EMPIRICISM

INTRODUCTION

The quest to acquire knowledge is one of great importance to humankind since the beginning of existence. All of humankind whether privilege or not strive to explore nature given talents to know one thing or the other about reality. However, more pertinent quests which man seldom considers are: how he came to know; how sure what he claims to know is true knowledge is, and if sure, how whether he can prove this certitude; can man know all things, or is there a limit to his knowledge? These and other questions epistemology, one of the major branches of Philosophy tries to answer. To these, tons and volumes of books have been written by numerous philosophers over the centuries with convergent and divergent opinions.

One epistemological question of how knowledge can be acquired, and how things are known, there are two major schools: Empiricist and Rationalist Schools. However, the main focus of this work is on the former-Empiricists. The first part of this piece will dwell on the history of empiricism, beginning from the Pre-Socratic era. The second will treat three main philosophers and supporters of empiricism, who though are not the first to put forth this thought, actually popularized the word “empiricism”. The third part will focus on the critiques against the ideas of this school, especially from the Rationalists, who are their eternal rivals.

PART I: HISTORY OF EMPIRICISM.

The word empiricism is derived from the Greek word ‘emperion’ which means to try or test, with a Latin translation ‘experientia’ from which English derives the word ‘experience, which may means feeling an occurrence, or happening. Empiricism as a school of thought hold that knowledge can be acquired only though experience. Thus knowledge is never a priori, rather a posteriori. Originally, the word empirical was used by was used by the skeptic Sextus Empiricus to refer to those ancient Greek practitioners of medicine who rejected adherence to dogmatic doctrine of the day, rather preferred to base knowledge on observance of phenomenon as it appears to the senses. This school although popularized in the 17^th century, was already in the world of philosophy before the tome of the Great Socrates.

Heraclitus (c.a 480BC) with his famous maxim that “the universe as we have it is in constant flux” based reality on perception since change which cannot be known except when perceived by experience. Although he is an ardent advocate of the ‘logos’ meaning word or reason, he maintains that the logos itself cannot exist without change. The disciple of Protagoras, commonly referred to as the Sophists upheld though not in a strict sense, empirical views, by purporting that knowledge is relative. To them, nothing is, all is becoming, but even this becoming is relative. As the eye doesn’t see except while it is being acted upon, so the object is not coloured except while it acts upon the eye. Thus knowledge of a subject is according to the disposition of the observer, for nothing ‘is’ in itself.

Plato’s doctrine of knowledge seems to stand between the world of experience (empiricism) and the metaphysical world of forms. For him, since knowledge lacks the certitude and infallibility that true knowledge must possess. Hence, perception acts as a reminder of the genuine knowledge. His theory can be termed an a priori metaphysical knowledge that must be activated by experience. Plato’s student, Aristotle deviates sharply from his master by proposing the theory of Tabula rasa, which holds that the human mind is devoid of any concept at birth. The mind gets to be imprinted with ideas, or acquire knowledge by sense perception. For him, “nothing reaches the intellect without first being in the sense”. Post Aristotelian philosophic schools such as the Epicureans propagated a doctrine of extreme sensation, and posit that while in practice the standard of truth is pleasure and pain, in theory, the ultimate test of knowledge is sensation. For them, perception is infallible; rather the perceivers’ judgment of the perceived may distort the true nature of the perceived. St. Augustine in his response to the skeptics of his time argues that it is necessary to give credence to the senses, even though we know that it is not infallible, for the man who holds that the senses should never be believed falls into a worse error than any error he may fall upon believing sense perception. The medieval scholastic and theologian, Thomas Aquinas is not left out as one who held empirical views about acquiring knowledge of the reality. He didn’t hesitate to trail Aristotle’s path whose works he studied extensively.

PART II: BRITISH EMPIRICISTS

John Locke (1632-1704)

In his book titled Essay concerning human understanding, this British philosopher and empiricist gave a systematic expression of the empiricist school of thought. Although he seemed to have continued from Francis Bacon who held that there is no knowledge without experiences, John Locke is referred to as the father of empiricism. In Locke’s work mentioned above, he wrestles with epistemological questions such as: The origin, certitude and extent of human knowledge; The good, and degree of beliefs, opinions, and assent; How knowledge can be acquired.

His strongest point hinges on Aristotle’s theory of the mind being Tabula rasa. Locke calls the mind a white paper on which is written the experiences derived from sense impression as a person proceeds in life. He opposes the idea that we are all born with certain fundamental principles or concepts. The rationalists, seeing the universality of certain ideas in man cannot but support the innate theory of knowledge (i.e. man is born with certain ideas, which he doesn’t have to learn by experience), which for Locke is mere illusion, and nonexistent, for not eben the knowledge of a God is imprinted on the mind at conception.

