Seventeenth Century Sensism or Empiricism

Article i. Seventeenth Century Sensism or Empiricism

a) Francis Bacon; b) Thomas Hobbes; c) John Locke. Lord Bacon inaugurated Empiricist philosophy in England in the 17 century. After him, others made sense, or empirical knowledge, the basis of all philosophy. After flourishing in England throughout the 17 century, Empiricism spread through Europe, and especially through France, in the 18 century.

a) Fr ancis Bacon (1561-1626).

Life: Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount of St. Albans, was born in London, and was educated at Cambridge. He spent two years in Paris as companion of the English Ambassador there. Returning to England upon the death of his father, he took up the practice of law. But his native flair for speculation made him devote much of his time to philosophy and theology, and he studied history and letters as well. Made Lord Chancellor under James I in 1618, he was charged with dishonesty in office, and was dismissed and heavily fined.

Works: Bacón’s great work is his Instauratio Magna (Great Restoration), which consists of two parts: (1) On the Dignity and Development of the Sciences (De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum), and (2) The New Organ of Sciences (Novum organum scientiarum), which treats (a) of the character and importance of science, and (b) of scientific method.

Doctrine: Bacon wished to remodel the whole structure of science and philosophy. To this end he employed the inductive method, i. e., observation and experiment. Deduction he regards as a method wholly inept, and the source of endless confusion in science and of interminable conflicts among philosophers. Having fixed upon induction as the one suitable scientific instrument, Bacon revises the division (“subordination”) of sciences. He declares that the logical and natural basis for a division or arrangement of sciences is the faculty in man to which certain groups of sciences specially appeal. First, he distinguishes the faculties of mind as memory, imagination, and reason; to these, he says, correspond history, poetry, and philosophy. History reports the deeds of nature, or of men in civil society, and is accordingly distinguished as natural and civil history; civil history is subdivided into civil history proper, ecclesiastical, and literary history. Poetry imitates history (narrative poetry), or exaggerates it (dramatic poetry), or expresses matters intellectual in type and symbol (parabolic poetry). Philosophy, or science proper, is divided into Theology, founded on revelation, and Natural Philosophy ; natural philosophy deals with God, man, the visible world. Natural philosophy treats of God’s existence; this it can prove; but for anything more than the mere existence of God, one must go to theology, based on divine revelation. Natural philosophy treats of man in se (Human philosophy) and as a member of society (Civil philosophy) ; human philosophy treats of the bodily structure of man and the means of acquiring goods of body (Somatology’) ; of the rational and sensitive soul (Psychology) ; and of the union of soul and body (Philosophy of human nature) : civil philosophy treats of society as a means of utility to man. The philosophy of the visible or sensible world looks to the causes of things (speculative philosophy), or to the production of effects (practical philosophy) ; speculative philosophy investigates efficient and material causes (physics), or formal and final causes (metaphysics) : practical philosophy finds its instrument in mathematics. To present this division of sciences in schematic form :

Ci. descriptive

i. Natural…J

ii. inductive I. History (memory)- {i. civil proper ii. ecclesiastical iii. literary rï. imitates history (narrative poetry) II. Poetry (imagina■! 2. exaggerates history (dramatic poetry) tion) I3. typifies the intelligible (parabolic poetry) -I. Theology r i. God’s existence r physics a. speculative 4 metaphy-ii. The World l sics b. practical (mathematics) III. Philosophy. (reason) ‘somatology f a. human psychology 2. Natural Phiphilosophy of losophy. t human nature iii. Man -b. civil (social utility)

