The British Empiricists

There has been a bit of time in between writing these articles. I wish to finish up this review of philosophers in a very brief way for people to refer to. For those not familiar, I recommend the previous installment:

http://spirited-tech.com/2018/03/17/the-continental-rationalist/

There will be some observations of the context around the empiricists and some categories to help us understand them. Firstly, we should not think of them as thinking we simply look at the world and have direct access. For the most part, they held that the world we experience is mediated by the mind (this is called indirect realism). Secondly, in the Rationalists we find they start with more of certain metaphysical commitments and then derives epistemology from it. The Empiricists tend to do it in the opposite fashion in they wish to start with epistemology and then discuss issues about existence and ethics. This is how they both enter their procrustean beds.

Thomas Hobbes:

Thomas Hobbes is a figure that plays an influential role for the empiricists. Thomas Hobbes believed in materialism and that the material world was deterministic. For him, nothing was immaterial. The human mind, angels, and even God were all material things. His affirmation of nominalism (and this is the case with other philosophers) pushed him towards a more empirical epistemology. That’s probably because it forces someone to think of the world in terms of particulars. This led him to think of knowledge as being some kind of material causation. This being where he seems most like an empiricist because knowledge is caused when sensations pour into it from the world. This is why categorizing him is difficult because he has slight elements that make him seem like a rationalist. For example, he starts off with metaphysics instead of epistemology.

The most popular idea from Hobbes is his political ideas. He is known for his contribution to social contract theory (contractarianism). Social contract theory is the view that persons’ moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live. His rationale for his theory is derived from his perspective on human psychology:

Hobbes’ political theory is best understood if taken in two parts: his theory of human motivation, Psychological Egoism, and his theory of the social contract, founded on the hypothetical State of Nature. Hobbes has, first and foremost, a particular theory of human nature, which gives rise to a particular view of morality and politics, as developed in his philosophical masterpiece, Leviathan, published in 1651. The Scientific Revolution, with its important new discoveries that the universe could be both described and predicted in accordance with universal laws of nature, greatly influenced Hobbes. He sought to provide a theory of human nature that would parallel the discoveries being made in the sciences of the inanimate universe. His psychological theory is therefore informed by mechanism, the general view that everything in the universe is produced by nothing other than matter in motion. According to Hobbes, this extends to human behavior. Human macro-behavior can be aptly described as the effect of certain kinds of micro-behavior, even though some of this latter behavior is invisible to us. So, such behaviors as walking, talking, and the like are themselves produced by other actions inside of us. And these other actions are themselves caused by the interaction of our bodies with other bodies, human or otherwise, which create in us certain chains of causes and effects, and which eventually give rise to the human behavior that we can plainly observe. We, including all of our actions and choices, are then, according to this view, as explainable in terms of universal laws of nature as are the motions of heavenly bodies. The gradual disintegration of memory, for example, can be explained by inertia. As we are presented with ever more sensory information, the residue of earlier impressions ‘slows down’ over time. From Hobbes’ point of view, we are essentially very complicated organic machines, responding to the stimuli of the world mechanistically and in accordance with universal laws of human nature. …

In addition to being exclusively self-interested, Hobbes also argues that human beings are reasonable. They have in them the rational capacity to pursue their desires as efficiently and maximally as possible. Their reason does not, given the subjective nature of value, evaluate their given ends, rather it merely acts as “Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired” (139). Rationality is purely instrumental. It can add and subtract, and compare sums one to another, and thereby endows us with the capacity to formulate the best means to whatever ends we might happen to have.

https://iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/#SH2a

For clarity’s sake, he argues that humans are motivated by self-interest, but also rational. So, we make these social contracts to avoid a world of endless violations of other’s self-interest. That kind of world results in some sort of universal distrust and endless war (State of Nature). This also leads to his ethical perspective as well:

In Hobbes’ view, this mechanistic quality of human psychology implies the subjective nature of normative claims. ‘Love’ and ‘hate’, for instance, are just words we use to describe the things we are drawn to and repelled by, respectively. So, too, the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ have no meaning other than to describe our appetites and aversions. Therefore, moral terms do not describe some objective state of affairs, but are rather reflections of individual tastes and preferences. …