Against innate knowledge

1.)    The fact that a principle seems to be universal does not imply that it is true, since in principle it is possible for everyone to be mistaken about a principle, even though believed to be true. Since it may not be true, then it fails to be knowledge because we cannot know what is fails, which foll2ws that there is nothing like innate knowledge.

2.)    Even if a principle is universal and claimed to be innate knowledge,  it wouldn’t necessarily follow that it is acquired by innately. They might as well have been acquired via other means, if innate knowledge is true, then children would so many things about reality, including God, before they are taught in schools, or religious communities. But we all know (even this knowledge is not innate, but acquired) that this is not obtainable. Children are taught in schools the principles of reality and God, so come to know things by experience. For instance, a child seeing a flame of fire for the first time find it attractive and goes close to touch it without fear. When he/she gets burnt by it, there will be no attempt to touch it next time since by experience there is knowledge of its bad side. Likewise, a child who is not taught formally about God may end up an atheist just as one who is tutored in the doctrine of God is likely to be a lifelong theist. That we cannot explain the origin of an idea doesn’t give us mean we ascribe it to innate knowledge.

3.)    Locke identifies the acquisition of knowledge unconsciously. By this one may know something without a knowing that they are known. For Locke this is a false, for “No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew or never yet conscious of”. Experience is a conscious act, which imprints consciously on the mind, and can be recalled when the need arises. Since are no unconscious knowledge, there cannot be innate knowledge.

4.)    Rationalists hold that we have innate knowledge, but we need reason to deduce them. To this Locke replies firstly that that reason discovers them doesn’t mean that they are innate; secondly, that it is all together false that reason discovers them; thirdly, coming to now these principles does not coincide in time with acquisition of the power to reason. What these objections are driving at is that if reason is the power to deduce knowledge from what is yet not knowledge, we cannot claim to use reason to know what we already have the innate knowledge about, that would amount to tautology. If reason cannot be used to deduce innate knowledge, than innate knowledge is false.

On the means by which ideas originate from experience, Locke in the second part of his book teaches a twofold concept of experience, which are sensation and reflection. Sensation is when the mind experiences the world outside the body through the five senses, while reflection is when the mind turning inwardly recognizes ideas about its function such as thinking, willing, doubting, or otherwise put, it is the perception of the internal phenomena. From these two sources, all the ideas we have arise. Our ideas are either simple or complex.

Simple ideas are divided into four classes: 1) ideas that come into the mind through one sense only, such as light, colour, and taste; 2) ideas that come into the mind via more than one sense, such as shape, size; 3) ideas that emerge from reflection such as thought and will; 4) ideas arising from a combination of sensation and reflection such as pain, pleasure, existence, joy.

On the validity of simple ideas, Locke adopts Boyles’ corpuscular hypothesis that holds that all matter is composed of tiny particles, or corpuscles which are too tiny to see individually, are colourless, odourless, soundless and tasteless. The arrangements of these particles give an object its primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are properties of an object such as size, shape, movement, etc; while secondary qualities are properties of an object such as colour, taste, odour, etc. primary qualities can be said to be real qualities of an object because they exist regardless of the perceiver. Whereas secondary qualities are not attributed with real existence as they only exist when being perceived. For instance, a rose flower grows and has its shape regardless of our perception of it, but its colour and smell is dependent light and wind, and ultimately on the nature if our sense organs.

Locke divides complex ideas into three classes: Modes are considered dependencies or affections of substances. However compounded, they are not suppositions or ideas of the in themselves. A combination of ideas gives us modes. For instance, simple mode of duration is a combination of the simple ideas of time, eternity, and duration, just like simple modes of space is composed of simple ideas of distance, figure, and surface, and the ideas of thinking make up the modes of memory, reasoning and judging; Substances are those things which are capable of upholding simple ideas. Substances unlike modes are capable of existing in themselves, so as to support qualities of things. For instance the substance of rose flower is the complex ideas that support the simple ideas of colour, texture, softness, fragrance, etc.; Idea of relations is the meaningful connection of one idea with another. It may be seen in terms of causality, or simply put the subject of cause and effect.

