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Single Idea 1620

[filed under theme 12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism ]

Full Idea

One dogma of empiricism is that there is some fundamental cleavage between truths that are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of facts, and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact.

Gist of Idea

Empiricism makes a basic distinction between truths based or not based on facts

Source

Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.20)

Book Ref

Quine,Willard: 'From a Logical Point of View' [Harper and Row 1963], p.20

The 38 ideas with the same theme [knowledge is essentially derived from experience]:

1820 The criteria of truth are senses, preconceptions and passions [Epicurus, by Diog. Laertius]
20805 All our concepts come from experience, directly, or by expansion, reduction or compounding [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus]
12121 We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon]
3648 Empiricists are collecting ants; rationalists are spinning spiders; and bees do both [Bacon]
16688 Evidence is conception, which is imagination, which proceeds from the senses [Hobbes]
7405 Experience can't prove universal truths [Hobbes]
7724 All the ideas written on the white paper of the mind can only come from one place - experience [Locke]
19431 There is nothing in the understanding but experiences, plus the understanding itself, and the understander [Leibniz]
3953 Real things and imaginary or dreamed things differ because the latter are much fainter [Berkeley]
6720 Knowledge is of ideas from senses, or ideas of the mind, or operations on sensations [Berkeley]
2182 Impressions are our livelier perceptions, Ideas the less lively ones [Hume]
23631 Hume is loose when he says perceptions of different strength are different species [Reid on Hume]
2184 All ideas are copies of impressions [Hume]
2190 All objects of enquiry are Relations of Ideas, or Matters of Fact [Hume]
2192 All reasoning about facts is causal; nothing else goes beyond memory and senses [Hume]
2246 If books don't relate ideas or explain facts, commit them to the flames [Hume]
21309 A proposition cannot be intelligible or consistent, if the perceptions are not so [Hume]
15619 Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims [Hegel]
15620 Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it [Hegel]
14789 Experience is indeed our only source of knowledge, provided we include inner experience [Peirce]
16476 For simple words, a single experience can show that they are true [Russell]
7290 If Russell rejects innate ideas and direct a priori knowledge, he is left with a tabula rasa [Russell, by Thompson]
5357 It is natural to begin from experience, and presumably that is the basis of knowledge [Russell]
5382 We are acquainted with outer and inner sensation, memory, Self, and universals [Russell, by PG]
5389 Knowledge by descriptions enables us to transcend private experience [Russell]
13932 Empiricists tend to reject abstract entities, and to feel sympathy with nominalism [Carnap]
4729 Empiricism lacked a decent account of the a priori, until Ayer said it was entirely analytic [O'Grady on Ayer]
5180 All propositions (especially 'metaphysics') must begin with the senses [Ayer]
5169 My empiricism logically distinguishes analytic and synthetic propositions, and metaphysical verbiage [Ayer]
19046 Empiricism improvements: words for ideas, then sentences, then systems, then no analytic, then naturalism [Quine]
19049 In scientific theories sentences are too brief to be independent vehicles of empirical meaning [Quine]
1620 Empiricism makes a basic distinction between truths based or not based on facts [Quine]
1629 Our outer beliefs must match experience, and our inner ones must be simple [Quine]
8450 Quine's empiricism is based on whole theoretical systems, not on single mental events [Quine, by Orenstein]
8252 Davidson believes experience is non-conceptual, and outside the space of reasons [Davidson, by McDowell]
8253 Sense impressions already have conceptual content [McDowell]
2961 Empiricism is a theory of meaning as well as of knowledge [Lockwood]
3172 Empiricism says experience is both origin and justification of all knowledge [Rey]