Category Archives: Rationalism

Many Irish rugby fans in Edinburgh this weekend will at some point pass the statue of David Hume, prominently located on the citys most prestigious thoroughfare, the Royal Mile. If they notice it, the superstitious among them may even stop to rub the figures right big toe.

When sculptor Sandy Stoddart was preparing the work in the mid-1990s, he correctly identified a public demand for statues of the famous dead to have rubbable body parts. So casting the 18th century philosopher in Roman attire, without shoes, he arranged for the right foot to protrude from the plinth, with a tantalisingly flexed toe.

Stoddart predicted that the rubbing of same would become an ancient tradition. He was right. Since its installation in 1997, the toe has been been burnished to a shiny bronze by those in search of luck. Hume, a famous rationalist, may be turning in his grave.

It could be worse. Had the sculptor not been careful, the great philosopher might have shared the indignities of Victor Noir, a 19th-century Parisian journalist killed in a duel, who unwittingly founded a fertility cult thanks to the bronze likeness on his grave having a conspicuously swollen crotch, which is now being shined for all eternity in Pre Lachaise cemetery, by women intent on motherhood.

In Verona, a statue of the fictional Juliet has had one of her breasts similarly polished.

And I noticed recently that this trend of inappropriate touching of monuments has extended to Dublin, via the mammarian tourism magnets of Molly Malone.

Rationalism aside, Irish rugby fans might in any case want to think twice before rubbing Humes toe. For although the man was undoubtedly possessed of a towering intellect, he was also what we would now call a racist. He considered some peoples innately inferior to others.

Among these were the Irish.

Here he is in his History of England (1773), for example, explaining why this country so badly needed invading in 1169: The Irish, from the beginning of time, had been buried in the most profound barbarism and ignorance; as they were never conquered or even invaded by the Romans, from whom all the western world derived its civility, they continued still in the most rude state of society, and were distinguished only by those vices to which human nature, not tamed by education or restrained by laws, is for ever subject.

So at least we had an excuse in his eyes the failure of the Romans to humanise us.

Perhaps too, in life, some Irish people just rubbed him up the wrong way. Still, confronted with his smug, Roman toga-wearing features, I might be inclined to boycott the toe on principle, regardless of its supposed powers.

It is knowledge or wisdom, by the way, that the statue is said to confer. Thus, before tourists picked up on the habit, the superstition was the preserve of local philosophy students, especially before exams.

That being so, its the Irish team and coaches, not the fans, who should be rubbing it, before they face this afternoons practical in Murrayfield. But then again, in the matter of how to win rugby matches, Joe Schmidt appears to have more knowledge in his big toe than most of his rivals.

Superstition should not enter into it.

Mind you, Schmidt and all other rational explanations aside, the turnaround in results between Scotland and Ireland over recent years has been extraordinary.

Many of todays team wont remember it, but there was a time, as recently as the 1990s, when Ireland couldnt win this fixture. Only a 6-6 draw in 1994 interrupted a sequence of 11 straight defeats and this during an era when, on paper, Scotland were always at least as bad as us.

Even after that run ended, we still couldnt win in Edinburgh.

The Scots decline, funnily enough, set in soon after the installation of Humes sculpture, although the locals loss of wisdom about how to beat us may have been influenced by other developments.

That fine sportswriter Vincent Hogan has noted that, in the run-up to our last Edinburgh hammering, in 2001, it was suspected there had been surreptitious surveillance of the Irish training sessions.

So in 2003, new coach Eddie OSullivan left a decoy list of lineout calls, accidentally on purpose, in a bin near the training base. Scotlands subsequent performance suggested that, to paraphrase Pope, a little planted misinformation can be a dangerous thing. Ireland won 36-6, and have been (almost) unbeatable in the fixture ever since.

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Rubbing for the Green An Irishman's Diary about David Hume's big toe - Irish Times

Saturday (2005) is a novel by Ian McEwan set in Fitzrovia, London, on Saturday, 15 February 2003, as a large demonstration is taking place against the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. The protagonist, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, has planned a series of chores and pleasures culminating in a family dinner in the evening. As he goes about his day, he ponders the meaning of the protest and the problems that inspired it; however, the day is disrupted by an encounter with a violent, troubled man.

To understand his character's world-view, McEwan spent time with a neurosurgeon. The novel explores one's engagement with the modern world and the meaning of existence in it. The main character, though outwardly successful, still struggles to understand meaning in his life, exploring personal satisfaction in the post-modern, developed world. Though intelligent and well read, Perowne feels he has little influence over political events.

The book, published in February 2005 by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom and in April in the United States, was critically and commercially successful. Critics noted McEwan's elegant prose, careful dissection of daily life, and interwoven themes. It won the 2005 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. It has been translated into eight languages.

Saturday is McEwan's ninth novel, published between Atonement and On Chesil Beach, two novels of historical fiction. McEwan has discussed that he prefers to alternate between writing about the past and the present.[1][2]

While researching the book, McEwan spent two years work-shadowing Neil Kitchen, a neurosurgeon at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square, London.[1][3][4] Kitchen testified that McEwan did not flinch in the theatre, a common first reaction to surgery; "He sat in the corner, with his notebook and pencil".[1] He also had several medical doctors and surgeons review the book for accuracy, though few corrections were required to the surgical description.[1][4]Saturday was also proof-read by McEwan's longstanding circle of friends who review his manuscripts, Timothy Garton Ash, Craig Raine, and Galen Strawson.[1]

There are elements of autobiography in Saturday: the protagonist lives in Fitzroy Square, the same square in London that McEwan does and is physically active in middle age.[1]Christopher Hitchens, a friend of McEwan's, noted how Perowne's wife, parents and children are the same as the writer's.[5] McEwan's son, Greg, who like Theo played the guitar reasonably well in his youth, emphasized one difference between them, "I definitely don't wear tight black jeans".[1]

Excerpts were published in five different literary magazines, including the whole of chapter one in the New York Times Book Review, in late 2004 and early 2005.[6] The complete novel was published by the Jonathan Cape Imprint of Random House Books in February 2005 in London, New York, and Toronto; Dutch, Hebrew, German, French, Spanish, Polish, Russian, and Japanese translations followed.[7][8]

The book follows Henry Perowne, a middle-aged, successful surgeon. Five chapters chart his day and thoughts on Saturday the 15 February 2003, the day of the demonstration against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the largest protest in British history. Perowne's day begins in the early morning, when he sees a burning aeroplane streak across the sky. This casts a shadow over the rest of his day as reports on the television change and shift: is it an accident, or terrorism?

