Compare And Contrast Locke And Empiricism

While empiricism is the theory that knowledge is derived from sense perception, there are varying degrees. Radical empiricists believe that all knowledge results from experience, while more moderate empiricists believe that experience is the basis of all knowledge except for analytic statements which are considered logical truths. Similarly, synthetic statements are considered by such empiricists as empirical truths. Empiricists stress the importance of observation. Unlike rationalists who believe in the existence of priori knowledge that can be deduced through reason, empiricists believe in posteriori knowledge, knowledge resulting from or dependent on experience, more specifically from sense perception. The implication of believing that all ideas are derived from experience is that there is no such thing as an innate idea. Another crucial difference between rationalism and empiricism is that because it involves induction instead of deduction, it can’t be as certain as a sound deductive argument – it can be at best probable. Locke was influenced by Hobbes, and so it makes sense that there is a degree of

Locke takes many of Hobbes’ solid empirical ideas and perverts them into pseudo-empirical ideas. Hobbes and Locke share several titles such as nominalist, only Hobbes is sounder in his argument that there is nothing universal beyond names, while Locke complicates and considerably weakens his nominalist argument by reversing his denial of essence to form the idea of nominal essence vs. true essence. A striking inconsistency occurs when Locke immediately after classifying the problems with language and arguing against the concept of things having essence proceeds to contradict himself by dividing essence into nominal and true essence so that he can later form his nominalist view of