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This unit explores in greater detail the epistemological account of knowledge that is empiricism. It raises both epistemological and metaphysical questions concerning the nature and extent of human experience. Material covered in this theme complements issues raised in the textual study of Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in Unit 4. It also affords a useful introduction to some of the thematic units in A2, in particular epistemology and metaphysics.
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Idealism is the view that what is real, depends on the mind, and that the external world does not exist independently of the mind – essentially the theory is idea-ism. According to the famous idealist Bishop George Berkeley, all that exists are minds and their ideas, thoughts and sensations. Idealists definitely believe that we have a mind, and that we perceive things in our mind, but feel that to then go from our mental processes to the actual existence of a material external world is an unnecessary leap of blind faith.
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Representative realism claims that we perceive a world of physical objects external to our minds, but that we do so indirectly, via perceiving sense data that represent these objects.
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Direct realism is the view that our senses give us a direct experience of the world around us. The theory is extremely simple, and essentially states that ‘what you see is what there is’, and a direct realist will believe that the world is the way we perceive it is, and we perceive it as this because this is the way the world is. The theory has had much criticism by philosophers over the years as they see it as very much a ‘man in the street’ theory, in that it fails to take philosophical considerations seriously.
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