British Empiricism
British Empiricism stresses the importance
of experience, not the importance of innate ideas. According to British Empiricists, all
knowledge is attained through experiences in our lives, most especially sensory
experiences.
1575-----1600-----1625-----1650-----1675-----1700-----1725-----1750-----1775-----1800-----1825-----1850-----1875-----1900
___ __ ---------Hartley-------____------------J. Mill-------------
____________ -------------Locke------------__-----------Hume---------- --------------Bain--------------
---------------Hobbes--------------- ------------Berkeley---------- _-----------JS Mill-----------
Founder of British Empiricism
Humans are mechanistic (applied Galileo to people)
The church should be subservient to the state
Human behavior is motivated by appetite and aversion
Friend and student of Boyle
Against the conception of innate ideas
Ideas come from sensation or reflection on that sensation
Simple and complex ideas
Anything that produces an idea is a quality, there are primary and secondary qualities
Primary qualities produce things not in the physical world, such as color sound, taste
Had some views on associations, mostly unnatural associations
Recommended behavioral therapy for fears
Materialism is a threat to God and Religion
-speak out against it by denying the physical world
external reality is god's perception
people don't perceive distance with "natural geometry bt rather by asociating things with distance
Wanted to bring about a revolution of the moral sciences as
-Create a science of human nature
Impressions and ideasà two kinds of perception
Three laws of association
-Law of resemblance: Thoughts run easily from one idea to similar other ideas
-Law of contiguity: When you think of something you remember other things from the same time and place
-Law of cause and effect: When you think of an outcome, you think of the things preceding it.
Beliefs are the result of recurring experiences which can be explained by laws of association
The passions associated with ideas and impressions cause behavior
Experiences occurring together are recorded in the brain as an interrelated package
Complex ideas are formed automatically by association
Vividness and freuency cause differences in associations
Mental events are as predictable as physical events
People can be studied just as easily as nature can be studied
Sought to find the universal laws of human behavior
First true psychologist, he wrote the first texts
Two new laws of association
-Compound: Ideas are linked with several other ideas
-Constructive: The mind can organize experiences into infinite combinations, this produces creativity
Bain had many ideas providing the groundwork for behaviorism