Empiricism

1
Empiricism

2
Concept Empiricism

• All concepts from experience none innate
• Aquinas Nothing is in the mind without first
  being in the senses.
• Hume . . . all our ideas are nothing but copies
  of our impressions, or, in other words, it is
  impossible for us to think of anything, which we
  have not antecedently felt, either by our
  external or internal senses.

3
Judgment Empiricism

• All knowledge of the world comes from experience
• There are no synthetic a priori truths

4
Concept Judgment

• Synthetic a priori judgments would have to
  contain innate concepts
• If we have no a priori concepts, we cant have
  any a priori knowledge

5
Concept Judgment

• Locke Had those who would persuade us that
  there are innate principles not taken them
  together in gross, but considered separately the
  parts out of which those propositions are made,
  they would not, perhaps, have been so forward to
  believe they were innate. Since, if the ideas
  which made up those truths were not, it was
  impossible that the propositions made up of them
  should be innate, or our knowledge of them be
  born with us.

6
Concept Judgment

• For, if the ideas be not innate, there was a
  time when the mind was without those principles
  and then they will not be innate, but be derived
  from some other original. For, where the ideas
  themselves are not, there can be no knowledge, no
  assent, no mental or verbal propositions about
  them.

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Two Kinds of Experience

• Sensation
• Vision
• Hearing
• Smell
• Taste
• Touch
• Reflection

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Kinds of experience

• Locke All ideas come from sensation or
  reflection. 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?
  Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy
  and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with
  an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the
  materials of reason and knowledge?

9
Kinds of experience

• To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE.
  In that all our knowledge is founded and from
  that it ultimately derives itself. Our
  observation employed either, about external
  sensible objects, or about the internal
  operations of our minds perceived and reflected
  on by ourselves, is that which supplies our
  understandings with all the materials of
  thinking. These two are the fountains of
  knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or
  can naturally have, do spring.

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Distinctions

• Impressions Ideas
• Impressions received by external or internal
  senses
• Ideas are copies of impressions
• Simple Complex Impressions and Ideas
• Complex ideas are compounds of other ideas
• Simple ideas arent

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Simple Ideas

• Simple ideas
• come from simple impressions
• Represent them exactly
• Hume "all our simple ideas in their first
  appearance are deriv'd from simple impressions,
  which are correspondent to them, and which they
  exactly represent."

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Empiricists Method

• Analyze complex ideas into simple ideas
• Find origins of simple ideas in experience
• Content of the idea lies in simple impression(s)
  from which it comes

13
Ideas are weak

• All ideas, especially abstract ones, are
  naturally faint and obscure The mind has but a
  slender hold of them They are apt to be
  confounded with other resembling ideas and when
  we have often employed any term, though without a
  distinct meaning, we are apt to imagine it has a
  determinate idea, annexed to it.

14
Impressions are strong

• On the contrary, all impressions, that is, all
  sensations, either outward or inward, are strong
  and vivid The limits between them are more
  exactly determined Nor is it easy to fall into
  any error or mistake in regard to them.

15
Humes Method

• When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion,
  that a philosophical term is employed without any
  meaning or idea (as is but too frequent), we need
  but enquire, from what impression is that
  supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to
  assign any, this will serve to confirm our
  suspicion. By bringing ideas into so clear a
  light, we may reasonably hope to remove all
  dispute, which may arise, concerning their nature
  and reality.

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Kinds of Knowledge

• Analytic a priori
• Logic
• Definitions
• Mathematics
• Synthetic a posteriori
• Natural science

17
Test for Nonsense

• Hume When we run over libraries, persuaded of
  these principles, what havoc must we make? If we
  take in our hand any volume of divinity or
  school metaphysics, for instance let us ask,
  Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning
  quantity or number? No. Does it contain any
  experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact
  and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames
  For it can contain nothing but sophistry and
  illusion.

