HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

In
philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...
, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with
rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy' ...
and skepticism. Empiricism emphasizes the central role of empirical evidence in the formation of ideas, rather than innate ideas or traditions. However, empiricists may argue that traditions (or customs) arise due to relations of previous sensory experiences. Historically, empiricism was associated with the "blank slate" concept (''tabula rasa''), according to which the human mind is "blank" at birth and develops its thoughts only through experience. Empiricism in the
philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...
emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in
experiment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs whe ...
s. It is a fundamental part of the
scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientifi ...
that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on ''
a priori ("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...
'' reasoning, intuition, or revelation. Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, says that "knowledge is based on experience" and that "knowledge is tentative and probabilistic, subject to continued revision and falsification". Empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method.


Etymology

The English term ''empirical'' derives from the
Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
word ἐμπειρία, ''empeiria'', which is cognate with and translates to the Latin ''experientia'', from which the words ''experience'' and ''experiment'' are derived.


Background

A central concept in
science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...
and the
scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientifi ...
is that conclusions must be ''empirically'' based on the evidence of the senses. Both
natural Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans ar ...
and
social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of s ...
s use working hypotheses that are testable by observation and
experiment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs whe ...
. The term ''semi-empirical'' is sometimes used to describe theoretical methods that make use of basic axioms, established scientific laws, and previous experimental results in order to engage in reasoned model building and theoretical inquiry. Philosophical empiricists hold no knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced unless it is derived from one's sense-based experience. This view is commonly contrasted with
rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy' ...
, which states that knowledge may be derived from
reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, lang ...
independently of the senses. For example,
John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...
held that some knowledge (e.g. knowledge of God's existence) could be arrived at through intuition and reasoning alone. Similarly
Robert Boyle Robert Boyle (; 25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders ...
, a prominent advocate of the experimental method, held that we have innate ideas. The main continental rationalists ( Descartes, Spinoza, and
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of ma ...
) were also advocates of the empirical "scientific method".


History


Early empiricism

Between 600 and 200 BCE, the Vaisheshika school of Hindu philosophy, founded by the ancient Indian philosopher Kanada, accepted
perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...
and inference as the only two reliable sources of knowledge.DPS Bhawuk (2011), Spirituality and Indian Psychology (Editor: Anthony Marsella), Springer, , page 172Eliott Deutsche (2000), in Philosophy of Religion : Indian Philosophy Vol 4 (Editor: Roy Perrett), Routledge, , pages 245-248John A. Grimes, A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy: Sanskrit Terms Defined in English, State University of New York Press, , page 238 This is enumerated in his work '' Vaiśeṣika Sūtra''. The Charvaka school held similar beliefs, asserting that perception is the only reliable source of knowledge while inference obtains knowledge with uncertainty. The earliest Western proto-empiricists were the empiric school of ancient Greek medical practitioners, founded in 330 BCE. Its members rejected the doctrines of the
dogmatic school The Dogmatic school of medicine (''Dogmatics'', or ''Dogmatici'', el, Δογματικοί) was a school of medicine in ancient Greece and Rome. They were the oldest of the medical sects of antiquity. They derived their name from '' dogma'', a ...
, preferring to rely on the observation of '' phantasiai'' (i.e., phenomena, the appearances).Sini, Carlo (2004), "Empirismo", in Gianni Vattimo et al. (eds.), ''Enciclopedia Garzanti della Filosofia''. The Empiric school was closely allied with the Pyrrhonist school of philosophy, which made the philosophical case for their proto-empiricism. The notion of '' tabula rasa'' ("clean slate" or "blank tablet") connotes a view of mind as an originally blank or empty recorder (Locke used the words "white paper") on which experience leaves marks. This denies that humans have innate ideas. The notion dates back to
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
, c. 350 BC:
What the mind ('' nous'') thinks must be in it in the same sense as letters are on a tablet (''grammateion'') which bears no actual writing (''grammenon''); this is just what happens in the case of the mind. (Aristotle, '' On the Soul'', 3.4.430a1).
Aristotle's explanation of how this was possible was not strictly empiricist in a modern sense, but rather based on his theory of potentiality and actuality, and experience of sense perceptions still requires the help of the active ''nous''. These notions contrasted with Platonic notions of the human mind as an entity that pre-existed somewhere in the heavens, before being sent down to join a body on Earth (see Plato's ''
Phaedo ''Phædo'' or ''Phaedo'' (; el, Φαίδων, ''Phaidōn'' ), also known to ancient readers as ''On The Soul'', is one of the best-known dialogues of Plato's middle period, along with the '' Republic'' and the ''Symposium.'' The philosophica ...
'' and ''Apology'', as well as others). Aristotle was considered to give a more important position to sense perception than
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
, and commentators in the Middle Ages summarized one of his positions as "''nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu''" (Latin for "nothing in the intellect without first being in the senses"). This idea was later developed in ancient philosophy by the Stoic school, from about 330 BCE. Stoic epistemology generally emphasized that the mind starts blank, but acquires knowledge as the outside world is impressed upon it. The doxographer Aetius summarizes this view as "When a man is born, the Stoics say, he has the commanding part of his soul like a sheet of paper ready for writing upon."


