Umar Shahzad
- Jan 7, 2023

10 Things you need to know about Empiricism

“No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”

In this short article you shall know the interesting aspects of Empiricism, how it affected the cognitive process of human brain in the pursuit of “truth” and why it matters in today’s world.

10 Key points about Empiricism:

1. In philosophy, Empiricism is the view which stresses that all the knowledge comes through “experience” and can only be verified empirically.

2. In outright opposition with “rationalism”, which stresses on reason for the pursuit of knowledge, it focuses on the most common sensical notion of knowing things through our empirical sense experiences of touching, hearing or seeing.

3. It is fundamentally an epistemological aspect of philosophical inquiry that guides human understanding of knowledge and how it can be acquired with a flawless precision.

4. Being a strong proponent of first-hand experience and senses, Empiricism upholds the decisiveness of empirical experiences as the only reliable source of reaching “reality”.

5. This concept of the theory of knowledge, heavily relies on our human cognitive abilities, as the entire science of Empiricism is based upon experiment and observation.

6. Most importantly it stresses that the “rational” knowledge can be ascertained only if is knowable or justifiable through experience.

7. The controversy that encompasses it is that; arguably there are more than five senses for experiences i-e moral, aesthetic and religious experiences.

8. It can be argued weather experiences include “mental” experiences too or it solely allows sensory experiences.

9. The major challenge to the theory of empiricism is the presence of “analytic a priori” propositions which includes those propositions which are true by the virtue of their meaning alone and do not need sensory experience for verifiability i-e; the proposition that “a triangle has three sides”.

10. This led the empiricists to distribute their theory in three types each more lenient then the previous for “a priori” concepts; Absolute, Substantive and Partial Empiricism holding the views that a) there are no a priori concepts, b) are either defective or reducible to empirical concepts and c) are not formal respectively.

“To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, not exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.”

- William James

Why does Empiricism matter for us today?

The spectacular edifice of scientific achievements which humans have built recently is solely due to the scientific method and the process of experiment and observation. Empiricists tend not to believe in the supernatural and metaphysical explanations of natural happenings and try to derive experimental and empirical justifications of natural phenomena around us. This means that having an ample inclination towards the “empiricism” will ensure the future of humanity in the technological advancements and correct conceptual understanding of the world.

Empiricism has made human mind more and more empiric which, on the one hand, brought enlightenment in the face of superstitions and, on the other hand, made humanity less oriented with the soft, non-empirical aspects of human personality and theological concepts. This is bringing a dynamic change in the life of modern man and inevitably demands us revisiting our set cognitive patterns and find weather is it really the case that we cannot go beyond our experience.

A most notable Empiricist

Some important Empiricists include: Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill.

However, John Locke is most commonly associated with the position of the father of Empiricism. He was born in England in 1632 and died in 1704. As a social activist he concerned himself first and foremost with political theory, governance, epistemology, and religious tolerance.

His political writings paved the way for modern democratic institutions. His 'Two Treatises of Government' minimise the view of the institiutions of marriage and family and move us towards ondoovual freedom and responsiblity.

"Individuals have rights, but also duties, which are defined in terms of protecting their own rights and respecting those of others. Through the law of nature, which Locke describes as "reason," we are able to understand why we must respect the natural rights of others (including the right to property for which one has labored). In practice, the law of nature can be ignored—and thus, government is necessary. However, unlike Hobbes, Locke does not see the natural condition as a permanent state of war of all against all, but rather a situation where the Golden Rule of reciprocity is generally followed. Civil government can be created only by the consent of the governed, leading to a commonwealth of laws. As law is sometimes incapable of providing for the safety and increase of society, man may acquiesce in being done certain extralegal benefits (prerogative). All government is therefore a fiduciary trust: when that trust is betrayed, government dissolves. A government betrays its trust when the laws are violated or when the trust of prerogative is abused. Once government is dissolved, the people are free to erect a new one and to oppose those who claim authority under the old one, that is, to revolt."

“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.”

- John Locke