Philosophy 201: Philosophy and Contemporary Ideas

How are Beliefs Acquired? Rationalism and Empiricism

Obtaining Knowledge
Belief: Something we affirm to be true in a

propositional form. Where do we get the content for our beliefs? Classic rival theories:
Rationalism: At least some knowledge of reality

can be acquired through reason independent of sense experience Empiricism: All knowledge is ultimately derived from sense experience

Rationalism
Plato
Two worlds: World of being and world of

becoming. We pre-existed in world of being where we encountered every form of thing in the world of being and had all knowledge We innately know everything, but through the trauma of birth this knowledge was lost in our subconscious mind Learning is a process of recollection of what we already know

Rationalism
Rene Descartes Reacted against his skeptical conclusion
Geometric method: Can know something

through intuition and deduction. Intuition: Cogito ergo sum I think, therefore I am Deduction: God: based on the fact that I exist and that I have a concept of God, God must exist (ontological argument)

The Deduction of God

Ontological Argument: Based on the

Idea of God
God is the greatest possible being. God exists at least in the mind or

understanding. A being who exists only in the mind is not as great as a being who exists in reality as well as in the mind. If God exists only in the mind, then he would not be the greatest possible being. Therefore, God must exist in reality as well as in the mind.

Rationalism
Rene Descartes
Reacted against his skeptical conclusion
Geometric method: Can know something through

intuition and deduction. Intuition: Cogito ergo sum I think, therefore I am Deduction: God: based on the fact that I exist and that I have a concept of God, God must exist (ontological argument) Matter: God would not deceive me of what I clearly and distinctly perceive and I perceive matter.

On the basis of reason alone, Descartes

deduced the existence of: mind, God and

Empiricism
John Locke
Rejected the idea of innate ideas
Man is born a tabula rasa (blank slate) on

which sense experience will write all he will know Knowledge is divided into external sensations and internal reflection
External sensations enter our minds passively as

simple ideas Through internal reflection our mind actively creates complex ideas through process of combination, comparison and contrast, and

Empiricism
David Hume
Agreed with Locke, but took it to the extreme;

radical empiricism. Sense knowledge is the only kind of knowledge there is; all we can know is the phenomena of our own experiences. Rejected all metaphysical claims of knowledge that were not sensually experienced:
Causality Mind Space and Time

Combining Rationalism and Empiricism

Immanuel Kant
Agreed with Humes reasoning, but not his

conclusion; I do know some things about the world: causality, time and space We are born with innate categories of understanding that helps us to understand sense experience Reality provides raw data (noumena) through our sense which our mind manipulates and organizes into knowledge (phenomena).
Analogy: Just as a computer has been programmed to accept data

a certain way, the mind has been programmed to accept the data

Combining Rationalism and Empiricism

Causality, time and space, are not properties

of reality, they are programmed functions of our mind in understanding the world. Our mind doesnt conform to reality, reality is conformed by our mind in a way that we can understand it. I cannot know the real world apart from these categories, but what I do know because of them, I know for certain.