Notes for Chapter 4: Empiricism, mechanism, associationism, and common sense philosophy.
1. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Geometry gave a method of analysis
Science of motion source of concepts and causality
Mechanistic Psychology from the movements of objects to sensations
and ideas
Primary and secondary qualities of objects
Leviathan--Social contract leads to acceptance of autocratic
rule
vital motion (micro) and animal motion (macro)
2. John Locke (1632-1704)
Knowledge begins with sensation
Primary and Secondary qualities--imitative or not imitative of their
cause
Reflection--perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing,
willing
Memory and Contemplation
Reality could not be completely known
Complex ideas--modes (e.g. space, time, number, substances, relations
(e.g. cause &
effect, identity))
Man born in state of freedom, rational and governed by laws of nature
3. George Berkeley (1685-1753)
Mental monist--esse is percipi--to be is to be perceived
All qualities are secondary qualities
Extreme empiricist; ideas are tied together by experience
Theory of vision
4. David Hume (1711-1776)
Skeptic about the world
Ideas are merely copies of impressions
Association of ideas--resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect
Limits of reason--strongly influenced 20th century analytic philosophers
Importance of habit
No self that holds experiences together
5. David Hartley (1705-1757)
Associationist
Repeated sensations leave physical vestiges in the nerves which "are"
the ideas
Speculative physiological basis for memory, ideas, afterimages, etc.
Voluntary actions are due to behaviors associated with ideas rather
than directly with sensations
6. James Mill (1773-1836)
Simple ideas and complex ideas
All sensations contribute to ideas
Synchronous and successive associations both occur
We tend to be aware of a cluster of ideas, a compound, rather than
the simple ideas from
which they are generated.
Association of ideas; variations in strength of associations
7. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Wanted progress, human freedom and happiness (utilitarian)
Extreme empiricist
Contiguity and similarity
Mental chemistry
Foundations of inductive reasoning and experimental methods
8. French Materialists
Followers of Descartes without including mental substance
La Mettrie (1709-1751) His fever gave him data which led to
Man a Machine Mind dependent upon body
Condillac (1715-1780) Ideas are generated from sensation, illustrated
with the sentient
statue metaphor. Once there, Condillac allowed for Lockean reflection.
Cabanis (1757-1808) Consciousness is in the head, mental processes
are brain processes
9. Thomas Reid (1710-1796)
Common sense psychology
Reacted to Hume
Sensation and perception are two different phenomena
Faculties of mind (self-preservation, judgment, memory, perception,
etc.)
10. Thomas Brown (1778-1820)
Believed in analysis and simplification
Laws of suggestion--resemblance, contrast, and nearness in space and
time
Secondary laws--duration, liveliness, recency, frequency
Physical mechanical causation