Thomas Hobbes: British Empiricism and Government

Study Notes

Hobbes is considered the founder of British empiricism, believing that the primary motive in human behavior is the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
He believed that the function of government is to satisfy human needs and prevent humans from fighting with each other.

Hobbes believed that all human activity, including mental activity, can be reduced to atoms in motion, making him a materialist.
He believed that the universe consists only of matter and motion, which can be understood through mechanistic principles.
Hobbes thought that humans could be viewed as machines consisting of matter and motion.

Hobbes' primary interest was politics, and he believed that an absolute monarchy was the best form of government.
He believed that humans are naturally aggressive, selfish, and greedy, making democracy dangerous.
Only under a monarch, he felt, could there be law and order.

Hobbes rejected Francis Bacon's inductive method in favor of the deductive method.
He rejected Bacon's concept of innate ideas, believing that all ideas come from experience or sensory experience.

Hobbes was a physical monist, denying the existence of a nonmaterial mind.
He believed that mental phenomena could be explained by sense experiences and internal motion.

Attention is explained by the fact that sense organs retain motion caused by external objects, preventing them from responding to others.
Imagination is explained by the decay of sense impressions over time.
Dreams are caused by the same origin as imagination, with vividness due to lack of new sensory impressions during sleep.
Motivation is driven by appetite (seeking pleasure) and aversion (avoiding pain), following a hedonistic theory of motivation.
There is no place for free will in Hobbes' deterministic view, with "will" being defined as the prevailing action tendency in conflicting desires.
Trains of thought are explained by the law of contiguity, where events experienced together are remembered together and subsequently thought of together.