Extreme Rationalism Rationalism is the idea that we can gain knowledge through the
processes of mind alone. Empiricism is the idea that we can only gain
knowledge through the senses. Empiricism has been adopted by the
Western world because it is the foundation of the scientific approach
to life that we use. Various popular sayings such as 'seeing is
believing' and 'I heard it with my own ears', show that we accept the
use of the senses without question. How many times do you hear anyone
say anything about certain beliefs based on the mind alone?
There are two types of Rationalism which we will call Extreme and
Moderate.
Extreme Rationalism
Reached its peak in the Ancient Greek world with some philosophers
entitrely dismissing sensory data. Philosophers such as as Parmenidies
and Zeno. They believed that the knowledge derived from the senses was
misleading and that true knowledge could only be gained through the
processes of mind. Thi...
Man's fundamental bewilderment and confusion, stems from the fact that man has no answers to the basic existential questions: why we are alive, why we have to die, why there is injustice and suffering, all this serve as the impetus for such a thinking. Man constantly wonders about the truth of life and realizes that the more you expect from it, the more it fails you or may be the more we expect from ourselves the more we find ourselves engaging in a futile battle with the odds. May be the truth is the realization of our limitations and the potency of these odds that press you down with their brutal truths….….brutal?, can the truth be brutal. But the truth is the God, ourselves, the destiny that rules us and fashions us, after a strange decree which we fail to unravel.
Transcendentalism Transcendentalism was a movement in philosophy, literature, and religion that emerged and was popular in the nineteenth century New England because of a need to redefine man and his place in the world in response to a new and changing society. The industrial revolution, universities, westward expansion, urbanization and immigration all made the life in a city like Boston full of novelty and turbulence. Transcendentalism was a reaction to an impoverishment of religion and mechanization of consciousness of eighteenth century rational doctrines that ceased to be satisfying. After the success of the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, an American man emerged confident and energetic. However, with the release of nervous energy, an American was forced to look at a different angle at his place in the world and society.
Many people have theories and philosophies about life in general. There have been hundreds of thousands of books published by many different people on the ideas of people in the past and the present. Transcendentalism falls in amongst all of these ideas. There have been articles, essays, poems, and even books written about this subject. Transcendentalism has effected many people since the philosophy was first introduced. The idea was complex and hard to grasp for many commoners and therefore it was understood by few people, and some would think that the idea was not understood at all and that was part of the idea. Henry David Thoreau once stated about himself, “I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist. That would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanations” (Reuben 1).
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;
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts "native" before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.
President Wilson, those in his administration and other Americans who believed in the supremacy of democracy might’ve thought it was the best form of government for others around the world simply because they were arrogant, in denial, believed heavily in the idea of American Exceptionalism and were idealists.
To begin with the question of rationalism versus empiricism, it is important to understand, first, what it is that rationalists argue. This school of thought infers that all knowledge comes from within, an innate source that arrives with us at birth. Rationalists "suggest that only the truths we arrive at through our minds alone can count as knowledge".(White & Rauhut, pg.64) They argue that the conclusions that we arrive at through our senses are not adequate enough to count as legitimate knowledge. Instead, this school of thought maintains that because the world that we experience through our sense is in a state of constant change it can, therefore, not be relied upon in deriving distinct and reliable truths, also known as absolute truths.
...efs of empiricists have explained that people use experiences to understand the world around them. Meanwhile, rationalists have explained that through reason the fundamentals of knowledge can be understood. Kant’s epistemological philosophy has revolutionized philosophy as we know it today. Kant showed that the mind, through its innate categories, constructs our experience along a space-time principle. Therefore, Kant’s theory that true knowledge is obtained by reasoning based upon previous sense experiences seems to adequately address the problems evident in the controversy between rationalism and empiricism.
Rationalism and empiricism were two philosophical schools in the 17th and 18th centuries, that were expressing opposite views on some subjects, including knowledge. While the debate between the rationalist and empiricist schools did not have any relationship to the study of psychology at the time, it has contributed greatly to facilitating the possibility of establishing the discipline of Psychology. This essay will describe the empiricist and rationalist debate, and will relate this debate to the history of psychology.
There is a distinct difference between rationalism and empiricism. In fact, they are very plainly the direct opposite of each other. Rationalism is the belief in innate ideas, reason, and deduction. Empiricism is the belief in sense perception, induction, and that there are no innate ideas.
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.
The late 1970’s-1980 may be looked upon as a turning point in the social and economic history of the world. David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism looks at the roots of neoliberalism as a form of political economy. It is through these roots that Harvey attempts to clarify what the goal of neoliberalism actually is. The goal of Harvey throughout his book is to analyze a central contradiction of neoliberalism, between the utopian project and the political project. Harvey uses his book as a tool to articulate the history of neoliberalism throughout the world.
An ideology is a set of ideas connected together that explain how government and society should be organized and what set of values the society should embrace. The concept of an ideology is a very slippery topic in that people range in the level or degree of their feelings. Ideologies are simplistic and not concerned about logic and consistency. This means that if they are either conservatives or liberal their ideas may vary slightly. Conservatives may have slight differences in the way they think about society. Their ideas are not clear cut or precise.
Philosophy uses a term for empirical knowledge, “posteriori”, meaning that knowledge is “dependent upon sense experience”. (Markie, 2008, section 1.2) Yet, philosophical empiricism is defined in such an absolute way; which causes philosophical empiricism to be an inaccurate philosophical position from which to address all aspects of human life. Philosophical empiricism is defined as “the belief that all human knowledge arises from sense experience.” (Nash, 1999, page 254) Yet, medical empiricism is so far to the other extreme as to be insulting, while this empiricism is still said to be based on all sensory experience; only the scientific sensory experience is valued and counted. This form of empiricism excludes the experience of non-scientific persons. This is just one manner in which empiricism has “proved inadequate to explain many important human ideas”. (Nash, 1999, page 254) I believe that human truth is in a combination of empiricism and rationalism. Although, sensory data can inform us of the external world; yet, reason gives humanity access to equally important intangibles.
Empiricism (en- peiran; to try something for yourself): The doctrine that all knowledge must come through the senses; there are no innate ideas born within us that only require to be remembered (ie, Plato). All knowledge is reducible to sensation, that is, our concepts are only sense images. In short, there is no knowledge other than that obtained by sense observation.