Empiricism– Locke and Hume
… Hume is very well known and appreciated. Applies to journalism because we should care about what is true and how we know this. Empiricists question if it is true, can I test, can I speak to primary source?
Opposite to last seminar.. Descartes = rationalist.
Epistemology – theory of knowledge – about how we get our knowledge and how we can get to think about the world.
Empiricism is set against rationalism. Locke v Descartes
I am an empiricist because I believe in finding out about the world by doing things, experience counts for me. You have to go out and read newspaper to learn whats going on.
For the rationalist we can gain knowledge of the world just by thinking about it – Descartes (I think, therefore I am) – A priori. (BEFORE EXPERIENCE)
Division
Descartes – european.. Kant, Hegel.
Hume – Locke
A proposition is a priori if it can be known independently of all experience.
But for the empiricist any of our knowledge of the world has to come through our senses, our experience – A posteriori. (AFTER EXPERIENCE)
Rationalist thinks that someone who grows up in a box can have knowledge of the world but empiricist they can have no knowledge because they have no experience – evidence
Rationalists thought that our ideas are innate – that we’re born with them- Plato’s forms, Descartes trademark argument (Gods logo). Empiricists think are blank slate, and grow to have knowledge.
John Locke (1632-1704)
Seen as one of the first Empiricists – also important for political theory (Liberalism, Contract Theory)
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding – very influential – this book was very influential to Hume, and started the ball rolling, if you like, in terms of Empiricism.
Locke believed that our understanding comes from our experience which is worked on by our powers of reason to produce “real” knowledge.
Liberal.. Influential on politics.
Against idea of “innate ideas” – our minds at birth are a “blank slate” (Tabula rasa)
He thought that God had given mankind the ability to discover knowledge and morality so that innate ideas weren’t needed – God given faculties (The ability to reason and learn). (Remember his natural laws from contract theory)
Locke believed that our understanding comes from our experience, which is worked on by our powers of reason to produce real knowledge. We have sensory experience.. Data.. Reasoning.. = Knowledge. We produce info, not just take pictures and store in mind.
We are not simply cameras passively recording the world.
In the Epistle to the Reader: “Truly before they [ideas] are known, there is nothing of them in the mind but a capacity to know them.”
David Hume
Seen as the greatest philosopher to have written in English.
Hume was born in the Scottish Borders, south of Edinburgh in 1711 and died in 1776. Didn’t become a professor, atheist.
Known as “The Great Infidel” because of his attacks on religion.
He disagrees with Locke -although great respect for- he doesn’t think that there is a God given faculty called reason which processes experience into thoughts. He thinks it just happens naturally. Thinks we cannot believe anything.
Some critics attack him as an irrationalist because he is skeptical about the pretensions of reasons. But in fact Hume is very pro science, anti superstition.
During time of enlightenment – newton, clockwork, world is complicated, science helped to begin to understand.. We believed reason was possible to understand.. Hume believed reason is a small part of this.. Freud echoes Hume.
Hume very influenced by Locke – especially on view of epistemology.
Locke spoke about ideas (sensory data acted on by reason to produce ideas).
Hume speaks about perceptions (any content of the mind, what we first see) – refines Locke’s ideas.
Perceptions can be impressions (involves actual hearing, seeing, feeling, etc. What we experience) or ideas (thinking of something instead of actually experiencing it – it is a copy of an impression). Impression, Idea.
Beliefs can be separated into: Relations of ideas and matters of fact.
- Relations of ideas – a priori bond between ideas – 5+5=10, all bachelors are unmarried..
- Matters of fact – this is to do with experience, a posteriori. Hume thinks we know matters of fact things a process of cause and effect (we do this all the time.. Dropped phone, you think someone must have dropped it.. This is reasoning). But this relies of a belief in causation – and induction (irrational). Thus, on Hume’s view, all beliefs in matters of fact are fundamentally non-rational…
(See below for further explanation)
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Recall … Logic
- Deductive: In a valid argument if the premises are all true then the conclusion must be true too. (strongest but nothing new)
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Socrates is mortal.
- Inductive: Reason from the particular to the general. Aims to establish a conclusion to be true with some degree of probability. (science uses this, and we do too. A survey for example, shows that generally something is true, via sample of small group and apply to all. Although not as certain as deductive logic.)
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Induction
Typically we think what we’ve seen happen in the past is a good guide to what happens in the future.
But now how do we know that the future will resemble the past?
The search for natural laws has long been seen as the central task of science, at least since Newton. (Kegel, Galileo) ..We look for trends, (Valentines day everyone buys flowers, choc and wine so shops know to discount it– it is normal for it to work this way, based on example and applied generally).
The scientific method – Bacon etc – the scientist begins by carrying our experiments, makes observations, from this evidence the scientist attempts to build up general laws – using induction. The use of induction (doing it, practice) then becomes the demarcation between science and non-science.
The whole of science assumes the regularity of nature – assumes that the future will be like the past – yet there is no way that this assumption can be secured (can’t assume regularity). It cannot be established by observation, since we cannot observe future events.
David Hume had argued that was a problem about induction, namely that it’s unreliable [Turkey at Christmas, British PM before 1979] but we cannot help thinking in terms of them because of how we are physiologically constructed.
Just because happened in past does not mean will happen in future.. Hume used idea of sun.. How do you know it will rise? Future is unpredictable, even though can GUESS using patterns and past. We rely on this, but it has no reason.
“Hume’s problem” has baffled philosophers. Russell HWP pg 612: “Hume has proved that pure empiricism is not a basis for science.. Without the principle of induction, then science is impossible.” Science, technology etc all based on INDUCTION. But this has been proved doesn’t work.. So.. Science is apparently impossible.
Our justification for assuming that the future will be like the past is flimsy. Yet it is the basis of all our thought. It is custom and habit (just like animals, pavlovian theory in psychology, dog bell induces drooling, assume to continue that way) that guide us through life, not our powers of reason. It’s not that Hume wants us to abandon our trust in relations between causes and effects (as we wouldn’t trust anything, but we cannot live like this.. BUT journalists SHOULD be skeptical about everything): that would be impossible for us anyway. Rather he is demonstrating how little our behavior is dependent on reason and how much on our inherited nature and habits.
He has become relevant because of relativity and quantum mechanics – the world is a much more complicated place than we had imagined.
He’s not necessarily skeptical about for example whether the sun will rise tomorrow – he’s skeptical about the power of reason to tell you that the sun will rise tomorrow. Our confidence in the uniformity of nature might let us down. You can’t argue that it won’t. No degree of certainty.
On Miracles
For Hume, a miracle is a transgression of a law of nature, and one which is usually presumed to have been caused by God. Hume says that you should never believe people who claim to have witnessed a miracle unless it would be more miraculous that they were lying or deceived than that the miracle occurred. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Proportion belief to the available evidence. (Miracles are impossible?)
(Example: David Icke – believes world is ruled by lizards, Obama is a lizard, drink blood of children, very scientologist.)
I will be doing my seminar paper next Tuesday on this topic and I am excited because for me, science has always fascinated me especially when put in terms of Empiricism.
Loosely defined 