Empiricists believe that experience is the basis of both our knowledge (a posteriori) and understanding

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  • Created by: Gozde_
  • Created on: 26-03-16 12:35
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  • EMPIRICISM
    • DAVID HUME
      • aware that causation meant trouble for empiricists, the notion that one thing necessarily causes another sounds like a prior?
        • When we see a brick flying towards a window we know the window will break?
          • Hume insists there is no necessity here
            • we expect it because we have observed this particular constant conjuction in the past
        • Causation then, is a habit of the mind, and necessity is an illusion caused by expectations
          • necessity is something that exists in the mind, not in objects
      • another point is ethics. We know Plato ws a thief by observing him  but how could we observe wrongness of his act?
        • Hume deals with this by insisting that we feel morality as an inner experience
          • Thus, we have an experience of wrongness merely by feeling an emotional repulsion to the act
            • if moral principles cant be self evident, its only natural that empiricists look for criteria for morality
    • JOHN LOCKE 1632-1704
      • rejects innate ideas
        • They may be unknown to children and idiots
          • These groups may then only discover ideas by reasoning from their experience
        • He claims that entire nations have been and are still ignorant of God
        • There is no universal agreement concerning these innate principles
    • its adherents point to its relevance to the observable world
    • In some sense the reality in our minds must be a representation of the outside world
    • They deny the existence of a priori ideas and are hostile towards metaphysics.
    • We are born a blank slate or 'Tabula Rasa'
    • Empiricists believe that experience is the basis of both our knowledge (a posteriori) and understanding

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