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Empiricism

As far as I am aware, empiricism dictates that we are all born as "tabula rasa", or blank slates, with absolutely no knowledge or ideas, and that we gain all our knowledge and ideas from external experiences.

If this is true (and I have understood correctly) then surely we are born without the ability to interpret all the new knowledge and ideas, just like a computer with no programming would not be able to understand and respond to commands given by the user.

Does this disprove empiricism, or are there ways around this?

(edited 12 years ago)

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Interpreting and analysing new knowledge and ideas doesn't require prior information, it is a natural physical process that we can do for the same reason that we can think and breathe. The interpretations we make are based on empiricle evidence and formed using these processes. We are more like a computer with the analytical hardware but no data to analyse yet.

Reply 3

InsomniacDreamer

ah...alright. the blank slate bit kind of gave me the impression that we are born without anything. thanks :smile:

Reply 4

Es man

i think youre kinda onto something i guess

we gain connections in our brains whenever we learn something,

how do we learn the ability to make connections :/

Reply 5

DeepInside

Well Empiricism is absurd. If we were a blank slate, then it throws the nature side of the nature vs nurture argument out the window. If we truly were tabula rasa when we were born then we would not know to cry as babies in order to get comfort and food. These methods are innate, they are not learned. Empiricism means that knowledge is only gained through the senses, but then, as Artemis says, how do we gain the ability to compare, assess and augment information? Of course it isn't possible, otherwise human's ability to solve maths would not be comprehensible to us.

I think that the way we find knowledge is dependent on the stimulus. For example, identifying a colour would require a different method to solving a mathematical equation. People should not accept either rationalism and empiricism as human's way of finding knowledge but rather see them as two separate forms of epistemology, dependent on the nature of the knowledge they wish to find out.