The malleability of the notion of empiricism. it's meaning has migrated over the centuries. The "British Empiricists" did not describe their views as "empiricist."| HPS 2156 | Empiricism in Science | Spring 2024 |
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“Some say that experience alone suffices for the art, whereas others think that reason, too, has an important contribution to make. Those who rely on experience [empeiria] alone are accordingly called empiricists. Similarly, those who rely on reason are called rationalists. And these are the two primary sects in medicine. The one proceeds by means of experience to the discovery of medicines, the other by means of indication. And thus they have named their sects empiricist and rationalist.”
“The empiric school produces dogmas of a more deformed and monstrous nature than the sophistic or theoretic school; not being founded in the light of common notions (which, however poor and superstitious, is yet in a manner universal, and of a general tendency), but in the confined obscurity of a few experiments.”
“… by a Quack or Empirick, I mean any and every one of those who pretend to practise Physick without Knowledge of the Prerequisita to that most useful but most difficult Art.”
Guybon’s (1712) An Essay Concerning the Growth of Empiricism; Or the Encouragement of Quacks
“Let us then suppose the Mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all Characters, without any Ideas; How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it to that vast Store, with the busy and boundless Fancy of Many has painted on it, with an almost endless Variety? Whence has it all the Materials of Reason and Knowledge? To this answer, in a word, from Experience: In that, all out Knowledge, is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our Observation employ’d either about external sensible Objects, or about the internal Operations of our Minds, perceived and reflected on by Ourselves, is that which supplies our Understandings with all the Materials of Thinking. These Two are the Fountains of Knowledge, from whence all the Ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.”
“The full examination of this question is the subject of the present treatise; and therefore we shall here content ourselves with establishing one general proposition, that all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent.”
Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783)
“empirical” (empirisch) is defined to mean “have their ground in immediate sense-perception” (1783, p. 54)
“… the distinction is confounded between empirical laws, which express merely the customary order of the succession of effects, and the laws of causation on which the effects depend.”
“Empiricism allows nothing to be true nor certain but what is given by experience, and rejects all knowledge a priori.” (p. 157)
"As we have seen, the first characteristic of the Positive Philosophy is that it regards all phenomena as subjected to invariable natural Laws. Our business is—seeing how vain is any research into what are called Causes, whether first or final--to pursue an accurate discovery of these Laws, with a view to reducing them to the smallest possible number. By speculating upon causes, we could solve no difficulty about origin and purpose. Our real business is to analyse accurately the circumstances of phenomena, and to connect them by the natural relations of succession and resemblance."
"The aim of research is the discovery of the equations which subsist between the elements of phenomena."
"The atom must remain a tool for representing phenomena, like the functions of mathematics. however, as Gradually, the intellect, by contact with its subject-matter, grows in discipline, physical science will its mosaic give up play with stones and will seek out the boundaries and forms of the bed in which the living stream of phenomena flows. The goal which it has set itself is the simplest and most economical abstract expression of facts."
(The Economical Nature of Physical Enquiry.)
"Thing, body, matter, are nothing apart from their complexes [of sensations] of colors, sounds, and so forth—nothing apart from their attributes."
(Analysis of the Sensations)
"Thus general truths cannot be inferred from particular truths alone, but must, if they are to be known, be either self-evident, or inferred from premisses of which at least one is a general truth. But all empirical evidence is of particular truths. Hence, if there is any knowledge of general truths at all, there must be some knowledge of general truths which is independent of empirical evidence, i.e. does not depend upon the data of sense.
The above conclusion, of which we had an instance in the case of the inductive principle, is important, since it affords a refutation of the older empiricists. They believed that all our knowledge is derived from the senses and dependent upon them.
... Such general knowledge is to be found in logic.
"
"It is the method of logical analysis that essentially distinguishes recent empiricism and positivism from the earlier version that was more biological-psychological in its orientation. If someone asserts “there is a God”, “the primary basis of the world is the unconscious”, “there is an entelechy which is the leading principle in the living organism”, we do not say to him: “what you say is false” but we ask him: “what do you mean by these statements?” Then it appears that there is a sharp boundary between two kinds of statements. To one belong statements as they are made by empirical science; their meaning can be determined by logical analysis or, more precisely, through reduction to the simplest statements about the empirically given. The other statements, to which belong those cited above, reveal themselves as empty of meaning if one takes them in the way that metaphysicians intend."
