British empiricism: the ideas of Hobbes and Locke.

Review of History of Psychology: Hobbes, Locke, top representatives of British Empiricism.

Hobbes is considered the father of British empiricism and associationism.. The importance of Hobbes consists in the fact that he was the first to understand and express the position of man in his mechanical universe: "Since life is apparently nothing but a movement of members...

British empiricism: foundations of a scientific thought

Why can we not say that all automata... have an artificial life? For what is the Heart but a spring; and the nerves but many cords; and the joints but so many cogs that carry motion to the whole body?"

Hobbes (1588-1679)

He conceives of all psychic life and consciousness as corporealand ideas as bodily activities.

Hobbes proclaimed Descartes' spiritual substance to be a meaningless idea. Only matter exists, and people's actions are totally determined.

He believed that all knowledge is rooted in sensory perception, upholding a radical nominalism.l, sustaining a radical nominalism. His most interesting psychological theory is that language and thought are intimately related, and are perhaps identical. He is one of many British philosophers who have held, and still hold, that right thinking (true science) is equivalent to the right use of language (Russell, Vienna Circle). The relationship between thought and language is an unresolved problem of paramount importance for cognitive psychology.

Hobbes also claimed to be the inventor of political science. political science. His defense of an absolute despotism, in which the members of society submit their rights to a sovereign who will rule them, is based on the idea that man always seeks his own advantage, and that his existence is solitary, brutal and brief ("Man is a wolf to man").

Locke (1632-1704)

He was a friend of Newton and of BoyleHe was a friend of Newton and Boyle, a preceptor of noble politicians, and a physician. Locke wanted to understand how the human mind works, its limits and the origin of its ideas. His epistemology is psychological, therefore, asking how one knows, rather than what one knows.

Ideas come from experience and observation.. He denied the existence of innate ideas, contrary to Descartes' conception.

Locke was not, however, a radical empiricist. He believed in the existence of simple ideas and complex ideas. Simple ideas come either from sensations or from reflection on them. Therefore, mental operations, as well as the faculties themselves (thought, memory and perception), would all be innate. Later empiricists denied this thesis.

Complex ideas are derived from simple onesand can be analyzed in their components. This notion of combination of ideas marks the beginning of what would be called mental chemistry, characteristic of the notion of association (Wundt and Titchener).

Locke opposed, more than Descartes, the group of English authors who defended the existence of innate moral principles. He considered that belief in innate moral truths and in metaphysical truths constituted the pillars of dogmatism. Locke advocated a pedagogical methodology of discovery (Jean Piaget). Students were to keep their minds open, discovering truth through their own experience.

Locke affirms, like Descartes, that language is a human trait, characteristic of the species. In his work on education he argues that much of the child's personality and abilities are innate.

For Locke, the mind, rather than an empty space to be furnished by experience, is a complex information-processing device, which converts the materials of experience into organized human knowledge.. Knowledge is produced when we inspect (introspect) our ideas and see how they agree or disagree. He believed, therefore, as did Descartes, that human knowledge, including ethics, could be systematized geometrically.

In his conception of the relation between thought and language, language is posterior, words are signs of ideas, from which they proceed. In a way, Locke was less empiricist than Hobbes, his predecessor.

Two interpretations have followed Locke's work: on the one hand those who hold that Locke's ideas are mental objects, and that language refers not to real objects, but to mental images. On the other, the majority, interpret that for Locke the idea was a mental act of perception, by which the mind connects with the external world. According to this reading, words would name real objects.