Empiricism

Empiricism is one of the major branches of epistemology. Empiricists hold the view that knowledge can only be derived from experience. A weak form of empiricism claims that knowledge can only be gained through the senses. However, there are many different forms of empiricism, some of them denying innate knowledge, others dealing with sense data.

Radical Empiricism

Radical Empiricism goes back to the theory of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776). He develops the idea that ideas are reducible to sensations. The name "Radical Empiricism", however, was coined by William James, who claims that this branch of empiricism consists of a postulate, a statement of fact and a generalised conclusion.

"The postulate is that the only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience. (Things of an unexperienceable nature may exist ad libitum, but they form no part of the material for philosophic debate.)

The statement of fact is that the relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves.

The generalized conclusion is that therefore the parts of experience hold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe needs, in short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure." (James, The Meaning of Truth, Preface)

With the help of the statement of fact, James wanted to distinguish his notion of experience clearly from that of British empiricism and Kantian and Hegelian idealism, namely, "that experience as given is either a collection of disparate impressions, or, [...] a manifold of completely unsynthesized representations" (Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy 90).

British Empiricists

British Empiricists is a label usually applied to the philosophers John Locke (1632-1704), George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-1776).

Early English Empiricists

In the early 17th century, the old beliefs seemed inadequate to the English people and therefore, many thinkers searched for new theories of reality. The two most important of them were Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).

In his work "Novum Organum", Bacon describes requirements for the study of natural phenomena. According to him, it is absolutely necessary to get rid of all preconceptions and prejudices in theories, ideas and languages before making scientific experiments in order to be receptive for the phenomena. Bacon is often called the founder of inductive logic, but this seems to be too exaggerated from today's point of view (Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy 91).

Hobbes, on the other hand, tried to apply deductive logic to new facts. Hobbes' focus was on Man, Matter and the State. Hobbes saw nature as corporeal and all events caused by motion. Man is dominated by passion which leads to a "bellum omnium contra omnes" (war of all against all). Nevertheless, man is able to use his reason and so decides to live in a state, whose foundation is a contract.

Sources:

Fair Use Repository. 11 June 2009. http://fair-use.org/william-james/the-meaning-of-truth/preface [1]

Lacey, Alan R. A Dictionary of Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976. 55.

Runes, Dagobert D. Dictionary of Philosophy. 15th ed. (1st edition: 1956). Paterson: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1962. 89-91.