En route to his weekly squash game, a traffic diversion reminds Perowne of the anti-war protests occurring that day. After being allowed through the diversion, he collides with another car, damaging its wing mirror. At first the driver, Baxter, tries to extort money from him. When Perowne refuses, Baxter and his two companions become aggressive. Noticing symptoms in Baxter's behaviour, Perowne quickly recognises the onset of Huntington's disease. Though he is punched in the sternum, Perowne manages to escape unharmed by distracting Baxter with discussions of his disease.

Perowne goes on to his squash match, still thinking about the incident. He loses the long and contested game by a technicality in the final set. After lunch he buys some fish from a local fishmonger for dinner. He visits his mother, suffering from vascular dementia, who is cared for in a nursing home.

After a visit to his son's rehearsal, Perowne returns home to cook dinner, and the evening news reminds him of the grander arc of events that surround his life. When Daisy, his daughter, arrives home from Paris, the two passionately debate the coming war in Iraq. His father-in-law arrives next. Daisy reconciles an earlier literary disagreement that led to a froideur with her maternal grandfather; remembering that it was he who had inspired her love of literature. Perowne's son Theo returns next.

Rosalind, Perowne's wife, is the last to arrive home. As she enters, Baxter and an accomplice 'Nige' force their way in armed with knives. Baxter punches the grandfather, intimidates the family and orders Daisy to strip naked. When she does, Perowne notices that she is pregnant. Finding out she is a poet, Baxter asks her to recite a poem. Rather than one of her own, she recites Dover Beach, which affects Baxter emotionally, effectively disarming him. Instead he becomes enthusiastic about Perowne's renewed talk about new treatment for Huntington's disease. After his companion abandons him, Baxter is overpowered by Perowne and Theo, and knocked unconscious after falling down the stairs. That night Perowne is summoned to the hospital for a successful emergency operation on Baxter. Saturday ends at around 5:15a.m. on Sunday, after he has returned from the hospital and made love to his wife again.

McEwan's earlier work has explored the fragility of existence using a clinical perspective,[9] Hitchens hails him a "chronicler of the physics of every-day life".[5]Saturday explores the feeling of fulfilment in Perowne: he is respected and respectable but not quite at ease, wondering about the luck that has him where he is and others homeless or in menial jobs.[5] The family is materially well-off, with a plush home and a Mercedes, but justifiably soPerowne and his wife work hard. McEwan tells of his success rate and keeping cool under pressure; there is a trade off, as he and his wife work long hours and need to put their diaries side by side to find time to spend together.[5]

Perowne's composure and success mean the implied violence is in the background. His personal contentment, (at the top of his profession, and "an unashamed beneficiary of the fruits of late capitalism"[3]) provides a hopeful side to the book, instead of the unhappiness in contemporary fiction.[2] McEwan's previous novels highlighted the fragility of modern fulfilled life, seemingly minor incidents dramatically upsetting existence.[9]Saturday returns to a theme explored in Atonement, which plotted the disruption of a lie to a middle-class family, and in The Child in Time, where a small child is kidnapped during a day's shopping.[10] This theme is continued in Saturday, a "tautly wound tour-de-force" set in a world where terrorism, war and politics make the news headlines, but the protagonist has to live out this life until he "collides with another fate".[2] In Saturday Perowne's medical knowledge captures the delicate state of humanity better than novelists' imaginations: his acquaintance with death and neurological perspective better capture human frailty.[9]

The burning aeroplane in the book's opening, and the suspicions it immediately arouses, quickly introduces the problems of terrorism and international security.[5] The day's political demonstration and the ubiquity of its news coverage provide background noise to Perowne's day, leading to him to ponder his relationship with these events.[11]Christopher Hitchens pointed out that the novel is set on the "actual day the whole of bien-pensant Britain moved into the streets to jeer at George Bush and Tony Blair" and placed the novel as "unapologetically anchored as it is in the material world and its several discontents".[5]The Economist newspaper set the context as a "world where terrorism and war make headlines, but also filter into the smallest corners of people's lives."[2] McEwan said himself, "The march gathered not far from my house, and it bothered me that so many people seemed so thrilled to be there".[12] The characterisation of Perowne as an intelligent, self-aware man: "..a habitual observer of his own moods' [who] is given to reveries about his mental processes," allows the author to explicitly set out this theme.[1]

"It's an illusion to believe himself active in the story. Does he think he's changing something, watching news programmes, or lying on his back on the sofa on Sunday afternoon, reading more opinion columns of ungrounded certainties, more long articles about what really lies behind this or that development, or what is surely going to happen next, predictions forgotten as soon as they are read, well before events disprove them?"[13]

Physically, Perowne is neither above nor outside the fray but at an angle to it; emotionally his own intelligence makes him apathetic, he can see both sides of the argument, and his beliefs are characterised by a series of hard choices rather than sure certainties.[5][14]

