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12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism

[knowledge is essentially derived from experience]

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