PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS

OF EMPIRICISM OF JOHN LOCKE IN

INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF THE
HUMAN PERSON

SUBMITTED BY: BIEN, GIAN L. AND ENCOMIENDA, HANNIEL R.

GRADE 11 – STEM103
SUBMITTED TO: SIR TIMENA, MARK DAVE P.
OCTOBER 26, 2022
I. INTRODUCTION

Do you believe in Rationalism? What is Rationalism? Well Rationalism is where you believe
that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge. On the other hand
Empiricism is the idea that all learning comes from the experience and observations. That’s
where Empiricism vs Rationalism comes in.

Who is John Locke? John Locke was born in August 29, 1632 but died in October 28, 1704.
He was a English Philosopher whose works lie at the foundation of modern philosophical
empiricism and political liberalism. His philosophical thinking was close to that of the
founders of modern science especially Isaac Newton, and other members of the Royal
Society. John Locke is known as the founder of a school of thought known as British
Empiricism, and he made foundational contributions to modern theories of limited, liberal
government.

The most elaborate and influential presentation of empiricism was made by John Locke, an
early Enlightenment philosopher, in the first two books of his Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690). All knowledge he held, comes from sensation or from reflection, by
which he meant the introspective awareness of the workings of one’s mind. Locke often
seemed not to separate clearly the two issues of the nature of concepts and the justification
of beliefs.

II. DISCUSSION/BODY

The debate between rationalism and empiricism predominantly takes place in epistemology,
the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature, origins, and limitations of knowing.
Knowledge may refer to a variety of things and is typically classified into three broad
categories: knowledge of the exterior world, knowledge of the interior world or self-
knowledge, and knowledge of moral and/or aesthetic ideals. We may discover that there are
category-specific requirements that must be met for knowledge to exist, and that shaping
particular questions and answers is simpler or more difficult depending on whether we focus
on the external world or on values. Most varieties of rationalism have significant
commitments to other philosophical perspectives. One is a commitment to rejecting
skepticism in at least some domains of knowledge. If we claim to know some facts by
intuition, deduction, or intrinsic knowledge, we plainly reject skepticism about such truths.
The Intuition/Deduction thesis is likewise devoted to epistemic foundationalism, the
concept that we know certain facts without relying on any others, and that we subsequently
utilize this foundational knowledge to know other truths.

In philosophy, empiricism is the assumption that all conceptions arise from experience, that
all concepts are about or apply to objects that can be experienced, or that all rationally
acceptable views or propositions can be justified or known only via experience. This broad
meaning is consistent with the term's origins in the ancient Greek word empeiria, which
means "experience." Concepts are said to be "a posteriori" (Latin for "from the latter") if they
can only be applied based on experience, and "a priori" (Latin for "from the former") if they
can be applied regardless of experience. Beliefs or propositions are said to be a posteriori if
they can only be known by experience, and a priori if they can be known without the
assistance of experience (see a posteriori knowledge). Thus, empiricism, according to the
second and third definitions above, is the conviction that all concepts, or all logically
acceptable beliefs or propositions, are a posteriori rather than a priori. The third definition
of empiricism is a theory of knowledge or a theory of justification. It considers beliefs, or at
least some critical types of belief. Empiricism about ideas and empiricism about knowledge
do not always entail each other. Many empiricists acknowledge that there are a priori
propositions but deny that there are a priori conceptions. A philosopher who accepts a priori
ideas but rejects a priori propositions is uncommon.

During the discovery of the Empiricism, there are philosophers who contributed to this
philosophy one of them is John Locke, our main focus for this research. Aside from Locke,
The Philosophers commonly associated with empiricism include Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas,
Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, George Berkeley, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill.
III. SYNTHESIS AND APPLICATION

In conclusion, we learn in this research that empiricism heavily emphasizes the use of
experiments and observation to collect evidence and draw conclusions. The goal of such
experimentation is to apply theories to real world observations; record the findings in the
form of empirical data and present them to the relevant audience. The mind puts idea
together in three different ways. The first is to combine simple ideas to form complex ones.
The second is to bring two or more ideas together and form a view of them in relation to each
other. The third is to generate general ideas by abstracting from specific examples.

As students, we may implement what we've learned from this research by employing
empiricism whenever we're learning and gaining information at school. To prove our point,
the finest example that my partner and I can provide is when we balance our transactions
for accounting subjects. Our school has ten different classes, and in order to balance our
learning, teachers use visual aids to help us students take up and visualize the concepts
that they are teaching. Students will be able to balance their learnings by employing their
senses of sight and touch. Different visual aids were employed by teachers in different
areas so that students may differentiate their knowledge. Through those experiences, we
are applying the empiricism because based on its definition, empiricism is the idea that all
learnings came from the experiences and observations.

IV. REFERENCES

https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/e/Empiricism.htm
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/
https://study.com/academy/lesson/john-lockes-theory-of-empiricism.html
https://www.britannica.com/topic/empiricism

https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Locke
https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/empiricism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism