Title: Similarities and differences in British empiricists philosophies

During the seventeenth and eighteenth century, Western epistemology was

divided into two main schools: rationalism and empiricism. Continential
rationalists such as Descartes and Leibniz hold that pure reason can be the
source of knowledges and ideas, whereas experience is the only source of all the
contents in our minds according the the empiricits, represented by the British
philosophers: John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. However,
although they all agree on the fundamental principal of empiricism, each of
them has different answers to certain epistemological questions regarding
perceptions and realities.
1. On Perception
Considered to be the founder of modern empiricism, John Locke (16321704)
proposes this approach as a response to Descartes belief that the mind contains
innate principles which are recognized as being clearly and distinctly true
(Beitman, 2015). In his influential work An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690), he states that the mind is a tabula rasa or blank sheet
and argues that there are no innate ideas, but all ideas have their origin in
experience. Locke distinguishes between two forms of experience: sensation
and reflection. Sensation is sensory experience, involving the five senses, while
reflection is the awareness of the processes occuring within our minds. These
experiences provide the simple ideas out of which more complex knowledge
will be constructed. Locke classifies complex ideas according to the three
activities of the mind that produce them: combining, relating, and abstracting..
The first of these kinds of action is to combine simple ideas into complex ones.
Complex ideas are of two kinds, ideas of substances and ideas of modes.
Substances are independent existences such as God, humans, animals, plants,.
Modes are dependent existences, which include include mathematical, political,
cultural and moral ideas. The second action which the mind performs is relating
one idea with another to create ideas of relations such as causation, identity
Finally, abstracting from a series of particular experiences provides us with
general ideas.
It is this theory of abstract idea that the Irish philosopher George Berkeley
(1685 -1753), while sharing the belief that all knowledges come from
experience, strongly disagrees with Locke. According to Locke, there are two

ways of forming abstract ideas: by mental separation or by mental exclusion.

Mental separation involves separating two ideas in thought. For example, in our
idea of a particular colored extended thing, we can mentally separate the idea of
color from the idea of extension, and thereby mentally construct an abstract idea
of color. Mental exclusion involves mentally leaving out of an idea what is
particular to it and distinguishes it from a similar idea. We can mentally exclude
the differences in our ideas of two different men, single out what these ideas
have in common, and thereby mentally construct the abstract idea of human.
Thus, in the abstract idea of human, the determinate qualities such as size
and color are removed.
However to Berkeley mental separation and mental exclusion are both
impossible. First, Berkeley argues that there are certainly some parts or qualities
that we can abstract from a given thing only if those parts or qualities can exist
by themselves. For example, it is possible for us to abstract the idea
of nose from a man since it is readily conceivable that a nose can exist without
the rest of the body. However, Berkeley believes that there are certain qualities
that cannot exist apart from others; these include extension, colour, and motion.
Berkeley argues that colour cannot exist on its own: it cannot exist without
figure, which cannot exist without extension and motion. Therefore we cannot
form the abstract idea of color through mental separation. Second, Berkeley
claims that it is impossible for us to have indeterminate ideas, for instance, it is
impossible to imgine a man with no particular height, shape or skin color. To
Berkeley, human does not exist, only particular man does.
Expanding on Berkeleys argument, Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711
1776) offers another explanation for abstract ideas. It should be noted that
Humes idea is different from that of Locke and Berkeley. Idea along with
impression is a category of perception, the term Hume uses to represent any
mental content. Impressions are all the sensations, passions, and emotions that
we experience while ideas are the faint images of these in thinking and
reasoning or the contents of our memories and imagination. Ideas are copies of
impression, therefore they are less forceful and vivid. Therefore, according to
Hume, if one cannot have an impression of a thing then one cannot have an idea
of it, which means one cannot form the abstract idea under Lockes concept.
However, Hume believes that there can be abstract idea which is the idea of
some characteristic, some respect in which particular things resemble. We
cannot think separately of redness but can only think generally of red things.