He is concerned for the fate of Iraqis; through his friendship with an exiled Iraqi professor he learned of the totalitarian side of Saddam Hussein's rule, but also takes seriously his children's concerns about the war. He often plays devil's advocate, being dovish with this American friend, and hawkish with his daughter.[12]

McEwan establishes Perowne as anchored in the real world.[5][15] Perowne expresses a distaste for some modern literature, puzzled by, even disdaining magical realism:

"What were these authors of reputation doing grown men and women of the twentieth century granting supernatural powers to their characters?" Perowne earnestly tried to appreciate fiction, under instruction from his daughter he read both Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, but could not accept their artificiality, even though they dwelt on detail and ordinariness.[11]

Perowne's dismissive attitude towards literature is directly contrasted with his scientific world-view in his struggle to comprehend the modern world.[11] Perowne explicitly ponders this question, "The times are strange enough. Why make things up?".[11]

Perowne's world view is rebutted by his daughter, Daisy, a young poet. In the book's climax in chapter four, while he struggles to remain calm offering medical solutions to Baxter's illness, she quotes Matthew Arnold's poem Dover Beach, which calls for civilised values in the world, temporarily placating the assailant's violent mood.[3] McEwan described his intention as wanting to "play with this idea, whether we need stories".[16] Brian Bethune interpreted McEwan's approach to Perowne as "mercilessly [mocking] his own protagonist...But Perowne's blind spot [literature] is less an author's little joke than a plea for the saving grace of literature."[15]

Similarly he is irreligious, his work making him aware of the fragility of life and consciousness's reliance on the functioning brain.[11] His morality is nuanced, weighing both sides of an issue. When leaving the confrontation with Baxter, he questions his use of his medical knowledge, even though it was in self-defense, and with genuine Hippocratic feeling. While shopping for his fish supper, he cites scientific research that shows greater consciousness in fish, and wonders whether he should stop eating them.[11] As a sign of his rationalism, he appreciates the brutality of Saddam Hussein's rule as described by the Iraqi professor whom Perowne treated, at the same time taking seriously his children's concerns about the war.

Saturday is a "post 9/11" novel, dealing with the change in lifestyle faced by Westerners after the 11 September attacks in the United States. As such, Christopher Hitchens characterised it as "unapologetically anchored as it is in the material world and its several discontents".[5] "Structurally, Saturday is a tightly wound tour de force of several strands"; it is both a thriller which portrays a very attractive family, and an allegory of the world after 11 September 2001 which meditates on the fragility of life.[14]

In this respect the novel correctly anticipates, at page 276, the July 7, 2005 bombings on London's Underground railway network, which occurred a few months after the book was published:

London, his small part of it, lies wide open, impossible to defend, waiting for its bomb, like a hundred other cities. Rush hour will be a convenient time. It might resemble the Paddington crash twisted rails, buckled, upraised commuter coaches, stretchers handed out through broken windows, the hospital's Emergency Plan in action. Berlin, Paris, Lisbon. The authorities agree, an attack's inevitable.

The book obeys the classical unities of place, time and action, following one man's day against the backdrop of a grander historical narrative the anti-war protests happening in the city that same day.[9] The protagonist's errands are surrounded by the recurring leitmotif of hyper real, ever-present screens which report the progress of the plane and the march Perowne has earlier encountered.[11]Saturday is in tune with its protagonist's literary tastes; "magical realism" it is not.[5] The 26-hour narrative led critics to compare the book to similar novels, especially Ulysses by James Joyce, which features a man crossing a city,[15] and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, of which Michiko Kakutani described Saturday as an "up-to-the-moment, post-9/11 variation."[10]

The novel is narrated in the third person, limited point of view: the reader learns of events as Perowne does. Using the free indirect style the narrator inhabits Perowne, a neurosurgeon, who often thinks rationally, explaining phenomena using medical terminology.[1] This allows McEwan to capture some of the "white noise that we almost forget as soon as we think it, unless we stop and write it down."[16] Hitchens highlighted how the author separates himself from his character with a "Runyonesque historical present ("He rises " "He strides ") that solidifies the context and the actuality."[5]

Saturday was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful, a best-seller in Britain and the United States. It spent a week at No. 3 on both the New York Times Best Seller List on 15 April 2005,[17] and Publishers Weekly (4 April 2005) lists.[18] A strong performance for literary fiction, Saturday sold over 250,000 copies on release, and signings were heavily attended.[19] The paperback edition sold another quarter of a million.[20]

Ruth Scurr reviewed the book in The Times, calling McEwan "[maybe] the best novelist in Britain and is certainly operating at the height of his formidable powers".[9] She praised his examination of happiness in the 21st century, particularly from the point of view of a surgeon: "doctors see real lives fall to pieces in their consulting rooms or on their operating tables, day in, day out. Often they mend what is broken, and open the door to happiness again."[9] Christopher Hitchens said the "sober yet scintillating pages of Saturday" confirmed the maturation of McEwan and displayed both his soft, humane, side and his hard, intellectual, scientific, side.[5]

Reviewers celebrated McEwan's dissection of the quotidian and his talent for observation and description. Michiko Kakutani liked the "myriad of small, telling details and a reverence for their very ordinariness ", and the suspense created that threatens these.[10] Tim Adams concurred in The Observer, calling the observation "wonderfully precise".[21] Mark Lawson in The Guardian said McEwan's style had matured into "scrupulous, sensual rhythms," and noted the considered word choice that enables his work. Perowne, for example, is a convincing neurosurgeon by the end of the book.[22] This attention to detail allowed McEwan to use all the tricks of fiction to generate "a growing sense of disquiet with the tiniest finger-flicks of detail".[14]