Islamic Golden Age and Pre-Renaissance (5th to 15th centuries CE)

During the
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
(from the 5th to the 15th century CE) Aristotle's theory of ''tabula rasa'' was developed by Islamic philosophers starting with
Al Farabi Abu Nasr Muhammad Al-Farabi ( fa, ابونصر محمد فارابی), ( ar, أبو نصر محمد الفارابي), known in the West as Alpharabius; (c. 872 – between 14 December, 950 and 12 January, 951)PDF version was a renowned early Is ...
(c. 872 – 951 CE), developing into an elaborate theory by Avicenna (c. 980 – 1037) and demonstrated as a thought experiment by Ibn Tufail. For Avicenna ( Ibn Sina), for example, the ''tabula rasa'' is a pure potentiality that is actualized through
education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...
, and knowledge is attained through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts" developed through a "
syllogistic A syllogism ( grc-gre, συλλογισμός, ''syllogismos'', 'conclusion, inference') is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true. ...
method of reasoning in which observations lead to propositional statements which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts". The intellect itself develops from a material intellect (''al-'aql al-hayulani''), which is a potentiality "that can acquire knowledge to the
active intellect The active intellect (Latin: ''intellectus agens''; also translated as agent intellect, active intelligence, active reason, or productive intellect) is a concept in classical and medieval philosophy. The term refers to the formal (''morphe'') aspec ...
(''al-
'aql ‘Aql ( ar, عقل, meaning "intellect"), is an Arabic language term used in Islamic philosophy or theology for the intellect or the rational faculty of the soul or mind. It is the normal translation of the Greek term '' nous''. In jurisprudenc ...
al-fa'il''), the state of the human intellect in conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge".Sajjad H. Rizvi (2006)
Avicenna/Ibn Sina (c. 980–1037)
'' Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
So the immaterial "active intellect", separate from any individual person, is still essential for understanding to occur. In the 12th century CE, the Andalusian
Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
philosopher and novelist Abu Bakr Ibn Tufail (known as "Abubacer" or "Ebn Tophail" in the West) included the theory of ''tabula rasa'' as a thought experiment in his Arabic philosophical novel, '' Hayy ibn Yaqdhan'' in which he depicted the development of the mind of a feral child "from a ''tabula rasa'' to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a
desert island A desert island, deserted island, or uninhabited island, is an island, islet or atoll that is not permanently populated by humans. Uninhabited islands are often depicted in films or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereo ...
, through experience alone. The
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
translation of his philosophical novel, entitled ''Philosophus Autodidactus'', published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on
John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...
's formulation of ''tabula rasa'' in '' An Essay Concerning Human Understanding''.G. A. Russell (1994), ''The 'Arabick' Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England'', pp. 224–62,
Brill Publishers Brill Academic Publishers (known as E. J. Brill, Koninklijke Brill, Brill ()) is a Dutch international academic publisher founded in 1683 in Leiden, Netherlands. With offices in Leiden, Boston, Paderborn and Singapore, Brill today publishes 2 ...
,
A similar Islamic theological novel, ''
Theologus Autodidactus ''Theologus Autodidactus'' ("The Self-taught Theologian"), originally titled ''The Treatise of Kāmil on the Prophet's Biography'' ( ar, الرسالة الكاملية في السيرة النبوية), also known as ''Risālat Fādil ibn Nātiq'' ...
'', was written by the Arab theologian and physician Ibn al-Nafis in the 13th century. It also dealt with the theme of empiricism through the story of a feral child on a desert island, but departed from its predecessor by depicting the development of the protagonist's mind through contact with society rather than in isolation from society.Dr. Abu Shadi Al-Roubi (1982), "Ibn Al-Nafis as a philosopher", ''Symposium on Ibn al-Nafis'', Second International Conference on Islamic Medicine: Islamic Medical Organization, Kuwait ( cf.br>Ibn al-Nafis As a Philosopher
, ''Encyclopedia of Islamic World'')
During the 13th century
Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, Dominican Order, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino, Italy, Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican Order, Dominican friar and Catholic priest, priest who was an influential List of Catholic philo ...
adopted into scholasticism the Aristotelian position that the senses are essential to the mind. Bonaventure (1221–1274), one of Aquinas' strongest intellectual opponents, offered some of the strongest arguments in favour of the Platonic idea of the mind.


