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Tabula rasa and empiricism: Locke and Hume
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- 1Mind as a Tabula Rasa- Tabula Rasa is a latin term literally meaning 'blank slate'
- Philosophers use the term with reference to the mind being blank at birth, and as our senses gather information about the world, the mind is filled with ideas.
- Empiricists argue that we may have instincts but these do not count as knowledge. Instincts are not ideas about the world, but physical reactions to it. - 2Sense impressions and ideas- Locke & Hume are the main proponents of classical empiricism
- Hume made a distinction between impressions and ideas in his book, he claims we cannot have any ideas without first having sense impressions.
- If i see a green tree, i have a 'green' sense impression.
- Hume argues that we have 'inner senses' that explain experiences and feelings of pain, pleasure, love and hate.
- Locke and Hume argue that new ideas (which we have not experienced before are still actually derived from objects and impressions. Our mind rearranges the elements. Locke uses the example of a golden mountain, if we have impressions of Gold and Mountains, we can combine the two elements into the idea. - 3Simple and Complex ideas- Simple ideas - are ideas of sensory qualities based on original impressions. They are based on the unprocessed information given to us by our senses.
- Complex ideas - are combinations of simple ideas, such as the idea of a tree or a chair.
- Simple ideas are directly based on perception, whereas complex ideas are only indirectly related to perception in so far as they are based on simple ideas.
- A complex idea of an apple can be broken down into the simple ideas of red colour, round shape etc.
- Locke argues that simple ideas cannot be broken down any further than the sense impression.
-Locke is aware that some ideas are not directly derived from experience, such as feeling of hunger or of pain. These are ideas of reflection - the mind is able to reflect and combine ideas that originate in experience. - 4Concept formation- Complex ideas and ideas of reflection are also called concepts.
- A concept is the mental image we have of an impression.
- When we see a red object, we have the impression of 'red' but when we think about this impression we have the idea of 'redness'
- Hume argues that every idea we have is always the copy of an original sensation; our minds store ideas then combines them as it wants.
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- Karteikarten am Ohne Titel, erstellt von Andrew Horbury am 01/04/2015.
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