According to this argument, morality, politics, society, and everything that comes along with it, all of which Hobbes calls ‘commodious living’ are purely conventional. Prior to the establishment of the basic social contract, according to which men agree to live together and the contract to embody a Sovereign with absolute authority, nothing is immoral or unjust – anything goes. After these contracts are established, however, then society becomes possible, and people can be expected to keep their promises, cooperate with one another, and so on. The Social Contract is the most fundamental source of all that is good and that which we depend upon to live well. Our choice is either to abide by the terms of the contract, or return to the State of Nature, which Hobbes argues no reasonable person could possibly prefer.

It should be seen how his materialism pervades all his thought. That knowledge is that or material causation, society is men seeking to serve their appetites, and ethics merely refers to preferences. This is a mere assumption on the part of Hobbes because he cannot actually through his senses know that the world is completely corporeal nor that all events are mechanistically determined. Furthermore, why trust the world to cause reliable beliefs to form from sensation? Even if there could be reliable causal chains, why trust the human mind? Hobbes leaves many more questions than he does in giving answers.

In his political philosophy, man is a worthless beast, and given any arbitrary societal agreement can be treated like a king or as a slave. The things we call rights, laws, and obligations are illusions we have because of social agreement. The state is privileged over that of the persons of a state. As R. J. Rushdoony states:

The basic form of utopianism was now shaped for modern man to apply to the social order: the state, or better, the scien-tific socialist state, is the great and ultimate order, the order of unity and man’s savior. Because the one is now totally imma-nent, there is no escape from its “truth” nor appeal against it. Truth being incarnate and present in the form of the state, man in any conflict with the state can only be evil.
Hobbes’s utopianism made this point. Thomas Hobbes(1588-1679) wrote his Leviathan(1651) as “a vindication of the absolute rights of whatever government happens to be in pow-er.” The state incarnates true order. In Hobbes’s words, “the Law of Nations, and the Law of Nature, is the same thing.” The state comprehends all orders, so that “a Church, such a one as is capable to Command, to Judge, Absolve, Condemn, or do any other act, is the same thing with a Civil Common-wealth.” Nothing can exist outside of this One, the state. The great condemnation of heresy for Hobbes was that it is “a pri-vate opinion, obstinately maintained, contrary to the opinion which the Publique Person (that is to say, the Representative of the Commonwealth) hath commanded to be taught.” Moreover, “Haeretiques are none but private men, that stubbornly de-fend some Doctrine, prohibited by their lawfull Soveraigns.” The state in Hobbes’s order is the only good; man is virtually nothing.

The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy by R. J. Rushdoony (pgs. 290-291)

1. John Locke

Locke denies that people have innate ideas and thinks we start off as blank slates (Tabula rasa). The notion of innate ideas is that humans are born with certain ideas and knowledge that guides them in interpreting experiences. Locke thinks that we don’t start with any of that but rather experiences pour into our minds.

Locke presents us with some distinctions to help clarify his views. He presents a difference between ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection. The ideas of sensation are notions we derived from experience and ideas of reflection. We gained ideas by reflecting on those ideas collected from experience (perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing). The ideas gained from experience are called simple ideas. This is different from complex ideas in which the mind takes an active role in taking simple ideas and combining, separating, or abstracting one from another. This is like the ancient Empiricist Aristotle’s distinction between the active and passive intellect. To explain, you may see a cat. The simple idea of a cat would be to break that sensation down into color, texture, a certain size, a certain shape, etc. We may then abstract that when you see these qualities all together you think of your general things you may call a “cat”. This idea of a “CAT” is what is called a complex idea. Many things fall under this notion:

Complex ideas are of two kinds, ideas of substances and ideas of modes. Substances are independent existences. Beings that count as substances include God, angels, humans, animals, plants and a variety of constructed things. Modes are dependent existences. These include mathematical and moral ideas, and all the conventional language of religion, politics and culture. The second action which the mind performs is the bringing of two ideas, whether simple or complex, by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them. This gives us our ideas of relations (II.12.1, N: 163). The third act of the mind is the production of our general ideas by abstraction from particulars, leaving out the particular circumstances of time and place, which would limit the application of an idea to a particular individual. In addition to these abilities, there are such faculties as memory which allow for the storing of ideas.

