PHIL 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Earlobe, Cartesian Coordinate System, Baruch Spinoza
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Empiricism: the doctrine that all knowledge comes from and only from experience. We think we know a lot of things. Knowledge that you can justify is based on the empirical information produced by your senses. And the people on the crime scene used their senses to justify their claim. If you are an empiricist you claim that all knowledge comes from sensory experiences. How do you know that that particular claim comes from sensory experiences. Empiricism truth cannot be backed by evidence of the senses. There is no evidence of the senses that could establish the truth of mathematics or ethics. Ex. in ethics you can feel strongly that something is wrong, but you are unable to make an experiment to prove your belief. How much of what we actually know can be traced back to sensory experiences. Spent most of his time hanging out in the lyceum (public place in athens)
