How do we know?
Empiricist Epistemology




I.
 Introduction




II.
 John Locke (1632-1704)

A.
 Tabula Rasa

B.
 Ockham's Razor

C.
 Locke's Analysis of Ideas


1.
 Simple and Complex Ideas


2.
 Particular and General Ideas


3.
 Primary and Secondary Qualities





D.
 Substance (Locke's Undoing)




III.
 George Berkeley (1685-1753)

A.
 Berkeley "Corrects" Locke

B.
 Sense Data


1.
 Berkeley's Attack on "Primary Qualities"


2.
 Ideas are Sensations are Sense Data





C.
 The Source of Sense Data




IV.
 David Hume (1711-1776)

A.
 Types of Declarative Statements


1.
 Analytic Propositions ("Relations of Ideas")


2.
 Synthetic Propositions ("Matters of Fact")


3.
Nonsense





B.
 "Necessary Connections" Rather than "God"





C.
 Rethinking Causality (Cause vs. Seriality)





D.
 Hume's Challenge to Descartes' "Foundation" (the Self)




V.
 Logical Positivism

A.
 Cause = Seriality

B.
 "Predictions of Future Sense Data" Rather than Locke's "Substance"

C.
 Rejection of Idealism


1.
 Rejection of Solipsism (contra Descartes and Berkeley)


2.
 Assertion of a Monistic Viewpoint



"Mental" and "Physical" are Logical Constructs (interpretations of sense data).


3.
 Radical Behaviorism


4.
 Theoretical Entities (where esse is not percipi)




VI.
 Critiques of Logical Positivism and Empiricism More Broadly

A.
 Attacks on Psychological Atomism


(Donald Palmer and the Red VW; the Cognitive Dissonance of Ale and Cola)

B.
Attacks on Logical Positivism's Language


(This is important because Berkeley's "Bridge of Intersubjectivity" depends on an adequate empiricist account of language.)


1.
 B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) and Operant Conditioning


2.
 Noam Chomsky devastates B.F. Skinner's Linguistic Theory



(Linguistic Novelty and Children's Grammatical Mistakes)




VII.
 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

A.
 No Blank Slate (contra the Empiricists)

B.
 No Innate Ideas (contra the Rationalists)

C.
 Categories of the Understanding (Innate Structures)




VIII.
 Where do we go from here?

A.
 Cultural Relativity and Kant's Categories of the Understanding

B.
 The Web of Knowledge?

C.
 Richard Rorty: Arguments rather than Objects of Belief