Powerpoint Highlights Empiricism

All knowledge comes from experience (sense-perception) empeiros Tabula rasa: blank slate All knowledge comes from experience (sense-perception) The Empirical Approach

Perception “What can give us surer knowledge than our senses? With what else can we distinguish the true from the false?”---Lucretius

Three Anchor Points of Empiricism (1) The only source of genuine knowledge is sense experience (2) Reason is an unreliable and inadequate route to knowledge unless it is grounded in the Solid Bedrock of Sense Experience (3) There is no evidence of innate ideas within the mind that are known apart from experience.

The Empiricism of John Locke Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? .... To this I answer in one word, from experience. The great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call sensation

Locke’s primary and secondary qualities

George Berkeley "Esse est percipi" (To Be is to Be Perceived) 1685-1753

Berkeley’s view of reality

All that you believe to be true… Is merely your perception… Reality lies in your perception of your experience Matter does not exist apart from its perception: idealism

If knowledge lies in experience of perception, what implications does this have for: Choose a subject: The Red/Blue divide in public opinion research Violent Video games’ effect on Propensity to Commit Violent Acts

David Hume All that we learn is from experience Perceptions and Ideas that arise from The Problem of Induction; we assume that the future will be like the past.. Our understanding of cause and effect is based on experience Hume is ultimately a skeptic. 1711-1776

Can we know ourselves…. We only experience a stream of consciousness---of perceptions— regarding who we are.. We can never truly know ourselves…. Hume’s denial of self-knowledge….

All knowledge comes from experience…Perplexing Problems The Existence of God Infinity Moral goodness