Empiricist principle
All meaningful knowledge or concepts must be grounded in observable experience.
Classical Formulation
In modern philosophy, especially logical empiricism (early 20th century), this principle took a sharper form:
A statement is meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable or analytically true.
This was known as the verifiability principle and was central to the logical positivist movement.
Associated Philosophers
- John Locke: The mind begins as a tabula rasa (blank slate).
- George Berkeley: All that exists is perception.
- David Hume: All ideas come from impressions (sense experience).
- A.J. Ayer / Logical Positivists: Language and knowledge must be reducible to empirical terms.
Criticism
The strict empiricist principle (verifiability) was eventually criticised as self-defeating, since the principle itself is not empirically verifiable. This led to the decline of logical positivism.
Summary
The empiricist principle asserts that experience is the foundation of knowledge and meaning. While foundational to modern science and epistemology, its strictest forms have been softened or revised in contemporary philosophy.
I hold the softer form: empirical evidence is epistemically privileged, and confidence should be proportioned to it, but I do not claim that unverifiable statements are meaningless. See My Presuppositions and Knowledge.