From particulars, Locke wishes to abstract universals (even though they were merely names for things you have had repeated experience) from them. This is where “substance” comes into his philosophy:

The ideas of things – the book and the stone – are also compound ideas, produced by combining the several simple ideas that occur together. A book, for example, is a combination of the ideas of brown, the dusty smell of leather, and the tangible sensation of its crumbling, plus the ideas of its size, shape, and other qualities. But there is an ambiguity in the word book that points to the second of the three mental operations, namely, abstraction. It was previously stated that language does not afford enough names for every idea, even every simple idea, to have one of its own. If we look at snow, we have the simple idea of white; but usually when we use the word white, we do not intend to refer to that single sensation. We have received similar ideas from chalk, milk, paper, and other snowfalls. From these several sensations of whites we abstract the common quality of white, so that usually our idea of white is not a simple but an abstract idea. This is still more evident in the case of a book. We have many compound ideas of books, long shelves of them. But by abstracting their common qualities, and discarding their individual peculiarities, e.g., the circumstances of time and place, the exact size of each, and so on, we frame for ourselves the abstract idea of book. This abstract idea of book can then be used as the representative for all the compound ideas of books. And the same holds for all other examples of what are ordinarily called things.

But there is a still further step in abstraction before the idea of book, or even the idea of this book, is completed. It is a matter of curiosity and one requiring explanation that several simple ideas can frequently occur together. How is it possible that the ideas of brown, the smell of dry leather, and the idea of a particular shape should accompany each other? There is nothing in the color brown to require one smell rather than another, or any smell at all. It is evident, therefore, that no one of these ideas depends on or inheres in any other. Brown cannot inhere in a dusty odor. Nor can the two of them exist “out there” by themselves. Brown cannot sit on a shelf all by itself, nor can brown and odor together do so. The white of the snow cannot fall from the clouds by itself, nor can the idea of cold. These simple qualities cannot walk around unchaperoned. They could not meet and form groups all by themselves. Accordingly, “we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein” the qualities “subsist and from which they result; which therefore we call substance.” Substance thus serves the important function of uniting qualities so that a thing can be said to exist.

Thales to Dewey: A History of Philosophy by Gordon Clark(Kindle Locations 6151-6159). Kindle Edition.

This is reminiscent of Aristotle again and his use of matter that individuates things. Things are individuated because they are different substances. Aristotle maintained that matter is what distinguished one thing from another. For Locke, a substance is an object that has the power to give us ideas of simple predicates.

The other distinction is between primary and secondary qualities. Firstly, a quality is the power [in an object] to produce any idea in our mind. The primary qualities are something an object possesses in virtue of itself and secondary qualities are a property something has in relation to an observer. these primary qualities are solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number are produced in our minds by the qualities of extension, figure, quantity, etc. While the secondary qualities are things like colors, tastes, feelings (like heat, warm, cold), and sounds. We don’t observe free-floating qualities. So, what is it that possesses these qualities? This is where substance is important to Locke.

Just as his epistemological and metaphysical views sought pure individuality, the same is true of his ethics and political views. Locke in the spirit of Hobbes embraces the social contract theory. The same motivation to avoid the state of nature. The state of nature isn’t as gloomy as it is for Locke as it is for Hobbes. The state of nature is that men would live by natural law, but with no government, they aren’t able to settle conflicts. In the light of that, he thought we have a social contract with everyone forming a state to deal with social conflicts. The social contract we make should have certain inalienable rights to protects individuals. His ethical views are just simple hedonism. Goodness is measured by how much it maximizes human pleasure and evil in terms of pain.

2. Bishop George Berkeley

George Berkeley takes Locke’s project and tries to make it more consistent. He notices a few areas where Locke was not being consistent with his empiricism. He attacks Locke’s notion of substance and his distinction between primary and secondary qualities.

