Rationalism vs Empiricism

In a recent Philosophize this podcast, Adam West discusses the two major thoughts of philosophy in the 1600’s; Rationalism and Empiricism. He goes on to say that they both schools of thought believe humans are able to arrive at truth, however, they disagree on how they get there.

just want to mention, the source material uses the word priori a lot. It means to gain knowledge through deductive reasoning. It can also be describe as knowledge gain independent of experience.

Rationalism - my beginners, over simplification of what a rationalist is

I am basically writing short summaries of what I read from the website - Plato.standford.edu

1) rationalist are able to arrive at truth outside of the sensory experience.

They believe intuition and logical deduction are tools at arriving at truth. I can strongly see the appeal to this type of thought, especially in a time without a lot of means of obtaining information. In a sense, it teaches the person to use their own devices. I find it especially appealing to me because I like to think that my intuitions are meaningful and I need to better understand them.

2) We inherit knowledge

Essentially, we have knowledge within us already and sense experience triggers our consciousness to become aware of it. There is some debate among rationalists how that knowledge was original placed within us to begin with. At the time rationalism was a popular school of thought, many thought it came from god. Others thought it was provided to us by some earlier existance

3) Innate concept thesis

Some of our knowledge is not gained from experience. Basically, this thesis is describing how we are able to obtain knowledge outside of our sensory experience. The experience does not provide the concepts

4) Knowledge obtain through reason is superior then knowledge from our senses

Empiricism

Sense experience is our only source of knowledge. - boom, drop mic. Empiricists argued that our sensory expience is our only tool of obtaining knowledge. They do admit it is flawed, however, it is all we got.

Continental Rationalist

in this corner we have Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz

British Empiricists

In this corner we have Locke, Berkely and Hume

I am going to stop here. I wanted to take a bit of time to figure out some of the differences and the major players when it comes to these two schools of thought. I will be making more posts when I can find a subject that would make for a nice blog post.