us with good reason for doubting its existence.

            An analogy may help here. Suppose someone suggests that zebras in the wild put on overcoats at night to keep warm.⁹ Are we not prepared to bet, in the light of our current knowledge, that this will never turn out to be true? Indeed, if someone were to present evidence of its truth, should we not do our best to dismiss or explain that evidence away? For if it were true, it would apparently be wholly inexplicable. Are we to imagine that zebras have their own secret technology, which enables them to weave cloth? Or are we to imagine that they have an elaborate and so far undiscovered system for stealing overcoats from human beings? These ideas pass beyond the possibility of belief, given what we already know about zebras and their habitat. Similarly, I suggest, with our imagined case of prescience: given what we already know about the world, we may be sure that it will never happen.

            This is not to say that the empiricist constraint on knowledge-claims is an infallible one. Plainly it cannot be, since it led the early empiricists to deny the truth of nativism - as it turns out, incorrectly. It may nevertheless be a reasonable one. If we share the empiricist belief in the ultimate explanatory adequacy of science (or at least their belief that all processes in nature are natural ones, happening in accordance with causal law), then we shall deny that there are any natural phenomena for which there is no natural explanation. We therefore have reason to deny that some suggested phenomenon will ever in fact occur, if to the best of our belief there can be no natural explanation of it. Into this category, in my view, fall not only claims of prescience, but also astrology, magic and various alleged psychic phenomena.

            We are now in a position to articulate the underlying motivation behind the core of empiricism. It consists, first, in the search for an explanatory coherence within the overall system of our beliefs; and secondly, in a commitment to the explanatory adequacy of science. The first of these strands leads empiricists to try make our first-order beliefs about the world cohere with our best theory of the human mind and its powers, where necessary (and if possible) reinterpreting the subject-matters of those beliefs to render them more accessible to the human mind. The second strand leads them to reject claims to knowledge where we cannot even begin to construct a plausible naturalistic explanation of the manner in which that knowledge might have been acquired. Both strands are, now, eminently reasonable. It is obvious that we should try to weld our beliefs into a coherent system if we can (more on this in chapter 12). And the early empiricists' methodological commitment to the explanatory adequacy of science has been amply vindicated by subsequent scientific progress.

            However, that we are justified in believing in the explanatory adequacy of science, given the huge success of science, does not mean that the same can be said of the early empiricists. On the contrary. While their commitment to science was not a matter of blind faith, since notable advances in knowledge had already been achieved, it was not fully justified either. So here may be a further reason why early empiricists did not make clear the true nature of their opposition to nativism. For had they done so, they would have had to admit that their position was almost as reliant upon faith as that of their theistic opponents.

            It appears that my proposal concerning the core of empiricism can indeed be supported by considerations of charity. If we cannot even begin to give an account of the process through which we might have acquired a set of beliefs, let alone an account which shows the process to be a reliable one, then it is surely only reasonable that we should refrain from committing ourselves to those beliefs if we can possibily do so. And if we cannot avoid the conclusion that the beliefs in question are true ones, then we should, if we can, provide an interpretation of their content which would render their mode of acquisition less problematic. This is, I suggest, precisely what the empiricist maintains.

            Now, if I am correct in my characterisation of the core of empiricism, it follows that contemporary empiricists should have no objections to evolutionary versions of nativism. For unlike Divine intervention, the selection of innate characteristics through evolution is certainly a natural process. Indeed, it is one of which we not only have the outline of an account, but a well-developed scientific theory. Moreover, evolutionary selection is very probably a reliable process where the determining of innate belief is concerned, if the points made in chapter 8, concerning the survival-value of true belief, were sound ones. We therefore, as empiricists, have no principled reason for denying the existence of innate knowledge. Since we can indeed provide an account of the process through which a belief might come to be innate, the empiricist constraint on knowledge-claims has no application.

 

On to chapter 10.