Renaissance Italy

In the late
renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...
various writers began to question the
medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
and classical understanding of knowledge acquisition in a more fundamental way. In political and historical writing
Niccolò Machiavelli Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli ( , , ; 3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527), occasionally rendered in English as Nicholas Machiavel ( , ; see below), was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. ...
and his friend
Francesco Guicciardini Francesco Guicciardini (; 6 March 1483 – 22 May 1540) was an Italian historian and statesman. A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance. In his masterpiece, ''T ...
initiated a new realistic style of writing. Machiavelli in particular was scornful of writers on politics who judged everything in comparison to mental ideals and demanded that people should study the "effectual truth" instead. Their contemporary,
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on ...
(1452–1519) said, "If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings." Significantly, an empirical metaphysical system was developed by the Italian philosopher Bernardino Telesio which had an enormous impact on the development of later Italian thinkers, including Telesio's students
Antonio Persio Antonio Persio (17 May 1542 – 11 February 1612) was an Italian philosopher of the Platonic school who opposed the Aristotelianism which predominated in the universities of his time. He was a member of the Accademia dei Lincei and an associate ...
and Sertorio Quattromani, his contemporaries Thomas Campanella and Giordano Bruno, and later British philosophers such as
Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
, who regarded Telesio as "the first of the moderns.” Boenke, Michaela, "Bernardino Telesio", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . Telesio's influence can also be seen on the French philosophers
René Descartes René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Ma ...
and
Pierre Gassendi Pierre Gassendi (; also Pierre Gassend, Petrus Gassendi; 22 January 1592 – 24 October 1655) was a French philosopher, Catholic priest, astronomer, and mathematician. While he held a church position in south-east France, he also spent much t ...
. The decidedly anti-Aristotelian and anti-clerical music theorist Vincenzo Galilei (c. 1520 – 1591), father of
Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...
and the inventor of monody, made use of the method in successfully solving musical problems, firstly, of tuning such as the relationship of pitch to string tension and mass in stringed instruments, and to volume of air in wind instruments; and secondly to composition, by his various suggestions to composers in his ''Dialogo della musica antica e moderna'' (Florence, 1581). The Italian word he used for "experiment" was ''esperienza''. It is known that he was the essential pedagogical influence upon the young Galileo, his eldest son (cf. Coelho, ed. ''Music and Science in the Age of Galileo Galilei''), arguably one of the most influential empiricists in history. Vincenzo, through his tuning research, found the underlying truth at the heart of the misunderstood myth of ' Pythagoras' hammers' (the square of the numbers concerned yielded those musical intervals, not the actual numbers, as believed), and through this and other discoveries that demonstrated the fallibility of traditional authorities, a radically empirical attitude developed, passed on to Galileo, which regarded "experience and demonstration" as the ''sine qua non'' of valid rational enquiry.


