Empiricism:
§ To an empiricist, all validity in knowledge must be a result of experience. Locke, Bacon and Hume were empiricists. An empiricist is one who subscribes to the notion that knowledge comes to us through experience. There is no such thing as innate ideas; there is no such thing as moral precepts; we are born with an empty mind, a soft tablet ready to be writ upon by experimental impressions. Thus, empiricism opposes the rationalist belief in the existence of innate ideas; it is a doctrine basic to the scientific method. Certain philosophers would call themselves empiricists though claiming that there are certain a priori truths (e.g., principles of mathematics and logic); but, it is better thought (see John Stuart Mill) that even the most sacred "a priori truths" are generalizations deduced from experience.
An empiricist, incidently, is not to be confused with a skeptic or a cynic.
Ethics:
§ Ethics deals with the problems of right conduct. Ethics is the study and evaluation of human conduct in the light of moral principles, which may be viewed as the individual's standard of conduct or as a body of social obligations and duties. Theories of conscience have ascribed the moral awareness of right and wrong to divine will; to an innate sense (e.g. Rousseau); or to the set of values derived from individual experience (e.g., Locke and Mill). Idealists such as Plato have contended that there is an absolute good to which human activities aspire. Moral codes have frequently been based on religious absolutes, but Kant's categorical imperative attempted to set up an ethical criterion independent of theological consideration.17
A majority (probably a large majority) in the general population, will have to subscribe to basically the same ethics if the population is to survive. The argument, as I see it, is not, in a surviving population, if moral awareness of right and wrong exist; but how this common moral code (common set of values) is adopted and adapted through time.
§ In referring to his time at Harvard Law School, Felix Frankfurter wrote: "We had no course in ethics but his course [Dean James Barr Ames] on the law of trusts and fiduciary relations was so much more compelling as a course on ethics than any formal course in ethics that I think ill of most courses in ethics. The delight he took in finding again and again and again the law had much higher standards than the businessmen who prate about it!" [Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (New York: Reynal & Co., 1960) p. 19.]
