After an interesting lecture on economic concepts i would quite like to think that i am not an empiricist, if i were then i would be very limited to believing that anything i had not seen actually experienced even existed, and this is just stupid.
So an empirical idea is one based on direct experience, an idea that has reliable proof and evidence. The quote from the lecture was ‘I won’t believe it until I see it with my own two eyes' and it think this summarises the theory well.
For lack of a better example last week i was told that my friend had cheated on his girlfriend, who is also a good friend of mine. I refused to tell her because i had not seen him cheat and he said he didn't do it. Who knows? There was no proof; i didn't believe it because i didn't see it with my own two eyes!
On the other hand a-priori is where something is explained by an a-priori principle or assumption. To explain the difference between empiricism and a-priori: if i have two apples now, and i plan to get another three apples, i will have five apples. This is a-priori because i know that two plus three is five. I did not actually need to get the three other apples and place them with the first two to see that I have five, like an empiricist would.