British empiricism

British empiricism, a retrospective characterization, emerged during the 17th century as an approach to early modern philosophy and modern science. Although both integral to this overarching transition,
Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
, in England, advised empiricism at 1620, whereas
René Descartes René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Ma ...
, in France, upheld rationalism around 1640, a distinction drawn by
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
, in Germany, near 1780. (Bacon's natural philosophy was influenced by Italian philosopher Bernardino Telesio and by Swiss physician
Paracelsus Paracelsus (; ; 1493 – 24 September 1541), born Theophrastus von Hohenheim (full name Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim), was a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance. He ...
.) Contributing later in the 17th century,
Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book '' Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influ ...
and
Baruch Spinoza Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, ...
are retrospectively identified likewise as an empiricist and a rationalist, respectively. In the Enlightenment during the 18th century, both George Berkeley, in England, and
David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" '' Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment ph ...
, in
Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...
, became leading exponents of empiricism, a lead precedented in the late 17th century by
John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...
, also in England, hence the dominance of empiricism in British philosophy. In response to the early-to-mid-17th century "
continental rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy'' ...
,"
John Locke John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...
(1632–1704) proposed in '' An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' (1689) a very influential view wherein the ''only'' knowledge humans can have is ''
a posteriori ("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...
'', i.e., based upon experience. Locke is famously attributed with holding the proposition that the human mind is a '' tabula rasa'', a "blank tablet", in Locke's words "white paper", on which the experiences derived from sense impressions as a person's life proceeds are written. There are two sources of our ideas: sensation and reflection. In both cases, a distinction is made between simple and complex ideas. The former are unanalysable, and are broken down into primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are essential for the object in question to be what it is. Without specific primary qualities, an object would not be what it is. For example, an apple is an apple because of the arrangement of its atomic structure. If an apple were structured differently, it would cease to be an apple. Secondary qualities are the sensory information we can perceive from its primary qualities. For example, an apple can be perceived in various colours, sizes, and textures but it is still identified as an apple. Therefore, its primary qualities dictate what the object essentially is, while its secondary qualities define its attributes. Complex ideas combine simple ones, and divide into substances, modes, and relations. According to Locke, our knowledge of things is a perception of ideas that are in accordance or discordance with each other, which is very different from the quest for certainty of Descartes. A generation later, the Irish
Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of t ...
bishop, George Berkeley (1685–1753), determined that Locke's view immediately opened a door that would lead to eventual
atheism Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...
. In response to Locke, he put forth in his '' Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge'' (1710) an important challenge to empiricism in which things ''only'' exist either as a ''result'' of their being perceived, or by virtue of the fact that they are an entity doing the perceiving. (For Berkeley, God fills in for humans by doing the perceiving whenever humans are not around to do it.) In his text ''
Alciphron Alciphron ( grc-gre, Ἀλκίφρων) was an ancient Greek sophist, and the most eminent among the Greek epistolographers. Regarding his life or the age in which he lived we possess no direct information whatsoever. Works We possess under th ...
'', Berkeley maintained that any order humans may see in nature is the language or handwriting of God. Berkeley's approach to empiricism would later come to be called
subjective idealism Subjective idealism, or empirical idealism, is a form of philosophical monism that holds that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that material things do n ...
. The Scottish philosopher
David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" '' Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment ph ...
(1711–1776) responded to Berkeley's criticisms of Locke, as well as other differences between early modern philosophers, and moved empiricism to a new level of skepticism. Hume argued in keeping with the empiricist view that all knowledge derives from sense experience, but he accepted that this has implications not normally acceptable to philosophers. He wrote for example, "Locke divides all arguments into demonstrative and probable. On this view, we must say that it is only probable that all men must die or that the sun will rise to-morrow, because neither of these can be demonstrated. But to conform our language more to common use, we ought to divide arguments into demonstrations, proofs, and probabilities—by ‘proofs’ meaning arguments from experience that leave no room for doubt or opposition." And, Hume divided all of human knowledge into two categories: ''relations of ideas'' and ''matters of fact'' (see also Kant's analytic-synthetic distinction). Mathematical and logical propositions (e.g. "that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides") are examples of the first, while propositions involving some contingent observation of the world (e.g. "the sun rises in the East") are examples of the second. All of people's "ideas", in turn, are derived from their "impressions". For Hume, an "impression" corresponds roughly with what we call a sensation. To remember or to imagine such impressions is to have an "idea". Ideas are therefore the faint copies of sensations. Hume maintained that no knowledge, even the most basic beliefs about the natural world, can be conclusively established by reason. Rather, he maintained, our beliefs are more a result of accumulated ''habits'', developed in response to accumulated sense experiences. Among his many arguments Hume also added another important slant to the debate about
scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientifi ...
—that of the problem of induction. Hume argued that it requires inductive reasoning to arrive at the premises for the principle of inductive reasoning, and therefore the justification for inductive reasoning is a circular argument. Among Hume's conclusions regarding the problem of induction is that there is no certainty that the future will resemble the past. Thus, as a simple instance posed by Hume, we cannot know with certainty by inductive reasoning that the sun will continue to rise in the East, but instead come to expect it to do so because it has repeatedly done so in the past.Hume, D. "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding", in Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, 2nd edition, L.A. Selby-Bigge (ed.),
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...
, Oxford, UK, 1902
748 __NOTOC__ Year 748 ( DCCXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 748 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calenda ...
Hume concluded that such things as belief in an external world and belief in the existence of the self were not rationally justifiable. According to Hume these beliefs were to be accepted nonetheless because of their profound basis in instinct and custom. Hume's lasting legacy, however, was the doubt that his skeptical arguments cast on the legitimacy of inductive reasoning, allowing many skeptics who followed to cast similar doubt.


