EMPIRICISM
From Philosopedia
EMPIRICISM
Empiricism is a philosophical doctrine that all knowledge is derived from experience. Such a position is opposed to rationalism, denying as it does the existence of innate ideas.
Empiricists hold that all ideas are derived from experience, that knowledge of the physical world can be nothing more than a generalization from particular instances, that it can never reach more than a high degree of probability.
John Stuart Mill was the first to treat the subject, and among its other leading advocates have been John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.
James K. Feibleman in Foundations of Empiricism (1965) and Fraser Crowley in A Critique of British Empiricism (1968) write about the epistemological doctrine. Stuart Brown, editor of British Empiricism and the Enlightenment (1996), begins with Herbert of Cherbury and the Cambridge Platonists and with Newton and the early English Enlightenment. Locke is cited as being a key figure.
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Empiricism and science
Empiricism was a precursor of logical positivism, also known as logical empiricism. Empirical methods have dominated science until the present day. It laid the groundwork for the scientific method, which is the traditional view of theory and progress in science. However, in the past couple of decades quantum mechanics, constructivism, and Thomas Samuel Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions have created some challenges to empiricism as the exclusive way in which science works and should work. On the other hand, some argue that theories such as quantum mechanics provide a perfect example of the solidity of empiricism: the ability to discover even counter-intuitive scientific laws, and the ability to rework our theories to accept these laws.
Empiricism in history
Within historiography, empiricism refers to empiricist historiography, a school of documentary interpretation and historical teleology derived from the works of Leopold von Ranke.
Variations
Classical empiricism
Refers mostly to the epistemological work of St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. Aristotle argued that all forms of knowing come from induction. Aquinas wrote the famous peripatetic axiom, "Nihil in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu" ("Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses."
Modern empiricism
Also known as traditional empiricism. David Hume, John Locke and George Berkeley were among the British philosophers who rejected the theory of innate ideas. Theories of the existence of innate ideas were the subject of much debate between the Continental rationalists and British empiricists in the seventeenth century. From the late eighteenth century onwards, empiricists were critical of Immanuel Kant's doctrine of the a priori as positing innate ideas, while proponents of innate ideas rejected Kant's doctrine of intuition and deduction as not innatist, but part of a rationalist doctrine. Modern empiricism contends that all knowledge must be attained through internal and external sensations.
Radical empiricism
William James was a proponent of one form of radical empiricism. Radical empiricists believe that all human knowledge is purely empirical. More specifically, the radical empiricists are much like ordinary empiricists (rejection of the metaphysical, etc.), but unlike the ordinary empiricists, radical empiricists like James include subjective knowledge as being a source of empirical information also, due to the mere fact that it is experience, and thus should be included. Like Henri Bergson, radical empiricists tend to reject distinctions between the "inner" (subjective) and "outer" (the so-called objective).
Moderate empiricism
According to moderate empiricism, apart from empirical also analytical and only analytical sentences have the right to a place in science. It holds that the only claims or propositions that can be justified a priori are those which are analytic.
Naïve empiricism
Naïve empirism holds that scientists should approach a problem with no preconceived expectations or assumptions which have not been previously studied and justified using the scientific method. It stresses the importance of relying on empirical observations about the world and not our interpretations of those observations.
Constructive empiricism
According to this view of science, coined by Bas C. van Fraassen (The Scientific Image, 1980), we should only ask that theories accurately describe observable parts of the world. Theories that meet these requirements are considered "empirically adequate". If a theory becomes well established, it should be "accepted". What that means is the theory is believed to be empirically accurate, used to solve further problems, and used to extend or refine the theory.
Criticisms
Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
One of the most famous challenges against empiricism is Thomas Samuel Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), which built upon Norwood Russell Hanson's Patterns of Discovery (1958). In this, he argues that theory change is actually developed through paradigm shifts, where a new idea is offered that doesn't follow on existing theories but instead offers a unique, creative solution to existing problems. Scientific thinking, in Kuhn's view, goes through revolutions, instead of gradual theory development through testing and experimentation. After the revolution occurs, scientists can see things they weren't able to see before in the former framework. Kuhn also questioned whether scientific experimentation is truly unbiased and neutral since the experimenter had previous theories and preconceptions which could affect what experiments are chosen and the way in which the results are interpreted. Kuhn also questioned whether we can trust the reliability of our senses, and cited the famous illusions printed in Hanson's 1958 book.
Constructivist epistemology
Knowledge and reality is actively constructed by the individual, not passively received from the environment. There are many forms of constructivism, such as social constructivism and cultural constructivism.
Quantum mechanics
Addresses the question whether experience can be used to determine an ontological reality. For example, the Many-worlds interpretation, one of the answers to the EPR paradox, argues that there are multiple versions of every observed object in every possible observable state, existing in a state of quantum superposition. If every observable entity within our reality has a counterpart in an alternate state, then our experience of these entities does not indicate any ontological reality.
