The Mind as a Tabula Rasa Flashcards
What is Empiricism?
The Belief that says you can only know something if you directly experience it through the senses e.g. smelling or seeing.
Key Empirical Thinkers.
- Locke
- Hume
- Berkeley
- Mill
Origin of the most important knowledge to Empiricists.
Experience as this allows exploration without boundaries.
Examples of the sorts of knowledge liked by Empiricists.
- Facts about the world
- Science
Empiricist view of Rationalism
Knowledge from reason is trivial, it doesn’t tell us about the world, only tells us things we already know.
Locke: The Two Fountains of Knowledge.
Sensation - Directly sensed observation.
Reflection - Inward mind workings from experience.
Hume’s Fork
All True Propositions are either:
Relations of Ideas
Matters of Fact
Committed to the Flames
Relations of Ideas
- Less important – restricted to math and logic principles
- E.g. mathematics, logical rule
- Ascertained through deductive reasoning
- A priori
- Analytic
- Necessary
Matters of Fact
- Most Important – add to our knowledge
- E.g. Claims about the external world
- Ascertained through inductive reasoning
- A posteriori
- Synthetic
- Contingent
The Flames
- Meaningless
- Can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion
Ayer’s Verification Principle
Ayer and the logical positivist philosophers turned Hume’s fork into the verification principle.
Relations of Ideas = Analytic
Matters of Fact = Empirically Verifiable
Flames = Meaningless ( inc. Theological, Ethical, Aesthetic)
Explain how Empiricism sets a clear limit on appropriate objects of knowledge and allows us to proceed without getting distracted by empty metaphysical speculation.
b
Explain how Empiricism reflects our experience of learning, where knowledge is acquired through new experiences.
n