The "set-piece" construction of the book was noticed by many critics; Mrs Scurr praised it, describing a series of "vivid tableaux",[9] but John Banville was less impressed, calling it an assembly of discrete set pieces, though he said the treatment of the car crash and its aftermath was "masterful", and said of Perowne's visit to his mother: "the writing is genuinely affecting in its simplicity and empathetic force."[3] From the initial "dramatic overture" of the aircraft scene, there were "astonishing pages of description", sometimes "heart-stopping", though it was perhaps a touch too artful at times, according to Michael Dirda in The Washington Post.[14] Christopher Hitchens said that McEwan delivered a "virtuoso description of the aerodynamics of a squash game," enjoyable even "to a sports hater like myself",[5] Banville said he, as a literary man, had been bored by the same scene.[23] Zoe Heller praised the tension in the climax as "vintage McEwan nightmare" but questioned the resolution as "faintly preposterous".[11]

John Banville wrote a scathing review of the book for The New York Review of Books.[3] He described Saturday as the sort of thing that a committee directed to produce a 'novel of our time' would write, the politics were "banal"; the tone arrogant, self-satisfied and incompetent; the characters cardboard cut-outs. He felt McEwan strove too hard to display technical knowledge "and his ability to put that knowledge into good, clean prose".[3]

Saturday won the James Tait Black Prize for fiction;[24] and was nominated on the long-list of the Man Booker Prize in 2005.[25]

According to songwriter Neil Finn, the Crowded House song "People Are Like Suns", from Time on Earth (2007), begins with lyrics inspired by the beginning of Saturday, stating "...when I wrote it, I was reading Ian McEwan's novel Saturday, which begins with a man on his balcony watching a plane go down, so the first lines borrow something from that image."[26]

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Saturday (novel) - Wikipedia

The history of philosophy has seen many warring camps fighting battles over some major issue or other. One of the major battles historically has been over the foundations of all our knowledge. What is most basic in any human set of beliefs? What are our ultimate starting points for any world view? Where does human knowledge ultimately come from?

Empiricists have always claimed that sense experience is the ultimate starting point for all our knowledge. The senses, they maintain, give us all our raw data about the world, and without this raw material, there would be no knowledge at all. Perception starts a process, and from this process come all our beliefs. In its purest form, empiricism holds that sense experience alone gives birth to all our beliefs and all our knowledge. A classic example of an empiricist is the British philosopher John Locke (16321704).

Its easy to see how empiricism has been able to win over many converts. Think about it for a second. Its interestingly difficult to identify a single belief that you have that didnt come your way by means of some sense experience sight, hearing, touch, smell, or taste. Its natural, then, to come to believe that the senses are the sole source and ultimate grounding of belief.

But not all philosophers have been convinced that the senses fly solo when it comes to producing belief. We seem to have some beliefs that cannot be read off sense experience, or proved from any perception that we might be able to have. Because of this, there historically has been a warring camp of philosophers who give a different answer to the question of where our beliefs ultimately do, or should, come from.

Rationalists have claimed that the ultimate starting point for all knowledge is not the senses but reason. They maintain that without prior categories and principles supplied by reason, we couldnt organize and interpret our sense experience in any way. We would be faced with just one huge, undifferentiated, kaleidoscopic whirl of sensation, signifying nothing. Rationalism in its purest form goes so far as to hold that all our rational beliefs, and the entirety of human knowledge, consists in first principles and innate concepts (concepts that we are just born having) that are somehow generated and certified by reason, along with anything logically deducible from these first principles.

How can reason supply any mental category or first principle at all? Some rationalists have claimed that we are born with several fundamental concepts or categories in our minds ready for use. These give us what the rationalists call innate knowledge. Examples might be certain categories of space, of time, and of cause and effect.

We naturally think in terms of cause and effect. And this helps organize our experience of the world. We think of ourselves as seeing some things cause other things to happen, but in terms of our raw sense experience, we just see certain things happen before other things, and remember having seen such before-and-after sequences at earlier times. For example, a rock hits a window, and then the window breaks. We dont see a third thing called causation. But we believe it has happened. The rock hitting the window caused it to break. But this is not experienced like the flight of the rock or the shattering of the glass. Experience does not seem to force the concept of causation on us. We just use it to interpret what we experience. Cause and effect are categories that could never be read out of our experience and must therefore be brought to that experience by our prior mental disposition to attribute such a connection. This is the rationalist perspective.

Rationalist philosophers have claimed that at the foundations of our knowledge are propositions that are self-evident, or self-evidently true. A self-evident proposition has the strange property of being such that, on merely understanding what it says, and without any further checking or special evidence of any kind, we can just intellectually see that it is true. Examples might be such propositions as:

The claim is that, once these statements are understood, it takes no further sense experience whatsoever to see that they are true.

Descartes was a thinker who used skeptical doubt as a prelude to constructing a rationalist philosophy. He was convinced that all our beliefs that are founded on the experience of the external senses could be called into doubt, but that with certain self-evident beliefs, like I am thinking, there is no room for creating and sustaining a reasonable doubt. Descartes then tried to find enough other first principles utterly immune to rational doubt that he could provide an indubitable, rational basis for all other legitimate beliefs.

Philosophers do not believe that Descartes succeeded. But it was worth a try. Rationalism has remained a seductive idea for individuals attracted to mathematics and to the beauties of unified theory, but it has never been made to work as a practical matter.

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Rationalism verses Empiricism - dummies.com

D. Rationalism vs. Empiricism

Theories of knowledge divide naturally, theoretically and historically into the two rival schools of rationalism and empiricism. Neither rationalism nor empiricism disregards the primary tool of the other school entirely. The issue revolves on beliefs about necessary knowledge and empirical knowledge.

1. Rationalism

Rationalism believes that some ideas or concepts are independent of experience and that some truth is known by reason alone.

a. a priori

This is necessary knowledge not given in nor dependent upon experience; it is necessarily true by definition. For instance "black cats are black." This is an analytic statement, and broadly, it is a tautology; its denial would be self-contradictory.

