Two Dogmas of Empiricism

Okay kiddo, so imagine you're in a science class and you want to learn about the world around you. Empiricism is the idea that you can only learn about things by observing them with your senses. But there are two big problems with that idea, or two "dogmas" as some people call them.

The first dogma is about how we use language. Language is how we communicate with each other and try to understand the world. But sometimes the words we use don't match up with what we observe in the world. For example, some people might say that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But we know that's not true - the Earth is actually spinning, and it just looks like the sun is moving. So even though we use the words "sunrise" and "sunset", they don't actually match up with what's really happening.

The second dogma is about how we come up with ideas. Empiricists believe that all of our ideas come from our senses - we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell things, and then use those experiences to build ideas. But sometimes we have ideas that don't seem to come from our senses at all. For example, you might have a dream that seems really strange and unusual. You didn't actually see, hear, touch, taste, or smell any of the things in your dream, but you still had the idea of them in your head. So where did those ideas come from?

So those are the two dogmas of empiricism: sometimes our language doesn't match up with what we observe, and sometimes we have ideas that don't seem to come from our senses. It's important to remember that even though these problems exist, we can still learn a lot by observing and experimenting in the world around us. The key is to be careful and thoughtful about how we use language and come up with ideas.