Substance that exists independent of your perception isn’t something we observe. It is something we infer or assume that the things we see exist when we are not observing them. Locke had gone far beyond what he had seen or what can be observed by our senses. The problem of this notion of substance continues for Locke. Locke has maintained that we could know that substances were real because we knew they were causing the perceptions we had. So, by inferring back we could know they are the case from what is observed. This issue John Locke had even recognized:

If anyone will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us.

For what are we to make of the idea of substance apart from our notion of qualities? It seems that substance is nothing without having some quality. Everything is abstracted from the notion that it seems that it leaves nothing left. The nature of substance seems to either be unknown or to be nothing at all.

The notion of primary and secondary qualities also seems to undermine Locke’s views. Locke supposed that some of these qualities are in the objects themselves and some our mind imposes on objects but how did he decide which appearances were real? There seems to be no non-arbitrary way to suppose which is the case.

Berkeley abandons the notion of mind-independent substances and mind-independent qualities. He maintained “to be is to be perceived.” This is what we call Idealism. In a way, he is the forefather of people like Michael Jones, Johanan Raatz, etc. They may use different means to get there but they arrive at the same destination.

Berekely because of his nominalism (denial of universals) began to grow skeptical of whether we can observe through sensation causal relations. They in his view are signs for things we find a resemblance to the things observed. In Locke’s philosophy, universals were names to help us remember particulars.

Bwewkley was foreshadowing Hume, in that he noticed that we don’t see causal connections. He maintained we can infer from mental acts and argue from how they analogously from acting out our intentions, things in the world can act things out. He also has God to ultimately cause everything.

One may wonder what happens to objects when humans aren’t observing them. Do they cease to exists? The answer from Berkeley is that they remain in existence. The reason is that they are always being observed. Everything is being perceived by God.

3. David Hume

Hume takes empiricism to its final form. He is a sort of final boss for our journey and a very bright philosopher. He’s sort of a stepping stone as we are also stepping stones for those that come after us to look back and to see where to go in God’s plan.

For Descartes and Locke, ideas can be clear and distinct. Hume abandons that for distinguishing between our ideas and our impressions. The difference between these is not in kind but in degree. Impressions are thought to be characterized as having “liveliness” and “vividness” (also put force and vivacity).

Hume proposes that perceptions be divided into impressions and ideas. Although he speaks of these as “two distinct kinds” of perceptions, it turns out that the difference is really one of degree, not of kind. Impressions are characterized by the “force and vivacity” with which they strike the mind. They are generally what we would consider primary or immediate experiences: the taste of fresh coffee, the warm sensation as it flows over your tongue, the happiness you feel as you drink it, and the overwhelming desire to accompany it with a doughnut.

Ideas, on the other hand, are merely “faint images of these in thinking and reasoning.” Hence, your later recollection of drinking the coffee is an idea rather than an impression. It is a real experience, but far less “lively” than the original experience. Hume assumes that everyone will grant the distinction between impressions and ideas insofar as they recognize a difference between feeling and thinking.

Anderson, James N.. David Hume (Great Thinkers) . P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Hume also finds useful the distinction between Analytic a priori and Synthetic a posteriori. This is the distinction between propositions being known in virtue on the constituent terms or by investigating the world. To be followed by later logical positivists, Hume has a verificationist principle. Namely, that if something wasn’t empirically verifiable nor true by definition then whatever is being stated has no meaning. As Hume famously said:

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Hume held that if we were to trace our perceptions back they would have come from simple impressions. This being is known as the Copy Principle:

All our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent.

The justification he gives for thinking this is that he argues from his experience and then challenges someone to find something that contradicts his theory.

Hume takes his epistemological observation and then begins to ask whether any of these notions we have can be found in sensation. For example, he starts to wonder (like Berkeley) whether we see causal relations. He tries to narrow down elements of causation to see what one means by “cause”. Hume maintained that when we speak about a cause we are talking about temporal priority (causes precede their events), spatial proximity (causes must be close to their effects), and necessary connection (an effect follows from its cause by necessity).

