School of thought
British Empiricism
Intellectual current
Classification
- Period
- c. 1600-1750 CE
- Regions
- europe
- Domains
- Epistemology
Overview
British Empiricism holds that all knowledge ultimately derives from sensory experience. Locke argued the mind begins as a blank slate (tabula rasa), Berkeley pushed this to idealism (to be is to be perceived), and Hume drew radical skeptical conclusions — undermining causation, induction, and the self, and awakening Kant from his 'dogmatic slumber.'
Key ideas
- Tabula Rasa: Locke's image: the mind at birth is a blank slate. All ideas come from sensation (external experience) or reflection (internal experience). There are no innate ideas.
- Hume's Fork: All genuine propositions are either 'relations of ideas' (mathematics, logic — certain but empty) or 'matters of fact' (empirical — informative but uncertain). Everything else is sophistry.
- Problem of Induction: Hume showed that no amount of past experience logically guarantees future events. That the sun has risen every day gives no logical proof it will rise tomorrow.
Key figures
John Locke · George Berkeley · David Hume · Francis Bacon
Methods used
Positions held
- Bundle Theory
Question scope: Persistence of the Self
- Empiricism
Question scope: Experience or Reason?
- Humean Regularity
Question scope: The Nature of Causation
- Psychological Continuity
Question scope: Persistence of the Self
Influenced by
- Medieval Nominalism
Inherited the nominalist rejection of real universals and its restriction of knowledge to particular things, which empiricism recast as knowledge grounded in particular sense experience.
- Pyrrhonism
The early-modern revival of Pyrrhonian skepticism (via Sextus) sharpened empiricism's doubts about how far the senses warrant knowledge, culminating in Hume's mitigated skepticism.
Later connections
- Analytic Philosophy Influenced by this tradition
- French Enlightenment Influenced by this tradition
Voltaire's admiration for Locke and Newton carried British empiricism's trust in observation and its critique of inherited authority into the philosophes' program.
- Kantian Critical Philosophy Influenced by this tradition
Hume's empiricism 'awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumber', prompting the critical synthesis that reconciles empiricist and rationalist insights.
- Logical Positivism Influenced by this tradition
- Phenomenology Influenced by this tradition
Husserl inherited the notion of intentionality from Brentano's descriptive psychology — itself rooted in the empiricist attention to experience — and transformed it into an a priori science of consciousness.
- Positivism Influenced by this tradition
- Pragmatism Influenced by this tradition
- Classical Utilitarianism Influenced by this tradition
References
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, British Empiricism
- David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I.4.6
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Rationalism vs. Empiricism
- David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I.3.14
- David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, §VII
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Locke on Personal Identity
- Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. III: Ockham to Suárez (Ockhamist nominalism as an antecedent of British empiricism)
- Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford University Press, 2003)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Rationalism vs. Empiricism, §1.2 'The Empiricism Thesis'
- David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, §IV
- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.i.4 (ideas of reflection)
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding — John Locke
- A Treatise of Human Nature — David Hume
- Novum Organum — Francis Bacon