To provide solutions to philosophical problems such as, how world process was created, man must be in possession of rational, intuition, and intuitive knowledge. Rational knowledge is human reasoning and requires verification. The ability of man to reason while giving logical step by step demonstration and arguments is referred to as human knowledge and it has a rational source. According to Carriero and Broughton (2011), genuine rational knowledge is provided by clear and separate knowledge of wholesome intellect with sense deliverances interaction. Sen (1996) considers rational knowledge as the knowledge of change in states of specific entities, in the sense that human experience is a confirmation of change. What are its classes, provisions and philosophical problem associated with rational knowledge? The paper seeks to examine rational knowledge by addressing the above three issues.
Ghazali in his theory of virtue considers rational knowledge as a complicated discipline which contains three divisions or classes. Mathematics and logic takes the elements of the first class. In this division, mathematics is inclusive of geometry, music, and arithmetic. Physics takes the second division comprising medicine and mineralogy among the other natural sciences. The third and major class is metaphysics, which examines the existence of Creator. It reflects His real meaning and aspects. After providing this division, he classifies ethics in religious science showing that ethics belongs to another type of knowledge called practical religious. He later combines both rational and religious knowledge into knowledge of mystics (Sherif, 1975). This raises the issue, where and how is rational knowledge acquired? As many philosophers put it, ‘Knowl...
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...d to understand among other mental acts. Possession of a mind implies that element is in a position of performing such mental acts, and the ability to either doubt, or understand or exhibit any of the mental acts implies that one is in a position of equally doing every mental act. Failure to perform of the mental acts also is an indication of the inability to perform any of the mental acts (Carriero & Broughton, 2011). Rational knowledge is valid but it must be combined with other knowledge to break its confinements so that it becomes sufficient when it comes to larger and broad fields.
Works Cited
Carriero, J. &Broughton, J. A Companion of Descartes. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, London.
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Sen, P. Axomatic Philosophy. New Age International (P) Limited, New Delphi. 1996.
Sherif, A.M. Ghazali’s Theory of Virtue. State University of New York, New York. 1975.
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
§ Physical Bodies - dreaming - e.g. do you know you are awake now? Or
Practical wisdom is knowledge of how to secure the ends of human life and for a man who demonstrates this quality his mark should be to be able to tell what is good for himself and his ultimate goal of a good life. In this paper, I will be agreeing with Aristotle’s idea that virtue is a state of character concerned with ones choices and one’s ability to reason.
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
In the history of concepts, there is no concern that Al-Ghazali’s figure emerges as one of the best Western thinkers. Considered as the prominent Sunni theologian that ever lived, Al-Ghazali’s polemic againstNeoplatonic thinkers, mainly Ibn Sina, dealt a fatal rage to philosophy within Islamic world. Written following his period of private study of philosophy, and completed in 1094 CE, Tahafut al-Falasifa carried the purpose of pursuing the analysis of reason that inspired his stint of cynicism, and was attempting to illustrate that reason is not self-reliant in the sphere of metaphysics and is incapable out of itself to construct an absolute world-view. Whereas, as Goldziher (1981) explains, Al-Ghazali uniquely held certain beliefs which he refuted in Tahafut, he wanted to demonstrate that reason on its own cannot establish that the world has the creator, two gods are unfeasible, God is not an entity or a body, and that he understand both himself and others, that the spirit is a self-resilient body. This paper will analyze Al-Ghazali’s argument on the eternity of the world, as found in his first areas of debate with philosophers and evaluated against Ibn Rushd’s answers.
Rationalism states that the main source of our knowledge is through mind, rather than the senses. Intuition
Since the beginning of time, religion has played one of the most significant roles within human existence and has been believed to be the source whereby our governing laws have been derived. However, dating back to as early as the 3rd to 6th century, Greek philosophers inclusive of Diagoras of Melos, Euhemerus, alongside the schools of Hindu philosophy, Samkhya and the Greek Cyrenaic School were all amongst some of the first who did not accept the idea of God (Friedrich, 1942, 25). In the 7th century and during the Early Middle Ages, undergoing the Golden Age, the idea of knowledge was emphasised amongst the Muslim world, translating and collaborating knowledge from all over the world, giving rise to a group of people known as the Dahriyya who were the ‘holders of materialistic opinions of vari...