Having established his division of sciences, Bacon proposes his true scientific method. Rejecting deduction and syllogistic reasoning as unscientific, he affirms that induction is the only serviceable instrument available to the scientist-philosopher. By induction Bacon does not mean the hurried and improperly tested induction such as the old Scholastics (following Aristotle) used in forming their Universal ideas and general principles. Such induction, says Bacon, is wholly unscientific and the source of much confusion of thought. The tendency to follow the old syllogistic reasoning is strong in many men ; it must be cleared away from the mind before any advance in science can be made. Besides this useless and hindering tendency for false rules of demonstration, there are other varieties of intellectual lumber that must be banished from the mind as a preliminary clearance for the beginning of true science. Bacon calls this intellectual lumber by the name idols of the mind, and these he divides into four classes : i. idols of the tribe: i. e., defects and limitations of nature; ii. idols of the den: i. e., individual prejudice; iii. idols of the market-place: i. e., prejudices arising from the influence of other members of society; iv. idols of the theatre: i. e., prejudices arising from the authority of philosophers, and from false rules of demonstration. All the idols or mental rubbish cleared away, a man is ready for the acceptance of science. He employs the instrument of induction. He learns first of all that induction, to be scientific, must proceed by way of rejection or exclusion, as well as by inclusion. He learns that induction progresses with very slow and careful steps. He learns that for every act of induction the mind must consider four lists or classes of things. To illustrate: suppose the scientist wishes to investigate the cause of heat. He will first make a careful inclusive list of things in which heat is found {List of presence}. Next, he will make a careful exclusive list of things which have, indeed, an affinity with heat-possessing objects, but which lack it themselves (List of absence’). A third inclusive list must be carefully made of things which possess heat in varying degrees (List of comparison). Finally, the scientist will make a list of things which not only do not possess heat, but which have no affinity whatever with heat-possessing objects (List of rejection). Now the scientist will compare his lists; he will study them with the greatest care and the keenest attention. He will be struck by the fact that heat is, in every instance recorded in the lists, associated with combustion. He will observe that where there is no combustion there is no heat, and that heat increases as combustion increases. Then he will rightly and scientifically conclude that combustion is the cause of heat.

Remarks: Bacon discussed “science” in general and in detail, but his works show that he did not clearly understand the nature of what he discussed. He continually confuses science (which is knowledge through causes) with knowledge in the general or ordinary sense. His division of sciences is false, for two reasons : ( 1 ) He takes the faculties of the knowing subject as the basis of this division, whereas, quite obviously, he should have taken the formal object known. In other words, he makes the division of sciences subjective, whereas it should be objective. (2) The division of cognitive faculties (memory, imagination, reason) is not coordinate; these faculties are not of the same grade ; imagination is a sense-faculty, reason is intellectual and hence spiritual, memory exists in both orders. There is nothing essentially new in Bacon’s inductive method ; Aristotle developed everything that Bacon presents in elaborate detail, and Bacon condemned Aristotelean induction without knowing anything about it. Besides his method contains a radical defect in that it dismisses deduction as useless. Without deduction philosophy properly so-called is impossible ; and in rejecting deductive reasoning Bacon rejects the basic principles of knowledge which are arrived at by an a priori analysis of concepts. In consequence, he may justly be said to limit the field of philosophy to the natural sciences alone. Bacon did not achieve his end, which was the restoration or reformation of philosophy. If he deserves praise for his insistence upon painstaking and accurate observation and experiment, he deserves great blame for the harm he did in rejecting metaphysics proper and syllogistic reasoning. His method opened the way to Empiricism, Positivism, and Skepticism. Hence Bacon is the inaugurator of modern Empiricism.

b) Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).

Life: Hobbes was born in England, and was educated at Oxford. He lived for some time in France, where he was professor of mathematics and philosophy to the exiled King Charles II. Hobbes was a considerable factor in the contemporary political movements in England.

Works: Hobbes wrote a famous political work called Leviathan. His chief philosophical work is Elements of Philosophy.

