Rethinking early modern empiricism: the case of Locke

Abstract

There is an enduring and influential story about empiricism, which runs as follows: from Locke onwards to Carnap, empiricism is the doctrine in which raw sense-data are received through the passive mechanism of perception; experience is the effect produced by external reality on the mind or ‘receptors’. By extension, empiricism is the ‘handmaiden’ of experimental natural science, seeking to redefine philosophy and its methods in conformity with the results of modern science. In this essay I take up, piecemeal, some representative moments of what we think of as Locke’s empiricism, in order to present a different view. Not by suggesting, as has been done quite convincingly, that the canonical understanding of empiricism should be broadened or widened. But rather, by suggesting that the canonical figure of Locke did not quite think what we thought he did, or at least what we often hear he thought. Specifically, Lockean empiricism as a project is less about being the “servant” of the sciences and more about “matters concerning our conduct”. This relates to a theme I explore elsewhere, on how Lockean inquiry into the mind is not a proto-“science of the mind.” I focus here on revising our view of Lockean empiricism in favour of a less epistemological, more ethico-practical view.