The Transcendental Deductions of the pure concept of the understanding in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, in its most general sense, explains how concepts relate a priori to objects in virtue of the fact that the power of knowing an object through representations is known as understanding. According to Kant, the foundation of all knowledge is the self, our own consciousness because without the self, experience is not possible. The purpose of this essay is to lay out Kant’s deduction of the pure concept of understanding and show how our concepts are not just empirical, but concepts a priori. We will walk through Kant’s argument and reasoning as he uncovers each layer of understanding, eventually leading up to the conclusion mentioned above.
Empiricists and rationalists have proposed opposing theories of the acquisition of knowledge, which appear unable to coexist. Each theory holds its own strengths but does not demonstrate a strong argument in itself to the questions, “Is knowledge truly possible?” and “How is true knowledge obtained?”. Immanual Kant successfully merged the two philosophies and provided a convincing argument with his theory of empirical relativism, or what some may call constructivism. His theory bridges the gap between rationalism and empiricism and proves that empiricists and rationalists each present a piece of the full puzzle. In order to truly understand Kant’s epistemology, one must first review and understand both empiricism and rationalism on an impartial basis.
The philosopher, Linda Zagzebski, offers a virtue based definition of knowledge. She arrives at this definition by presenting numerous accounts of knowledge definitions that fail, explore why they fail, then shows how her theory satisfies knowledge criteria.
"Knowledge, Truth, and Meaning." Cover: Human Knowledge: Foundations and Limits. Web. 17 Feb. 2011. .
The study of any particular science involves embracing particular and specific ontology, epistemology and methodologies that are different from each other. Ontology is the concept that defines and explains the essential types of truth (Blaikie 2009). Every field of science constitutes its own ontology and in most cases two types of ontology exists: formal ontology and domain ontology (Blaikie 2009). Formal ontology type of research always postulates something general related to reality while on the other hand domain ontology postulate something specific with regard to different types of truths (Blaikie 2009). On its part epistemology constitute a science concept that defines how human and the general population of the world know and reason the particular truth. The two concepts are differentiated by particular assumptions that are associated with each of them. For instance assumptions associated with ontology include: shallow realist, conceptual realist, cautious realist, depth realist and idealist (Blaikie 2009). On the other hand assumptions related to epistemology include: empiricism, rationalism, falsificationism, neo-realism and constructionism (Blaikie 2009). Therefore the purpose of this essay will be to define objectivism and inteprativism as related to ontology, define positivism and interpretavism as related to epistemology, explain how ontology and epistemology are linked and how they influence each other, before lastly looking at how important ontology and epistemology are.
One can say or try and dissect the brain and try to figure what’s going on inside of it and that’s what Philophers today try to do that. Why is that why must the brain be dissected? This question is raised for the simple fact that Philophers really want to know why whats going on the human brain. This can also go back to “knowing” and believing in something. We will also take a look into emotion with a emphisis on facil expressions. Reading the human face could be a difficult task. Last but not least I will talk about the Philosphy of life and why it is important to have an outreach like that in life, futhermore this has an emphese on belief. Learning a lot this busy semester the topics above will be though out and discussed so that we can get a better understand of each of them.
The Greek's notion of rational thought is a very strong reason why Western Civilization has become so influential in the world today. During their time, the Greeks spurred an intellectual revolution. They questioned the meanings of life and began using their minds to expand the world. According to Glenn Blackburn: "In many ways, they "discovered" the human "mind" through their philosophy and rational thought [ . . . ]"(64). Their "opening" of the mind influenced all ways of life and society. Major ideas blossomed like politics, governing laws, literature, art, history, and new inventions. Scientific thinking was groundbreaking among Greek minds. Ideas of mathematics, astronomy, architecture, and anatomy engrossed the public. This revolution of rational thought dominated society and began a transition in Western Civilization because people began using reason to explain human and natural events, rather than the gods (Blackburn, 67). Even today, rational thought is used by all of us and continues to influence society. The power of the modern mind has proved greater than any other Greek could have ever expected.
We gain knowledge in through our ways of knowing which are mainly perception, reason and language. We use them to find knowledge because we justify our claims and beliefs by their use, thus, our evidences, because they get us closer to the truth. To accept something as knowledge, it must be considered true, one must believe it and there must be justification why the person knows it, therefore these ways of knowing aid in the process for our quest for knowledge. In conclusion, in order to obtain knowledge all of these three attributes have to be integrated in some type of way, and due to the changing nature of all three of them, knowledge is always changing and it is dynamic, leading to the fact that knowledge can be discarded. The questions b...