The British Empiricists

• Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
  • Founder
  • Friend to Galileo and Descartes
  • Born under threat of Spanish Armada
  • Lived long life
  • Leviathan
  • Materialist
  • Hedonistic theory
  • Voluntary and involuntary motions
  • Appetites and aversions
  • No free will
  • Contiguity for complex trains of thought
• John Locke (1632-1704)
  • Prototypical empiricist
  • Tabula rasa metaphor
  • Political philosopher too
  • Oxford student and professor
  • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
  • Sensation
    • Primary qualities
      • Size and shape
      • Come from object
    • Secondary qualities
      • Color, odor, sound, taste
      • Come from act of perception
  • Simple and Complex Ideas
    • Associationism
  • Subjective interpretation of universe
• George Berkeley (1685-1753)
  • Bishop
  • Opposed to materialism
    • Idealist
    • Reality is in God's mind (not a solipcist)
  • Perception
    • Secondary qualities only
  • Associationist
• David Hume (1711-1776)
  • Newton:Natural Philosphy::Hume:Moral Philosophy
    • Today: Natural Philosophy = Physical Sciences and Moral Philosophy = Social Sciences
  • Desired to make Moral Philosophy experimental, but... (cognitive variables)
  • More influenced by Bacon than Newton, however
  • An Enquiry on Human Understanding
  • Impressions--strong, Ideas--weak
    • Simple and complex ideas (by association)
    • Direct knowledge of world was not possible
  • Ideas can be re-arranged-imagination
  • Laws of Association
    • Resemblance
    • Contiguity
    • Cause and Effect
      • Cause and Effect must be experienced, is an experience, not a logical necessity
      • Consistency gives rise to experience of cause and effect
  • Emotions (Passions)
    • Main determinants of character
  • Types of Knowledge
    • Demonstrative (abstract knowledge)
    • Empirical (based on experience)
  • Legacies
    • Reduced philosophy, religion, and science to psychology
    • Life is uncertain (he's a skeptic)
• David Hartley (1705-1757)
  • Contiguity
  • Physiological analogy for thinking
    • Vibratiuncles
  • Epiphenomenalist
• James Mill (1773-1836)
  • Mind is a machine
  • Mind contains simple ideas linked by contiguity, vividness, and frequency
• John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
  • Mental chemistry
  • Cognition (de novo)
  • Generation of complex ideas (chemistry metaphor)
• Alexander Bain (1818-1903)
  • First psychologist?
  • Mind-Body--psychophysical parallelism
  • Laws of compound association
  • Parts of the mind: Feeling, volition, intellect
  • Voluntary behavior comes from mind
  • Hedonistic theory
  • Precursor to many later ideas in psychology (trial and error learning, reinforcement)
• URLs
  • Berkeley --index, interm., short, links, graphics
    • A page with links to the life of Berkeley, full text copies of his papers, and works about Berkeley. The site also has links to other sites on Berkeley. http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Berkeley/Welcome.html
  • The Hume Society--index, interm., short, links, graphics
    • Home page of the Hume Society, contains links to archives, graphics, meeting dates, and other Hume-related information. http://www.hi.is/~mike/hume.html
  • Auguste Comte and Positivism--index, interm., short, links, graphics
    • A fully bilingual site (French/English) on the positivist philosopher, Auguste Comte, that contains graphics and information on him and other positivists. http://www.hgx-hypersoft.com/clotilde/
  • On Liberty--J.S. Mill,--index, interm., short, links, graphics
    • The full text of Mill's (1869) book, On Liberty. http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/mill/
  • Comte and Positivism--text, basic, short, links, graphics
    • A brief discussion of Comte's ideas about religion and society.
  • Ernst Mach--text, basic, short, links, graphics
    • A short biography and graphic of the physicist and philosopher. http://hawkeye.me.utexas.edu/~heatran/bios/mach.html