Empiricism: the philosophy of experience

"Empiricism: The view that sense experience is the only basis for true knowledge."

"Posteriori: Knowledge derived from experience."

"Philosophy 100 essential thinkers," Philip Stokes, enchanted lions books, 2003

Empiricism is a branch of philosophy based on questioning everything that you have taken to be true and holding it up to the test of your experienced reality. It discusses the difference between "Faith" and "Evidence."

How can a person know what is 'True' or what is 'Right'?

Everything that you have been told or read about is separate knowledge than what you experience directly. You have to take a certain amount of faith in the source of that knowledge in order to rationalize and accept it. When you experience something directly, through your senses, then you do not have to apply any faith, you simply accept your experience as Reality.

If what you have learned by faith has proven true by experience, then your faith in that source of information will grow. If your experience teaches you something which contradicts what you have learned previously, then you tend to lose faith in whatever that was that taught you before.

The simple beak down is that experiencing something is knowing that it is real, everything else requires faith.

The most dangerous things in our reality are things which give us an experience that we can accept in our minds as truth, but which serve negative agendas.

It is our function as human beings to be discriminatory towards all the objects in our lives. We have to first learn things, then experience them to know if they are true, then live in the results of that experience and build a better future for ourselves and our youth. This is the progressive cycle.


The Challenge:

What do you know by experience? What do you hope for? What do you want?
We have many 'dreams' and 'hopes', it's our natural human state to do so, but how many of those does reality back up? Does your country really have your best interest in mind? Do you have the real Freedom to live your dreams regardless of your race, color, or creed? Are you cool and strong because of your shoes? or your political zeal? Can you be a superhero? You'll never know without experiencing first hand.

Find a principle which you have learned to be true since you were a child and commit to experiencing it, because through action and experience we will all come to define what is really Truth.