Empiricism

Empiricist philosophers take the position that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge. By contrast, rationalist philosophers make the claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience.[1]

David Hume : John Locke

Jean Piaget's research into the development of cognitive schemas provides empirical support for the empiricist position. Piaget's experiments demonstrated that children incorporate experience to generate a progressively more logical construct concerning the operation of reality. That is, during the development of cognitive rationality, experiential information is assimilated and accommodated in a progression through increasingly more accurate reality-representational stages.

1. Markie, Peter, "Rationalism vs. Empiricism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL.

Quo Vadis?
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Hume

David Hume (1711-1776) was a Scottish empiricist philosopher, economist, essayist, and historian. Hume is best remembered for "Humean skepticism". Hume considered philosophy to be the inductive, experimental science of human nature and considered himself chiefly as a moralist philosopher.

Hume built upon John Locke's epistemology and adapted the scientific method of Sir Isaac Newton as his model. He attempted to describe the operation of the mind in acquiring knowledge and concluded that there can be no knowledge of anything beyond experience. Hume raised the skeptical philosophical objection that inductive reasoning might fail whenever the past cannot be taken to be a reliable guide to the future.

"Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries." ~ David Hume, Letters

Websites : Hume: Empiricist Naturalism : Hume texts online : David Hume: Writings on Religion : Hume on Religion : quotes from Hume's writings : philosophical skepticism : Skepticism :

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