The Mind as a Tabula Rasa Flashcards
(13 cards)
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.
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Explain how Empiricism reflects our experience of learning, where knowledge is acquired through new experiences.
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