2. Empiricism

Empiricism believes that some ideas or concepts are independent of experience and that truth must be established by reference to experience alone.

b. a posteriori

This is knowledge that comes after or is dependent upon experience. for instance "Desks are brown" is a synthetic statement. Unlike the analytic statement "Black cats are black", the synthetic statement "Desks are brown" is not necessarily true unless all desks are by definition brown, and to deny it would not be self-contradictory. We would probably refer the matter to experience.

Since knowledge depends primarily on synthetic statements -- statements that may be true or may be false -- their nature and status are crucial to theories of knowledge. The controvercial issue is the possibility of synthetic necessary knowledge -- that is, the possibility of having genuine knowledge of the world without the need to rely on experience. Consider these statements:

1) The sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees.

2) Parallel lines never meet.

3) A whole is the sum of all its parts.

Rationalism may believe these to be synthetic necessary statements, universally treu, and genunie knowledge; i.e., they are not merely empty as the analytic or tautologous statemenst (Black cats are black) and are not dependent on experience for their truth value.

Empiricism denies that these statements are synthetic and necessary. Strict empriicism asserts that all such statements only appear to be necessary or a priori. Actually, they derive from experience.

Logical empiricism admits that these statements are ncessary but only because they are not really synthetic statements but analytic statements, which are true by definition alone and do not give us genuine knowledge of the world.

GENUINE KNOWLEDGE

Rationalism includes in genuine knowledge synthetic necessary statements (or, if this term is rejected, then those analytic necessary statements that "reveal reality" in terms of universally necessary truth; e.g., "An entity is what it is and not something else.")

Empiricism limits genuine knowledge to empirical statements. Necessary statements are empty (that is, they tell us nothing of the world).

Logical empiricism admits as genuine knowledge only analytic necessary (Black cats are black) or synthetic empirical statements (desks are brown). But the anyalytic necessary statements or laws of logic and mathematics derive from arbitrary rules of usage, definitions, and the like, and therefore reveal nothing about reality. (This is the antimetaphysical point of view).

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Logic: Rationalism vs. Empiricism - Theology

In Philosophy, there are two main positions about the source of all knowledge. These positions are called rationalism and empiricism. Rationalists believe that all knowledge is "innate", or is there when one is born, and that learning comes from intuition. On the other hand, empiricists believe that all knowledge comes from direct sense experience. In this essay, I will further explain each position, it's strengths and weaknesses, and how Kant discovered that there is an alternative to these positions. The thesis I defend in this essay is that knowledge can be of both positions.

According to Rationalists (such as Descartes), all knowledge must come from the mind. Rationalism is concerned with absolute truths that are universal (such as logic and mathematics), which is one of the strengths of this position. It's weakness lies in the fact that it is difficult to apply rationalism to particulars (which are everywhere in our daily life!) because it is of such an abstract nature.

According to Empiricists, such as John Locke, all knowledge comes from direct sense experience. Locke's concept of knowledge comes from his belief that the mind is a "blank slate or tabula rosa" at birth, and our experiences are written upon the slate. Therefore, there are no innate experiences. The strength of the empiricist position is that it is best at explaining particulars, which we encounter on a daily basis. The weakness of this position is that one cannot have direct experiences of general concepts, since we only experience particulars.

Noticing that rationalism and empiricism have opposing strengths and weaknesses, Kant attempted to bring the best of both positions together. In doing so he came up with a whole new position, which I will soon explain.

Kant claimed that there are 3 types of knowledge. The first type of knowledge he called "a priori", which means prior to experience. This knowledge corresponds to rationalist thinking, in that it holds knowledge to be...

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Rationalism vs. Empiricism Essay - 797 Words - StudyMode

ENLIGHTENMENT RADICALISM AND THE ROMANTIC REACTION

MARX AND AFTER

VARIANTS OF RATIONALISM

CRITICAL RATIONALISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rationalism comes in various versions and makes wider or narrower claims. The idea underlying most versions is that reason is the most characteristic faculty of Homo sapiens. Appeal to reason is part of traditional wisdom, yet traditional (ancient Greek) rationalism includes an out of hand dismissal of traditional wisdom. The modern version of this dismissal is the radical demand for starting afresh (Enlightenment radicalism) and admitting only ideas that are proven, absolutely certain, and fully justified by rigorous proof. Science begins with rejecting all doubtful ideas. Francis Bacon initiated the idea that traditional unfounded views are the causes of all error; Ren Descartes tried to ignore all doubtful ideas and start afresh from nothing. David Hume began his investigations in efforts to delineate all that is certain while ignoring all else; he and many others, from Denis Diderot to Pierre Simon de Laplace, took it for granted that Isaac Newtons success was due to his adherence to Bacons advice. Auguste Comte and T. H. Huxley took it for granted that other fields will be as successful if they only jettison tradition more fully; Ludwig Wittgenstein went further and said only scientific assertions are grammatical (positivism, scientism).

Yet what proof is no one knew. Mathematics was the paradigm of proof, and the success of physics was largely ascribed to its use of mathematical methods, a practice for all to emulate. What is that method, and how can it be applied to the social domain? How does the relinquishing of tradition help word theories mathematically? This was unclear even after the discipline of statistics was developed enough to become applicable to some social studies (as in the work of Adolphe Qutelet, 1796-1874). Yet clearly as usefulness gives rational thought its initial (even if not final) worth, at least the rationality of action is obvious: its goal-directedness. Hence the study of rationality is vital for the study of the rational action that is the heart of the study of humanity. Whereas students of nature seldom pay attention to the rationality and the scientific character of their studies, students of humanities are engrossed in them. And whatever their views on this rationality, at least they openly center on it. Thus in the opening of his classic An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith declares his intent to ignore irrationality, no matter how widespread it is. Slavery is widespread, yet everyone knows that putting a worker in chains is no incentive, he observed.

