1. Transition to Immanuel Kant
Rationalism and Empiricism

2. Historical Overview Kant Rationalism Empiricism Descartes Spinoza
Leibniz
Wolff
Kant
Locke
Berkeley
Hume
Empiricism

3. Empiricism Basic tenets of Empiricism
All knowledge comes from experience
The mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa)
The mind is passive, merely a receptor of sense impressions
Hume’s radicalizes these, ending in Skepticism
Unbridgeable gap between sense impressions and objects in the world
All we know are ‘sensations’ playing in our minds
The necessary ‘connectedness’ of experience is problematic Causality is merely superstition, born of habit

4. Rationalism Basic tenets of Rationalism The Leibniz-Wolffian School
Reason has access to reality as it really is
Reason can go beyond what is given to us in experience
Reason can then grasp things, not as they appear, but as they really are
The Leibniz-Wolffian School
Reason (without experience) can know about God, immortality of the soul, and human freedom
Reason has direct access to “meta-physical” knowledge

5. Part 2 John Locke David Hume Immanuel Kant Thomas Bayes Karl Popper
Thomas Kuhn
Imre Lakatos

6. John Locke ( )
Introduction

7. John Locke

8. Biography B. 1632, son of a small property-owner and lawyer
Oxford,
Studied church-state issues, chemistry and medicine, new mechanical philosophy
Involvement in politics through Lord Ashley, whom he treated for a liver abscess
Plotted to assassinate King Charles II and his Catholic brother, later James II
Exile in Holland,
1689: 3 major works published

9. Major works and themes:
A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)
Argues for religious toleration;
Except for atheists, “who deny the Being of a God” and thus cannot be trusted to keep their promises (e.g. in contracts).
Context:
- Religious wars and persecution in England and on the Continent.

10. Works, cont. Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
Argues against innate ideas
For the acquisition of knowledge through the senses: “Intuitionism”
Anti-Cartesian (Descartes)
Re-opens debate about essentialism vs conventionalism with his views on identity, comparison, classification and natural kinds.

11. Works, cont.
Two Treatises on Government (written 1679/80; published 1689/90)
First: Argues against traditional basis for political authority expressed in Filmer’s Patriarcha, divine right of kings;
Second: protection of private property, life and liberty = basis for civil government.

12. Locke’s Basic Epistemology
Human being = tabula rasa (blank slate)
receives sense-impressions
some of these transformed by Mind into Ideas
Ideas represented in language by words
However, no Ideas are innate
Mind operates (through gradual learning process) w/out reference to any received authority (of Church, State or others)

13. Complex Ideas
Sense-data of primary qualities (PQs) and secondary qualities (SQs), produce ideas in the mind:
Ideas are mental results of sense-data
-Sense-perceptions
-Bodily sensations
-Mental images
-Thoughts and concepts

14. Primary(PQ) and Secondary Qualities(SQ)
Distinction between perceived aspects of things. The primary qualities are intrinsic features of the thing itself (its size, shape, internal structure, mass, and momentum, for example), while the secondary qualities are merely its powers to produce sensations in us (its color, odor, sound, and taste, for example). This distinction was carefully drawn by Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Locke, whose statement of the distinction set the tone for future scientific inquiry. But Foucher, Bayle, and Berkeley argued that the distinction is groundless, so that all sensible qualities exist only in the mind of the perceiver.

15. Attacks Innatism (Descartes)
Locke’s objections to innate ideas (“II’s”)
Lack of universal assent: II’s not known to idiots, children, illiterates
Dependence on authority:
“…a Man is not permitted without Censure to follow his own Thoughts in the search of Truth, when they lead him…out of the common Road”.
Epistemological and political commitment to the individual (who is the foundation of Locke’s political liberalism).