# Empiricism

> Experience is the source of knowledge about the external world, while reason organises and draws conclusions from what experience supplies.

- HTML version: https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/empiricism
- Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

Empiricism holds that experience supplies our knowledge of the external world.
Reason can compare ideas, draw inferences, and expose contradictions, but it
cannot discover substantive facts about that world without experience.

Its scope varies. Someone may be an empiricist about nature while accepting
that mathematics can be known through deduction. Locke, Berkeley, and Hume
also disagreed about perception, causation, and how far experience can support
a conclusion.

## Experience as a source

Empiricists reject innate knowledge about the external world. Sensation and,
for Locke, reflection on mental operations supply the material from which we
form ideas. Claims about the world must answer to experience rather than
intuition alone.

This does not reduce inquiry to passive looking. Observers compare cases,
design tests, use instruments, and reason from recorded results. Experience
constrains the premises; thought works on them. A botanist testing whether a
plant tolerates salt does more than watch it grow. The test controls relevant
conditions, measures a response, and compares the result with other plants.
Each step uses judgement, but the conclusion still depends on what happens.

## The problem of going beyond the evidence

Experience presents particular cases. Scientific claims often reach beyond
them. No number of observed white swans deductively entails that every swan is
white. David Hume made the deeper problem plain: past regularity cannot by
itself prove that the same regularity will continue. An argument for induction
that assumes nature will remain uniform already relies on the pattern it tries
to justify.

Empiricists can respond without pretending that induction is deduction. They
may treat inductive inference as a fallible practice, explain it through
probability, or give a pragmatic account of why it guides action. Each response
accepts a limit. Evidence can support a general claim without making its denial
logically impossible.

A second challenge concerns what experience contains. Sense impressions do not
arrive already divided into objects, causes, measurements, and kinds. If the
concepts used to organise experience cannot themselves come wholly from
experience, a strict empiricism owes an account of their source. Rationalists
press this objection through claims about necessity, mathematics, and innate
concepts.

## Observation already has a structure

[Theory-ladenness](/ideas/theory-ladenness) adds a practical criticism. An
observation depends on choices about instruments, categories, and relevance.
There is no useful store of raw facts that can be interpreted without prior
concepts. A temperature reading depends on a calibrated instrument and an
account of what the reading measures.

That dependence defeats strict empiricism as a foundation for knowledge. Data
cannot dictate its own interpretation because the concepts used to collect and
read it already shape the result. Weakening empiricism to the claim that
experience matters saves the word at too high a price. Almost every modern
account of inquiry accepts that claim, so it no longer identifies a distinct
school.

Empiricism survives as a methodological demand rather than a complete theory
of knowledge. Claims about the external world must answer to experience.
Instruments can return an unwanted result, predictions can fail, and repeated
tests can expose a bad classification. None of this requires experience to
supply every concept or provide a neutral foundation.

[Logical empiricism](/ideas/logical-empiricism) turned the empiricist demand
into a programme for analysing scientific language and public testing.
[Epistemology](/ideas/epistemology) supplies the wider question: what makes
experience a good reason for belief, and how far does that warrant extend?

## Sources

* Markie, Peter, and M. Folescu. ["Rationalism vs.
  Empiricism"](https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/rationalism-empiricism/).
  *The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy*, 2021.
* Locke, John. *An Essay Concerning Human Understanding*. 1689.
* Hume, David. [*An Enquiry Concerning Human
  Understanding*](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9662). 1748.

## Related ideas

- [Epistemology](https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/epistemology.md): How we know what we claim to know, what justifies a belief, and when new evidence should change it.
- [Logical empiricism](https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/logical-empiricism.md): A movement that used logic and analysis to connect scientific claims with public evidence and to clarify the role of philosophy.
- [Postpositivism](https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/postpositivism.md): Empirical inquiry can pursue objectivity while accepting fallible evidence, theory-laden observation, and the influence of values.
- [Theory-ladenness](https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/theory-ladenness.md): Observations depend on prior ideas about what to notice, how to measure it, and what the result means.

## Where it appears

- Blog post: [The Philosophy of Data Science](https://robbiepalmer.me/blog/2022-03-02-the-philosophy-of-data-science.md)

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