Doctrine: Hobbes was the pupil and friend of Bacon. He adopted his master’s philosophy and developed it to the extreme of sensism and materialism. He declares that metaphysical and spiritual entities are myths, since nothing but what is bodily can or does exist. Philosophy is the science of bodily being. Philosophy deals with three sorts of bodies: (1) natural bodies are studied in Physics; (2) the human body is studied in Psychology ; (3) the body politic is studied in Ethics. i. Hobbes’ Physics contains nothing of note. It is only a redaction of the physical doctrines current in his time. ii. Psychology. The human body has two elements: bodily organism, and the soul. The soul is made of a more subtle material than the body. The organism has the faculties of nutrition, generation, and motion ; the soul has cognitive and appetitive faculties. Knowledge is distinguished into sensation and intellection. The highest sensation act is that of the imagination, which conserves particular sensations and even fuses these into new images. Intellectual knowledge is a more perfect sort of knowledge. It arises from speech and other external signs of cognition. It is common to men and brutes. As a man is said to understand (i. e., to have intellectual knowledge) when he hears another speak (and so recalls the imagination-image of the thing signified by the word spoken), so a dog, taught by custom, understands that he is called or sent away when he hears his master’s voice. Still, human intellection is superior to brute intellection in that a man can compare his imaginationimages, can affirm or deny their agreement, and so reach conclusions which are really new cognitions. Hobbes, of course, denies the doctrine of Universals. He admits universal terms, but says they express nothing objective or essential in things, but are simply group names for objects associated on the basis of external resemblance (Nominalism’). iii. The Body Politic, or Society, which is studied in Ethics, is an artificial, or rather non-natural association voluntarily entered upon by men. For man is not naturally a social being. His natural state is that of a solitary wanderer, even that of a “human animal of the forest.” In this independent state— which man held originally before forming society—everything was licit that made for self-preservation, or was necessary or useful to individual man. Therefore, man was a wolf to man. But the natural wild state of man did not satisfy his desire for unbroken peace; his wolfish selfishness and that of other individual men made his condition one to demand constant alertness and the ability for sudden predatory action. But man wanted peace. To secure it he entered into alliances with others of his kind, and formed leagues for mutual defence against incursions. Of course, this meant the sacrifice of many advantages and privileges enjoyed in the solitary life, but that was the price of assured peace. Rulers, chiefs, governing boards, came gradually into existence as the needs of the new social life made themselves manifest. And thus civil society came into the world, a society that we must define as a union of many who have freely renounced their rights and privileges as predatory individuals, and have banded themselves together as a unit obedient to governing authority, so that the common benefit of assured peace may be the portion of all. The State, or civil society, once established, is supreme in its authority in all that makes for peace. State authority must regulate all things, even religion (and all citizens must obey at least in external practice) ; and so long as the general aim of peace is maintained, no individual right can be urged against state authority. There are three forms of government : monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Of these monarchy is the best, as both reason and history testify.

Remarks: Hobbes’ fundamental error is his gratuitous postulate that man is not a social being by nature. Indeed, the postulate is more than gratuitous, it goes against the natural social character of man as affirmed by reason, by history, and by revelation. Admitting no natural law for primitive man, Hobbes invents a natural law for the guidance of constituted civil authority, and confuses the data of the natural law or norm and the purely civil enactments of government. Hobbes’ Nominalism, like every phase of that theory, is utterly destructive of all science. His materialism (in which he includes his theological notions, making God matter) likewise makes rational science impossible, and destroys the sane basis of morals.

c) John Locke (1632-1704).

Life: Locke was born at Wringhton, England. He studied philosophy and medicine at Oxford. He held public office under Lord Ashley, but after the latter’s downfall, retired to Holland. He returned to England with William of Orange, and died at Oates in Essex, in 1704.

Works: Locke’s great work, An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding, is divided into four books : the first treats of innatism and refutes it; the second treats of the origin of ideas ; the third deals with language ; the fourth, with science and opinion.

