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.
2011.
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.
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§ Physical Bodies - dreaming - e.g. do you know you are awake now? Or
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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.
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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.
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
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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...