Empiricism

Philosophy · Modern philosophy. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.

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The idea

Empiricism holds that all knowledge of the world comes from experience. Locke rejected innate ideas: the mind begins as a blank sheet (tabula rasa) and gains its ideas from sensation and reflection.

Berkeley went further. Since we only ever perceive ideas, he denied that matter exists apart from mind: to be is to be perceived (esse est percipi). Things persist because God always perceives them.

Hume carried empiricism to scepticism. We never observe a necessary connection between cause and effect, only one event regularly following another; the expectation comes from custom or habit. In the same way he found no simple self, only a bundle of perceptions.

Rules to remember

Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding; primary qualities (shape, size, motion, number) are in bodies; secondary qualities (colour, taste, smell, sound) depend on the perceiver
Berkeley: idealism (immaterialism); only minds and their ideas exist
Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature; ideas are faint copies of impressions
Hume's fork: relations of ideas (certain, but say nothing about the world) and matters of fact (known only by experience)
Hume on causation: constant conjunction plus habit, not observed necessity; this leads to the problem of induction
Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz): reason and innate ideas. Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume): experience
Leibniz's reply to 'nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses': 'except the intellect itself'

Common mistake

Saying Hume denied that causes exist or that we should stop expecting effects. He denied that reason or observation can show a necessary connection; he explained the belief by habit.

Worked example

After seeing the sun rise every day of her life, Sara says: 'It is certain that the sun will rise tomorrow.' How would Hume judge this claim?

'The sun will rise tomorrow' is a matter of fact, not a relation of ideas, because its denial involves no contradiction.
Past experience shows only that sunrise has always followed night; it does not show that it must.
To argue from past to future we must assume that nature is uniform, and that assumption itself rests on past experience.

Answer: The belief is natural and comes from custom, but it cannot be proved certain by reason; it is probable, not demonstrated.

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