Empiricism
Tradition · 17th-18th century, Britain · Philosophy, stage 2: Map the schools
Empiricism holds that experience, not innate reasoning, is the source of knowledge. Where rationalists like Descartes trusted reason to reach truths independent of the senses, empiricists such as John Locke and David Hume argued that the mind starts empty and everything it comes to know is built from sensation. Hume pushed empiricism to its most radical conclusion, arguing that even a concept as basic as cause and effect is not something we perceive directly but a habit of expectation formed by repeatedly seeing one kind of event follow another. His skeptical arguments about induction and causation remain central problems in philosophy of science.
What it claims
- All knowledge ultimately comes from sense experience.
- The mind has no innate ideas built in before experience.
- Claims that cannot be traced back to experience or logical relations between ideas deserve suspicion.
- Even basic concepts like causation are habits formed by experience, not truths known independently of it.
Key ideas
People
Sources
- Rationalism vs. Empiricism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- David Hume Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Hume Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
