Empiricism

Human nature is the quality that sets us apart from other living things, it is the definition of what we are. In the article “Three Theories of Human Nature” by Mikael Stenmark. He critiques the book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker. Steven Pinker introduced the three theories of human nature which are – a Christian theory, a “blank slate” theory, and a Darwinian theory. In the blank slate theory, he explains that the human mind has no inherent structure and it…

ways. Those movements where the Enlightenment and The Great Awakening. The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement that stresses human reasoning over blind faith and or obedience. It encouraged "scientific" thinking for example Rationalism and Empiricism. On the other hand The Great Awakening was a movement to promote what the preachers called a "religion of the heart".Although it promoted two different thing both of the movement helped lead to the American Revolution, A political disorder…

The word “culture” is used in many different contexts and by many different disciplines. Although it is a concept that is constantly being used, it does not have a solid definition. If there is a definition of culture, it has changed many times throughout history, especially throughout the history of anthropology. Alfred Kroeber once said that culture, in the sense of a “set of attributes and products of human societies, and therewith of mankind, which are extrasomatic and transmissible by…

Are Mathematics and Christianity related at all? For some, mathematics is simply rules, laws, and axioms that are used to make sense of problems. For others mathematics is the language God used to create universe in its entirety. Either way, certain questions continue to puzzle mathematicians such as: are mathematics invented by human minds to unlock the many mysteries of the world, or are these mathematical truths embedded in God’s nature and henceforth used in the creation of the world?…

Mill considered himself to hold the theory of “empiricism firsthand” (Goodwin, 2009). Mill was a product of his environment. His father, John Mill, had a rigorous teaching method where he had his son learn more than the average child, and think critically about all the information he took in. He also made…

There are countless people you could analyze for philosophers on metaphysics. Immanuel Kant is seen as the central figure for modern philosophy. He changed early modern rationalism and empiricism and set term for most of 19th and 20th century philosophy. He continues to have a great significance in today’s metaphysics. He also has an influence in epistemology, ethics, political, and many other fields. Kant has many theories but his main theory was “critical philosophy”, seen in his three…

Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan during the English Civil War, promoting the necessity of sovereignty in order to achieve a functional society. With the influence of Francis Bacon and Niccolò Machiavelli, Hobbes presented his theories through empiricism and the social dynamics of power. Hobbes’ philosophy is a denial of classical teachings and the acceptance of science or the new age of reason. Hobbes devotes chapters in the Leviathan to even explicitly go against traditional Aristotle teachings.…

Reflections of the Indian Philosophy in Deleuze’s ‘Body without Organs’ I. Introduction – Brian Massumi rightly spells out the Deleuzian philosophy when he calls it ‘self-problematizing’; always confronting the reader with the question of what it is all about, and what to do with it. It challenges the reader to do something with it. It is pragmatic, not dogmatic. Pierre Hadot attributes this distinction between discourse about philosophy and philosophy itself to Stoics: ‘For the Stoics, the…

John Locke’s ideas, who was a student at Oxford University, differentiated from the ideas of Hobbes in the way that Locke was not in favor of having a government, and did not see rebellion towards the government as an evil thing. John Locke also did not think that humans were born evil, he believed that humans were born good. “Locke did not see political unrest, or even revolution, as necessarily bad things, nor did he perceive human nature as inherently self-interested and aggressive” (Austin…

Concepts of freedom and morality gained a lot of momentum during the Enlightenment period. The Enlightenment period saw a shift from the main line of thinking from religion to reason. Because of this shift of the dominant ideologies, philosophers attempted to explain morality through empirical means rather than attributing morality to God. Two of the most influential philosophers of this period were Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This essay will show how Kant’s perspective of freedom…