"It seems to me that it is preferable to formulate the principle of empiricism not in the form of an assertion - "all knowledge is empirical" or "all synthetic sentences that we can know are based on (or connected with) experiences" or the like - but rather in the form of a proposal or requirement. As empiricists, we require the language of science to be restricted in a certain way; we require that descriptive predicates and hence synthetic sentences are not to be admitted unless they have some connection with possible observations, a connection which has to be characterized in a suitable way. By such a formulation, it seems to me, greater clarity will be gained both for carrying on discussion between empiricists and anti-empiricists as well as for the reflections of empiricists."
Examples of meaningless terms and assertions:
"Just like the examined examples “principle” and “God,” most of the other specifically metaphysical terms are devoid of meaning, e.g. “the Idea,” “the Absolute,” “the Unconditioned,” “the Infinite,” “the being of being,” “non-being,” “thing in itself,” “absolute spirit,” “objective spirit,” “essence,” “being-in-itself,” “being-in-and-for-itself,” “emanation,” “manifestation,” “articulation,” “the Ego,” “the non-Ego,” etc."
“What is to be investigated is being only and—nothing else; being alone and further—nothing; solely being, and beyond being— nothing. What about this Nothing? … Does the Nothing exist only because the Not, i.e. the Negation, exists? Or is it the other way around? Does Negation and the Not exist only because the Nothing exists? … We assert: the Nothing is prior to the Not and the Negation. … Where do we seek the Nothing? How do we find the Nothing. … We know the Nothing. … Anxiety reveals the Nothing. … That for which and because of which we were anxious, was 'really'—nothing. Indeed: the Nothing itself—as such—was present. … What about this Nothing?—The Nothing itself nothings.” "
"The formalistic conception of logic frees us from all the problems of apriorism, from all questions of a correspondence betiveen mind and reality. It is for this reason the natural logical theory of every empiricism. It does not demand from us any belief in nonempirical laws. What we know about nature is taken from experience; logic does not add anything to the results of experience because logic is empty, is nothing but a system of syntactical rules of language.
Let us ask now whether we may insert probability logic into the formalistic conception of logic. It is obvious that this is, for every variety of empiricism, a basic question. We found that the concept of probability is indispensable for knowledge, that probability logic determines the methods of scientific investigation. If we could not give a formalistic interpretation of probability logic, all efforts of the anti-metaphysicians would have been in vain; in spite of their having overcome the difficulties of the two-valued logic, they would now fail before the concept which forms the very essence of scientific prediction--before the concept of probability. A logistic empiricism would be untenable if we should not succeed in tinding a fornialistic solution of the probability problem.
There is such a solution."
The fundamental tenet of modern empiricism is the view that all non-analytic knowledge is based on experience. Let us call this thesis the principle of empiricism.... Contemporary logical empiricism has added to it the maxim that a sentence makes a cognitively meaningful assertion, and thus can be said to be either true or false, only if it is either (1) analytic or self-contradictory or (2) capable, at least in principle, of experiential test. According to this so-called empiricist criterion of cognitive meaning, or of cognitive significance, many of the formulations of traditional metaphysics and large part of epistemology are devoid of cognitive significance—however rich some of them may be in non-cognitive import by virtue of their emotive appeal or the moral inspiration they offer."
"Empiricism has always been a main philosophical guide in the study of nature. But empiricism requires theories only to give a true account of what is observable, counting further postulated structure as a means to that end. In addition empiricists have always eschewed the reification of possibility (or its dual, necessity). Possibility and necessity they relegate to relations among ideas, or among words, as devices to facilitate the description of what is actual. So from an empiricist point of view, to serve the aims of science, the postulates need not be true, except in what they say about what is actual and empirically attestable."
"In. my own view of science, acceptance of a scientific theory involves not the belief that this theory is true, but only that it is empirically adequate ("saves the phenomena")."
The malleability of the notion of empiricism. it's meaning has migrated over the centuries. The "British Empiricists" did not describe their views as "empiricist."
The malleability of the notion of empiricism. it's meaning has migrated over the centuries. The "British Empiricists" did not describe their views as "empiricist."
Small-e empiricism: all knowledge should be properly grounded in experience.
Big-e empiricism: all knowledge is only a compilation of experiences.