Understanding Empiricism: Laws of Idea Association

Empiricism, which regards observation by the senses as the only reliable source of knowledge. Empiricism arose in the early years of the seventeenth century, under the same pressure as rationalism, to offer a theory of the method used by the new sciences, the most important intellectual development of the modern world.

The first law is that ideas are associated or connected by the resemblance between ideas. So, our minds easily run from one idea to another that resembles it. Hume gives as an example that “a picture easily leads our thought to the original.” We could say that a picture of Abraham Lincoln leads our thought to our ideas of him.

The second law by which we associate or connect one idea with another is by contiguity, one idea being close to, or adjacent to, another in space or time. Our minds tend to associate one idea with another that is physically or temporally adjoining it, contiguous with it. Hume gives as an example that mentioning one apartment in a building “naturally leads us to think about the others.

The Third law of the association of ideas is by cause and effect. Our minds seem impelled to associate a cause with the effect it brings about. For example, Hume says, “If we think of a wound, we can scarcely keep ourselves from reflecting on the pain which follows it.”

First is the relation of contiguity or contact. We ordinarily consider that for something to be the cause of something else, it must touch it, be spatially connected to it, as when we see one billiard ball roll toward another, and make contact with it. When the second billiard ball moves we are likely to say that the first ball caused it to move.

Another relation between objects which is essential to our everyday idea of causality is that the effect should immediately follow the cause, in other words, that the cause should be prior in time to the effect. We consider billiard ball I the cause of the motion of billiard ball 2 when we have two impressions of the relations between them- that billiard ball 1 is spatially contiguous with, in spatial contact with, billiard ball 2 and that its motion is temporally prior to the motion of ball 2. These two relations taken together, the cause being spatially contiguous with the effect and temporally prior to it, Hume calls their conjunction.

But a third kind of relationship must also be present in our everyday idea of cause and effect. The third relationship, says Hume, is a necessary connection, and he adds, “that relation is of much greater importance than any of the other two .

One classical proof of God which Descartes did not use is called the argument from design. This ancient attempt to prove by reason that God exists was used by Saint Augustine in the fourth century, and by Saint Thomas in the thirteenth century, and it bases itself upon the wonderful order, harmony, and beauty that is found throughout nature. Order cannot come into being by chance but only by the plan of a designer.

From these premises it is argued that God exists as the necessary intelligence which planned and designed this entire enormous harmonious order of nature for the benefit of humanity.

Hume’s point is that we have two kinds of knowledge, knowledge of relations of ideas as in the formal, abstract statements of mathematics and logic; and knowledge of matters of fact which is derived from sense impressions. But, Hume argues, these two kinds of knowledge knowledge of formal abstractions and descriptions of factual constant conjunctions cannot motivate my moral conduct as Plato thought, nor can they fight against the passions.

Unlike England and France, Germany did not have an Enlightenment revolution in which the rising middle class struck for autonomy and power against a king. Germany had not taken part in the new commercial and industrial developments that had transformed the social, economic, and political structures of England and France and had culminated in their revolutions of 1688 and 1789. Germany had no financially strong upper middle class, with the economic power to strike for independence in their life, liberty, and property from the ruling powers. No flourishing economic interests demanded a voice in the government as in England and in France.

What does Hegel mean by dialectic? Dialectic, he says, is the synthesis of opposites. Every concept, as we think about it, begins to show us its limitations, and passes over into its opposite, into the very negation of itself. As a result, dialectic in the Heraclitean sense of opposition, conflict, polarity, or contradiction characterizes all human thought.

Dialectic is a process which consists of three stages, or moments: for this reason, Hegel’s theory of dialectic is called triadic. The process of dialectic moves from a first stage or moment (the thesis) to a second stage or moment which negates, opposes, or contradicts the first (the antithesis); and this opposition is overcome by a third stage in which a new concept (the synthesis) emerges as a higher truth which transcends them. Synthesis has these three functions:

1. It cancels the conflict between thesis and antithesis.
2. It preserves or retains the element of truth within the thesis and antithesis.
3: It transcends the opposition and raises up or sublimates the conflict into a higher truth.

Source : From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest by T.Z. Lavine

Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22626.From_Socrates_to_Sartre

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