Phenomenalism

Most of Hume's followers have disagreed with his conclusion that belief in an external world is ''rationally'' unjustifiable, contending that Hume's own principles implicitly contained the rational justification for such a belief, that is, beyond being content to let the issue rest on human instinct, custom and habit. According to an extreme empiricist theory known as
phenomenalism In metaphysics, phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in ...
, anticipated by the arguments of both Hume and George Berkeley, a physical object is a kind of construction out of our experiences. Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects, properties, events (whatever is physical) are reducible to mental objects, properties, events. Ultimately, only mental objects, properties, events, exist—hence the closely related term
subjective idealism Subjective idealism, or empirical idealism, is a form of philosophical monism that holds that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that material things do n ...
. By the phenomenalistic line of thinking, to have a visual experience of a real physical thing is to have an experience of a certain kind of group of experiences. This type of set of experiences possesses a constancy and coherence that is lacking in the set of experiences of which hallucinations, for example, are a part. As
John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
put it in the mid-19th century, matter is the "permanent possibility of sensation". Mill's empiricism went a significant step beyond Hume in still another respect: in maintaining that induction is necessary for ''all'' meaningful knowledge including mathematics. As summarized by D.W. Hamlin: Mill's empiricism thus held that knowledge of any kind is not from direct experience but an inductive inference from direct experience. The problems other philosophers have had with Mill's position center around the following issues: Firstly, Mill's formulation encounters difficulty when it describes what direct experience is by differentiating only between actual and possible sensations. This misses some key discussion concerning conditions under which such "groups of permanent possibilities of sensation" might exist in the first place. Berkeley put God in that gap; the phenomenalists, including Mill, essentially left the question unanswered. In the end, lacking an acknowledgement of an aspect of "reality" that goes beyond mere "possibilities of sensation", such a position leads to a version of subjective idealism. Questions of how floor beams continue to support a floor while unobserved, how trees continue to grow while unobserved and untouched by human hands, etc., remain unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable in these terms.Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1969), "Phenomenalism", vol. 6, p. 131. Secondly, Mill's formulation leaves open the unsettling possibility that the "gap-filling entities are purely possibilities and not actualities at all". Thirdly, Mill's position, by calling mathematics merely another species of inductive inference, misapprehends mathematics. It fails to fully consider the structure and method of
mathematical science The mathematical sciences are a group of areas of study that includes, in addition to mathematics, those academic disciplines that are primarily mathematical in nature but may not be universally considered subfields of mathematics proper. Statist ...
, the products of which are arrived at through an internally consistent deductive set of procedures which do not, either today or at the time Mill wrote, fall under the agreed meaning of induction.Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1969), "Empiricism", vol. 2, p. 503. The phenomenalist phase of post-Humean empiricism ended by the 1940s, for by that time it had become obvious that statements about physical things could not be translated into statements about actual and possible sense data. If a physical object statement is to be translatable into a sense-data statement, the former must be at least deducible from the latter. But it came to be realized that there is no finite set of statements about actual and possible sense-data from which we can deduce even a single physical-object statement. The translating or paraphrasing statement must be couched in terms of normal observers in normal conditions of observation. There is, however, no ''finite'' set of statements that are couched in purely sensory terms and can express the satisfaction of the condition of the presence of a normal observer. According to phenomenalism, to say that a normal observer is present is to make the hypothetical statement that were a doctor to inspect the observer, the observer would appear to the doctor to be normal. But, of course, the doctor himself must be a normal observer. If we are to specify this doctor's normality in sensory terms, we must make reference to a second doctor who, when inspecting the sense organs of the first doctor, would himself have to have the sense data a normal observer has when inspecting the sense organs of a subject who is a normal observer. And if we are to specify in sensory terms that the second doctor is a normal observer, we must refer to a third doctor, and so on (also see the
third man Fielding in the sport of cricket is the action of fielders in collecting the ball after it is struck by the striking batter, to limit the number of runs that the striker scores and/or to get a batter out by either catching a hit ball before ...
).


