Empiricism

2200 years of philosophy on “Empiricism”

Epicurus (341 b.c.e.-270 b.c.e.)

Epicurus holds that sense perception derives from contact between the atoms of the soul and the atoms from the bodies that surround us. Because sensations are set up in the soul by external stimuli, it’s considered a ‘given’ and therefore used to refer our judgments about the world. When they occur in bulk they constitute phantasíae (appearances). These are all veridical.

Because sensations are set-up within us, we can go no further in seeking information. While this may prevent knowing the true knowledge of objects, our sensations are beyond correction. There is difficulty understanding how all knowledge is built up from these sensations to explain Epicurus’ metaphysical system axioms. Priori arguments are often made. Nevertheless, Epicurus’ ideal of knowledge is one which not only depends on experience for its materials but is based on basics truths of experience.

Aristotle (384 b.c.e.-322 b.c.e.)

Aristotlewas concerned with issues in the philosophy of mind rather than epistemology. He seemed to believe that knowledge is possible outside the immediate spheres of the senses and that reason can and does furnish us with necessary truths about the world. Aristotle’s place in the development of empiricism, therefore, remains unclear.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Aquinasbelieved that the materials for knowledge must be derived from sense experience. Stimulating the sense organs result in a change in the soul, a phantasm of sorts. Illuminating the phantasm requires that active reason reveal a sensible form for imposition to passive reason that produces a species expressa, or verbal concept, that in turn is used in judgment. All concepts are arrived at in this way (known as conversion ad phantasmata). Aquinas’ empiricism is therefore limited to concepts, and it is in this sense he holds that “there is nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the senses.”

John Locke (1632-1704)

Locke’s new ways of ideas inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent. Descartes’ method of doubt seems to raise concern for skepticism, but Locke approached the matter by attacking the doctrine of innate ideas and by showing that objects of the mind are built up from ideas of sense. He seems to embrace Aquinas’ view, albeit with a different mechanism that shows how ideas come into being.

The properties of things can have both primary (bulk, figure and motion) and secondary (color and taste) qualities. By accepting primary qualities as real and rejecting the secondary qualities as real, Locke maintains that the knowledge of things themselves is of only nominal essence due to the weakness of our senses. Therefore, Locke’s view is that all the materials for knowledge are provided by sense perception, but the extent and certainty of sensible knowledge is limited; while on the other hand, there is nonempirical, a priori knowledge, of nonsensible things.

George Berkley (1685-1753)

George Berkley’saim was to produce a metaphysical view that shows the glory of God. The esse of sensible things is percipi; they consist in being perceived and have no existence without the mind. These are caused by sensations, or ideas and spirits. God is the cause of our sensations, and we ourselves can be the cause of ideas of the imagination.

Berkeley asserts that knowledge is entirely dependant on sensations for all its materials other than the notions we have of God and ourselves. All truths must be founded on the truths of sense experience. The relations between ideas, like those Locke used as a source of knowledge, are the result of the mind’s own acts. Formal disciplines are as much a matter of invention as discovery.

David Hume (1711-1776)

A cardinal point of Hume’s empiricism is to deny the existence of anything behind impressions and therefore any simple idea is just a copy of a corresponding impression. A priori truths other than mere analytic truths have validity only in reference to experience; hence, while all knowledge is based on experience, it is not all derived from experience.

Pure reason can provide no real knowledge, despite the claims of rationalist metaphysicians.
Such nonanalytic propositions as we do know a priori constitute principles that lay down the conditions to which experiences must conform if it is to be objectively valid and not just a product of the imagination. Hume, like other British empiricists, employed a method of trying to build up the body of knowledge from simple building blocks, resembling the empirical science of the day (Newton). Rationalists found their inspiration in the method of axiomatic geometry.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Mill’s philosophy is that there is no real place for knowledge based on relations of ideas.
Things are merely permanent possibilities of sensation. Mathematical truths are generalizations from experience and therefore, inductive inferences. Logical and mathematical necessity is psychological; we are merely unable to conceive of any other possibilities than those which logical and mathematical propositions assert. This most extreme version of empiricism has not found many defenders, however.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Russell sees limits to empiricism, on the grounds that the principles of inductive inference cannot themselves be justified by reference to experience. He also spoke loudly to the harmfulness of religious belief. It’s not what you believe, but how you believe it.

“You may believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible or of the Koran or of Marx’s Capital. Whichever of these beliefs you entertain, you have to close your mind against evidence; and if you close your mind against evidence in one respect, you will also do so in another, if the temptation is strong.”

The person who bases his belief on reason will support it by argument rather than by persecution and will abandon his position if the argument goes against him. If, however, his belief is based on faith, he will conclude that argument is useless and will “therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young whenever he has the power to control his education.”

Assessment

Skepticism is not to be answered by providing absolutely certain truths, but by examining the grounds of skepticism itself. It is futile to argue whether experience or reason alone can provide proof of what we ordinarily claim to know. What of the thesis that, whether or not experience can provide certainty, all knowledge is derived from experience?

In Mill’s sense the thesis is obviously false and needs no further consideration. Locke and Aquinas’ doctrine appears as a psychological account of the origin of our ideas; in logical dress it amounts to the view that all our concepts are definable in terms of those which are ostensively definable. There remains the Kantian point that the having of experience is a condition for any further knowledge. Yet the logical possibility of the possession of knowledge by nonsensitive creatures remain, whether or not any such creatures exist in fact.

It's arguable that pretty much all human progress has been based on empiricism. That's why it's so worrying that so many countries are now governed by political movements that seek to deny the existence of any source of objective evidence that is independent of what the leadership claims.