Sensualism

{{Missing information|basic philosophical information|date=September 2024}}

{{Short description|Epistemological position}}

In epistemology, sensualism is a doctrine whereby sensations and perception are the basic and most important form of true cognition. It may oppose abstract ideas.{{Cite book|title=Meditations on Quixote|author=José Ortega y Gasset|author-link=José Ortega y Gasset|author2=Julián Marías|author2-link=Julián Marías|others=trans. Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marín|publisher=University of Illinois Press|date=2000|page=85|isbn=0-252-06895-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RlfnPj3sXt0C&pg=PP1}}

This ideogenetic question was long ago put forward in Greek philosophy (Stoicism, Epicureanism) and further developed to the full by the British Sensualists (John Locke, David Hume) and the British Associationists (Thomas Brown, David Hartley, Joseph Priestley). In the 19th century, it was very much taken up by the Positivists (Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Hippolyte Taine, Émile Littré)According to Schopenhauer, this judgment was attributed to Aristotle. Schopenhauer presents the Latin version as Nihil est in intellectu nisi quod antea fuerit in sensu. See The World as Will and Representation, Volume II, Chapter VII. It is possible that it was mentioned by the Stoic Cicero and was repeated by Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.{{Cite web|url=http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=9313|title=Philosophy - Encyclopedia Volume - Catholic Encyclopedia}}{{Better source needed|date=October 2024}}