The Empiricists

PHI205 The Empiricists

Module Convener

Dr Niall Connolly

N.connolly@sheffield.ac.uk

Office hours: Mondays 3-4 & Tuesdays 3-4

Structure of the Course

Two one-hour lectures every week from week 1 to week 11, plus a one-hour seminar every week from week 3 to week 11.

Lecture Times and Locations:

Mon 11-12 - Mappin LT11Mon 1-2 - Hicks LT6

Seminar Times and Locations:

Fri 12-1 - Hicks Room F35Fri 1-2 - RRB- A84 [Richard Roberts Building]

Assessment

Two coursework essays: A Mid-term assessment essay (25%) due 12 NOON Tue 17th March 2015and an end of semester essay (25%) due 12 NOON Wed 20th May 2015. Plus two questions in a two-hour, pre-released examination at the end of the module (50%)

Course Description

This course focuses on the work of three major figures in the history of philosophy whose ideas have continuing relevance to contemporary debates: the so-called British Empiricists Locke, Berkeley and Hume.

Empiricism, roughly, is the doctrine that everything we know is derived from experience. Locke, Berkeley and Hume each endorse some form of this doctrine. But from a similar starting point they end up in very different places.

The course will examine the ideas and arguments of Locke, Berkeley and Hume. It will pay attention to the historical context but also it will investigate the continuing influence and relevance of the empiricists theories and arguments, and look at recent answers to the questions framed by Locke, Berkeley and Hume.

Debates about knowledge, perception, language, the mind and personal identity, causation and natural laws all exhibit the influence of these seminal thinkers.

Topics Covered

The rough plan for the lectures is to start with a clarification of empiricism particularly in comparison with the rationalism of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. Lockes attack on the suggestion that there are innate ideas and principles seems to be intended as a challenge to rationalist suppositions. We will investigate whether Lockes arguments succeed against their intended target and whether they are relevant to more recent forms of innatism/nativism.

Lockes Essay Concerning Human Understanding, on which the Locke lectures will focus, seeks toenquire into the Original, Certainty, and Extent of humane Knowledge; together, with the Grounds and Degrees of Belief, Opinion, and Assent (Essay BkI, ch I). Locke saw himself as laying the philosophical groundwork for the scientific advances of Newton and Boyle. Reality as revealed by the new science is very different from the world as we experience it. This discrepancy is explained by the distinction between Primary and Secondary Qualities. We will examine Lockes explanation and defense of this distinction and Berkeleys attack on it.

Berkeley was Lockes most vociferous critic. When he didnt deny Lockes assumptions he used them to draw conclusions that would be wholly unwelcome to Locke. Two central planks (apparently) of Lockes philosophy are the role of ideas for Locke an idea is whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks (Essay BkI, ch I) and a representational theory of perception according to which we the immediate objects of perception are not external material bodies but ideas. We will investigate Lockes view of perception and criticisms of the representational theory.

The next topic from Locke is the topic of Personal Identity. Lockes discussion of the Personal Identity question - what is it for a person at a given time to be one and the same person as a person at an earlier time still sets the agenda for discussion of this question.

We will also cover Lockes account of abstraction and Berkeleys criticism. Our sense experience, the source of all our knowledge and concepts for Locke, is made up of specific ideas the idea of this red patch Im now seeing for instance. Locke seeks to explain how we come to have abstract general ideas like red or triangle. Berkeley argues there are no such things.

Lockes views on Language and meaning will be the next topic. Lockes theory of meaning Words in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing, but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them (Locke, Essay III.ii.2) will be examined in comparison with contemporary theories of meaning.

Locke maintains that the ideas associated with the general words that we use to categorize things are ideas of nominal essences recognizable outward features rather than ideas of real essences: the internal structural properties responsible for things recognizable outward features. Locke is critical of scholastic essentialism; but it will be investigated whether contemporary essentialist views are touched by his critique.

George Berkeley is famous chiefly for his assertion that to be is to be perceived. He asserts that it is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. (PHK 4) All these items, in Berkeleys view, exist only in the minds of perceivers. If nobody was perceiving the Matterhorn it wouldnt exist.

Some of Berkeleys criticisms of Locke will have been covered already by the stage Berkeley becomes the central focus of the lectures. Some of Berkeleys key arguments for Immaterialism (the denial that there are material substances) and Idealism (the thesis that everything is a mind or mind-dependent) take Lockean assumptions as their starting point. If, as Locke holds, what we (immediately) perceive when we perceive mountains and houses and rivers, is ideas, then how can we know that there is anything above and beyond these ideas that causes us to have the ideas? The coherence of our experience and the discernable patterns suggest that ideas dont pop up randomly, but Berkeley has another explanation for the order we find in our experience (yes, its God).

Berkeleys arguments for Immaterialism and Idealism in his major works the Principles of Human Knowledge and the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, including the (n)famous Master Argument, will be examined, as will the role God plays in Berkeleys world.

We will also look into how Berkeley tries to square his bizarre metaphysics with commonsensical assumptions such as the assumption that when I stop looking at the Matterhorn it continues to exist, and the assumption that you and I, when we look at the Matterhorn, are looking at the same mountain.

Berkeley saw his Idealism as an alternative to the skepticism that seems hard to avoid if it is taken that we dont perceive external objects directly that all we perceive directly are ideas. David Hume embraced this skepticism.

The text under focus in the Hume component will be the Enquiry into Human Understanding (1st Enquiry). This is more readable than Humes earlier Treatise of Human Nature, though we will refer to this work for its discussion of personal identity.

Hume starts with a definition of a form of empiricism. The contents of the human mind what Locke called ideas and Hume calls perceptions are divided into two types: impressions and ideas. Impressions are distinguished from ideas by their comparative force and liveliness (Treatise I, I). Perceptions take the form of impressions when they make their first appearance (Treatise I, I). Ideas are the faint images of [impressions] in thinking and reasoning (Treatise I, I). Humes Copy Principle states that every simple idea is the copy of some simple impression.

Hume will wield the copy principle in arguing that we have no idea of a necessary connection between supposed causes and their supposed effects, nor even of our selves qua individuals that endure over time. In each case there is no impression or impressions from which the supposed idea could have arisen.

Humes seminal discussion of causation will be examined. There is a debate in the interpretive literature over whether Hume denies that there are necessary connections between causes and effects that is maintains that the link between my kicking a ball and its moving is coincidental or whether he believes in necessary connections between causes and effects but merely denies that we can have knowledge of them.

A related topic is Humes skepticism about Inductive reasoning. Hume seems to contend that you dont have any reason to believe that fire will continue to burn things rather than freeze them.

Humes views about personal identity/the self will be examined, his discussion of free will, and finally his (comparatively sensible) argument that we can never have good evidence that a miracle has occurred.

Seminars

There will be two seminars (you must sign up for one of them) every week from week 3 to week 11. Each seminar will focus on a text. You are required to read this and bring a copy to the seminar.

Week 3: Locke on Innate Ideas

Locke, J. Essay concerning Human Understanding, Bk.I, ch ii No Innate Speculative Principles

Week 4: Locke on Primary and Secondary Qualities

Locke, J. Essay, Bk II. Ch. Viii

Week 5: Locke on Personal Identity

Locke, J. Essay, Bk. II. Ch. xxvii

Week 6: Berkeley against Abstract Ideas

Berkeley, G. Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction

Week 7: Berkeleys arguments for Idealism

Berkeley, G. Principles of Human Knowledge, para. 1-24

Week 8: Hume on induction

Hume Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Sect.IV

Week 9: Hume on causation

Hume Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Sect.VII

Week 10: Hume on Personal Identity

Hume T