The Enlightenment movement deemed Smiths argument obvious; this led to its dismissal of human history as the sad story of needless pain caused by ignorance and superstition. This was an error. The advocacy of the abolition of slavery came in total disregard for its immediate impact on the lot of slave owners. Smith spoke of rationality in the abstract. Because high productivity depends on the division of labor and because this division leads to trade, freedom is efficient. Selfish conduct is rational as long as it is scientific, that is, undogmatic. Life in the light of reason is egalitarian, simple, and happy. This abstract reasoning led to concrete results, including the French Revolution and its terror and wars. Edmund Burke and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel blamed the radicalism of the revolution for its deterioration into terror. The reaction to the French Revolution was aggressively hostile to radicalism, to egalitarianism, and even to reason (Hegel).

Karl Marx wedded the two great modern movements, the radical Enlightenment movement and the Romantic reaction to it. The former had the right vision, and the latter had the historically right view of the obstacle to its realization. Smith-style harmony between individual and society has no place in traditional society. Hence the institution of enlightened equality is an essential precondition for it. The realization of the radical dream of harmony requires civil war. But it is certainly realizable, he insisted.

Marxs critique of radicalism from within is as popular as ever. We are chained to our social conditions, and rationalism cannot break them. Max Weber, the author of the most popular alternative to Marxs ideas, stressed this; so do all the popular radical critics of the ills of modern (bourgeois) society, chiefly imperialism, racism, and sexism, perhaps also alienation from work. These critics puzzle the uninitiated, as they seem to belabor condemnations of obviously indefensible aspects of modern society. But they do something else; they advance a thesis. Social evils will not go away by sheer mental exercises. Are there any reasonable people who disagree with this thesis? It is hard to say. Perhaps some thinkers still follow the central thesis of the Enlightenment movement. If such people do exist (as seems true but not obviously so), then they are the neoliberals, the Chicago school of economics, which is not confined to economics, as it preaches the idea that a world with free markets still is the best of all possible worlds, even though it is far from ideal (Friedrich A. von Hayek).

What then is rationalism? Of the alternative views on reason, which can count as variants of rationalism? Consider pragmatism, the view of the useful as the true (Hegel, William James, John Dewey). It is unsatisfactory, because assessments of usefulness may be true or not; but is it a version of rationalism? Consider the traditionalist reliance on the test of time (ordinary-language philosophy; neo-Thomism). The assessment of the relative worth of traditions may be cultural (Martin Buber, Amitai Ezioni; communitarianism) or intellectual (Michael Polanyi, Thomas S. Kuhn; postcriticalism). It is unsatisfactory, as these assessments may be true or not; but is it a version of rationalism? There is no telling. The same holds for appeals to other criteria for truth. These are common sense (Hume, Smith, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson, George Edward Moore), the intuitions of Great Men (Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Hegel, Martin Heidegger), higher religious sentiments (Friedrich Schleiermacher, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy), and superior tastes (Richard Rorty). Are these variants of rationalism? Do they lead to more reasonable human conduct? The standard claim is that their asset is in their ability to maintain social stability. But in the early twenty-first century stability is unattainable and even deemed inferior to democratic controls (Karl R. Popper).

There is no consensus about whether the counsel to limit reason and admit religion is rationalism proper (Moses Maimonides, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Robert Boyle, Moses Mendelssohn, Polanyi) or not (Immanuel Kant, David Strauss, Ludwig Feuerbach, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, Adolf Grnbaum). The only consensus is about the defiance of reason (Sren Kierkegaard, Max Stirner, Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau, Georges Sorel, Friedrich Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence, Heidegger, perhaps also Paul Feyerabend). The only generally admitted necessary condition for rationalism is the demand to side with reason. Therefore it is fashionable to limit rationalism by allowing the taking of a single axiom on faith while otherwise swearing allegiance to reason (Polanyi, Richard H. Popkin, Pope John Paul II; fideism). The default view should then be that this allegiance suffices. Add to this the consensus around a necessary condition for this allegiance. It is the critical attitude, openness to criticism, the readiness to admit the success of the criticism of any given view. Consider the view that the critical attitude is sufficient as the default option (Popper) and seek valid criticism of it that may lead to its modification, to the admission of some unavoidable limitations on reason, whether in the spirit of Marx or in that of his critics. The need for this limitation comes from purely philosophical considerations. Hume said that we need induction for knowledge and for practice, yet it is not rational (it has no basis in logic); instead, we rely on it out of habit and necessity and this is the best we can do. A popular variant of this is that because induction is necessary, it is in no need of justification (Kant, Russell). Another variant takes it on faith (Polanyi, Popkin; fideism). Is induction really necessary?

This question is welcome. Since finding alternative answers to a worthy question improves their assessment, they are all worthy. Hence all versions of limited rationalism are welcomeas hypotheses to investigate (Salomon Maimon, Popper). This is the power of the method of always trying out the minimal solution as the default.

Critical rationalism is revolutionary because it replaces proof with test; it replaces radical, wholesale dismissal of ideas with the readiness to test piecemeal (Albert Einstein, Popper; reformism). The demand to prove thus yields to the critical attitude (William Warren Bartley III, Willard Van Orman Quine; non-justificationism), recognizing that theories possess graded merit (Einstein, Leonard Nelson, Popper; critical rationalism)by whatever rule we happen to follow, no matter how tentative. Rules are then hopefully improvable (Charles Sanders Peirce, Russell, Popper; fallibilism). Hence diverse rules may serve as competing criteria or as complementary. Being minimalist, critical rationalism invites considering some older theologians as allies, although not their contemporary followers. Unlike radical rationalism, critical rationalism is historically oriented. (It is the view of rationality as relative to contexts and of truth as absolute, as a guiding principle la Kant.)