Hume challenges the last contention. He thinks we don’t see necessary connections but rather constant conjunctions. We often see a pool ball hit another and then the other goes a certain direction. It doesn’t follow from those past experiences that the pool balls will behave in that fashion. Furthermore, unlike Berkeley that maintained God was the ultimate cause of things. Hume thought of such as being inconsistent with empiricism. Where did Berkeley see God or see God causing things? So, Hume knew that empiricism left no room for a deity. Hume maintained that we don’t have any rational basis for causation. We rather form habits from seeing constant conjunction. As Dr. Anderson notes:

Furthermore, the notion of a necessary connection cannot be defended on a consistently empiricist basis. We may observe that the ball flies into the air when the bat hits it, but we don’t observe any necessity about it. No matter how many times we observe those conjoined events, it wouldn’t follow that the one event must follow the other. It is logically possible for the ball not to behave that way on some future occasion.2 In fact, the very concept of necessity is problematic, given Hume’s empiricism. Our impressions can only convey to us what does happen; they cannot tell us what must happen.

Anderson, James N.. David Hume (Great Thinkers) . P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Hume also grew skeptical of the notion of a “self”. Do we look out a see our mind, self, or soul? Even if we did, then why suppose that it the same self you see at another moment?

He agreed with Berkeley that an examination of experience does not reveal any such thing as material substance. 317 But what of immaterial substance? What of the soul, self, or mind? Hume said that whenever he focused on himself, he encountered some perception or other. He had no perception of a self or soul that brought these perceptions together into a single consciousness. So he defined soul minimally, to agree with his experience, as a bundle of perceptions. 318 So my soul differs from yours in that my bundle of perceptions is different from yours.

A History of Western Philosophy and Theology by Dr. John Frame. P&R Publishing (Page 225).

Hume also is known for the problem of induction. He raised the question as to whether we can suppose that we can make any inductive inferences from current impressions. We obviously can’t observe future experiences.

Hume also had some ethical observations. In empiricism, all we can observe is simply what is the case, but Hume noticed that we can’t derive what one ought to do from merely what we actually do. It is often put that we can’t derive normative conclusions from merely descriptive premises. This issue is known as Hume’s Guillotine or the Is-Ought problem. So, from his perspective, ethics is about human preferences.

Further Reflections:

Definition:

It may be the case that someone will argue that I’ve misrepresented the type of empiricism that was presented in John Locke. There are forms of empiricism and they aren’t the same thing. The thesis that I’ve attacked is the notion that all knowledge has its source in sensation. Another form is that all ideas have their source in sensation. I find it plausible that Locke had affirmed both it seems that there is a strong connection in his view between the power of human thought and knowledge. It is not important to discuss that here, but I think if someone wishes to object to me on these grounds then I have a challenge to the coherence of this notion as well. Where does the idea that all ideas come from sensation come from? It can’t come from sensation and thus is another reductive self-refuting stance.

Hume also has the same issue as Locke in this regard. If you can recall Hume’s fork, then you can see that Hume has the same problem. For Hume, something lacked any meaning if it wasn’t a matter of fact (some empirical truth that can be verified through sensation) and a matter of the relation of ideas (analytic truths: All bachelors are unmarried.) The issue is that Hume’s own position known as “Hume’s Fork” isn’t a matter of empirical verification nor is it an analytic truth. So, according to Hume’s principle, his own position is meaningless.

For Hume, perception plays an important role in him being an empiricist. This leads us to the question of where did Hume have an impression of his theory of perception? You can’t observe your idea of perception. So, according to Hume’s theory, the most basic content to human thoughts was unintelligible. Take Hume’s copy principle, that is the idea that all simple ideas comes from impressions. His reasoning for such is to merely appeal to his own experience, but he can’t know this is true universally.

