“The Empiricists: Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Abridged); Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge & Three Dialogues; Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding & Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, by John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume, edited by Richard Taylor

528 pages, Anchor, ISBN-13: 978-0385096225

The rise and fall of British Empiricism is philosophy’s most dramatic example of pushing premises to their logical – and fatal – conclusions. Born in 1689 with the appearance of Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Empiricism flourished as the reigning school until 1739 when Hume’s Treatise strangled it with its own cinctures after a period of Berkeley’s optimistic idealism. In a nutshell, Empiricism is the theory that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience as it emphasizes the role of experience and evidence – especially sensory perception – in the formation of ideas and argues that the only knowledge humans can have is based on experience. Most empiricists also discount the notion of innate ideas or Innatism, a philosophical doctrine that holds that the mind is born with ideas/knowledge, and that therefore the mind is not a “blank slate” at birth.

The Empiricists collects the key writings on this important philosophy, perfect for those interested in learning about this movement with just one book. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke concerns the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. Locke describes the mind at birth as being a blank slate (tabula rasa, although he did not use those actual words), filled later through experience. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge by George Berkeley, published in 1710, argues that while we are having experiences, regardless of whether material objects exist, the outside world (the world which causes the ideas one has within one’s mind) is also composed solely of ideas. Berkeley did this by suggesting that “Ideas can only resemble Ideas”; that is, the mental ideas that we possess can only resemble other ideas (not material objects) and thus the external world consists not of physical form, but rather of ideas. This world is (or, at least, was) given logic and regularity by some other force, which Berkeley concludes is God. Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, likewise by Berkeley and written in 1713, discusses perceptual relativity, the conceivability/master argument (“master argument” was coined by André Gallois), and Berkeley’s Phenomenalism. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding published by John Hume in 1751 states that very little of what we think we know can actually be derived from any idea that there are actual necessary connections between observed phenomena. We assume that certain things are connected just because they commonly occur together, but a genuine knowledge of any connection is mere habit of thought. So, a severe skepticism is the only rational view of the world. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, likewise by Hume, concerns a debate between three philosophers – Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes – on the nature of God's existence. While all three agree that a god exists, they differ sharply in opinion on God’s nature or attributes and how, or if, humankind can come to knowledge of a deity.