1. British Empiricists Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679
Extends over a period of time from late 16th century to early 20th.
Many forms but united by a two general themes:
Reaction against Descartes idea of ‘innate ideas’
All thought ultimately originates in sensory experience (sensory as opposed to ‘internal experience’ such as imagination or dreaming)
Inspired by success of Galileo and Newton. Sought to create a “physics of the mind”
Thomas Hobbes
Humans were the “machine within the machine”
Universe was matter in motion, human thought was brain matter in motion initiated by sense receptors.
Attention: senses limited, can only respond to one ‘motion’ at a time
Memory: persistence of motion initiated by sense activity
Motivation: driven by appetite (seek pleasure) and aversion (avoid pain)
Determinism: no free-will, thought and behavior all determined by natural laws.
Thought: directed by law of contingency (Aristotle). Sensory events that co-occur tend to be related or ‘in motion’ together in the brain. Events associated with pleasure are attractive, pain are repulsive.
Held a generally pessimistic view of human nature. Society was obligated to restrain natural human impulses toward violence, power, and self-gratification

2. British Empiricists John Locke 1632-1704
Rejected Hobbsian materialism for mind/body dualism, but offered no specific account of how immaterial mind could affect material body.
Rejected Cartesian innate ideas. If humans have a set of common ideas, it is because they have similar experiences.
Ideas (mental images) arise from sensation or reflection. In reflection ideas can be re-arranged into novel ideas (comparing, combining, relating). But even novel ideas have origins in sensory experience.
Primary qualities: qualities of external signals that when subjectively experience correspond to external reality. Ex: movement
Secondary qualities: qualities of external signals that when subjectively experienced do not correspond to external reality. Ex. Color.
Locke’s associative learning: natural associations (thunder-lightening, smell of bread-taste of bread) are adaptive. Mistaken, coincidental, or chance lead to maladaptive behavior or madness.
Paradox of the basins: One hand in hot water and the other in cold. Temperature experience could be primary or secondary quality. But taking each hand out and putting them simultaneously in warm water shows that temperature is entirely subjective. One hand is hot (previously in cold water) while the other is cool.

3. British Empiricists George Berkeley 1685-1753
God in the Quad There was a young man who said "God Must find it exceedingly odd To think that the tree Should continue to be When there's no one about in the quad." Reply: "Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; I am always about in the quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God."
George Berkeley
Idealist/Empiricist: knowledge arises from experience but all experience is perception.
The universe may only be matter, but matter only exist to the extent that it is perceived. “To be is to be perceived.”
Does the external world exists if unperceived? It does because God is the ever-present perceiver. The universe are ideas in God’s mind.
Against Locke: there are no primary qualities of objects, only secondary qualities.
Theory of perception: all named objects are aggregates of different associated sensations. Bread is consistently associated visual (shape), tactual (feel), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste) experience we have when particular sensory experience occurs over time. These combined sensory signals create an “idea” in the mind we call bread.
Understanding of distance is built up over time through combined (multi-modal) sensory experiences. Visual image of toy is associated with reach required to obtain toy. Combined Image-reach experience provides information about distance. Contra Descartes ‘visual geometry’ theory. Both turn out to have some validity. Visual geometry corresponding to convergence, ocular-motor, and disparity cues of depth/distance.

4. British Empiricists David Hume 1711-1776
Sought to create an empirical science of human experience and behavior model on the success of Newtonian physics.
Inductive method inspired by Bacon. Careful observation of human experience and its relation to behavior from which general principles might be derived.
Agreed with Berkeley that all we can know is what we perceive including our sense of self and mind, in other words we only exist to the extent that we perceive ourselves perceiving or thinking. But disagreed that reality was only perception.
Impressions: strong, attended to, vivid, emotion-laden sensation. Ideas: faded, recalled, reflected upon, faint ‘images’ of impressions. Imagination: the process of combining and rearranging ideas into complex ideas, which may not correspond directly to sense impressions. Association of ideas can create beliefs, which allow prediction or expectation that one event will follow another. “Will loves money, so losing the bet will anger him’
Laws of association: resemblance – categorical similar ideas associated together; contiguity – experience together; causation – effects associated with causes and vice-versa
Theory of motivation based on passions: Ideas don’t drive behavior, passions associated with ideas do. Certain emotions (passions) give rise to certain behaviors (anger leads to aggression). While there is commonality across humans in passions, passions vary in degree. These varying patterns of intensity of passions across individuals constitute character.