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Arguments for Rationalism

• Universality
• All experience is particular
• Particular -/- universal
• Necessity
• All experience is contingent
• Contingent -/- necessary

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Universality

• We move from particular to universal in induction
• Instances generalization
• What justifies this move?
• It doesnt follow not logic
• Rationalist innate idea or principle
• Hume nothing

20
Inductive Inferences

• All observed ravens have been black so, all
  ravens are black
• When Ive eaten bread, Ive found it nourishing
  so, bread is nourishing
• When the sun sets, it rises the next morning so,
  the sun always rises

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Scandal of Induction

• Justification for inductive reasoning is not a
  priori
• Not necessary the next raven might be white
• Justification is not a posteriori
• That would be an appeal to experience
• But thats just whats at issue!

22
Humes Circle

• We have said, that all arguments concerning
  existence are founded on the relation of cause
  and effect that our knowledge of that relation
  is derived entirely from experience and that all
  our experimental conclusions proceed upon the
  supposition, that the future will be conformable
  to the past. To endeavor, therefore, the proof of
  this last supposition by probable arguments, or
  arguments regarding existence, must be evidently
  going in a circle, and taking that for granted,
  which is the very point in question.

23
Humes Tangent

• . . . after the constant conjunction of two
  objects, heat and flame, for instance, weight and
  solidity, we are determined by custom alone to
  expect the one from the appearance of the other.
  This hypothesis seems even the only one, which
  explains the difficulty, why we draw, from a
  thousand instances, an inference, which we are
  not able to draw from one instance, that is, in
  no respect, different from them. Reason is
  incapable of any such variation.

24
Humes Tangent

• The conclusions, which it draws from considering
  one circle, are the same which it would form upon
  surveying all the circles in the universe. But no
  man, having seen only one body move after being
  impelled by another, could infer, that every
  other body will move after a like impulse. All
  inferences from experience, therefore, are
  effects of custom, not of reasoning.

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Two inductive arguments

• This flame is hot
• So, all flames are hot ??? Unacceptable
• This flame is hot
• That flame is hot
• That one is too!
• . . .
• So, all flames are hot Acceptable

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Humes Skeptical Solution

• There is no rational justification for inductive
  inference
• Based on habit or custom, not reason

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Necessity

• We make causal inferences
• Cause effect
• Effect cause
• What justifies them?
• Not a priori We can imagine it otherwise
• Not a posteriori We dont experience the causal
  link

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Necessity

• When we look about us towards external objects,
  and consider the operation of causes, we are
  never able, in a single instance, to discover any
  power or necessary connexion any quality, which
  binds the effect to the cause, and renders the
  one an infallible consequence of the other.

29
Constant Conjunction

• We only find, that the one does actually, in
  fact, follow the other. The impulse of one
  billiard-ball is attended with motion in the
  second. This is the whole that appears to the
  outward senses. . . .

30
Necessity

• So that, upon the whole, there appears not,
  throughout all nature, any one instance of
  connexion which is conceivable by us. All events
  seem entirely loose and separate. One event
  follows another but we never can observe any tie
  between them. They seem conjoined, but never
  connected.

31
Instances

• From one instance, we can infer nothing
• From repeated instances, we infer causal link
• But nothing in the world changes
• What does? Our feeling of expectation.

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Origin of idea of causation

• Constant conjunction of events
• Feeling of expectation (internal impression)
• Ideas of causation and necessity

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The source within

• Necessity and causation arent in the world
• These ideas come from something in us
• Necessity . . . Exists in the mind, not in
  objects.
• We project regularity onto the world

34
Projection

• 'Tis a common observation, that the mind has a
  great propensity to spread itself on external
  objects, and to conjoin with them any internal
  impressions, which they occasion, and which
  always make their appearance at the same time
  that these objects discover themselves to the
  senses.

35
Projection

• Empiricism source of all ideas is experience
• We cant find sources for certain ideas in
  experience of the world
• Examples self, identity, morality, universality,
  necessity
• Source is an internal impression
• We project these things onto the world