BRITISH
EMPIRICISM:
John Locke, 1632-1704; George Berkeley, 1685-1753;
David Hume, 1711-1776. Others include
Joseph Butler 1692-1752 and Adam Smith 1723-1790, esp. his Theory of Moral
Sentiments (rather than his economics).
"Empiricist": a convenient way of
suggesting two things:
1) a broad similarity of
approach: the paradigm of good thinking is the empirical method supposedly
followed by
2) the fact of a
tradition, and a development from one to the other: Berkeley and Hume taking
the philosophical approach of Locke to its logical conclusion, in brief as
follows:
Locke Mind perceptions Objects
Berkeley Mind perceptions /
Hume
/ perceptions /
BRITISH
EMPIRICISM/THE DEVELOPMENT FROM LOCKE THROUGH
JOHN LOCKE: An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690)
Locke and the others, versus the Rationalists:
·
no innate ideas: all
ideas are derived from experience.
·
all knowledge of matters
of fact and existence is based on experience.
·
the inductive method, (going back to Francis
Bacon and beyond that into the Middle Ages, and supposedly followed by Newton),
as the way of getting from particular matters of experienced fact to laws and theories:
general laws are derived by a comparison of particular instances.
Cf. Newton: I don't feign hypotheses - it is all
deduced from experience.
Cf. Charles Darwin, later on: "my mind seems
to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large
collections of facts".
Having seen A's followed by B's often enough you
eventually say, A's cause B's.
[But scientist's don't in fact do that, or very
rarely, and nor did
The point is that everyone in the 18th Century
until the time of Immanuel Kant thought
that this was what scientists did, including the scientists themselves.]
In spite of these contrasts, Locke still holds to:
1)primary and secondary qualities
and just as importantly
2)the representative theory of perception:
I'm directly aware of, in immediate contact with
appearances, perceptions, sensations, sense data, ideas (= Locke's word),
rather than the things themselves;
and deduce the existence of the things and what they are like from the
appearances or sense data or representives or ideas
of which I am directly aware.
Thus:
mind perceptions, 'ideas', the external world,
(a
mental some of which bodies,
substance) are copies of 'material substances'.
Combining 1) and 2): it is only my ideas of
primary qualities that can be taken as truly representative of objects in the
external world.
It is these two remnants of Cartesian-Galilean
mechanistic philosophy which
GEORGE
BERKELEY: The
Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous 1713.
·
primary qualities by
themselves can never give us a conception of material substance. Consequence: these people have no conception
of material substance.
Just as importantly and even more devastatingly,
·
if I am never
directly aware of the things themselves, how can I ever know that the
representatives or appearances are good copies of them, or that one causes the
other, or even that there are any things themselves at all? It is not as with a photo or a painting,
where we have immediate access to both painting and scene supposedly
represented.
Like it or not [and starting from Cartesian and Lockean premisses], so far as we
know or understand or have any good reason to believe,
"ESSE EST PERCIPI AUT PERCIPERE": to be
is either to be perceived or to perceive.
Diagramatically,
(MIND)
mind perceptions,
with God to make sure they don't
disappear when there is no one to look at them.
DAVID HUME: A Treatise of Human Nature
1739-1740, An Enquiry concerning Human
Understanding 1748.
·
ditto, and the mind for its part is nothing other than a system of
perceptions, impressions (= sensations, also passions both calm and violent)
and ideas, succeeding each other with inconceivable rapidity and united
together by various relations. There is no
good reason to posit a 'substance' in which these perceptions supposedly
inhere.
The world (as far as we have any good reason to
believe)
= perceptions, i.e. momentary events,
succeeding each other according to certain laws.
The Mind = the whole system of perceptions
considered under one aspect, including the idea of the self, personal identity,
i.e. the lively idea which we can't help having that these perceptions either
are or are states or modifications of something called a mind.
External objects, bodies = a sub-set of these
perceptions thought of as continuing to exist when unperceived. The system of perceptions considered as Mind
includes and cannot help but include the lively idea or belief that some of
these perceptions either are or represent things which have a continued and
distinct or independent existence.
Of course this is all a question of what we have
good reason to believe, not what we actually believe: what we actually believe
is determined as much by instinct as by anything else.
·
Even beyond this, Hume does a hatchet job on
the very centre of
empiricism, the Inductive Method: according to Hume, there is no
way of establishing its validity which doesn't take it for granted. It would seem to be based on a kind of animal
faith: we are determined to judge, as well as to breathe and to feel.
Crudely,
in our experience A's are followed by B's;
to go from this to the idea that A's will be followed by B's in the future
you have to presume that the future will be like the past;
but there is no way to prove that the future will be like the past which
does not take that for granted.
If it's not derived from reasoning, from whence is
it derived?
Conclusion, eventually: causal reasoning is
nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct...
Does this mean that we give up reasoning? By no means. The instinct still maintains itself,
reasonable or not. We can even continue
to do science/philosophy, should we happen to feel like it or get a kick out of
it.