CHAPTER 5 EMPIRICISM, SENSATIONALISM, AND POSITIVISM
Descartes was so influential that most of the philosophies that developed after him were
reactions to some aspect of his work. The British and French philosophers denied Descartes’s
contention that some ideas are innate, saying instead that all ideas are derived from experience.
These philosophers attempted to explain the functioning of the mind as Newton had explained
the functioning of the universe. That is, they sought a few principles, or laws, that could account
for all human mental experience.
German philosophers made an active mind central to their conception of human nature. Instead
of envisioning a mind that simply recorded and stored sensory experiences, they saw the mind as
actively transforming sensory information, thereby giving that information meaning it otherwise
would not have.
Scattered throughout Europe, the romantic philosophers rebelled against the views of the
empiricists and rationalists. The romantics urged a focus on the total person, a focus that
included two aspects the other philosophies minimized: human emotions and the uniqueness of
each individual.
BRITISH EMPIRICISM
An empiricist is anyone who believes that knowledge is derived from experience. Empiricism,
then, is a philosophy that stresses the importance of experience in the attainment of knowledge.
The term experience, in the definition of empiricism, complicates matters because there are
many types of experience. There are “inner” experiences such as dreams, imaginings, fantasies,
and a variety of emotions. There is general agreement, however, to exclude such inner
experiences from a definition of empiricism and refer exclusively to sensory experience. Yet,
even after focusing on sensory experience, there is still a problem because the implication is that
any philosopher who claims sensory experience to be vital in attaining knowledge is an
empiricist. Thus, acknowledging the importance of sensory experience alone does not qualify
one as an empiricist.
What then is an empiricist? In this text, we will use the following definition of empiricism:
Empiricism ... is the epistemology that asserts that the evidence of sense constitutes the primary
data of all knowledge; that knowledge cannot exist unless this evidence has first been gathered;
and that all subsequent intellectual processes must use this evidence and only this evidence in
framing valid propositions about the real world. (D. N. Robinson, 1986, p. 205)
, THOMAS HOBBES
Although he followed in the tradition of William of Occam and Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes
(1588–1679) is sometimes also referred to as the founder of British empiricism. Hobbes was
educated at Oxford and was friends with both Galileo and Descartes. He also served as Bacon’s
secretary for a short time. Hobbes was born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England. Hobbes’s father,
an Anglican vicar, got into a fight in the doorway of his church and thereafter disappeared. The
care of his children was left to a prosperous brother who eventually provided Hobbes with an
Oxford education, but Hobbes claimed that he learned little of value from that venture. Hobbes
noted that Oxford had a strong Puritan tradition but also had an abundance of “drunkenness,
wantonness, gaming, and other such vices” (Peters, 1962, p. 7). Hobbes achieved great fame in
his lifetime: “Indeed, like Bernard Shaw, by the time of his death he had become almost an
English institution” (Peters, 1962, p. 16).
HUMANS AS MACHINES. Hobbes did not become serious about philosophy until the age of
40, when he came across a copy of Euclid’s Elements. This book convinced him that humans
could be understood using the techniques of geometry. After visiting Galileo in 1635, Hobbes
became convinced that the universe consisted only of matter and motion and that both could be
understood in terms of mechanistic principles. Why, asked Hobbes, could not humans too be
viewed as machines consisting of nothing but matter and motion? Galileo was able to explain the
motion of physical objects in terms of the external forces acting on them—that is, without
appealing to inner states or essences. Are not humans part of nature, wondered Hobbes, and if so,
cannot their behavior also be explained as matter in motion? This became the self-evident truth
that Hobbes needed to apply the deductive method of geometry: Humans were machines.
Humans were viewed as machines functioning within a larger machine (the universe): “For
seeing life is but motion of limbs.... For what is the heart but a spring; and the nerves but so
many strings; and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body” (Hobbes,
1651/1962, p. 19). With Hobbes, we have the first serious attempt to apply the ideas and
techniques of Galileo to the study of humans.
GOVERNMENT AND HUMAN INSTINCTS. Like many of the philosophers we will see in
this chapter, Hobbes’s primary interest was politics. He was thoroughly convinced that the best
form of government was an absolute monarchy. He believed that humans were naturally
aggressive, selfish, and greedy; therefore, democracy was dangerous because it gives too much
latitude to these negative natural tendencies. Only when people (and the church) are subservient
Descartes was so influential that most of the philosophies that developed after him were
reactions to some aspect of his work. The British and French philosophers denied Descartes’s
contention that some ideas are innate, saying instead that all ideas are derived from experience.
