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Essays on Empiricism and the role of the scientific method
Introduction about empiricism
The Principles of Empiricism
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Rationalism goes by the idea of questioning everything. This method can be extreme in some aspects, meaning that certain things may be denied such as the senses, including taste, smell, vision and sound. It also tends to use mathematical principles to explain the world in which we live in; examples include equations modeled for change in climate, the economy and population, but math cannot be used to understand every single aspect of life. Many rationalists also believe in the concept of perfectionism, in which there is perfect order and everything works out the way we would like it to. The biggest problem with Rationalism’s ideology however, is its strong use of skepticism, everything around us does not have to be questioned, but rather understand through simple observation.
An important concept in Rationalism is that of innate ideas. This explains that we are “born” with certain ideas or talents and some are universally true, which is why we are said to be good at certain activities. From personal experience, it’s like saying you are naturally good at math, but for years I was horrible at math until I had the right teachers in high school and college overall. John Locke explained that “All ideas come from sensations or reflection” (Soccio 281). This means that our knowledge is gained through the senses, rather than already embedded in us. If innate ideas were to actually exist, there would be no gain of specific knowledge individually, as none of it would be new to us. All knowledge or talents are gained from learning the basics of life, and experiences.
Perfectionism of the mind is a goal rationalists try to strive for. Perhaps the main problem with this concept is that it promotes over achievement on everything we do. For many...
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...an one position alone. Rationalism uses and accepts the ideas that are believed to be true all the time, but the problem is denying those that have the slightest bit of doubt. (253) It is okay to be skeptical of certain aspects, but not when you deny everything. Rationalism can be quite difficult to follow, because it’s is fairly challenging to deny your surroundings and partially true facts. It is also problematic as it emphasizes that facts are completely correct before they are accepted or they are denied, an example of perfectionism. Empiricism explains life in a much better aspect, rather than using reason to explain the world, senses and experiences help to explain what we have been through. Our world cannot be explained through assumptions only, perhaps we can combine the idea process with the ideas of empiricism to help us further understand life in general.
The underlying paradox of irrationality, from which no theory can entirely escape, is this: if we explain it too well, we turn it into a concealed form of rationality; while if we assign incoherence too glibly, we merely compromise our ability to diagnose irrationality by withdrawing the background of rationality needed to justify any diagnosis at all. (1)
Regardless of the disagreement between both schools of philosophy that Rene Descartes and David Hume founded, Descartes’s rationalism and Hume’s empiricism set the tone for skepticism regarding knowledge. Rene Descartes rationalism served to form a solid foundation for true knowledge. Although Descartes reaches an illogical conclusion, his rationalism was meant to solve life’s problem by trusting and using the mind. David Hume’s empiricism serves to be the true blueprint on how humans experience the mind. Hume’s empiricism shows that the world only observes the world through their own sense and that there are no a priori truths. For that reason it became clearer that David Hume’s empiricism explains and demonstrates that it is the better way
In what is widely considered his most important work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke establishes the principles of modern Empiricism. In this book he dismisses the rationalist concept of innate ideas and argues instead that the mind is a tabula rasa. Locke believed that the mind was a tabula rasa that was marked by experience and reject the Rationalist notion that the mind could perceive some truths directly, without sensory experience. The concept of tabula
The debate between rationalist and empiricist philosophers looks at the nature of knowledge, and specifically, how we gain this knowledge. Rationalists and empiricists take opposite, and sometimes mutually exclusive, views on how knowledge is obtained.
Rationality is this idea by Weber that it is potentially what created capitalism. Formal rationality is the set of pre-determined criteria that we use to make decisions and conduct activities. He basically says that as humans, we set goals for ourselves and we take whatever steps necessary to reach those goals. These steps though, have to be rational i.e. they are based off of our past experiences, logic or even science. Weber best describes this through the Protestant Ethic, in which he speaks of traditional capitalism, and rational capitalism.
Believing that reason is the main source of knowledge is another clear distinction of rationalism. Rationalists believe that the 5 senses only give you opinions, not reasons. For example, in Descartes’ wax argument, he explains how a candle has one shape to begin with- but once the candle is lit, it begins to melt, lose its fragrance, and take on a completely different shape than it had started with. This argument proves that our senses can be deceiving and that they should not be trusted.
Rationalism states that the main source of our knowledge is through mind, rather than the senses. Intuition
Rationalism derives from the idea that accepts the supremacy of reason, as opposed to blind faith, and aims at establishing a system of philosophy, values, and ethics that are verifiable by experience, independent of all arbitrary assumptions or authority. The principle doctrine of rationalism holds that the source of knowledge is reason and logic. Thus, rationalism is contrasted with the idea that faith, revelation and religion are also valid sources of knowledge and verification. Rationalists, in this context, prioritize the use of reason and consider reason as being crucial in investigating and understanding the world, and they reject religion on the grounds that it is unreasonable. Rationalism is in contradistinction to fideism;
Descartes is a prime example of a rationalist. Descartes begins his Meditations on First Philosophy by doubting his senses in the first meditation. “From time to time I [Descartes] have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once”(Descartes: 12). In the second meditation, Descartes begins to rebuild the world he broke down in the first meditation by establishing cogito ergo sum with the aid of natural light. It is with this intuition that the cogito is established, from the cogito, intellect, from the intellect, knowledge; thus knowledge has been defined in this world that Descartes is constructing from scratch. Descartes uses the fact that he is a thinking thing to establish the existence of other things in the world with the cosmological and ontological arguments, as well as a meditation on truth and falsity. “So now I seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true” (Descartes: 24). Descartes only utilizes his perceptions to establish ideas of the things t...
