1. Phil – 10 Into to Philosophy
Empiricism

2. Mid-term
• Everyone should be getting an A
– 35 response questions
– 10 definitions
– 5 quizzes

3. CSU Vs. UC
• Knowledge vs. brilliance or innovation?

4. Mid-term
• Feedback
– Time constraints
• Types of questions
– Longer times for definition study
– Some did not get their response questions
back - how to make this better?
– Where to go from here?
• We will see……

5. Extra credit
• Philosophy Center (sign in and shoot me an email letting me know)
– Location: FOB 231
Hours: T-W 11-4
• Presentations – Shoot me an email letting me know your interested
– 2-5 min
• To Kill a Mocking Bird – bring a ticket stub
– Wednesday 7
– Thursday 7
– Friday 7
– Saturday 7
– Give a free-form response to the play – 1 page
• Have you encountered racism?
• Do you think racism still exist?
• Even if “race” does not exist scientifically, does the societal conception of it
still effect society?

6. Empiricism
• Remember the scientific revolution?
• Bacon (theorized about science)

7. Empiricist Philosophers
• John Locke (1632 - 1704)
• George Berkeley (1632-1704)
• David Hume (1711-1776) Solomon Loses

8. Rationalism vs. Empiricism
• Rationalists claim that there are significant
ways in which our concepts and knowledge are
gained independently of sense experience.
• Empiricists claim that sense experience is the
ultimate source of all our concepts and
knowledge.
• Video:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8wh8C7lP7U

9. Rationalism
• The Intuition/Deduction Thesis
• The Innate Knowledge Thesis
• The Innate Concept Thesis

10. Empiricism
• True knowledge is gained from experience
• The Empiricism Thesis: We have no
source of knowledge in S or for the
concepts we use in S other than sense
experience.

11. Empiricism
• Empiricism about a particular subject
rejects the corresponding version of the
Intuition/Deduction thesis and Innate
Knowledge thesis.
• Insofar as we have knowledge in the
subject, our knowledge is a posteriori,
dependent upon sense experience.

12. Empiricism
• Empiricists also deny the implication of
the corresponding Innate Concept thesis
that we have innate ideas in the subject
area. Sense experience is our only source
of ideas.

13. Empiricism
• They reject the corresponding version of
the Superiority of Reason thesis. Since
reason alone does not give us any
knowledge, it certainly does not give us
superior knowledge.

14. Empiricism
• Empiricists generally reject the
Indispensability of Reason thesis, though
they need not.

15. Empiricism
• The Empiricism thesis does not entail that
we have empirical knowledge. It entails
that knowledge can only be gained, if at
all, by experience.

16. John Locke (1632 - 1704)
• Biography: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=StBlNYX7HBU&feature=related
• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
• Some philosophers before Locke had suggested
that it would be good to find the limits of the
Understanding, but what Locke does is to carry
out this project in detail.

17. John Locke (1632 - 1704)
• In Book II Locke claims that ideas are the
materials of knowledge and all ideas come
from experience. The term ‘idea,’ Locke
tells us “…stands for whatsoever is the
Object of the Understanding, when a man
thinks” (Essay I, 1, 8, p. 47).

18. John Locke (1632 - 1704)
• Experience is of two kinds, sensation and
reflection. One of these — sensation —
tells us about things and processes in the
external world. The other — reflection —
tells us about the operations of our own
minds.

19. John Locke (1632 - 1704)
• Reflection is a sort of internal sense that
makes us conscious of the mental
processes we are engaged in. Some ideas
we get only from sensation, some only
from reflection and some from both.
• Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=X-buzVjYQvY

20. John Locke (1632 - 1704)
• Locke raises the issue of just what innate
knowledge is. Particular instances of
knowledge are supposed to be in our
minds as part of our rational make-up, but
how are they "in our minds"?

21. John Locke (1632 - 1704)
• If the implication is that we all consciously have
this knowledge, it is plainly false. Propositions
often given as examples of innate knowledge,
even such plausible candidates as the principle
that the same thing cannot both be and not be,
are not consciously accepted by children and
idiots. If the point of calling such principles
"innate" is not to imply that they are or have
been consciously accepted by all rational
beings, then it is hard to see what the point is.

22. John Locke (1632 - 1704)
• "No proposition can be said to be in the
mind, which it never yet knew, which it
never yet was conscious of" (Essay
Concerning Human Understanding, Book
I, Chapter II, Section 5, p. 61).

23. Berkeley (1632-1704)
• Berkeley was born in 1685 near Kilkenny,
Ireland.
• Berkeley's first important published
work, An Essay Towards a New Theory of
Vision (1709), was an influential
contribution to the psychology of vision
and also developed doctrines relevant to
his idealist project.

24. Berkeley (1632-1704)
• In his mid-twenties, he published his most
enduring works, the Treatise concerning
the Principles of Human
Knowledge (1710) and the Three
Dialogues between Hylas and
Philonous (1713),

25. Berkeley (1632-1704)
• Principles 4:
• It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men,
that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible
objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from
their being perceived by the understanding. But with how
great an assurance and acquiescence so ever this
principle may be entertained in the world; yet whoever
shall find in his heart to call it in question, may, if I
mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest
contradiction. For what are the forementioned objects
but the things we perceive by sense, and what do we
perceive besides our own ideas or sensations; and is it
not plainly repugnant that any one of these or any
combination of them should exist unperceived?

