Philosophy - British Empricists

British Empiricists

British Empiricists - no innate knowledge exists, whatever knowledge man possesses he has acquired after birth.

John Locke (1632-1704) - in the process of gaining knowledge, only the mental faculty is innate, actual knowledge itself is acquired.

- knowledge is imprinted on the mind by sensations, impressed upon the tabula rasa

Two kinds of experience (1) external (phenomena, senses)  (2) internal (reflection)

- simple ideas can be repeated, compared and united to form an infinite variety of complex ideas.

- primary qualities of objects are their real qualities  eg. solidity, motion, figure, etc.

- secondary qualities are those sensations that an object produces in us eg. sound, smell, taste.

Metaphysical agnostic - doctrine that the nature of ultimate reality cannot be proved or known.

Proof of God’s existence - since we are aware of the world as a complex of causes and powers, we must logically conclude that there is an original, supreme source of all causes and powers, namely Good.

- happiness is the greatest good, obedience to the moral law results in happiness.

George Berkeley (1685-1753) - founded objective immaterialism [the real universe is solely phenomenal and non material in nature], anglican bishop

- abstract ideas do not exist, essence  (reality) consists in its being perceived.

- a thing cannot exist in its own right independently of a mind, it requires a mind to provide the ground of its existence.

Solipsist - believes that he alone exists and that the external world is merely the subjective world of his own inner experiences (self-refuting doctrine).

- the world is real, for if it were not real, we could not experience it.

Doctrine of divine arbitrariness (1) the things we perceive are more vivid than those we merely imagine (2) the things we perceive do not obey our personal wills.

David Hume (1711-1776) - the only knowledge we can possess consists of a mere sequence of ideas, none of which can be proves to be true; a metaphysical skeptic.

Locke denied the existence of innate ideas; Berkeley denied the validity of any ideas abstracted from sensory experience.

- knowledge is restricted to mental states or experiences.

- denied the existence of ultimate reality (metaphysical nihilist), he asserted the existence only of the phenomena of sense (phenomenalist).

- he posited that there was no such thing as a true cause and effect relationship.

Hume was an ethical subjectivist (subscribed to the theory that morality consists of principles or values which the individual formulates for himself as a matter of personal opinion; he was also a social subjectivist inasmuch as he believed that moral values are based upon the opinions of a particular society and as such sentiment becomes the foundation of morality.

naive realism - the reality itself, the object, is exactly what it appears to the senses to be.