Wednesday 4 November 2009

All ideas derive from sense experience which they copy.


Now in philosophy we study a very interesting part such as "empiricism". There are two representatives of empiricism: english empiricist John Locke and Scotish empiricist David Hume. They discovered meaning such as: "Where do ideas come from"?
So, David Hume insisted that our ideas come from our experience. He showed to us an example of it, he took gold and mountain and combined them, "goldem mountain" thereby Hume showed us that he had an experience of gold and of mountain that's why he had an idea of it. Also Hume pointed out that people must have experience of something otherwise it is impossible to make ideas from our mind.
Also there is another empiricist, english philosopher John Locke who revealed a conception such as "Tabula rasa". This concept means that when a child born he has a blank slate" and Locke believed that with lapse of time through the experience we make ideas. Also Locke insisted that our ideas which we have from experience rule our mind and that some ideas may derive from another ideas. John Locke said: "The mind can combine, relate and abstract ideas to form other ideas". It means that people can create one idea from another idea, if they had an experience of these things.
Both empiricists John Locke and David Hume showed that our ideas are copies of original sense impressions. Locke took an example of "white and "cold" and that they are faded copies of sense impressions. Also Locke showed some examples of meaning words: he discoverd that our words in their primary or immediate signification are nothing but our ideas which come to our mind from our experience are very important and we use them in our mind.
To prove discover about ideas and experience Hume took an example of deaf man, a deaf man doesn't have any ideas about notion of sounds because he hadn't got any sense experience of sounds. There is an appointed term of deriving ideas from sense experience is calling "a posteriori". This term means that we need to have an experience before we make an idea, a posteriori meaning is very popular among many empiricists such as Hume, Locke, Immanuel Kant. They believe that we should have sense experience and then our mind creates ideas which they copy from our experience.
But there is another term in philosophy "a priori" it means that people have ideas without any experience. It calls "innate knowledge" it created by intellect and our intuition. Leibniz, Descartes and Spinoza they believed that everything in our world created by mathematic (logical) and that people gain knowledge through intellect or intuition. And they completely refute that our ideas are making by experience and there were many and many arguments between these two termins.

2 comments:

  1. I totally agree that we learn by intellect and intuition.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actually, I don't agree, that we learn by intellect and intuition.My point of view is closer to David Hume and John Locke, I think that without any experience we can not have any knowledge.

    ReplyDelete