Empiricists’ Approaches on Perception with Special Reference to Locke, Berkeley and Hume - A Philosophical Analysis

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyze critically the approaches of John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume on Perception from the philosophical point of view. The philosophical point of view of perception has been discussing in Epistemology which is the heart of Philosophy. In Epistemology, perception seems to be an important source of knowledge. Even though there are some problems regarding the validity of the perceptual knowledge such as whether things we perceive are really exist or are merely appearance, how can we measure the validity of the perceptual knowledge, whether knowledge is possible without perception, etc. However, the theory of empiricism emphasizes perception as an ultimate source of knowledge. Because, empiricism is a philosophical theory which argues that human is derived entirely from sensory experiences. In such a way, experience can only be gained by the senses. Attaining the experiences through the senses is called as ‘sense perception’. So, the fundamental of empiricism is that knowledge can be gained through perception. John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume were the primary exponents of empiricism in the 18th century enlightenment. They all explain perception in several ways. John Locke proposes that we can only be aware of mental representations of objects through perception. George Berkeley proposes that, everything we perceive is dependent upon our mind. In contrast, David Hume created an account of skepticism on perceptual knowledge. These various accounts on perception led to several theories in the contemporary period. Hence, this paper critically analyzes their ideas and theories, objections, and later developments. This research is mainly based on secondary data particularly from original sources of Locke, Berkeley and Hume. Further, this study will collect the data from the related books, scholarly articles from the journals on related topics, and recognized sources of web. As this research mainly adopts on the qualitative method, researcher intends to utilize historical, analytical, comparative and descriptive methods for analyzing the data gathered from related sources.