Empiricists are philosophers who argue that knowledge comes from sensory experience. This means that whatever we experience through our senses are the only ideas that can be epistemically justified. John Locke, David Hume, and George Berkley are three of the most influential empiricists in modern philosophical history. Though sharing the same premise about knowledge stemming from sensory experience and having some common ground in certain areas, each philosopher had different views on what we can and cannot know through empirical evidence about the universe. This paper will look at each philosopher’s argument, point out what philosopher does the best at arguing for the empirical state of the world and God, and finally use the best arguments to show everything we can truly know through empirical justification. John Locke's account of knowledge can be summed up in that we can know ideas of modes and not ideas of substances. This will become much clearer as we delve into why and how John Locke comes to this conclusion. To begin with, John Locke throws away the longstanding notion that we can have innate ideas, thus disallowing those ideas to play a part in justified knowledge. Locke's argument is that if innate ideas exist, then they must be in every single human without them being taught. Locke points out that there is no justification of this. If innate ideas existed, then wouldn't infants and those with a lack of intelligent know them as well? Locke states that innate ideas are not in these individuals. Innate idea enthusiasts would state then that they would have to be shown the way to recover these innate ideas. Locke again argues against this by stating that if one has to use reason to know innate ideas, then one couldn’t tell ... ... middle of paper ... ...cal standpoint, has the strongest argument for the existence of God. The conclusion this paper has reached thus far is the Berkley has the best argument for the universe while Hume trumps the other two in his argument for God. However, the ultimate question arises: what do we know with any certainty? In an empirical sense, we can come to the conclusion that the universe is nothing more than ideas in which, in Berkley's terms, spirits (us) perceive and interpret. Due to us not epistemically knowing whether each other exist, then the world consists of whatever ideas we experience in our own mind. We can't know whether the physical world actually exists, whether there is a God, or whether even our bodies exist. This is due to our sensations of ideas being the only thing we can experience which is. as stated before, the baseline argument for what constitutes knowledge.
The intricacy of a simple time telling device has sparked controversy about the creation of the universe. In William Paley’s “The Analogical Teleological Argument” he argues that the universe must have been created by a universe maker, God, due to its complexity. However, David Hume, provides an empiricist objection by arguing that one cannot prove the existence of a universe maker due to lack of experience regarding the creation of a universe. Ultimately, I will argue that Paley’s argument by design is not sufficient for proving God 's existence because, as individuals, we cannot assume that the world works the way we wish it.
One of Locke’s largest points is "All ideas come from sensation or reflection” (Locke 101). He thinks that man is completely blank when they are born and that their basic senses are what gives them knowledge. Locke states, “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper” (Locke 101). Locke is basically saying that human nature is like a blank slate, and how men experience life in their own ways is what makes them good or evil. Overall, Locke believes that any and all knowledge is only gained through life
Our principals and beliefs people choose to follow in life are based on experiences, sensations, and reflections, they are not innate in nature. Even though our knowledge and ideas come from experience, sensation, and reflections, Socrates states in “The Allegory of the Cave”, our minds can create false realities that we may perceive as being the truth. Locke’s beliefs in this essay are very similar to mine, almost exact. I do not believe that we have innate ideas. I believe that everybody has different minds and opinions. At the top of this essay there is a quote that states, rationalist are like spiders who ‘spin webs out of themselves’ while empiricist are more like bees who ‘collect material from the outside world and turn it into something valuable’”(qtd. in Thompson). The way I see it, everybody learns from experience. For example, in lacrosse everybody sucks in the beginning because they lack the experience of playing but with practice, they gain knowledge and experience of the game. Another aspect that I agree with Locke on is how nobody has the same principles and can change and form their own. I think that everybody has the freedom and the consciousness to make there own principles and ideas, which is one thing that make us
In this paper I will describe the foundationalist structure of Descartes’ arguments in his work Meditations on First Philosophy. Foundationalism is the view that there are some beliefs are epistemologically basic and can be known without knowing anything else is true (Loeb, Lecture 1-14). For example, philosophers such as Descartes would acknowledge that geometric truths, such as 2 + 2 = 4, are so fundamental that they don’t need to be proven through argumentation. Thus, these truths can provide the basic foundation for further arguments. In my paper, I will show that two foundational claims of Descartes are first, the existence of the mind, and second, the existence of God. From these claims Descartes derives many others, including the argument for material objects and souls. As I lay out Descartes’ case, I will examine the philosophical soundness and validity of his foundationalist account, as well as its merits and potential weaknesses. In the end, I will conclude that Descartes’ foundationalism, while alluring in its simplicity, does not survive deeper investigation.
