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Date Submitted: 03/04/2013 04:52 AM
A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON LOCKE, BERKELEY AND
HUME’S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
A Paper
Submitted to Mr. Emmanuel De Leon
of the
Faculty of Arts and Letters
In Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Course
Epistemology: PHL204
Giruha Grace H. Sabile
University of Santo Tomas
September 2012
INTRODUCTION
John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume – these three philosophers were considered as the Great Triumvirate of British empiricism. This paper will focus on the different and at the same time the common grounds of the great British empiricists.
These are the highlights of the three empiricists:
John Locke became famous with his theory of knowledge in which he coined the term tabula rasa. Locke believes that the human mind do not have innate ideas. The mind only gains simple ideas with the help of sensation and it is the duty of the mind to form complex ideas. Locke has also ranked knowledge into two degrees: first is the intuitive knowledge, where he considers it as the clearest and most certain that the human mind is capable to obtain. And the next degree is reasoning, which can be called as a “back-up” when the mind cannot easily determine the ideas it perceives, when the ideas seems to be vague.
George Berkeley suggested that if an object cannot be perceived, then it does not exist. Berkeley believes that abstraction is not necessary in the learning of man. Berkeley repudiated Locke’s account of abstraction. He raised his three points regarding his contradiction to abstraction (1) they cannot, in fact, be formed, (2) they are not needed for communication or knowledge, and (3) they are inconsistent and therefore inconceivable.
David Hume believed that there is no certain knowledge, finding in the mind nothing but a series of sensations. On his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume stated that:
Here therefore we may divide all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species... The less forcible and lively are commonly...