Hobbes is considered the father of British empiricism and associationism The importance of Hobbes consists in having been the first to understand and express the position of man in his mechanical universe: “Since in appearance life is nothing but a movement of limbs…
Why can’t we say that all automatons… have artificial life? Well, what is the heart but a spring; and the nerves, but many cords; and the joints, but so many other gears that carry movement to the entire body?
Hobbes (1588-1679)
Conceives all psychic life and consciousness as corporeal and ideas as bodily activities.
Hobbes proclaimed that Descartes’ spiritual substance was a meaningless idea. Only matter exists, and people’s actions are totally determined.
I believed that all knowledge has its roots in sensory perception l, supporting a radical nominalism. His most interesting psychological theory is the one that states that language and thought are closely related, and perhaps identical. He is one of many British philosophers who have maintained, and still maintain, that correct thinking (true science) is equivalent to the correct use of language (Russel, Vienna Circle). The relationship between thought and language is an unsolved problem of capital importance for cognitive psychology.
Hobbes also claimed to be the inventor of Politic science His defense of an absolute despotism, in which the members of society submit their rights to a sovereign who will govern them, is based on the idea that man always seeks his own benefit, and that his existence is solitary, brutal and brief (“Man is a wolf to man”).
He was a friend of Newton and of Boyle, preceptor of noble politicians, and doctor. 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 about 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 derive from simple ones, and can be analyzed into their components. This notion of combining 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 metaphysical truths constituted the pillars of dogmatism. Locke advocated a pedagogical methodology of discovery (Jean Piaget). Students were to keep their minds open, discovering the 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 a child’s personality and abilities are innate.
For Locke, The mind, more than an empty space that must be furnished by experience, is a complex information processing device, which converts the materials of experience into organized human knowledge Knowledge occurs when we inspect (introspection) our ideas and see how they agree or disagree. He believed, therefore, like Descartes, that human knowledge, including ethics, could be systematized geometrically.
In his conception of the relationship between thought and language, language is later, words are signs of the ideas from which they come. In some ways, Locke was less empiricist than Hobbes, his predecessor.
Two interpretations have followed Locke’s work: on the one hand those who maintain that Locke’s ideas are mental objects, and that language refers not to real objects, but to mental images. On the other hand, most 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, the words would name real objects.
