Economic Concepts

In our previous Journalism lecture we learnt about economic concepts such as empiricism and a priori thinking. I have been led to believe that empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises solely from experience. It is one view out of several explaining how we know 'things', and our theory of knowledge, or epistemology. Empiricism discounts the notion of innate ideas; a philosophical doctrine that suggests the mind is born with knowledge and ideas, meaning that our minds are not 'blank slates' at birth, as early empiricst John Locke claimed.

An example I thought about which can help to explain empiricism is the 'black swan theory' I learnt whilst studying Sociology. This theory dates back to the 17th century, where people thought that all swans were white because they had seen no different. This then changed when a group of explorers saw black swans, thus changing the knowledge people had. This can be related back to the idea of empiricism, as people only believed what they assumed was correct until they saw differently, applying to the statement 'I won't believe it until I see it with my own two eyes.'

Empiricism emphasises those aspects of scientific knowledge that is closely related to evidence, and it is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than relying on a priori reasoning, intuition or revelation. The term a priori is used to distinguish different types of knowledge, justfications or arguments. It is independent of experience, for example the statement 'All bachelors are unmarried'. A posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or emprical evidence, for example 'Some bachelors are very happy'. A priori differs to empiricism because it makes no reference to experience. Galen Strawson wrote that an a priori argument is one of which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science."