Philosophy / Unit 2 Philosophy 0067 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Empiricism
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The idea
Empiricism holds that all substantive knowledge of reality derives from sense experience—reason alone only unpacks what experience supplies.
In practice
Hume pushed the tradition hardest: even cause and effect, he argued, we learn only from repeated experience.
Where people slip
Empiricists still use logic and mathematics—the dispute is over knowledge of the world.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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