26. Berkeley (1632-1704)
• Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
vdDPrmOHFPo

27. Berkeley (1632-1704)
• Berkeley presents here the following
argument:
• (1) We perceive ordinary objects (houses,
mountains, etc.).(2) We perceive only
ideas.
• Therefore,
• (3) Ordinary objects are ideas.

28. Berkeley (1632-1704)
• The argument is valid, and premise (1) looks
hard to deny.
• What about premise (2)? Berkeley believes that
this premise is accepted by all the modern
philosophers. In the Principles, Berkeley is
operating within the idea-theoretic tradition of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In
particular, Berkeley believes that some version
of this premise is accepted by his main targets,
the influential philosophers Descartes and
Locke.

29. Berkeley (1632-1704)
• However, Berkeley recognizes that these
philosophers have an obvious response
available to this argument. This response
blocks Berkeley's inference to (3) by
distinguishing two sorts of perception,
mediate and immediate.

30. Berkeley (1632-1704)
• Thus, premises (1) and (2) are replaced
by the claims that (1′) we mediately
perceive ordinary objects, while (2′) we
immediately perceive only ideas. From
these claims, of course, no idealist
conclusion follows.

31. Berkeley (1632-1704)
• The response reflects a representationalist
theory of perception, according to which we
indirectly (mediately) perceive material things, by
directly (immediately) perceiving ideas, which
are mind-dependent items. The
ideas represent external material objects, and
thereby allow us to perceive them.
• Video:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTd3ypNu0IU

32. Berkeley (1632-1704)
• Idealist – The only things that exist are
ideas.
• If strict empiricism is true then things do
not exist when they are not observed.
• Berkeley’s jump – God causes ideas in
our mind and observes everything when
we are not.

33. Hume (1711-1776)
• A master stylist in any genre, Hume's major
philosophical works —
• A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740)
• the Enquiries concerning Human
Understanding (1748)
• Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)
• Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779)
• Video:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=BQ2qjVkMj6s&feature=related

34. Hume (1711-1776)
• For Hume, all the materials of thinking
— perceptions — are derived either
from sensation (“outward sentiment”) or
from reflection (“inward sentiment”) (EHU,
19).

35. Hume (1711-1776)
• He divides perceptions into two
categories, distinguished by their different
degrees of force and vivacity. Our “more
feeble” perceptions, ideas, are ultimately
derived from our
livelier impressions (EHU, Section II; T,
I.i.1-2).

36. Hume (1711-1776)
• Although we permute and combine ideas
in the imagination to form complex ideas
of things we haven't experienced, Hume is
adamant that our creative powers extend
no farther than “the materials afforded us
by the senses and experience.”

37. Hume (1711-1776)
• complex ideas are composed of simple
ideas, which are fainter copies of the
simple impressions from which they are
ultimately derived, to which they
correspond and exactly resemble.

38. Hume (1711-1776)
• Hume offers this “general proposition” as
his “first principle…in the science of
human nature” (T, 7). Usually called the
“Copy Principle,” Hume's distinctive brand
of empiricism is often identified with his
commitment to it.

39. Hume (1711-1776)
• Hume presents the Copy Principle as an
empirical thesis. He emphasizes this point
by offering “one contradictory
phenomenon” (T, 5-6; EHU, 20-21) — the
infamous missing shade of blue — as an
empirical counterexample to the Copy
Principle.

40. Hume (1711-1776)
• Bundle theory of identity - Where is the
self?
• Though we've changed in many respects,
the same person appears present as was
present then. We might start thinking
about which features can be changed
without changing the underlying self.

41. Hume (1711-1776)
• Hume, however, denies that there is a distinction
between the various features of a person and
the mysterious self that supposedly bears those
features.
• “We are never intimately conscious of anything
but a particular perception; man is a bundle or
collection of different perceptions which succeed
one another with an inconceivable rapidity and
are in perpetual flux and movement"

42. Hume (1711-1776
• Cause and Effect cannot be verified by empirical
means. This leads to the problem of induction:
Induction (opposed to deduction) always has the
ability to be fallible  all knowledge gained from
sense experience is probabilistic  science is
based on a fallacy and therefore could be wrong
• Cause and effect: http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tZ6L7QNFws
• Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=r3QZ2Ko-FOg

43. • John Locke (1632 - 1704) - original
empiricist
• George Berkeley (1632-1704) - Idealist
• David Hume (1711-1776) – took
Empiricism to its rational ends

44. Terms to know
• Empiricism (The • Mediate vs.
Empiricism Thesis) immediate
• Idea (complex and • Representationalism
simple) • Copy Principle
• Impression • Missing shade of blue
• Sensation and • Bundle theory
reflection • Cause and Effect
• Innate knowledge • The problem of
• Idealism induction