1. By the end of today you should be able to:
Concept Empiricism
By the end of today you should be able to:
Explain more fully what Concept Empiricism is and the arguments postulated by John Locke and David Hume (using the proper terminology).
2 mins

2. Recap John Locke’s Concept Empiricism
Recap John Locke’s Concept Empiricism
Our mind is a Tabula Rasa (blank slate) – it contains no ideas (thoughts or concepts). NO INNATE IDEAS. This is shown if you observe new born babies.
All our ideas derive from one of two sources:
Sensation: Our experience of objects outside the mind, perceived through the senses. This gives us ideas of ‘sensible qualities’.
Reflection: our experience of ‘internal operations of our minds’, gained through introspection or an awareness of what the mind is doing. This provides the ideas of perception, thinking, willing and so on. These ideas may well arrive later in childhood.
Locke uses the term ‘idea’ to cover sensations and concepts! (We will use the term ‘concept’ and ‘idea’ interchangeably).
10 mins

3. David Hume’s Concept Empiricism
Read Section 2 of Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Discuss in your groups what Hume is arguing and make notes.
5 mins

4. Ideas vs sensations
All gained from experience (gold mountain/virtuous horse)
Simple concepts
If someone is not susceptible to the sensation, they cannot be susceptible to the corresponding ‘idea’
One exception to this, but so small that ‘it is scarcely worth our observing’

5. David Hume’s Concept Empiricism
Impressions = the more lively sensations that we have when we see or hear or feel or love or hate.
Ideas = the less lively sensations that we have when we think about seeing, hearing, feeling etc.
What we are immediately and directly aware of are ‘perceptions’.
‘Perceptions’ are divided into ‘impressions’ and ‘ideas’, the difference between the two being marked by a difference of ‘forcefulness’ and ‘vivacity’, so that impressions relate roughly to ‘feeling’ (or ‘sensing’) and ideas to ‘thinking’.
Hume, following Locke, divides impressions into those of ‘sensation’ and those of ‘reflection’. Impressions of sensation derive from our senses, impressions of reflection derive from our experience of mind, including emotions.
Hume argues that ideas are ‘faint copies’ of impressions.
5 mins

6. Simple and Complex Concepts
So… how do we form ideas of things we have never experienced?
Read Chapter 2 from Locke’s second Book in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
10 mins

7. Simple and Complex Concepts
How do we form ideas of things we have never experienced?
Hume’s copy principle
This says: all of our ideas are copies of our impressions.
What it means is that all of our ideas are built up from copies of our impressions, by combining, separating, augmenting and diminishing them.
10 mins

8. Concept Empiricism…
ALL OF OUR IDEAS, OUR CONCEPTS, THOUGHTS AND IMAGINATION MUST HAVE COME FROM OUR IMPRESSIONS.!
2 mins

9. Using blue book pages 110 – 113 answer –
How did Hume’s empiricism influence his thoughts about God, himself, morality and causation?
3 mins