Locke finalizes his theory of knowledge by linking perception with acquisition of knowledge. He defines knowledge as what the mind is able to perceive through reasoning out the connection, or lack of connection between any two or more ideas. To obtain knowledge, the mind makes a connection between what it perceives either in agreement or disagreement, with ideas it has already stored in its memory. This connection may be via Identity (stone is stone) or diversity (air is not stone); Relation (a horse and a rat have backbones, so have something in common); Coexistence; and Realization

He identifies three degrees of knowledge: Intuition knowledge is the perception of an idea without in itself without the intervention of any other. For example the power to know that five equals two and three is by intuition. Demonstrative knowledge is the perception of disagreement or agreement of two ideas with the intervention of other ideas. For instance the knowledge of the existence of God requires some proof. Sensitive knowledge is the knowledge of the existence of the external world roughly resembling the world as we perceive it. It is the knowledge of finite things.

George Beckley (1685-1753)

This Irish Bishop is both an empiricist and an idealist. He uses his idealism to foster his empiricist theory. In his treatise New Theory of Vision, Beckley takes a drastic step in the direction of immaterialism, positing that what exists is fundamentally mental or mind-dependent phenomena, implying that what we think or hold to by physical is actually mental. Since the state of mind of an individual is specific to the person, and knowledge depends on the mind, then knowledge is relative since the condition of every mind I relative. For instance, when glass of water is felt by two individual, one may claim it to be hot while the other claims it to be cold depending on the condition of the individuals mind. Thus knowledge of the idea-temperature- is relative to individuals even though the idea remains the same.

Beckley goes on to prove his immaterialism theory by first agreeing with Locke about the effect of primary and secondary qualities in arriving at knowledge, however for Beckley, all qualities of physical objects are nothing when the mind doesn’t perceive it. To buttress his point that the physical doesn’t exist, he argues that suppose we agree that bodies exist physically, we know them either by sensation or by reason. For sensation, if like Locke, what we know are ideas, which we obtain from the sense organs, we cannot conclude that what the senses feel about the outside world is real since our minds have no direct link with the outside world. It is possible that like Descartes that a demon might be deceiving us in believing that there is a physical world .if we hold that physical objects are perceived by our senses to cause ideas of sensation, it doesn’t follow that they exist unperceived or even exist at all, since sensations can also be built up in the mind without the senses. On the second point, reason is completely powerless in ascertaining the truth of physical things since reason is a deductive means of obtaining knowledge via experience, and experience can only by worked on by the rational mind through ideas, it will be illogical to claim that reason knows the veracity of experience just because it has ideas at its disposal. Since not all the ideas of a given experience is obtained and stored in the mind, we cannot with the little we know about an experience conclude by reason that it exists. For Beckley,

         “In short if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come to know it…”

On the self, Beckley maintains that humans can indubitably assert their own existence, for unlike all other thing in which “to be is to be perceived” ( esse est percipi), for humans, “to be is to perceive” ( esse est percipere). When humans are not around to perceive objects, God fills in the gap.  Beckley like Locke believes in the immateriality if the soul. Although Locke can be termed a dualist, Beckley is a monist idealist.

If matter doesn’t exist, only ideas do, what then causes sensation in me? Beckley replies by saying that the external world is spirit, and the phenomenon which they produce in the mind. Thus we perceive ideas created by spirit, but these ideas lack the power to cause effect. The effect of ideas received are caused by the spirits which posses the power of understanding to perceive ideas in the mind, and the power to will or operate on ideas to cause effects.

Beckley attacks the theory of abstraction which is upheld by Locke, by arguing that it is not possible to think of properties of an object as independent of one another even though they are dependent on one another. For him, if one is to think of the colour of an object, one necessarily has to think of the size, shape etc of the object.

Beckley seems to be too attached to his religion. He seem to attribute everything that eludes his understanding to God, even when those they are thing quite commonsensical. He doesn’t also tell us what man is when he identifies himself as existing. If Beckley can write his ideas, and we can read them, how then can he prove that what he writes on is not physical, and what I read from is also not physical? His theory of idealism is indeed a serious issue to look into. Also, Beckley’s epistemological approach fails to prove that mind-independent physical objects don’t exist; rather he succeeds in proving that we cannot know if they exist.

David Hume (1711-1776)

“No ideas without impression” is the common slogan of this great 18th century atheist and empiricist. David Hume rejects the ability of sense to provide us with certitude of existence of physical objects because the sense “convey to us nothing but a single perception and never give us the least intimacy of anything beyond”. The senses can only perceive the impression and not the essence of the object which is necessary to determine it state of existence. Since he gives full support to the tabula rasa principle, reason is powerless and useless, while impression can do little.