Logical empiricism

Logical empiricism (also ''logical positivism'' or ''neopositivism'') was an early 20th-century attempt to synthesize the essential ideas of British empiricism (e.g. a strong emphasis on sensory experience as the basis for knowledge) with certain insights from
mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of forma ...
that had been developed by
Gottlob Frege Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic p ...
and
Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian- British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is consi ...
. Some of the key figures in this movement were Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick and the rest of the Vienna Circle, along with A.J. Ayer, Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach. The neopositivists subscribed to a notion of philosophy as the conceptual clarification of the methods, insights and discoveries of the sciences. They saw in the logical symbolism elaborated by Frege (1848–1925) and
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, a ...
(1872–1970) a powerful instrument that could rationally reconstruct all scientific discourse into an ideal, logically perfect, language that would be free of the ambiguities and deformations of natural language. This gave rise to what they saw as metaphysical pseudoproblems and other conceptual confusions. By combining Frege's thesis that all mathematical truths are logical with the early Wittgenstein's idea that all logical truths are mere linguistic tautologies, they arrived at a twofold classification of all propositions: the "analytic" (''a priori'') and the "synthetic" (''a posteriori''). On this basis, they formulated a strong principle of demarcation between sentences that have sense and those that do not: the so-called "
verification principle Verificationism, also known as the verification principle or the verifiability criterion of meaning, is the philosophical doctrine which maintains that only statements that are empirically verifiable (i.e. verifiable through the senses) are cogniti ...
". Any sentence that is not purely logical, or is unverifiable, is devoid of meaning. As a result, most metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic and other traditional philosophical problems came to be considered pseudoproblems. In the extreme empiricism of the neopositivists—at least before the 1930s—any genuinely synthetic assertion must be reducible to an ultimate assertion (or set of ultimate assertions) that expresses direct observations or perceptions. In later years, Carnap and Neurath abandoned this sort of ''phenomenalism'' in favor of a rational reconstruction of knowledge into the language of an objective spatio-temporal physics. That is, instead of translating sentences about physical objects into sense-data, such sentences were to be translated into so-called ''protocol sentences'', for example, "''X'' at location ''Y'' and at time ''T'' observes such and such". The central theses of logical positivism (verificationism, the analytic–synthetic distinction, reductionism, etc.) came under sharp attack after World War II by thinkers such as
Nelson Goodman Henry Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906 – 25 November 1998) was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism, and aesthetics. Life and career Goodman was born in Somerville, Ma ...
,
W.V. Quine West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bu ...
, Hilary Putnam, Karl Popper, and
Richard Rorty Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic ...
. By the late 1960s, it had become evident to most philosophers that the movement had pretty much run its course, though its influence is still significant among contemporary analytic philosophers such as
Michael Dummett Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett (27 June 1925 – 27 December 2011) was an English academic described as "among the most significant British philosophers of the last century and a leading campaigner for racial tolerance and equality." He ...
and other anti-realists.