Doctrine: At Oxford Locke acquired a sketchy knowledge of Scholasticism, and a rather complete understanding of the theories advanced by Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes; his own philosophy is strongly colored by the influence of these contemporary systems. First and foremost, his philosophy is characterized by its Sensism. Again, like that of Bacon, Locke’s doctrine is marked by continuous confusion of sensation and intellection. Our outline of Locke’s philosophy will treat of his theory of ideas, speech, certitude, and the moral order. i. An idea Locke conceives as any object of knowledge— phantasy, notion, species, sensation, concept. He rejects imia-tism, the doctrine of in-born ideas, and declares that all ideas are acquired. All ideas come from experience: or, more fully, direct external sensation and internal sensation (reflection) are the sole fonts of human knowledge. Ideas are of two kinds: simple or composed (compound). Simple ideas are those that are uniformly the same in mental representation, and cannot be analyzed or divided into component idea-parts : such an idea is, for example, that of “whiteness.” Compound ideas are merely combinations of various simple ideas. (i) Simple ideas are acquired by sensation or reflection. Those that are acquired by sensation, come from one sense (e. g., color) or from more than one (e. g., extension—from sight and touch). Simple ideas which come through the senses represent sense qualities of things. Now sense qualities are themselves of two kinds : some are always found in bodies (e. g., solidity, extension) and these are formally objective, and their ideas represent them as they are in nature. Others do not always exist in bodies (e. g., color, savor), and these have nothing objective about them except that the object in which they are sensed has a power of producing sensations of such qualities in us. Hence, our ideas of such qualities are not conformable to any formally existent object in nature. The qualities always existing in bodies, i. e., the formally objective qualities, are called Primary Qualities. The other qualities, i. e., those only causally objective, are called Secondary Qualities. Primary Qualities are : solidity or impenetrability, extension, figure or shape, rest, motion. Secondary Qualities are: color, sound, odor, taste, temperature. (2) Compound (or complex’) ideas are the product of the mind which has the power to combine its simple ideas in various unifications or fusions. Such indefinitely multiple ideas fall into three general classes : Modes., Substances, Relations. Modes are ideas which represent what has no proper and independent existence, but depends in being on a substance which it modifies. Modes are simple in compound ideas made up of ideas of the same species: thus, the number ten is a simple mode when it expresses ten units of the same species. Modes are mixed when the components of the modal idea are of different species : beauty, for example, is composed of color, figure, etc., and so the idea is a mixed mode. The more important modes (modal ideas) are the ideas of space, place, time, active and passive potency.—Substances, in the order of ideas, are the mind’s postulate of some subject or substratum underlying and supporting sense qualities. In the order of reality, substance is a wholly unknown and unknowable something which supports qualities. It exists, but that is all we can know of it ; we know that it is, but cannot know what it is. There are three kinds of substances, bodily, spiritual, and the infinite or divine substance. Bodily substance is the substratum of sense qualities; spiritual substance is the subtratum of reasonings and volitions; the infinite substance is the substratum of our ideas of unlimited knowledge, power, etc.—Relations are ideas which arise from the mind’s perceiving of an order existing between objects. The chief relation is that of cause and effect. ii. Of Speech.— Speech would be impossible if every individual thing in existence had its proper name. But, by prescinding from circumstances of place, time, etc., which de-termine this or that individual existence, we can obtain an idea which represents many individuals. This is called a universal idea, and it is expressed in speech by the universal term. Similarly, we may prescind from the differences of many ideas, and so acquire a more universal idea : it is thus that we attain to our universal ideas of body, substance, being, etc. Now our universal ideas of things do not represent the intimate and impenetrable essences of these things, for our knowledge is limited to the findings of sense. Real essences, then, are beyond our grasp; that they exist we know, but beyond the fact of their existence we know nothing about them. Our universal ideas represent nominal essences of things, i. e., that which the mind perceives by eliminating individual features in many things and grouping them on the basis of what is sensibly perceived as common to them all. Thus Locke—inevitably confused about the nature of intellectual knowledge, and reducing all knowledge, in the last analysis, to the plane of things sensible—mistakes the true nature of Universals, and proposes a Nominalistic doctrine on the subject. Universals are for Locke no more than more or less arbitrary groupings occasioned by the necessity for speech; and the universal term is merely a group name. iii. Of Certitude.