This invites critical rationalism to enlist rational thought as a category of rational action (Ian C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi). And this in turn invites the study of rationalism as an aspect of extant scientific research. It also invites comparison of the various versions of rationalism as to the degree of their adequacy to this task: take scientific research as it is, warts and all, and examine its merits and defects according to the diverse alternatives. This attitude is new and expressed in various studies of the sociology of science, so-called, that often spread over diverse disciplines, including political science and even criminology no less. This renders a part of the project of rationalism the assessments of the intellectual value of the outcome of research, theoretical, practical, or culturalor even aesthetic. The only intellectual justification of a scientific theory, said Einstein, is its ability to explain; its best reward is its successors admission of it as approximate. In this way he stressed that the aim of research is to explain in the hope of approximating the truth. This is open to debate. Social science as a whole may serve as a test case, with the sociology of science at the center of the debate on this matter.

Historically, rationalism doggedly accompanied studies of nature, not social studies. What in these should rationalism approve of? Discussion of this question allowed rationalism to inform the social sciences. A conspicuous example is the vagueness in social studies of the boundaries between philosophy, science, and practice that still invites open discussion. Anything less is below the minimal criterion of the critical attitude.

Critics of minimal rationalism find criticism insufficient, since positive criteria of choice need justification. If so, then rationalism is back to square one. If not, then positive criteria must be tentative, and the issue must shift from their justification to efforts at their improvement. Some do not like this, as it rests on their initial choice that was too arbitrary. They prefer to return to the initial criterion and replace it with the least arbitrary one. They are radicals. The clash is thus between the radical and the critical version of rationalismas well as between them and fideism.

The agenda of rationalismin philosophy, in science, or in practiceis the same: heightening the critical attitude, seeking improvement through criticism everywhere. Where is the starting point? How are we to decide on our agenda? Parliamentary steering committees decide on agendas. The commonwealth of learning, however, is its own steering committee. Those concerned to promote rationalism should do their best to put discussions of it high on the public agenda.

Agassi, Joseph. 1996. The Philosophy of Science Today. In Philosophy of Science, Logic, and Mathematics in the Twentieth Century. Vol. 9 of Routledge History of Philosophy, ed. Stuart G. Shanker, 235-265. London: Routledge.

Agassi, Joseph, and Ian C. Jarvie, eds. 1987. Rationality: The Critical View. The Hague: Nijhoff.

Baumgardt, Carola. 1952. Johannes Kepler: Life and Letters. Introduction by Albert Einstein. London: Golancz.

Burtt, E. A. 1926. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. London: Routledge.

Churchman, C. West. 1968. Challenge to Reason. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Einstein, Albert. 1954. Ideas and Opinions. New York: Bonanza Books.

Festinger, Leon. 1957. Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Feyerabend, Paul. 1987. Farewell to Reason. London: New Left Books.

Haakonssen, Knud, ed. 2006. The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy. 2 vols. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Hayek, Friedrich August von. 1952. The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Hayek, Friedrich August von. 1960. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Jarvie, Ian C. 1964. The Revolution in Anthropology. London: Routledge.

Jarvie, Ian C., and Joseph Agassi. 1987. The Rationality of Magic. In Rationality: The Critical View, ed. Joseph Agassi and Ian C. Jarvie, 363-383. The Hague: Nijhoff.

John Paul II, Pope. 1998. Fides et Ratio. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference.

Koyr, Alexandre, 1968. Metaphysics and Measurement. London: Chapman and Hall.

Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lakatos, Imre, and Alan Musgrave. 1970. Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Mill, John Stuart. 1843. A System of Logic. London: J. W. Parker.

Naess, Arne. 1968. Scepticism. London: Routledge and K. Paul; New York: Humanities.

Nelson, Leonard. 1949. Socratic Method and Critical Philosophy: Selected Essays. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; repr. New York: Dover, 1965.

Nisbet, Robert A. 1966. The Sociological Tradition. New York: Basic Books.

Osler, Margaret J., ed. 2000. Rethinking the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Parkinson, G. H. R., ed. 1993. The Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Rationalism. Vol. 4 of Routledge History of Philosophy. London: Routledge.

Phillips, Derek L. 1973. Abandoning Method. London: Jossey-Bass.

Pitte, Frederick P. van de. 1971. Kant as Philosophical Anthropologist. The Hague: Nijhoff.

Polanyi, Michael. 1958. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. London: Routledge.

Polanyi, Michael. 1962. The Republic of Science. In Criteria for Scientific Development, ed. Edward Shils, 1-20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Popper, Karl R. 1945. The Open Society and Its Enemies. 2 vols. London: Routledge.

Rees, Graham, and Maria Wakely. 2004. Introduction. In The Instauratio Magna. Part 2, Novum Organum and Associated Texts. Vol. 11 of The Oxford Francis Bacon. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Russell, Bertrand. 1912. The Problems of Philosophy. London: Williams and Norgate; New York: Henry Holt.

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Simon, Robert L., ed. 2002. The Blackwell Guide to Social and Political Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell.

Solomon, Robert C. 1988. Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wettersten, John R. 1992. The Roots of Critical Rationalism. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Joseph Agassi

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Empiricism vs Rationalism

Empiricism and rationalism are two schools of thoughts in philosophy that are characterized by different views, and hence, they should be understood regarding the differences between them. First let us define these two thoughts. Empiricism is an epistemological standpoint that states that experience and observation should be the means of gaining knowledge. On the other hand, Rationalism is a philosophical standpoint that believes that opinions and actions should be based on reason rather than on religious beliefs or emotions. The main difference between the two philosophical standpoints is as follows. While rationalism believes that pure reason is sufficient for the production of knowledge, empiricism believes that it is not so. According to empiricism, it should be created through observation and experience. Through this article let us examine the differences between the two philosophical thoughts while gaining a comprehensive understanding of each standpoint.