Pragmatism

In the late 19th and early 20th century, several forms of pragmatic philosophy arose. The ideas of pragmatism, in its various forms, developed mainly from discussions between
Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for ...
and
William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
when both men were at Harvard in the 1870s. James popularized the term "pragmatism", giving Peirce full credit for its patrimony, but Peirce later demurred from the tangents that the movement was taking, and redubbed what he regarded as the original idea with the name of "pragmaticism". Along with its '' pragmatic theory of truth'', this perspective integrates the basic insights of empirical (experience-based) and rational (concept-based) thinking. Charles Peirce (1839–1914) was highly influential in laying the groundwork for today's empirical
scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientifi ...
. Although Peirce severely criticized many elements of Descartes' peculiar brand of rationalism, he did not reject rationalism outright. Indeed, he concurred with the main ideas of rationalism, most importantly the idea that rational concepts can be meaningful and the idea that rational concepts necessarily go beyond the data given by empirical observation. In later years he even emphasized the concept-driven side of the then ongoing debate between strict empiricism and strict rationalism, in part to counterbalance the excesses to which some of his cohorts had taken pragmatism under the "data-driven" strict-empiricist view. Among Peirce's major contributions was to place inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning in a complementary rather than competitive mode, the latter of which had been the primary trend among the educated since David Hume wrote a century before. To this, Peirce added the concept of abductive reasoning. The combined three forms of reasoning serve as a primary conceptual foundation for the empirically based scientific method today. Peirce's approach "presupposes that (1) the objects of knowledge are real things, (2) the characters (properties) of real things do not depend on our perceptions of them, and (3) everyone who has sufficient experience of real things will agree on the truth about them. According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth". In his Harvard "Lectures on Pragmatism" (1903), Peirce enumerated what he called the "three cotary propositions of pragmatism" ( L: ''cos, cotis'' whetstone), saying that they "put the edge on the maxim of pragmatism". First among these, he listed the peripatetic-thomist observation mentioned above, but he further observed that this link between sensory perception and intellectual conception is a two-way street. That is, it can be taken to say that whatever we find in the intellect is also incipiently in the senses. Hence, if theories are theory-laden then so are the senses, and perception itself can be seen as a species of abductive inference, its difference being that it is beyond control and hence beyond critique—in a word, incorrigible. This in no way conflicts with the fallibility and revisability of scientific concepts, since it is only the immediate percept in its unique individuality or "thisness"—what the Scholastics called its '' haecceity''—that stands beyond control and correction. Scientific concepts, on the other hand, are general in nature, and transient sensations do in another sense find correction within them. This notion of perception as abduction has received periodic revivals in
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...
and cognitive science research, most recently for instance with the work of Irvin Rock on '' indirect perception''. Around the beginning of the 20th century, William James (1842–1910) coined the term "
radical empiricism Radical empiricism is a philosophical doctrine put forth by William James. It asserts that experience includes both particulars and relations between those particulars, and that therefore both deserve a place in our explanations. In concrete terms: ...
" to describe an offshoot of his form of pragmatism, which he argued could be dealt with separately from his pragmatism—though in fact the two concepts are intertwined in James's published lectures. James maintained that the empirically observed "directly apprehended universe needs ... no extraneous trans-empirical connective support", by which he meant to rule out the perception that there can be any value added by seeking
supernatural Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin (above, beyond, or outside of) + (nature) Though the corollary term "nature", has had multiple meanings si ...
explanations for
natural Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans ar ...
phenomena. James' "radical empiricism" is thus ''not'' radical in the context of the term "empiricism", but is instead fairly consistent with the modern use of the term " empirical". His method of argument in arriving at this view, however, still readily encounters debate within philosophy even today. John Dewey (1859–1952) modified James' pragmatism to form a theory known as instrumentalism. The role of sense experience in Dewey's theory is crucial, in that he saw experience as unified totality of things through which everything else is interrelated. Dewey's basic thought, in accordance with empiricism, was that
reality Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, re ...
is determined by past experience. Therefore, humans adapt their past experiences of things to perform experiments upon and test the pragmatic values of such experience. The value of such experience is measured experientially and scientifically, and the results of such tests generate ideas that serve as instruments for future experimentation, in physical sciences as in ethics. Thus, ideas in Dewey's system retain their empiricist flavour in that they are only known ''a posteriori''.


