Empiricism Flashcards
Where does Locke say all of our ideas come from?
- Sensation: Our experience of objects outside the mind, perceived through the senses (this gives us ideas of sensible qualities).
- Reflection: Our experience of the ‘internal operations of our mind’, gained through introspection or an awareness of what the mind is doing. More generally, thinking.
What is an Impression? What is an Idea complex and what is a simple idea?
- Impression- What we are immediately and directly aware of, which can either be impressions of ‘sensations’ or impressions of ‘reflection’.
- Idea complex- An idea that is derived from 2 or more simple ideas.
- Simple Idea- A single, uniform conception, with nothing distinguishable within it e.g. primary colour.
What are 3 differences between impressions and ideas (Hume)?
1) There is a difference between the two masked by a difference of ‘forcefulness’ and ‘vivacity’ or ‘liveliness’. Impressions relate roughly to ‘feeling’ or ‘sensing’ and ideas to ‘thinking’.
2) Hume argues that ideas are ‘copies’ of impressions.
3) Thirdly, we are liable to confuse and make mistakes about ideas, but this is more difficult with impressions.
What is Humes first shorter argument that ideas are copies of sensory impressions that we use in thinking. Why think that all ideas derive from impressions?
-First, without having a particular type of experience, a person lacks the ability to form an idea of that experience. Thus, a blind man does not know what colour is. It’s similar to saying ‘I know how you feel’ but you don’t if you haven’t had the experience e.g. a family member dying.
What is Humes second argument that not all ideas derive from impressions? (Based on simple and complex ideas)
-Locke argues that the basic building blocks of all thoughts are simple ideas, or more precisely, in Humes terminology, simple impressions i.e. single colours, single shapes, single smells and so on.
- For each, there is a corresponding simple idea. A simple impression or simple concept ‘contains nothing but one uniform appearance or conception in the mind, and is not distinguishable into different ideas’.
- Of course, we experience many such simple impressions at once, e.g. we hold a toy car which is both cold and hard.
- But there is no confusing the sensation of cold with the sensation of hardness- they are quite distinct.
What are the 3 arguments to show that simple ideas are building blocks for complex ideas?
- 1) We can unite or combine the impressions of the qualities we perceive into the concept of a single object- we identify one and the same thing, a dog say, as having a particular colour, shape, smell. So we can think of ‘that thing’, where the concept of ‘that thing’ is made up of many concepts of colour, shape and smell.
- 2) We can also form complex concepts by abstraction, e.g. the concept of DOG doesn’t correspond to any one particular dog. When we abstract, we ignore certain specific features and focus on features they have in common, such as four legs, tail, hairy, they bark etc.
- 3) We can put together simple concepts in an original way. While many of us have seen a picture of a unicorn, someone had to invent the concept without seeing a picture. They did it by putting together concepts of HORN and HORSE and WHITENESS.
What are some issues with the empiricist theory of concepts?
- Hume and Locke argue that no concept, no matter how abstract or complex, is more than a putting together, or abstracting from simple concepts, and that all simple concepts derive from impressions.
- We can show that this theory is false if we can find a counter example, either w concept that doesn’t derive from an impression of a complex concept that cannot be analysed into simple concepts.
Outline and explain analytic truth, synthetic truth, contingent truth, and necessary truth.
-Analytic: A proposition is analytic if it is true or false just in virtue of the meanings of the word.
what e.g. maths.
- Synthetic: Synthetic truth/ falsehood draws upon how the world actually is e.g. capitals.
- Contingent: A proposition is contingently true/false if it is possible that it could be true or false. E.g. there are more insects that any other animals.
- Necessary: A proposition is necessarily true if it must be true. E.g. maths.
Outline and explain Humes fork.
- David Hume argues that we can have knowledge of just 2 sorts of claim:
1) The relations between ideas (a priori- Analytic)
2) Matters of fact (a posteriori-synthetic)
-He’s not arguing for innatism or rationalism here; ideas of concepts still come from experience.
Outline and explain ‘matters of facts’.
- Matters of facts- states of affairs, how the world is. According to Hume, they are known through experience and induction, especially causal inference.
- In other words, matters of fact are synthetic truths. Also, they require empirical observation to establish their truth, so are known a posteriori.
What does tabula rasa mean?
-John Locke famously argues that the mind at birth is a tabula rasa – a blank slate. He says all knowledge and concepts come from experience and therefore there is no such thing as innate knowledge.
Outline and explain rational intuition.
-Rational Intuition- The capacity to discover the truth of a claim just by thinking about it using reason.
Outline and explain relations of ideas.
- A relation of ideas is:
- “either intuitively or demonstratively certain”
- In other words, an analytic truth, and:
- “discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is any where existent in the universe”
- In other words, known a priori.
- Like analytic truths, relations of ideas cannot be denied without a contradiction (e.g. “that triangle does not have 3 sides” is a contradiction).
