Assess Empiricism

Empiricism is the view that the ultimate source of knowledge is from experience, beliefs that conform to this are known as a posteriori. Empiricists believe that we are born without any innate knowledge (a priori knowledge) but instead learn everything we know from our senses. This is in opposition to Rationalism which is the view that the source of our knowledge is ultimately reason, such beliefs are known as a priori, or without prior experience and so are innately within us from birth.

Empiricists such as Locke argue that there are “no innate ideas” and so we are born with no knowledge, we only have knowledge of a pencil or gravity because we have experienced it. However a Rationalist could respond with the example of our ideas of mythical creatures such as Hippogriffs or Chimeras. However, Empiricists argue that even though we may not have experience of a hippogriff, ultimately we have. This is because a hippogriff is a complex idea built from simple ideas, namely the experiences of different animals such as the beak of an eagle and the feathers of an owl, which combine to form a complex idea, and so we may never have experienced an actual hippogriff, our experiences are enough for us to create a complex idea, but ultimately it remains a posteriori knowledge.

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However the main problem with empiricism has been its reliance on inductive reasoning, which as Rationalists are keen to point out is weaker than reaching conclusions deductively. Even Hume, an empiricist himself, admitted that causal relationships have no reason to be the same in the future as what they had been in the past. This poses a problem as ideas come from experience and so the belief that something such as the sun rising tomorrow may not necessarily occur.

Even though it is likely that the sun will rise tomorrow as it is based on many past ...

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