Two things Hume says cause our continued belief in the existence of physical objects. These are: constancy which relates to the unchanging nature of the object irrespective of the viewer or perceivers state. When possess a constancy of impression on our mind, we are forced to develop a belief of the existence of the physical object over its mind dependency; Coherence relates to a consistency in the kind of impression a physical object gives to the mind even when the constancy is not absolute. For instance if a square shaped red tablet impresses on the mind a mango-strawberry taste, and a round blue tablet gives the same impression, then the mind is forced to believe in the true existence of the physical object that gives this impression even though the form is not the same.

Hume in his theory of knowledge points out the two distinct and mutually exclusive kind of knowledge which are:

Knowledge of relations is a proposition that does not require empirical observation, but arrived at by intellectually search. Knowledge of geometry and arithmetic are relations, and any contradictory proposition amounts to falsehood, and probability does not hold here. For instance when you say that a square has four sides, that is knowledge of relation, and a contradictory proposition that a square does not have four sides is false.

Knowledge of matter is a knowledge in which the truth of the statement is completely dependent upon the actual occurrence of the event. Knowledge of occurrences in nature, or non abstractions fall into this category, and a contradictory statement is not a falsity since the process must reach completion for us to ascertain its truth, claim it to be knowledge.

It may be misleading to believe that because Hume recognizes knowledge of relations then he uphold the theory if innate knowledge. Hume does not in any way support this rationalist view fore he maintains that the ideas we use intellectually must first be impressed on the mind through experience.

“Neither the ideas of memory or imagination, neither the lively nor the faint ideas can make their appearance in the mind unless their correspondent impression has gone before to prepare the way for them”.

It is not by misprint that Hume begins by analyzing what furnishes our belief, for in answering the question of how we claim knowledge of things, he posits that our belief form our knowledge. He goes on to distinguish between belief and thought in general. Beliefs he says are more lively and vivacious ideas than thought. Thus my belief in the occurrence of an event results in a lively idea.

On knowledge gained by induction, Hume identifies a logical gap between conclusion justified by a scientific experiment from a particular sample and the wide generalization based on the conclusion. However he maintains that life would be full of skepticism or speculations if we do not make some general conclusions from particular observation since we cannot wait to observer all the observables in nature.  He concludes by saying that there are commonsensical conclusions that arise from our power of inductive reasoning, making induction an intelligible tool for acquisition of true knowledge.

Hume’s description of belief is a rather weak one. Belief in an object though necessary for a claim of knowledge is logically insufficient because there are so many ideas which we have that we don’t believe. We entertain so many ideas about reality, but little of those beliefs do we believe. Also there are thoughts that generate very lively ideas in us, which are not beliefs, and on this issue, Hume is apparently incorrect.

PART III: RATIONALIST VIEW OF KNOWLEDGE.

The rivalry between rationalism and empiricism is an unending one as they battle for supremacy over who has the right answer to the source of knowledge. The rationalist view is that regard reason as the chief source and test of knowledge. They hold that there are certain fundamental ideas that an individual just knows without being taught. Rationalists include Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, and others, who resort to intuition or innate knowledge or both as the sources of knowledge. By intuition they mean that we just know things in themselves without experience in such a way as to warrant belief. Among their numerous claims is that reason is superior to experience, and that what we know a priori is certain, but the knowledge we gain by experience may fail us. In some cases, a priori knowledge may need to be triggered by experience, but that does not mean experience is the source of the knowledge.

Points raised by the various empiricists above counters the rationalist claim head-on, such as that the mind is tabula rasa; one is always conscious of inherent knowledge so doesn’t require experience to elicit them; the intuition works on the memory which is highly fallible.

CONCLUSION

Indeed the view points of empiricists on the epistemological questions of knowledge seem to be weighty, and highly tenable. Although it is agreeable that so much knowledge is gained about God or the metaphysical world which the physical cannot connect to through sense experience, experience appear to be a stepping stone to this kind of knowledge. Considering that the language with which the ideas of the non-temporal is communicated to man (even though not adequate to convey all that the mind experiences) is built upon is learnt with experience, to me knowledge is obtained by experience, but synthesized and made useful to man and the world at large via the use of reason.

Empiricism have indeed come a long way and still waxes strong today. Its tenets seem to be effective in bringing about creativity, and development of the world evident in the growth of science and technology that fasten their doctrines on empiricism. It is no news that pragmatism which sprang up in the twentieth century with the likes of William James (who coined the word ‘radical empiricism’ to denote his strand of pragmatism) integrates the basic insight of empiricism. Because man’s yearning for certitude of true knowledge, he continues to probe into what is generally considered knowledge, leading to discoveries that put aside many things that were considered true knowledge by man many centuries ago. This is what the different schools in human sciences and arts strive at. No matter how cogent and reasonable the points of the empiricist may seem, the quest continues.

Bibliography

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