These philosophers attempted to explain the functioning of the mind as Newton had explained
the functioning of the universe. That is, they sought a few principles, or laws, that could account
for all human mental experience.
German philosophers made an active mind central to their conception of human nature. Instead
of envisioning a mind that simply recorded and stored sensory experiences, they saw the mind as
actively transforming sensory information, thereby giving that information meaning it otherwise
would not have.
Scattered throughout Europe, the romantic philosophers rebelled against the views of the
empiricists and rationalists. The romantics urged a focus on the total person, a focus that
included two aspects the other philosophies minimized: human emotions and the uniqueness of
each individual.
BRITISH EMPIRICISM
An empiricist is anyone who believes that knowledge is derived from experience. Empiricism,
then, is a philosophy that stresses the importance of experience in the attainment of knowledge.
The term experience, in the definition of empiricism, complicates matters because there are
many types of experience. There are “inner” experiences such as dreams, imaginings, fantasies,
and a variety of emotions. There is general agreement, however, to exclude such inner
experiences from a definition of empiricism and refer exclusively to sensory experience. Yet,
even after focusing on sensory experience, there is still a problem because the implication is that
any philosopher who claims sensory experience to be vital in attaining knowledge is an
empiricist. Thus, acknowledging the importance of sensory experience alone does not qualify
one as an empiricist.
What then is an empiricist? In this text, we will use the following definition of empiricism:
Empiricism ... is the epistemology that asserts that the evidence of sense constitutes the primary
data of all knowledge; that knowledge cannot exist unless this evidence has first been gathered;
and that all subsequent intellectual processes must use this evidence and only this evidence in
framing valid propositions about the real world. (D. N. Robinson, 1986, p. 205)
, THOMAS HOBBES
Although he followed in the tradition of William of Occam and Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes
(1588–1679) is sometimes also referred to as the founder of British empiricism. Hobbes was
educated at Oxford and was friends with both Galileo and Descartes. He also served as Bacon’s
secretary for a short time. Hobbes was born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England. Hobbes’s father,
an Anglican vicar, got into a fight in the doorway of his church and thereafter disappeared. The
care of his children was left to a prosperous brother who eventually provided Hobbes with an
Oxford education, but Hobbes claimed that he learned little of value from that venture. Hobbes
noted that Oxford had a strong Puritan tradition but also had an abundance of “drunkenness,
wantonness, gaming, and other such vices” (Peters, 1962, p. 7). Hobbes achieved great fame in
his lifetime: “Indeed, like Bernard Shaw, by the time of his death he had become almost an
English institution” (Peters, 1962, p. 16).
HUMANS AS MACHINES. Hobbes did not become serious about philosophy until the age of
40, when he came across a copy of Euclid’s Elements. This book convinced him that humans
could be understood using the techniques of geometry. After visiting Galileo in 1635, Hobbes
became convinced that the universe consisted only of matter and motion and that both could be
understood in terms of mechanistic principles. Why, asked Hobbes, could not humans too be
viewed as machines consisting of nothing but matter and motion? Galileo was able to explain the
motion of physical objects in terms of the external forces acting on them—that is, without
appealing to inner states or essences. Are not humans part of nature, wondered Hobbes, and if so,
cannot their behavior also be explained as matter in motion? This became the self-evident truth
that Hobbes needed to apply the deductive method of geometry: Humans were machines.
Humans were viewed as machines functioning within a larger machine (the universe): “For
seeing life is but motion of limbs.... For what is the heart but a spring; and the nerves but so
many strings; and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body” (Hobbes,
1651/1962, p. 19). With Hobbes, we have the first serious attempt to apply the ideas and
techniques of Galileo to the study of humans.
GOVERNMENT AND HUMAN INSTINCTS. Like many of the philosophers we will see in
this chapter, Hobbes’s primary interest was politics. He was thoroughly convinced that the best
form of government was an absolute monarchy. He believed that humans were naturally
aggressive, selfish, and greedy; therefore, democracy was dangerous because it gives too much
latitude to these negative natural tendencies. Only when people (and the church) are subservient