See also

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Endnotes


References

* Achinstein, Peter, and Barker, Stephen F. (1969), ''The Legacy of Logical Positivism: Studies in the Philosophy of Science'', Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. *
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
, " On the Soul" (''De Anima''),
W. S. Hett W. may refer to: * SoHo (Australian TV channel) (previously W.), an Australian pay television channel * ''W.'' (film), a 2008 American biographical drama film based on the life of George W. Bush * "W.", the fifth track from Codeine's 1992 EP ''Bar ...
(trans.), pp. 1–203 in ''Aristotle, Volume 8'', Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1936. * Aristotle, '' Posterior Analytics''. * Barone, Francesco (1986), ''Il neopositivismo logico'', Laterza, Roma Bari * Berlin, Isaiah (2004), ''The Refutation of Phenomenalism'', Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library. * Bolender, John (1998), "Factual Phenomenalism: A Supervenience Theory"', ''Sorites'', no. 9, pp. 16–31. * Chisolm, R. (1948), "The Problem of Empiricism", ''Journal of Philosophy'' 45, 512–17. * Dewey, John (1906), ''Studies in Logical Theory''. * ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', "Empiricism", vol. 4, p. 480. * Hume, D., '' A Treatise of Human Nature'', L.A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), Oxford University Press, London, UK, 1975. * Hume, David. "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding", in ''Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals'', 2nd edition, L.A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1902
Gutenberg press full-text
* James, William (1911), ''The Meaning of Truth''. * Keeton, Morris T. (1962), "Empiricism", pp. 89–90 in Dagobert D. Runes (ed.), ''Dictionary of Philosophy'', Littlefield, Adams, and Company, Totowa, NJ. * Leftow, Brian (ed., 2006), ''Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, Questions on God'', pp. vii ''et seq''. * ''Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (1969), "Development of Aristotle's Thought", vol. 1, pp. 153ff. * ''Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (1969), "George Berkeley", vol. 1, p. 297. * ''Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (1969), "Empiricism", vol. 2, p. 503. * ''Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (1969), "Mathematics, Foundations of", vol. 5, pp. 188–89. * ''Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (1969), "Axiomatic Method", vol. 5, pp. 192ff. * ''Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (1969), "Epistemological Discussion", subsections on "A Priori Knowledge" and "Axioms". * ''Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (1969), "Phenomenalism", vol. 6, p. 131. * ''Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (1969), "Thomas Aquinas", subsection on "Theory of Knowledge", vol. 8, pp. 106–07. * Marconi, Diego (2004), "Fenomenismo"', in Gianni Vattimo and Gaetano Chiurazzi (eds.), ''L'Enciclopedia Garzanti di Filosofia'', 3rd edition, Garzanti, Milan, Italy. * Markie, P. (2004), "Rationalism vs. Empiricism" in Edward D. Zalta (ed.), ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
Eprint
* Maxwell, Nicholas (1998), ''The Comprehensibility of the Universe: A New Conception of Science'', Oxford University Press, Oxford. * Mill, J.S., "An Examination of Sir William Rowan Hamilton's Philosophy", in A.J. Ayer and Ramond Winch (eds.), ''British Empirical Philosophers'', Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 1968. * Morick, H. (1980), ''Challenges to Empiricism'', Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, IN. * Peirce, C.S., "Lectures on Pragmatism", Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 26 – May 17, 1903. Reprinted in part, ''Collected Papers'', CP 5.14–212. Published in full with editor's introduction and commentary, Patricia Ann Turisi (ed.), ''Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Harvard "Lectures on Pragmatism"'', State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, 1997. Reprinted, pp. 133–241, Peirce Edition Project (eds.), ''The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 2 (1893–1913)'', Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1998. * Rescher, Nicholas (1985), ''The Heritage of Logical Positivism'', University Press of America, Lanham, MD. * Rock, Irvin (1983), ''The Logic of Perception'', MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. * Rock, Irvin, (1997) ''Indirect Perception'', MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. * Runes, D.D. (ed., 1962), ''Dictionary of Philosophy'', Littlefield, Adams, and Company, Totowa, NJ. * Sini, Carlo (2004), "Empirismo", in Gianni Vattimo et al. (eds.), ''Enciclopedia Garzanti della Filosofia''. * Solomon, Robert C., and Higgins, Kathleen M. (1996), ''A Short History of Philosophy'', pp. 68–74. * Sorabji, Richard (1972), ''Aristotle on Memory''. * Thornton, Stephen (1987), ''Berkeley's Theory of Reality''
Eprint
* Vanzo, Alberto (2014), "From Empirics to Empiricists", ''Intellectual History Review'', 2014, Eprint availabl
here
an
here
* Ward, Teddy (n.d.), "Empiricism"

* Wilson, Fred (2005), "John Stuart Mill", in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''
Eprint


External links

* * *
Empiricist Man
{{Authority control Philosophical movements Epistemological theories Justification (epistemology) Philosophical methodology Internalism and externalism Philosophy of science *