Therefore the abstract idea of red would be the idea of the respect of
resemblance between red things.(Norton, 2008)
Following Locke, Hume also divides impressions and ideas into several
categories. For impressions, there are external impressions of sensation which
come from our senses, and internal impressions of reflection such as our feelings
of love, hate, desireIdeas are divided into those produced by memory and
those produced by imagination. Memory is the ability to conjure up ideas based
on experiences as they happened. Imagination, on the other hand, is the ability
to break apart and combine ideas to create new ones. Our more complex ideas
produced by imagination are further divided into fanciful ideas and sound ideas.
Fanciful ideas are sources of fantasies, superstitions and bad philosophy. By
contrast, sound ideas are derived from reason and divided into two types:
relations of ideas and matter of fact. Hume defines relations of ideas to be
mathematical relation that is discoverable by the mere operation of thought,
without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe (Patrick,
2015), whereas matters of fact are the more common truths we learn through
our experiences. Relations of ideas are mathematical truth, so we cannot negate
them without creating a contradiction, while no judgments that concern matters
of fact are necessarily true because we can always imagine the contrary to those
ideas (SparkNotes Editors) The split between relations of ideas and matters of
fact is commonly called Humes fork.
2. On reality
According to Locke, ideas are the building blocks of all knowledges, which
means our knowledge does not extend beyond the scope of human ideas. One
problem may arise with such theory in that it strictly narrows our knowledge:
since ideas can only come from experience, and we cannot experience
everything that exists in the world, our knowledge is severely limited. However,
Locke asserts that though our knowledge is limited in these ways, we can still
be certain of some things. For example, we can have an intuitive knowledge
about the existence of minds, both of our own and of other people. We can also
know about Gods existence through logical proofs, though our understanding
cannot fully comprehend who or what he is. We can also know about the
existence of things through sensation. Locke claims that ideas in minds are
caused by qualities in things. A quality is a power in a thing to cause an idea in a
mind. According to Locke, there are two kinds of quality: primary and
secondary. Primary qualities include solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest,

and number, in other words, qualities that a physical object must have in order
to be physical and therefore are in the object regardless of whether we perceive
it or not. Secondary qualities, on the other hand, are such things as colors,
sounds, tastes, which are nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to
produce various sensations in ourminds. While both qualities produce ideas in
our minds, the difference is that our ideas of primary qualities resemble the
qualities in the object, while our ideas of secondary qualities do not resemble
the powers that cause them.
Berkeley disagrees with Locke regarding the idea that substances exist even
though all we can know about it are ideas that we get through our impressions.
He argues that not only secondary but also primary qualities are subjective, and
that no ideas are resemblances of objects. He provides two reasons for this
argument. The first is that primary qualities and secondary qualities are
inseparable, therefore if secondary qualities are merely ideas existing in minds,
then so too are primary qualities. His second argument is that primary qualities
such as motion, figure, and extension are just as relative to the perceiver as
secondary qualities. Berkeley points out, since ones perception of shape and
size depends upon the position of the eyes, ones experience of solidity depends
upon sense of touch, and ones idea of motion is always relative to his own
situation. Therefore all things, regardless of having primary or secondary
qualities, are mind-dependent, and if we perceive only sensations and never
actually perceive physical matter, then we cannot claim to experience physical
matter, and thus have no basis for believing that physical matter exists. To
Berkeley, there are only two kinds of existence: ideas and the minds that
perceive them. What we consider to be things are not made of physical matter,
but are collections of sensory perceptions. That is the basis for his famous
theory: Esse est percipi - To be is to be perceived. And even when there are no
humans directly perceiving them, these things still continue to exist because
they are always perceived by Gods infinite mind.
Berkeley sees God and minds as the reality behind sense impressions in much
the same way as Locke sees material substance. They disagree about whether
the real world consists of material substance or of God and souls. However,
both of their perspectives are challenged by Hume, who argues that neither
material objects nor minds really exist. Hume agrees with Berkeley on account
of his argument against Lockes physical material, however he is going to take
empiricism even further than Berkeley by questioning the existence of the mind

itself. Hume believes that ideas not based on experience have no basis in reality
and are out to be thrown out. He then asks whether or not the concept of mind is
an experience-based idea, in other words, whether we experience anything when
we turn inward and examine our own self. Humes conclusion is when we do
that, we can only experience sensations, perceptions and feelings but no
impression of the self that those ideas and perceptions reside. (lecture_intro)
Since we never have any experience of self, there is no justification for claiming
that there is any such thing. What we have done is just made up the concept of a
mind, or self, so that we would have something for our sensations and
perceptions to exist in. Hume suggests that the self is just a bundle or
collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an
inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. (Chaffe,
2009, p126). Here we see the evolution of doubt and skepticism starting with
Locke, continuing through Berkeley has reach the final stage with Hume. If
Locke believes in four different kinds of existents (things, perceptions, minds,
and God) and Berkeley believes in two (perceptions and minds, God being an
infinite mind), to Hume, perception is the only thing that exists in the world.
3. Conclusion
As seen from above, even though they do share some similar ideas, Locke,
Berkeley and Hume all disagree with one and another on certain points and
create their own individual ideology. Each succeeding philosopher attempts to
give an answer to the questions and problems arisen from his predecessors
theory, yet at the same time raising different epistemological questions that
continue to intrigue and inspire the following generations. [Finding out] the
differences in their philosophies will provide us with many perspectives that
will bring us one step closer to fully understand the world and beyond.

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