Empiricism Flashcards
key ideas
- sense experience alone
- a posteriori truth
- a priori knowledge only of analytic propositions
- inductively acquired
3 main types
- naïve realism: what you see is what is there
- representationalism: our ideas (from experience) are representations of external world - can never know for sure whether our perception of something is certain reality.
- idealism: all knowledge of objects is completely subjective - no reality in terms of object itself
Aristotle
“There is nothing in the mind except that which was first in the senses.”
Theory of perception:
- observe something, forms patterns in memory (phantasms)
- these are objects of pure thought which link perception with thought
- phantasms worked upon by our reason.
ideas only mean something once they have been related to sensations within experience
Bacon (modern)
- rejected Aristotle’s deductive reasoning
- inductive methodology: testing and refining hypothesis through observation and experimentation
- advance knowledge through experience and experiments
- focused on subjective elements of reasoning (eg memory)
Locke overview
agreed with Aquinas
- knowledge comes fromm experience
- refutes innatism:
- just because universally agreed, doesn’t mean it is TRUE
- just because universally true, doesn’t mean innate
-argues that no principles universally agreed upon: “ideas not known to children and idiots”
- induction can yield valuable info
- senses provide very limited view on the world, but this is all we have
Locke - Tabula Rasa
Tabula Rasa: at birth our mind is a “blank slate”
- no innate ideas
- knowledge acquired through experience alone
2 sources of ideas:
- sensation (sense experience)
- reflection - produces from mind’s working on the ideas of sensation
Locke - 2 types of ideas
simple: cannot be broken down into other ideas
eg. color yellow (from sensation) or idea of pain (from reflection)
complex: made up from simple ideas - mind can join ideas, compare ideas and think abstractly
eg. golden mountain (not empirically experienced, but can be imagined)
Locke - physical objects (2 qualities)
primary: exist in the bodies of themselves… objective … same for everyone
eg. weight, shape, mass
secondary: do not exist in themselves…subjective
eg. color, texture, taste
Locke - trust the senses as evidence of independent existence of the material world because…
(for)
- if sense is missing, so is corresponding idea
eg. blind from birth - no sense of color - agreement of senses
- we have no choice in act of perceiving - cannot wish things out of existence
Locke - criticisms
- substance - look up
- abstraction only possible if we have some innate faculty of recognizing resemblances
- no one can have objective knowledge
- Berkley - primary and secondary qualities
Locke - criticisms (tabula rasa)
- brain physiology similar in all individuals - innate brain structures which give rise to common human behaviors/characteristics
- eg. Chomsky: language is gained through use of innate language acquisition device
Berkley - Idealism and critique of Locke
- people can perceive primary qualities differently too eg. shape
EVERYTHING we experience is perceived differently for everyone - primary and secondary qualities are simply perceptions
- “esse est percipi” - to be is to be perceived (nothing exists unless it is perceived)
- no such thing as material world…Idealism claims that all experience is mental
eg. if you are warmer than water, it will feel cold (perception of temp. is in perceiver) - God is the ultimate perciever
Berkley - 2 modes of existence
- that which is perceived (sensible, non-material objects)
- that which perceives (mind)
mind perceives, thus humans simply minds without material bodies
- links to Don Cuppitt’s Antirealism: things don’t exist apart from our knowledge of them - simply individual interpretations of the world
- thus we can take realism for granted for practical purposes eg. Australia does exist though it has not been perceived
Berkley - criticisms
- consistency of experience - consistency between what I perceive and what another individual perceived through communication
WRITE NOTES
Hume - knowledge of 2 sorts of things
- relations of ideas:
- logical connections among ideas that belong to formal systems eg. maths
- knowledge of these is certain
- these concern only abstract terms, not the real world - matters of fact
- what we know from experience
- cannot be certain since the contrary of any fact is logically possible
access knowledge empirically: any concept you may have must be able to be traced back to the sensation from which it derives - no innate knowledge.
Hume - using empiricism to critique 1. God 2. self 3. morality
- God
- empirical origins of God are other people. Thus God is made by man - there is no God except in our imagination - self
- empirical sensations always changing
- self must be a whole bundle of sensations - morality
- good and evil derived from empirical sensations
- must come from inner sensations (emotions)
- thus morality grows out of emotions - there is no innate morality
- thus morality is relative to society and subjective to the individual
problem of induction
can we know and trust anything?
material world cannot be proved - we cannot accept that things will always work in a regular manner.
induction: from a number of specific claims, we can infer something more general (eg sun rise every day in history so will rise tomorrow )
Hume argues that until we have experienced it. Similar to cause and effect - not really logical but expectation based on habit.
Hume - problems
- solipsism: all that can be known to exist is the self
one step away from solipsism - we cannot be certain that anything else exists - Rand’s criticism of Hume’s non-self view
- we perceive ourselves as a unity, not a “bundle of impressions” LOOK UP
General Problems
- “A priori” knowledge
- senses mislead us thus
knowledge independent of experience more trustworthy eg. maths and analytic truths (all bachelors are unmarried) - innate ideas at birth
- Bowlby and Chomsky argue that there are structures in the brain which allow innate drives or abilities - makes our beliefs subjective
- can’t be certain of anything except our private sensations - problem of induction:
- can empiricism justify faith that things will continue in the way they have always done?
- sense data is corrigible so laws can suddenly change - conceptualizing all knowledge - LOOK UP
- Problem with Berkley’s Master Argument: “esse est percipi”
- look up
