Empiricism

British empiricists argued that the mind begins as a blank slate and all knowledge derives from sensory experience. Hume pushed this to a sceptical limit — causation, the self, and external reality are not rationally knowable, only habitual. It was Hume who roused Kant from his dogmatic slumber.

Core Ideas

The mind at birth is a blank slate (tabula rasa) — all ideas come from experience

Natural rights to life, liberty, and property are pre-political (Locke)

Causation is constant conjunction, not rational necessity — Hume's Fork

The self is a bundle of perceptions, not a unified substance

Received From

← Scholasticism

Passed Forward

Critical Philosophy →

Philosophers