Early Psychology/ Epistemology Flashcards
Epistemology:
Rationalism
Knowledge is innate, or derived from reasoning about the world.
Epistemology:
Empiricism
Knowledge acquired through the senses, from experience of the world.
What are the 2 ways which can we acquire knowledge?
Rationalism and Empiricism
Experience becomes knowledge according to which approach?
Empiricist approach
Knowledge becomes experience according to which approach?
Rationalist approach
Name 3 things considered to be true A Priori according to Rationalists?
God
Maths
Logic
Morality
A Priori (before the fact no evidence needed)
Descriptive vs Prescriptive knowledge
How the world is vs how it should be
Empiricist Locke argued there are 3 ways simple ideas are put together to make more complex ones:
Combination
Relation
Generalisation
Locke Combination
Combine multiple ideas into one
- e.g., an apple is red + round + sweet.
Locke Relation
Bringing ideas together without combination
- e.g., “my son is like a vulture when he eats”.
Locke Generalisation
Abstracting from events to form general rules
without time or place
eg- I have only seen white swans so all swans are white
What are the 2 kinds of sense experience Hume identifies?
Impressions: Sensations arising from touch, hearing, sight, smell, taste.
Ideas: Impressions recalled later by memory.
Name Humes 2 areas of intellectual inquiry:
All claims of knowledge must be:
Relations of ideas vs. Matters of fact.
Leibniz critique argues:
The mind is active not passive
The mind is immaterial.
Senses offer ONLY instances
(nothing useful or meaningful)
He does agree with some ideas being innate tho
Who would argue the mind is immaterial (not a physical structure or property)?
Leibniz
