Discuss the characteristics of empiricism

The term empiricism is derived from the ancient Greem word empeiria, meaning “experience”. Empiricism is a philosophical school holding that knowledge can only be gained from sensory experience. Empiricism is often contrasted with rationalism, rationalism emphasizes the role of reason and logic in discovering the nature of the world, while empiricism instead emphasizes the use of the senses. In western philosophy, empiricism became particularly popular during the 1600’s and 1700’s. Some of the most important British empiricists of that time included John Locke and David Hume.

The major characteristics of Empiricism are:

1. It emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, and argues that the only knowledge humans can have is a posteriori (i.e based on experience). Thus sense perception is the main source of knowledge. Empiricists support their philosophy by describing situations in which a person’s lack of sense experience stops her from full understanding. For example ,how can you explain the flavour of apples to someone who has never tasted one? All ideas of human mind can be divided into two parts:

1. Simple

2. Complex

Simple ideas are based only on perception, like color, size, shape, etc. complex ideas are formed when simple ideas are combined.

2. There is nothing that is more certain and indubitable than immediate sensation. Our senses may deceive us about the world, but it seems impossible to deny that we are actually having sense experiences. I cannot doubt the existence of the sensations which present themselves to me. My own sensations are certain regardless of doubts about their origin. I cannot change my mind about them e.g I am having a sensation of a certain sort such as a headache. ‘How do you know you are having a headache?’ is a silly question.

3. Most empiricists also discounts the notion of innate ideas or innatism (the idea that the mind is born with ideas or knowledge and is not a “blank slate” at birth). They argue that ideas are only acquired through experience, and not through innate ideas. Empiricists reject the concept of innate knowledge because, for example, if children had this knowledge, why does he or she not have this knowledge at birth? The empiricists believe that only with experiences could one form simple ideas, which could then be combined into complex ideas. 

4. The empiricist relies much more on inductive rather than deductive reasoning. In order to build a more complex body of knowledge from the direct observations of sensory perception induction or inductive reasoning(making generalizations based on individual instances) must be used. 

5. The empiricist emphasis on evidence, especially as discovered in experiments, makes empiricism very important for science. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning on intuition. Empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method. Hence science is considered to be methodologically empirical in nature.