The phrase, “Rational Gaze”, is extremely misinterpreted. As Ayn Rand defines, rationality is the virtue to recognize and accept that one’s only source of knowledge is their ability to reason. Thus, rationality is very unique and individualistic. It has no boundaries. However, rationality is misinterpreted as the disposition to act in unanimity with other human beings, in order to obtain knowledge from nature. This skewed definition of rationality leads to confusion and unattainable anxiety. The only way to satisfy this anxiety is by having rational gaze, which is, to understand that reason is ineffable. However, the rationality or rational gaze that we possess seems to be very different from what Ayn Rand defines. Hence, the persistence of having a rational gaze seems to be more disillusioning than convincing.
Hume is an empiricist; he believes humans acquire their knowledge through sense perception and experience. He believes that there are two types of perceptions in this world that contributes to how we obtain our knowledge: impressions and ideas. Impressions involve taking in objects through the senses, whereas ideas involve remembering said objects. Hume has the belief that we as people combine ideas together to create something; you can’t come up with an object unless you’ve had the experience of it. In contrast Descartes is a rationalist, someone who believes in indubitable truths. In his eyes, knowledge is innate, and acquired to a person before birth. He also thinks there is only one divine being that is innate, and that is God. Hume’s idea of empiricism is better than Descartes’ idea of rationalism.
The rational or a priori of knowledge- the base of this knowledge is provided by “natural light.” The empirical basis of knowledge is the content of a person conscious state of mind, beliefs, desires, and sensory states. “Thus the perception of the infinite is somehow prior in me to the perception of the finite, that is, my perception of God is before my perception of myself. For how would I understand that I doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there was some idea in me of a perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects” (Descartes, 1641)? “I recognize that it would be impossible for me to exist with the kind of nature I have — that is, having within me the idea of God — was it not the case that God existed. By ‘God’ I mean the very being the idea of whom is within me, that is, the possessor of all the perfections which I cannot grasp, but can somehow reach in my thought, which is subject to no defects whatsoever. It is clear enough from this that he cannot be a deceiver since it is manifest by the natural light that all fraud and deception depend on some defect” (Med. 3, AT
Rationalism and empiricism have always been on opposite sides of the philosophic spectrum, Rene Descartes and David Hume are the best representative of each school of thought. Descartes’ rationalism posits that deduction, reason and thus innate ideas are the only way to get to true knowledge. Empiricism on the other hand, posits that by induction, and sense perception, we may find that there are in fact no innate ideas, but that truths must be carefully observed to be true.
To the empiricists, our mind is a blank slate when entering the world and only through experience are marks left on it. Empiricists are content with believing in conclusions that are probable rather than absolutely certain (Lawhead). Our sense experiences may not provide complete certainty as rationalists would like, but it is all we have to go on. Empiricists are against the speculation that rationalists tend to make. Empiricists believe every idea, concept, or term must be tested by tracing it back to an original experience from which it was derived (Lawhead). Empiricists also differ from rationalists by claiming that we have no innate ideas. While some ideas may seem universal, the empiricists would say these are expressions of the relations of our ideas or the generalizations from experience (Lawhead). For example,
What is the source of knowledge? What can we know? Questions like these dominated western philosophy during the 17th and 18th century. This philosophical period was known as the epistemological turn. The quest for the source of knowledge was not an easy one. This question had led to many disagreements about the nature of knowledge, and a philosophical war was waged which would last two centuries. It began with the 17th century with a french philosopher by the name of Rene Descartes. The answer to his epistemological quest was rationalism. For Descartes rationalism was the key to keeping our reality in check. Descartes had undergone a process of purging all that he thought he knew to find the sole source of knowledge . After much examination Descartes came to the realization that there were few things that could be considered pure knowledge. Since most of the things we know come from the senses, and the senses were falliable. He made a crucial discovery that would forever change the face of philosophy. The mind he regarded is the tool and the that could lead to a pure source of knowledge unbridled by the senses. He believed that we can only trust our minds that which we can intuit or “deduce” on our own. Descartes called these ideas of knowledge a priori. A priori are ideas that are innate, and that we can only arrive at through a special kind of reasoning known as deductive reasoning.Descartes famously declares the statement “cogito ergo sum “to answer the question of our existence. Because if the senses are decieving who is to say that this world we live in is a lie created by a wicked genius we call god.”Descartes believed that if he existed it was because his mind was engaged in the process of thinking. In other words only ...