Locke considers the basis of knowledge to be the acquiring of ideas, rather than an innate understanding of a topic. He states that knowledge can only be learned either through physical sensation or by the mind “reflecting on its own operations within itself” (6). In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke also explains an effective manner of learning, describing that his own ideas are “not the product of some superficial thoughts, or much reading; but the effect of experience and observation” (9). A teacher, according to Locke, can take a student so far, but “no body ever went far in knowledge, or became eminent in any of the sciences, by the discipline and constraint of a master” (10). Essentially, the majority of a student’s learning occurs outside the classroom, as long as it is a topic the student feels motivated to pursue beyond school. That being said, Locke also points out that “our education fits us rather for the university than the world” (11). Taking all of this into consideration, Locke seems to believe the purpose of education is to teach students about topics they
Locke’s Theory of knowledge against Descartes which he believes there are no such innate ideas. He explains that if the idea is truly in one’s mind then it must be understood and some humans do not understand these ideas. From his evident, the noncontradiction law, “it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be”. For example, I work or not work on the philosophy exam but I just can’t do both of them at the same time. He considers the innate ideas are too extreme for humans being to understand and therefore we should reject them. Another Locke’s argument is that if innate idea exists, then it must appear to our minds prior before the instruction. When he mentions about the minds of young children whic...
Almost all epistemologists, since Edmund Gettier’s 1963 article, have agreed that he disproved the justified-true-belief conception of knowledge. He proposed two examples
Locke feels that we do not have any innate ideas. Then the question arises of
Rationalists would claim that knowledge comes from reason or ideas, while empiricists would answer that knowledge is derived from the senses or impressions. The difference between these two philosophical schools of thought, with respect to the distinction between ideas and impressions, can be examined in order to determine how these schools determine the source of knowledge. The distinguishing factor that determines the perspective on the foundation of knowledge is the concept of the divine.
But having the capacity to inquiry about His existence, it also gave me more knowledge about people who do not believe. I can understand now that people who does not believe, has enough reasons not too. We, people, are given our free will, to have our own choices, whether to believe in God or not. That’s why I now understand that it is not a sin if one does not believe in God. This paper has given me enough knowledge to understand the importance of knowing the different philosophical positions on the existence of God.
So the mind at birth is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, and is informed only by “experience,” that is, by sense experience and acts of reflection. Locke built from this an epistemology beginning with a pair of distinctions: one between SIMPLE and COMPLEX ideas and another between PRIMARY and SECONDARY qualities. Simple ideas originate in any one sense (though some of them, like “motion,” can derive either from the sense of sight or the sense of touch). These ideas are simple in the sense that they cannot be further broken down into yet simpler entities. (If a person does not understand the idea of “yellow,” you can’t explain it to him. All you can do is point to a sample and say, yellow.) These simple ideas are Locke’s primary data, his psychological atoms. All knowledge is in one way or another built up out of them.
That everything in our mind is in idea. It all could be developed by human reason, not innate ideas. Locke goes on to describe his theory in order for your mind to gain knowledge humans will have to fill it up their brain with ideas, and learn through their five senses. Since, the innate ideas was not that relevant to Locke he needed to come up with another perceptions. Locke then suggested that external experience called as sensations; this experience which we can attain our knowledge through our senses that we have such as smells, touch and color. In other words, it is about analyses the characteristics of an object. The second kind of experience which Locke mentions is internal experience known as reflection, it is summarize those personal experience such as our thoughts, thinking, and feelings. He says that all knowledge come from sensations or reflection, “These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have,” (page186). Therefore, the sense and observation make up the whole of knowledge. On the contrary, as for Descartes views he believes we do have innate
The first philosopher, John Locke, laid the foundations of modern empiricism. Locke is a representational realist who touches reality through feelings. He believes that experience gives us knowledge (ideas) that makes us able to deal with the world external to our minds. His meaning of ideas is "the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding." Locke's ideas consist of simply ideas which turn into complex ideas. Simple ideas are the thoughts that the mind cannot know an idea that it has not experienced. The two types of simple ideas are; sensation and reflection. Sensation is the idea that we have such qualities as yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, and sweet. Reflection ideas are gained from our experience of our own mental operations. Complex ideas are combinations of simple ideas that can be handled as joined objects and given their own names. These ideas are manufactured in the human mind by the application of its higher powers. Locke believes in two kinds of qualities that an object must have; primary and secondary. Primary qualities o...
ABSTRACT: Curiously, in the late twentieth century, even agnostic cosmologists like Stephen Hawking—who is often compared with Einstein—pose metascientific questions concerning a Creator and the cosmos, which science per se is unable to answer. Modern science of the brain, e.g. Roger Penrose's Shadows of the Mind (1994), is only beginning to explore the relationship between the brain and the mind-the physiological and the epistemic. Galileo thought that God's two books-Nature and the Word-cannot be in conflict, since both have a common author: God. This entails, inter alia, that science and faith are to two roads to the Creator-God. David Granby recalls that once upon a time, science and religion were perceived as complementary enterprises, with each scientific advance confirming the grandeur of a Superior Intelligence-God. Are we then at the threshold of a new era of fruitful dialogue between science and religion, one that is mediated by philosophy in the classical sense? In this paper I explore this question in greater detail.
Empiricists claim that knowledge does not directly originate from reason, but it originates from experience. Empiricists also believe in reason, but assert that reason is a way to augment knowledge that derives from experiences. Empiricists contend that reality is the essence which produces theory through experience. This makes empiricism a reductionist epistemology as well as it reduces the idea of truth to experiences (Resnick & Wolff, 1987). One can argue that our thoughts literally contribute to our experiences and similarly our experiences help us to constitute our thoughts. Both events are connected to each other and each event helps to shape the other. This implies neither empiricism nor rationalism can be utilized as a fair way to deliver the