5. British Empiricists James Mill 1773-1836 David Hartley 1705- 1757
Sought to provide more detail on thought and mental laws of association
Complex ideas are combinations of simple ideas. Grandmother is combination of visual image (face), audition (voice), tactual (hug) and associated experience (cookies, house, etc.). All complex can be reduced to simple
Strengths of association determined by vividness (pleasure and pain) and frequency (repetition of co-occurrence of sensations).
David Hartley
Tried to explore physiology behind association using the idea of vibratiuncles – weakened but persistant vibrations in the brain following sense stimulation. Association of ideas resulted from spreading of vibrations
Early form of Hebbian brain circuits.
Proposed early theory of skill development. Behavior starts as reflexive (automatic or involuntary) gradually comes under conscious control (voluntary). But with constant use, voluntary behavior eventually becomes habit again.

6. British Empiricists Alexander Bain 1818-1903
Friend of J.S. Mill, but followed in the footsteps of Hartley in trying to connect physiology with thought.
Authored what are considered to be earliest textbooks on sensory function and emotions.
First to propose that learning might occur due to growth in brain cell junctions (synapses).
To earlier laws of association he added: Law of compound (more than one) association (which leads to multiple cues in aiding recall); constructive association (creativity)
John Stuart Mill
Advocated ‘mental chemistry’ complex ideas are not aggregates of simple ideas but automatic chemical combinations, therefore not reducible and not consciously controllable.
Sought a science of human nature as rigorous and deterministic as physical science, but inexact similar to meteorology.
Primary laws: fundamental laws that govern a system’s activity (laws of physics). Secondary laws: periodically intervening laws that create variation in the system.
Science of human nature had primary laws (laws of association derived by Bes). Still in search of complete set of secondary laws. Secondary laws could be discovered in the study of ethology (character development). Unfortunately Mill never spelled out how ethology should be done.
Provided early description of spontaneous activity or emitted behaviors subject to reinforcement or punishment (non-reinforcement)

7. French Sensationalists
Similar to BEs: Inspired by success of physics. Saw humans as machines governed by natural law.
FS belief in experience as deterministic of thought ultimately lead to Helvetius’ claim ‘control the contents of experience and you control the mind.’ No all that different from John Watson’s later claim about behaviorism.
Pierre Gassendi Disagreed with Descartes are just about everything. Materialist/monist (non-dualist). Action defines existence, not thought. Enamored of early Greek Atomists (Democritus, Epicurus).
Julien de La Mettrie Physician – argued against Cartesian dualism by citing effects of food, wine, drugs etc. on thought. Bodily states effect mental states (and vice-versa). Brain size and ‘quality’ effect intelligence and personality. Brain, language and education separate humans from other animals. Argued for the moral superiority of materialistic view over dualist view
Etienne Bonnot de Condillac All mental functions derive from sensation, memory, and hedonism. We direct attention to sensory signals that aroused either pain or pleasure, these are remembered and compared with other stored sense signals to form abstract ideas. Duration of sensory experience constitutes our understanding of time. Use sentient statue example to highlight point.

8. Positivism
Idea that the only reliable knowledge was publically observable. Anti-subjectivist, i.e. subjective experience was unreliable.
Closely associated with scientism: idea that the best publically observable events were scientifically validated ones, i.e. only science gives us reliable knowledge. Which can lead to a “religious-like” devotion to science.
Ernst Mach : A kinder-gentler positivism. Science cannot avoid the subjective because ultimately all observables are mental events. But subjective mental events must be empirically verified to be reliable.
August Comte Law of three stages. Held for both individuals and societies