Empiricism is an epistemological standpoint that states that experience and observation should be the means of gaining knowledge. An empiricist would say that one cannot have the knowledge about God by reason. Empiricism believes that all kinds of knowledge related to existence can be derived only from experience. There is no place for the pure reason to get the knowledge about the world. In short, it can be said that empiricism is a mere negation of rationalism.

Empiricism teaches that we should not try to know substantive truths about God and the soul from reason. Instead, an empiricist would recommend two projects, namely, constructive and critical. Constructive project centers on commentaries of religious texts. Critical projects aim at the elimination of what is said to have been known by the metaphysicians. In fact, the elimination process is based on experience. Thus, it can be said that empiricism relies more on experience than pure reason.

David Hume was an empiricist

Rationalism is a philosophical standpoint that believes that opinions and actions should be based on reason rather than on religious beliefs or emotions. The rationalist would say that one can get the knowledge of God by mere reason. In other words, pure reason would suffice for one to have a thorough understanding of the Almighty.

Even when it comes to their acceptance of the sources of knowledge, these two standpoints are different from one another. Rationalism believes in intuition, whereas empiricism does not believe in intuition. It is important to know that we can be rationalists as far as the subject of mathematics is concerned, but can be empiricist as far as the other physical sciences are concerned. Intuition and deduction may hold good for mathematics, but they may not hold good for other physical sciences. These are the subtle differences between empiricism and rationalism.

Plato believed in rational insight

Empiricism is an epistemological standpoint that states that experience and observation should be the means of gaining knowledge.

Rationalism is a philosophical standpoint that believes that opinions and actions should be based on reason rather than on religious beliefs or emotions.

An empiricist would say that one cannot have the knowledge about God by reason. Empiricism believes that all kinds of knowledge related to existence can be derived only from experience.

The rationalist would say that one can get the knowledge of God by mere reason.

Empiricism is a mere negation of rationalism.

Empiricism teaches that we should not try to know substantive truths about God and the soul from reason.

An empiricist would recommend two projects, namely, constructive and critical.

Rationalism would ask to follow pure reason.

Empiricism does not believe in intuition.

Rationalism believes in intuition.

Images Courtesy:David Humeand Plato via Wikicommons (Public Domain)

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Difference Between Empiricism and Rationalism

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Rationalism, also known as the rationalist movement, is a philosophical doctrine that asserts that the truth can best be discovered by reason and factual analysis, rather than faith, dogma or religious teaching. Rationalism has some similarities in ideology and intent to humanism and atheism, in that it aims to provide a framework for social and philosophical discourse outside of religious or supernatural beliefs; however, rationalism differs from both of these, in that:

Outside of religious discussion, the discipline of rationalism may be applied more generally, for example to political or social issues. In these cases it is the rejection of emotion, tradition or fashionable belief which is the defining feature of the rationalist perspective.

During the middle of the twentieth century there was a strong tradition of organized rationalism, which was particularly influenced by free thinkers and intellectuals. In the United Kingdom, rationalism is represented by the Rationalist Press Association, founded in 1899.

Modern rationalism has little in common with the historical philosophy of continental rationalism expounded by Ren Descartes, however it has large affinities with the work of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz which influenced the development of empirical rationalism, or logical positivism. Indeed, a reliance on empirical science is often considered a hallmark of modern rationalism, whereas continental rationalism rejected empiricism entirely.

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Question: "What is Christian Rationalism?"

Answer:

According to the Christian Rationalism website, thousands of years ago great men driven by ideals of reform tried with their teachings to enlighten humanity. Men such as Jesus, Buddha, Confucius and Mohammed taught similar spiritual principles; however, they were not truly understood and ended up being deified by the illiterate masses. Once the idea of divinization took hold, the respective religions were created, each preaching a different form of speculative worship, and the followers of each flocked together. All of them taught the principles that Christian Rationalism now teaches and thus, despite their name, they have nothing to do with the biblical Jesus Christ.

According to its adherents, Christian Rationalism deals with physical and psychic phenomena, philosophical and psychological issues, reincarnation, incorporeal life, space and the universe, the power of thought, evolution, gods and religions, force and matter, the aura, ethics, family and children. Quite a vast array of topics are incorporated into Christian rationalism, many of which are clearly occult in nature, in particular psychic phenomena and reincarnation.

The basic beliefs of the Christian Rationalists are contrary to Scripture, beginning with their concept of God as a universal spiritual force, or a universal intelligence, not a Person. CR adherents see God as made up of billions and billions of intelligent spiritual particles, of which man is part. That means that each one of us is a particle of that universal force which is God. This philosophy is rampant among New Age cults and false religions. The belief that man can be God is very appealing to our fallen nature, originating in the Garden of Eden with the first lie told by Satan: you shall be as God (Genesis 3:5). Jesus, according to the Christian Rationalists, was not God incarnate as Scripture states, but simply a good, moral man who said good things. He is not the one and only Savior of the world, despite His own claims to be the only Way, the only Truth and the only Life and the only access to the Father (John 14:6). To the adherents of CR philosophy, a Christian is not one who believes in the biblical Jesus for salvation, following and obeying Him. Rather, a Christian is one whose behavior lines up with Christian morality, but the word non-biblical is added to the statement, causing one to wonder where they find the morality they call Christian, if not in the Bible.

Christian Rationalism is just another part of Satan's attempt to deceive people into thinking that they are gods and can find their own identity and meaning through his pseudo world. It is, of course, completely against the teaching of the Bible and the God-man, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, and coming King of the world, and the One whom true believers will worship and serve for all eternity.

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What is Christian Rationalism? - GotQuestions.org