Innate Knowledge:

I’ve written some things on epistemology in the past. This is directly relevant to the issue of the rejection of innate knowledge:

This idea goes back to John Locke’s idea of the Tabula Rasa. Reformed Christians have taught that knowledge of God is innate. That we have innate categories given by God to understand and organize the facts of this world. The rejection of that notion makes the human mind unable to process knowledge. Steve Hays wrote in an article entitles “Why you can’t use logic to prove God” this:

But that can’t be the basis of knowledge all the way down. You can’t derive a concept of numbers from observing physical objects, for unless you already have numerical concepts to work with, you can’t group physical objects numerically. Numbering objects requires a numerical preconception. You can’t bootstrap logical or mathematical knowledge from sensory perception. You can’t group five apples by number unless you recognize that they comprise five apples, and you’re not going to arrive at that classification by staring at some apples with a blank slate mind. It takes knowledge to learn. It takes some prior knowledge to acquire additional knowledge. An initially empty mind has no frame of reference to evaluate sensory input. The mind of the percipient must have a logical structure which enables it to organize or reorganize sensory input. An inbuilt classification-system.

http://spirited-tech.com/2018/07/04/parsing-revelational-epistemology/

This wasn’t only an observation of the former assistant of Dr. John Frame but also of his former student Dr. Greg Bahnsen:

If the analogy used here is to be appropriate, however, we must assume that men are already familiar with God when they encounter the world or His word. They come to their experiences prepared to recognize the indications in nature and Scripture as indications of God. Such preconditioning is necessary in all cases of direct, noninferential knowing. Whenever we gain knowledge in the form of immediate awareness, there has been prior training or preparation (linguistic, conceptual, behavioral, etc.). So by holding that there are some cases of noninferential knowing, Van Til was not at all endorsing a naive empiricist theory of concept formation or an artificial ver-ificationist criterion of meaningfulness. To put it simply, the mind is not a tabula rasa, and there are no “pure” observations. There is no such thing as the passive, neutral reception of stimuli that somehow bear meaning all by themselves. Observation always involves interpretation and is bound to theory. Broadly speaking, we bring a “cognitive background” to our experiences, so that we identify objects, events, and relations in terms of a theoretical perspective, cluster of beliefs, or state of mind.137 This cognitive background is partly a matter of intellectual/linguistic ability (a potentiality not always or fully developed), but also partly a matter of propositional truths capable of expression (in degrees of precision, accuracy, and scope), which mature along with the development of intellectual/linguistic ability. …

However, the troubles of empiricism appeared clearly when its most brilliant exponent, David Hume, insisted that in receiving facts the mind is so passive, that its “concepts” are but faint replicas of its “percepts.” This was evidence for Hume of the fact that the mind has no organizing power at all. Even if all the facts were brought into the mind in the forms of concepts they would still be utterly unrelated. It would be as though the human mind, like a modern Noah’s ark, had gathered together all facts which the womb of chance has produced in the past and would produce in the future, only to realize that the concept of the ark is itself nothing but the faint replica of a percept. Thus all the facts would still be not partially but wholly hidden.

Greg L. Bahnsen. Van Til’s Apologetic

Nominalism:

Bahnsen in his lectures major critique is that of the issue of nominalism. The empiricists being focused on the subjective and momentary nature of particulars of their experience missed their need for unifying these rather unconnected things in their ideas. When we talk about particulars we need to discuss things they share in common with other things to make them intelligible to us. They wished to think they can merely hold that we refer to these similarities purely out of linguistic convenience. The problem is that even names are purely illusory. The only thing we are reduced to having is purely unrelated to particulars that can’t even be spoken about without violating their particularity. This was pointed out by Bertrand Russell:

There is a section (Book I, Part I, Sec. VII) “Of Abstract Ideas,” which opens with a paragraph of emphatic agreement with Berkeley’s doctrine that “all general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive significance, and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals, which are similar to them.” He contends that, when we have an idea of a man, it has all the particularity that the impression of a man has. “The mind cannot form any notion of quantity or quality without forming a precise notion of degrees of each.” “Abstract ideas are in themselves individual, however they may become general in their representation.” This theory, which is a modern form of nominalism, has two defects, one logical, the other psychological. To begin with the logical objection: “When we have found a resemblance among several objects,” Hume says, “we apply the same name to all of them.” Every nominalist would agree. But in fact a common name, such as “cat,” is just as unreal as the universal CAT is. The nominalist solution of the problem of universals thus fails through being insufficiently drastic in the application of its own principles; it mistakenly applies these principles only to “things,” and not also to words.

