Compare And Contrast Empiricism And Rationalism

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Throughout history, Philosophers have been puzzled by so many questions regarding the world we live in. Questions such as is there something rather than nothing and do we have free will, have puzzled philosophers. However, the biggest question that puzzled philosophers was regarding humans and knowledge. Two groups of philosophers tried to answer the questions; however, they both have different view points about the topic. The first group was the rationalist and the second group was the empiricists. Both the rationalist and the empiricists try to answer the questions what is real, reality, truth and knowledge. The empiricists were a group of individuals who believed humans were born with a clean slate and gained knowledge using there five senses; sight, taste, hearing, touch and smell. Through our five sense we are able to understand reality and gain a better understanding of the world. The most notable of the of the empiricists was Berkeley, Aristotle, Kant and the founder of empiricism John Locke. On the other hand, were the rationalist and they believed humans are born with knowledge and have to use reason to discover the answers within them. The opposite of empiricist, rationalist believe that our senses are useless because the answers are in us. The most notable of the rationalist was Plato, …show more content…

Some of the questions they tried to answer but disagreed with is what is real, reality, truth and knowledge? The empiricist believed what is real and reality is what we are able to perceive through our sense and the physical world, while the rationalist believed reality and the real thing is in our head. The empiricist also believed that the truth is gained through empirical investigation, which the rationalist believed that the truth are within us and we only need to discover

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