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Revised on February 24, 2026
Radical Empiricism
philosophy
Table of contents
Table of contents
Links to
Links to
Radical empiricism says that all knowledge comes only from our senses. When we are born, our mind is completely empty, like a blank page. Everything we know comes from what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. There are no ideas already in our mind when we are born. Even abstract ideas like numbers come from our experiences in the real world.
Radical empiricism is the opposite of rationalism, which says we have some knowledge that does not come from our senses. It is also different from Kant’s idea Kant Empiricism concept, which says both experience and the mind work together. For radical empiricists, if we cannot sense something or get it from our senses, we cannot know it.