A Critical Study of Belief in the External World in the Thought of Empiricist Philosophers

Authors
Mohamad Mehdi Moghadas 1
Ali Fathtaheri 2
1 PhD student of philosophy at IkIU Qazvin
2 Associate Professor in Philosophy, Faculty of Literature and Humanity Sciences, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran
Abstract
Belief in the external world and the problem of the objective reference of ideas is a fundamental question that every epistemological approach tries to provide an answer to. In Descartes's philosophy, according to the cogito principle (cogito ergo sum), first I and then the world are proved, yet the distinction between I and the world, or subject and object, always raises the question of how the objective reference of our ideas is proved. And what are they? Are objects mind-independent? Or are they the same things we see, feel, smell, taste or touch? In other words, are they just sense data or are they imaginary data? And whether objects are mind-independent, but we have perceptions of them and receive sense data from them? Empiricists such as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume have each given reasons for explaining this objective reference. In this article, we first investigate the views of each of these philosophers from the concept of idea and the object, then examine and analyze their beliefs about the origin of ideas and the external world, and try to critically point out the flaws in each. Finally, on two levels: (1) the existence of external objects and (2) their conformity with the ideas of the mind, we investigate the problem of skepticism and show which of these philosophers' beliefs can be considered to lead to skepticism. And which one cannot believe.
Keywords
objective reference of ideas
Locke
Berkeley
Hume
skepticism
Belief in the external world
empiricism
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Metaphysical Investigations
Volume 3, Issue 2 - Serial Number 6
October 2022
Pages 221-248