The psychological objection is more serious, at least in connection with Hume. The whole theory of ideas as copies of impressions, as he sets it forth, suffers from ignoring vagueness. When, for example, I have seen a flower of a certain colour, and I afterwards call up an image of it, the image is lacking in precision, in this sense, that there are several closely similar shades of colour of which it might be an image, or “idea,” in Hume’s terminology. It is not true that “the mind cannot form any notion of quantity or quality without forming a precise notion of degrees of each.” Suppose you have seen a man whose height is six feet one inch. You retain an image of him, but it probably would fit a man half an inch taller or shorter. Vagueness is different from generality, but has some of the same characteristics. By not noticing it, Hume runs into unnecessary difficulties, for instance, as to the possibility of imagining a shade of colour you have never seen, which is intermediate between two closely similar shades that you have seen. If these two are sufficiently similar, any image you can form will be equally applicable to both of them and to the intermediate shade. When Hume says that ideas are derived from impressions which they exactly represent he goes beyond what is psychologically true.

Bertrand Russell. A History of Western Philosophy (Kindle Locations 11903-11921). Simon and Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Simple Ideas:

Locke has further issues with his philosophy. For Locke, all knowledge of ideas is traceable back to his simple ideas (this is similar to Hume in that they trace back to impressions). The issue is that these simple ideas aren’t true to our experience. We don’t have discrete sensations of simple ideas. We experience complex objects and not merely their parts. So, this is where Dr. Bahnsen notes that Locke has given up his own philosophical project. He didn’t want some strange abstract reality (like the Rationalists). He sought a more grounded and realistic and common sense philosophy but ended up contradicting it. In that way, it feels like an old fatalistic story where no matter how much a character tries to escape their fate, they end up bringing it about. This seems to be the trend of philosophy as Dr. Bahnsen pointed out:

Just think of the Continental Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz), who began with supposedly clear and distinct, “self-evident” ideas(notice their internal, subjective character), and yet derived from them radically and embarrassingly divergent conclusions about reality(dualism, monism, pluralism).Then consider the British empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume), who traced the mind’s ideas back to individual sensations (notice again the internal, subjective locus), only to render “substance” that unites properties inexplicable(Locke), to dispense with material substance(Berkeley), and then to lose altogether any mental substance or “self” that unites perceptions(Hume). As Kant concluded, to the degree the mind knows its inner contents( constituted by its own activity in forming the input of the senses), it still has no knowledge in the things-in-themselves outside the mind. The predicament is that man as a knower can never “get outside” the ideas formed within himself. When the unbeliever begins his philosophizing with himself at the center, he ends up unable to escape himself(subjectivism); and since every unbeliever faces the same dilemma, nobody can speak with authority about objective reality for anybody else(relativism).

http://spirited-tech.com/2018/03/17/the-continental-rationalist/

Solipsism:

I mentioned earlier that the empiricists maintain that we don’t know the world in some immediate way, but rather our knowledge of the world is mediated by our ideas. The empiricists have an issue that they don’t have any sensation that their ideas represent the reality beyond their minds. Of course, Berkeley is glad about this observation. The issue is that he still can’t show that anything beyond his own ideas exists either. Take Dr. Anderson’s criticism of Hume:

There is one further objection to Hume’s philosophical project that is worth highlighting. Hume boasts that his complete science of human nature will rest entirely on the “experimental method,” which means that his claims about human thoughts and actions will be grounded in ideas traceable entirely to original sensory impressions. But whose impressions? For Hume, the answer must be: Hume’s impressions—and no others. All of Hume’s conclusions must, by his own lights, derive entirely from his own ideas and impressions—the perceptions that arise within his own mind—because he has no epistemic access to anything else. And, as he himself argues, he has no rational basis for believing in an external mind-independent world, the existence of other minds, or even the existence of a unified self that persists through time. Thus, the specter of solipsism looms large for Hume, and he has no power to banish it. One who follows Hume must be willing to accept that there is no reason to believe that anything is real beyond one’s own ideas and impressions. A faithful Humean will insist that nature prevents us from embracing solipsism. We are psychologically unable to believe such an absurdity! But such a response misses the point: it still gives us no reason to reject solipsism. Worse still, it begs the question, for the very notion of “nature” presupposes that solipsism is false.

