Empiricism

Question 1

How can sense data be certain?

Answer 1

• Impossible to deny sense experience because regardless of if a perception is correct, we remain conscious of having various sensations
• Some are actually certain e.g. a headache

Question 2

What does it mean to say sense data is incorrigible?

Answer 2

• Cannot be wrong about a specific experience or perception

- Interpretation/inference can be wrong but nothing can change about the experience itself

Question 3

What is empiricist foundationalism?

Answer 3

All knowledge can be finally justified in terms of immediate experience; experiences are the true foundation of human knowledge

Question 4

Problem of a prioi knowledge…

Answer 4

Maths; we can have examples of 2 apples and another one make 3 but we don’t need this to understand maths and the basic laws of it

Question 5

Problem of interpreting empirical experience

Answer 5

All immediate knowledge is conceptualised and categorised; it is understood; we know how to understand and make use of it = rational

Question 6

Sense data being incorrigible seems to fall into the trap of…

Answer 6

Solipsism; view that the self is the only thing known to exist

Question 7

Problem: examples of innate ideas?

Answer 7

Perfection, equality, justice etc.

Question 8

Problem for the empiricist account of concept formation?

Answer 8

We must have a faculty, whether it is Locke or Hume, that. allows us to combine ideas, to come up with concepts, to recognise things etc.

Question 9

Problem for sensory experience’s incorrigibility?

Answer 9

Sense data is corrigible