British Empiricism

The claim

Every idea traces back to an impression. If a term cannot be traced to experience, it is empty — and the test is applied without exemption, including to substance, causation and the self.

What it held

Locke starts by denying innate ideas: the mind is a blank sheet, and everything on it arrives through sensation or through reflection on the mind's own operations. It is a modest-sounding programme with radical consequences, and the three great empiricists work them out in sequence.

Berkeley applies the rule to matter and finds no impression of it. We have impressions of colour, shape and resistance — never of an underlying substance holding them. So he denies matter: to be is to be perceived, and the world's continuity is maintained by God's perceiving. Whatever one thinks of the conclusion, the argument is difficult to answer on Locke's own terms.

Hume applies it to causation, and this is the moment the programme becomes genuinely disturbing. We observe one event following another, constantly. We never observe the necessity linking them. So the idea of necessary connection comes not from the world but from a habit of expectation formed in us — and induction has no rational justification, only a psychological explanation.

He applies it to the self as well, looks inward, and finds only a bundle of perceptions with no observer behind them.

How it argued

Trace each idea to its originating impression; where no impression can be found, conclude that the idea is confused or empty.

What it was arguing against

Innate ideas, Cartesian rationalism, and the assumption that reason alone can establish substantive truths about the world.

Where it disagreed with itself

Whether Hume's scepticism about induction admits any answer. Whether Berkeley's idealism follows from the premises or reveals that the premises were wrong.

Common misconceptions

That Berkeley denied the reality of ordinary things. He insisted trees and stones are as real as anything could be; what he denied was material substance underlying their perceived qualities. And Hume is not a global sceptic — he says explicitly that nature will not let anyone remain one for long.

How it began

Locke writing in Dutch exile after political trouble, in a century when the Royal Society had made observation prestigious and the appeal to authority disreputable.

What became of it

Living. The tradition runs through Mill and the positivists into contemporary naturalism, and Hume's problems remain open.

Lasting influence

Kant said Hume woke him from dogmatic slumber and the whole critical philosophy is a response. The American founders read Locke on government. Modern philosophy of science begins with Hume's problem.

Why it still matters

The problem of induction has no accepted solution, and every account of scientific inference has to say something about it.

Put another way

A ledger in which every entry must be traced to a receipt, and several important assets turn out to have none.

Where to start

Hume's Enquiry, sections IV and V. Twenty pages, and the problem of induction is complete in them.

The surprising bit

Hume's Treatise, which contains all of it, sold so badly he said it fell dead-born from the press. He was thirty when he wrote it and never got the academic post he wanted.

In their own words

Connections

Answers

Nominalism

Opposed by

Cartesianism, Cambridge Platonism

Influenced

Classical Utilitarianism, German Idealism, Scottish Common Sense School, Vienna Circle

The verdict

A modest principle followed honestly to conclusions its author had not wanted.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy