Perception as the Source and Basis of Knowledge

Perception as the Source and Basis of Knowledge

It is human nature to desire to acquire knowledge, but how we acquire

this knowledge is a constant debate between philosophers. For years

philosophers have written about different sources of knowledge. We can

divide these ideas into two theories, rationalism and empiricism. A

question that divides the two dogmas is; "Is perception the source of

knowledge?" Empiricists say yes whole-heartedly while Rationalists

believe that we accomplish knowledge through reason. Both empiricism

and rationalism can be convincing, but there are some points on both

sides that would need rethinking.

Rationalism is purely based on reason and the foundational concepts

known through it. A rationalist would say that experience is not our

only source of knowledge; some ideas are not accumulated through

experience. This theory is based on the idea that genuine knowledge is

derived from reason and does not need to rely on experience. These

ideas, according to rationalism, are synthetic necessary statements

and are universally true. We call this type of knowledge a priori;

this means that it is necessary knowledge not dependent unop

experience. Something that is a priori is necessarily true by

definition, for example "black cats are black". This statement has to

be true because we would be contradicting ourselves if we tried to say

it wasn't. It is presented in the name that black cats are black, so

indeed they must be black. There are some problems with this theory,

though. There are some names that have given adjectives that are not

necessarily true to the thing that we are naming. For instance, if we

were t...

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statements that are true by definition and they do not produce genuine

worldly knowledge. They argue that knowledge is based on both sense

experience and internal mental experiences. It is very difficult to

prove this though, because it seems that they have come to this

conclusion based on reason.

Rationalism and empiricsim both present good evidence to secure their

arguments, but they also both have some holes in their arguments. It

is impossible to prove without exception which of these ideologies is

the correct one. It can be assumed that both reason and experience are

necessary to acquire knowledge, but it cannot be proved. So you must

base your own decision on your own perception of the situation. But

this statement brings us back to the question, is perception the basis

of knowledge or not?