Anderson, James N.. David Hume (Great Thinkers). P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.

I would just charge that Solipsism is also an irrational position. Another issue is that if solipsism isn’t the result, then Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in the future spirit of Kant will have to posit a mysterious world beyond the mind that isn’t knowable. The issue is that leaves them in the threat of skepticism. If we can’t know the world for what it is, then it is hard to dismiss that it may be utterly irrational. It leaves us unable to know whether knowledge is possible and that leaves us with no ability to know anything.

Numbers:

Numbers are tricky things for empiricists. They are universals and we know that they are nominalists about universals. So, we all probably recognize that they are coherent notions. So, where do they come from? If empiricism was true, then our knowledge must come from simple ideas or impressions. We may see “two” objects, but this is different from seeing the number two.
Furthermore, the number of things also changes depending on how one conceptualizes the object. If you were to take shoes and observe them, you may find that they can be thought of in different ways. If we were to think of them atomistically, then they may have the property of trillions. If you were to think about it as a pair, then it would have the property of one. If you think of them as just shoes, then you would have two.

Even further observation from the world can be tricky. If you observe two pints of water being added to three pints of water, then we observe five pints of water. But if you were to add it to something else like sulfuric acid, then it wouldn’t result in five pints.

Experimentation shows that two pints of water and three pints of sulfuric acid do not make five pints. Still further, according to rationalism, two and three give the same result as three and two; but woe to the student who thinks that two pints of water added to three pints of sulfuric acid give the same result as three pints of sulfuric acid added to two pints of water.

Gordon Clark: Thales to Dewey: A History of Philosophy(Kindle Locations 6430-6433). Kindle Edition.

Causality:

It seems that the issue of causality leaves only a metaphysical issue, but it also is an epistemological issue. Empiricists’ beliefs led to them not having any rational basis for believing that causality is something actually occurring in the world. The issue is that means every belief that they possess is subject to chance. An impression is formed in the mind when they are caused to have some perception of something. If you put your hand in a fire, that causes you to have a sensation of pain. So, causality is necessary for knowledge in some regard, but if we have no basis for trusting that our minds are caused to believe things in some rational way relevant to the circumstances we exist, then we can’t trust our beliefs are being formed to produce reliable beliefs, because they merely may be the products of random causes.

One may respond that we just have our psychological habits of believing that we form these beliefs reliably, but this route has issues:

The elementary flaw in this account of causal beliefs is that it turns out to be circular, since it presupposes causal relations. Habit is an inherently causal notion: it implies that a cause (in this case, a constant conjunction of perceptions) brings about a specific effect (in this case, beliefs about necessary connections). But Hume has no right to appeal to a causal process in his account of causation, given the restrictions he imposes on that account. The most he is permitted to say is that we observe a constant conjunction between (1) our observations of constant conjunctions and (2) our beliefs about necessary connections (i.e., causal relations). Given Hume’s own terms, there is no reason to expect that we will always expect certain events to follow other events. Hume’s psychological account of causation turns out to be self-defeating. Either it must assume what it denies (objective necessary connections) or it sinks into an ocean of pure subjectivity.

Anderson, James N.. David Hume (Great Thinkers) . P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Furthermore, a psychological reason isn’t a solution to the epistemological issue that I’ve brought up. Those beliefs that are formed about causation are themself formed under the circumstances in a world where you can’t know that they formed reliably. So, they are no better epistemologically than an insane person’s delusions. We need our beliefs to be truth-tracking and not merely to be our beliefs.

Recommendations:

Dr. James Anderson:

John Locke and George Berkeley

David Hume

Dr. John Frame:

Lectures series:

Specific Lecture on Empiricism

History of Philosophy and Christian Thought

Dr. Ronald Nash:

18th Century Imperialism: Locke and Berkeley – 01

18th Century Imperialism: Locke and Berkeley – 02

18th Century Imperialism: David Hume