This is a theory of knowledge that places great value on sensory and demonstrative experience of reality. Authors like Hume are the greatest exponents of this type of theory of knowledge that considers that observable and verifiable experience is the criterion of true knowledge. Epistemology is one of the most important areas of philosophy as a science of knowledge: the theory of knowledge that reflects on the essential principles of how to reach the truth.
That is, something is true when it can be observed and demonstrated. Other representatives of epistemological empiricism are Locke and Berkeley. In opposition to rationalism, empiricism establishes that ideas start from practical experience and not from the innate character of reason, as Descartes concluded.
Empiricism is recognized as a philosophical doctrine that developed in England in part of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that assumes experience as the only authentic source of knowledge, while denying the possibility of spontaneous ideas or a priori thought. Only sensitive knowledge puts us in contact with reality. Empiricists take natural science as the ideal type of science, as it is based on observable facts.
For this method, the principle of our knowledge is not found in reason, but in experience, since in its entirety the content of thought has had to first pass through the senses.
It is not easy to distinguish empiricism from skepticism, since their borders are common. The most demanding modern empiricist, David Hume, is skeptical.
"For empiricism, the thesis of rationalism, that there are innate ideas, is totally inaccurate." Well, if that were so, there would be no reason to be learning, and all people would agree to the same truths.
