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The British Empiricists, Second Edition 11 THE BRITISH EMPIRICISTS 1 111 The Empiricists represent the central tradition in British philosophy as well as some of the most important and influential thinkers in human history. Their ideas paved the way for modern thought from politics to science, ethics to religion. The British Empiricists is a wonderfully clear and concise introduction to the lives, careers and views of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Mill, Russell and Ayer. Stephen Priest examines each philosopher and their views on a wide range of topics including mind and matter, ethics and emotions, 1 freedom and the physical world, language, truth and logic. The book is usefully arranged so that it can be read by thinker or by topic, 111 or as a history of key philosophical problems. By the end of the book the reader will be equipped to: • recognise and practise philosophical thinking • understand the methods of solving philosophical problems used by the British Empiricists • appreciate the role of empiricism in the history of Western philosophy. For any student new to philosophy, Western philosophy or the British Empiricists, this masterly survey offers an accessible, engaging introduction. Stephen Priest is Senior Research Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, a member of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Oxford and a member of Wolfson College, Oxford. His books have been translated into six languages. 1 11 THE BRITISH EMPIRICISTS 1 111 Second edition Stephen Priest 1 111 1 First published 1990 by Penguin Books Second edition published by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1990, 2007 Stephen Priest All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Priest, Stephen. The British empiricists/Stephen Priest. – 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Empiricism – History. 2. Philosophy, British. I. Title. B816.P75 2007 146.440941 – dc22 2007009898 ISBN 0-203-00310-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–35628–8 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–35629–6 (pbk) ISBN10: 0–203–00262–8 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–35723–4 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–35724–1 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–00310–7 (ebk) 11 1 IN MEMORY OF MY FATHER, ARTHUR PRIEST MBE, MA (OXON) (1921–1986) 111 1 111 1 11 CONTENTS 1 111 Preface xi Abbreviations xv 1 1 What is empiricism? 1 Doing philosophy and doing history 1 111 Defining ‘empiricism’ 5 Ants and spiders 7 Ancient Greek empiricism and rationalism 14 Empiricism and rationalism in medieval philosophy 17 The flight of the bee 19 Empiricism and American pragmatism 25 The logic of empiricism 29 2 Hobbes 32 Hobbes in history 32 Mind 38 Language 42 Reason 46 Science 48 Freedom 49 Emotion 51 Religion 54 Nature 56 Ethics 58 1 Politics 59 viii Contents 3 Locke 64 Locke in history 64 Innate ideas 67 Sensation and reflection 75 Physical objects 86 Minds 93 Personal identity 95 Space and time 101 Numbers 105 Language 107 Causation 109 God 111 Politics 112 4 Berkeley 116 Berkeley in history 116 Matter 120 Abstract ideas 127 The self 131 God and other minds 134 Space and time 136 Numbers 138 Language 139 5 Hume 144 Hume in history 144 Impressions and ideas 146 Physical objects 149 Space and time 152 Knowledge 154 Causation 157 Personal identity 160 Mind and body 163 Freedom 165 Induction 168 Memory and imagination 170 Religion 171 Ethics 177 Politics 179 Contents ix 11 6 Mill 183 Mill in history 183 Language 185 Causation 189 Induction 191 Deduction 193 1 Knowledge 194 Freedom 196 Mind 198 111 Ethics 198 Politics 203 7 Russell 209 Russell in history 209 Perception 213 Knowledge 215 Induction 217 Universals 218 1 Mind and matter 220 Logical atomism 221 111 Meaning and truth 225 Mathematics 228 Causation 230 Religion 231 8 Ayer 236 Ayer in history 236 Meaning and metaphysics 239 Philosophical analysis 242 Perception 244 Causation 245 Induction 246 Mind and body 248 Personal identity 249 Religion 250 Ethics 252 Notes 255 Bibliography 293 1 Index 320 11 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 1 111 What exists? Is there anything beyond experience? If so, can we know it? What are minds? What are physical objects? Am I a physical object? Is there free will? Do numbers exist? If so, what are they? 1 Are moral questions merely matters of subjective opinion or are some things right and some things wrong? Why should we obey 111 the state? Are there limits to our knowledge; things we could never know? If so, can we know that? Philosophy is about philosophical problems and nothing else. British empiricists have always understood this well and I have presented their ideas as attempts to solve problems about minds, language, physical objects, freedom, emotions, science, reason, numbers, causation, ethics, politics and many other subjects. Philosophical problems lie in the basement of commonsense and every intellectual inquiry. Often they go unnoticed for years or even centuries as some way of living or some pattern of explanation or criticism proceeds with unexamined assumptions. Then suddenly it is realised that the procedure requires people to be causally determined, or free; or it requires matter to exist, or minds; or it presupposes the existence of the past or remote events in space–time, or meaningful language, or a society, or the state, or the existence of God. Notions like these are taken for granted as the unquestioned tools and assumptions of other intellectual disciplines and common- sense. Philosophy calls them into question. Where other subjects and everyday life continue with more and more explanations, more 1 and more information, more and more criticism, philosophy invites xii Preface to the second edition us to halt abruptly and ask what we are assuming. Other subjects build higher and ever more complex buildings. Philosophy takes us down to the basement to examine the foundations. There sometimes we find God, sometimes matter, sometimes societies, sometimes natural laws. Commonsense is one building among the others. This book is an introduction to the approaches to philosophical problems of a group of philosophers with enough in common to be called ‘the British Empiricists’. As we shall see, on some of the problems they agree, on others they disagree violently. I shall be well satisfied if the reader unearths some unquestioned philosophical assumptions from his or her own basement. We all have them. The history of ideas is also a fundamentally important subject. There are few things more educative than the attempt to suspend one’s own beliefs and imaginatively to enter the perceptions and values of alternative mentalities. As historians we do this all the better if we understand the social, political and economic climate in which a philosopher wrote, as well as the parental and educative influences on that philosopher. I have therefore opened each chapter with a short historical introduction to the empiricist concerned. These sections should not be confused with philosophy; philosophical problem-solving being always and everywhere independent of biog- raphy. Although this is a philosophy book, in ‘What is Empiricism?’ I have entered into the interesting historical question of whether there is a clear distinction between rationalist and empiricist phil- osophers and offer a sharper distinction between rationalism and empiricism than the view that rationalism is the doctrine that the intellect is the best guide to the nature of reality, and empiricism is the view that experience is the best guide to the nature of reality. I have had to omit some British empiricists because of the word limit: Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and G. E. Moore. Ideally, William of Ockham and Duns Scotus (arguably the greatest Scottish philosopher) would be treated. I should also have liked to include Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, even though they are natural scientists first and philosophers second. Newton is particularly important because so many assumptions in contemporary Anglo- American philosophy are Newtonian, and quite possibly false. Sir Isaiah Berlin told me that J. L. Austin should be in the book, and one empiricist deleted. However, I am convinced I have included those British empiricists most studied in universities and I have Preface to the second edition xiii 11 tried to do some justice to their political theory as well as to their philosophy. I hope that it will be possible to use the book in two ways: first, to study a problem area, for instance the nature of matter, by reading the relevant sub-section within each chapter; second, to find out what one of the empiricists thought on a range of problems by reading 1 a whole chapter. In the first method the reader studies, say, what Locke, Hume and Russell thought on causation. In the second method the reader studies, say, Mill on everything from language to politics. 111 Both approaches are useful in philosophy. The first gives an appre- ciation of the peculiarly intractable nature of philosophical problems, which the serious student of the subject needs.
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