— We have certitude when we perceive the agreement or disagreement of ideas. Ideas agree or disagree on three heads: (i) identity, (2) relation, (3) co-existence. Thus when the mind perceives the reason why one idea is precisely the same as another, we have the certitude of identity; and, contrariwise, when the mind perceives the reason why one idea is not another, we have the certitude of diversity. Again, when the mind perceives a certain order or habitudo existing between ideas, we have the certitude of relation. Finally, when the mind apprehends one idea as always conjoined with another, we have the certitude of co-existence. We perceive the agreement or disagreement of ideas either intuitively, by direct cognition, or by demonstration, i. e., indirectly through reasoning. Now what of the realities outside the mind which ideas represent? Can we have certitude of the existence of these? In other words, have we certitude of realities as we have certitude of the agreement or disagreement of ideas? Locke seems to incline to the belief that we have such certitude. For, he says, when we consider ideas of things non-existent (of a gold mountain, for example) with ideas formed upon direct sense perception, we must attribute to the latter some objective foundation which is lacking in the former. The most that can be said here is that Locke does not deny the validity of ideas as representative of some objective reality; but he minimizes our certitude of the existence of things, and naturally enough, since his denial of the objective existence of secondary sense qualities makes our senses fallible even when engaged upon their proper objects; and sense-knowledge is the basis of all knowledge. Locke says that our knowledge of our own existence is intuitive (i. e., directly perceived) ; and that our knowledge of the existence of God is by demonstration (i. e., is reasoned out). We do not know with certitude whether our souls (and God ) are spiritual or corporeal ; we conceive them as spiritual, i. e., as the spiritual substance which is the support and substratum of reasoning and volition, but this is a mental view, and is not necessarily representative of the objective condition of such substance. It may be that matter (bodiliness) is endowed with the power of thought, or reasoning and volition ; thus we cannot prove that the soul is spiritual because of its thoughts and volitions. Still, Locke distinguishes God from the world, and calls Him a divine and spiritual substance. iv. The Moral Order.— Good and evil are but the respective causes of pleasure and pain. What begets joy in us is good; what gives rise to pain is evil. Moral good and evil consists in the agreement or disagreement of human acts with certain laws. This agreement or disagreement brings in its wake reward or punishment (determined by the law-maker), and hence is the cause either of pleasure or of pain. The laws which regulate human acts are : ( i ) the divine law ; (2) human laws; (3) the law of opinion. The divine law is made known to men by reason and revelation ; the greatest pleasure or pain follows respectively upon obedience or disobedience to this law; obedience to it is a duty, and disobedience is sin. Human or civil law is promulgated by legislators in civil society; it involves rewards (pleasure) and punishments (pain) ; obedience to this law makes one innocent of offence; an act of disobedience to this law is a crime. The law of opinion is the common estimate of men that some actions are worthy of praise, and some of blame; it involves pleasure (praise) and pain (blame) ; an act in conformity with this law is virtuous, an act contrary to it is vicious. Notice that Locke makes virtue consist in meriting the praise of men, not in action consistently conformable to the divine law. Again, he says, since not all peoples agree in their estimate of what is praiseworthy, that which is a virtue in one place or time may be a vice in other circumstances.

Remarks: Locke served philosophy by refuting innatism. For the rest, his philosophy is destructive rather than constructive. He distorts the notion of ideas; he minimizes the validity of thought; he tends to skepticism in his theory of the nonobjectivity of secondary sense-qualities; he delivers a subjectivist opinion on certitude; he erroneously regards the norm of morality as a threefold law, denies intrinsic good or evil in human activity, and bases morality ultimately upon its causal relation to pleasure and pain ; he wrongly asserts the value of a law of opinion differing in different peoples. The germ of Locke’s errors lies in his confusion of sensation and intellection. His philosophy is sensistic. Now sens-ism leads naturally to materialism; and Locke proposed a sheerly materialistic doctrine in his assertion of the possibility of thought in matter. Though a sensist, Locke tends to idealism in his vague doctrines on substance and causality. He also tends to skepticism, as already noted, inasmuch as he denies the objectivity of secondary sense-qualities. Thus we find in this philosopher an influence that makes for idealism and skepticism as well as materialism and sensism.