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Rationalism | Definition of rationalism by Merriam-Webster

Rationalism holds, in contrast to empiricism, that it is reason, not experience, that is most important for our acquisition of knowledge. There are three distinct types of knowledge that the rationalist might put forward as supporting his view and undermining that of the empiricist.

First, the rationalist might argue that we possess at least some innate knowledge. We are not born, as the empiricist John Locke thought, with minds like blanks slates onto which experience writes items of knowledge. Rather, even before we experience the world there are some things that we know. We at least possess some basic instincts; arguably, we also possess some innate concepts, such as a faculty for language.

Second, the rationalist might argue that there are some truths that, though not known innately, can be worked out independent of experience of the world. These might be truths of logic or mathematics, or ethical truths. We can know the law of the excluded middle, answers to sums, and the difference between right and wrong, without having to base that knowledge in experience.

Third, the rationalist might argue that there are some truths that, though grounded in part in experience, cannot be derived from experience alone. Aesthetic truths, and truths about causation, for instance, seem to many to be of this kind. Two people may observe the same object, yet reach contradictory views as to its beauty or ugliness. This shows that aesthetic qualities are not presented to us by our senses, but rather are overlaid onto experience by reason. Similarly, we do not observe causation, we merely see one event followed by another; it is the mind, not the world, that provides us with the idea that the former event causes the latter.

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Theory of Knowledge Rationalism

Rationalism is a philosophy in which a high regard is given to reason (specifically logic) and to empirical observation.

From the strict philosophical standpoint, rationalism is the view that all or most truth is deductive and a priori, deriving logically from a set of axioms gained by intuition or inherent knowledge (and not from studying the world around us empirically).[1] However, the term is not very often used so strictly, so this form of rationalism is generally known in English-speaking philosophy as continental rationalism, as its original proponents, such as Ren Descartes, were largely situated in continental Europe.[2]

The term is more commonly used to refer to a synthesis of continental rationalism with its former rival philosophy, empiricism. This looser rationalism holds that empirical observation is more useful than intuition for gaining one's starting axioms, but one can use deductive reasoning from these axioms just as well. The best embodiment of this way of gaining knowledge is the scientific method; hence, rationalists tend to give high regard to science, designating it as the primary or sole proper source of truth.

RationalWiki is devoted to this sort of rational analysis of empirical evidence to form conclusions; most RationalWiki editors are very skeptical of other ways of knowing.

The idea of being "rational" is distinct and broader than the philosophy of rationalism. To be "rational" is synonymous with a "sane" or "functional" way of thinking. If one is "rational," then in common parlance this means that one can think clearly and is capable of intelligently assessing new ideas when presented.

The opposite term, "irrational," is used to signify someone who cannot or will not think clearly. If a thought or action is irrational, it signifies something that is not just incorrect, but perverse, insane, or beneath consideration.

Rationalism was first formulated in classical times by philosophers such as Socrates and Plato. Many of the Socratic dialogues would use a conversational process to work out logical inconsistencies in ideas that were held by contemporaries to be "common sense," such as the definition of "the good." In this historical sense Rationalism was distinct and separate from Empiricism (see below), as these early Rationalists didn't deem it necessary to use observation - in the modern use, Rationalists who would combine both the logical reasoning of Rationalism with the observational checks of Empiricism.

But at the time, virtually everyone even the great philosophers believed that various things were known by people inherently. Aside from a few schools of thought which suggested that nothing could ever be known as true (pyrrhonism), few thought to discard a priori beliefs and start from scratch with only that which was known to be true. Thus, at this point historical Rationalism closely resembled the way philosophers still define the philosophy.

The 16th century philosopher Descartes, however, attempted to create a whole philosophy through pure reason in his Discourse on Method and its succeeding works: he began with the only thing of which he thought he could be certain, that there was an "I" that was thinking - often rendered in the Latin of cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am."). His process ushered in a new era in rationalism, concurrent with the greater Enlightenment. At that time the philosophy began to resemble modern empiricism more than its own ancient ancestor, especially during the era of Romanticism when Enlightenment ideas were challenged and sensory perception was given more of a hearing.

Loose use in the time since has led to the fuzzy state of the term today, particularly when combined with the similar but much broader notion of being rational.

Rationalism is a term of art in psychology referring to the school of thought that sees certain elements of cognition as innate. (For this reason, it is sometimes used synonymously with the terms "innatism" or "nativism.") Rationalism in psychology is identified with the philosophical tradition of the same name. During the 20th century, Noam Chomsky became associated with rationalism due to his positing the concept of an innate "language acquisition device."[3]

Rationalism, or "economic rationalism," is also a term of art in economics. It is generally used today in Australia to refer to the local brand of neoliberal economic and political policy, though it was also used by scholars such as Max Weber in reference to the Protestant work ethic.[4]

Another straightforward conception of rationality is that an individual acts rationally if they act in the way that, on reflection, they believe best suits achievement of their aims. This conception, naturally, gives rise to the common conception when on reflection it is believed that the aim of truth can best be achieved through factual analysis and the scientific method.

This approach, however, is problematic, as it denies the existence of any sort of objective logic independent of human perception. Many, on reflection, believe that astrology, Scientology, homeopathy and other ridiculous nonsense best suits achievement of their aims. If these people are to be held to be irrational, a new criterion must be put in the place of on reflection. Usually the criterion is modified such that the rational person must reasonably believe they have a methodology to achieve their aims, leaving question of what it means to reasonably believe that a methodology will achieve certain aims.[5]

[6] Alvin Plantinga's concept of rationalism neatly distinguishes reason from "raving madness" by conceiving of reason as "not raving mad". Of course Plantinga has to give us a good idea of what is not "raving mad", which he does with his concept of "proper function". Just as a clock, functioning properly, is a reliable indicator of the time, human senses, functioning properly, are reliable indicators of the world. Acting in accordance with the proper function of our faculties is rational.

The problem of what constitutes function, and proper function at that, is more than a question of what our faculties do (a fast clock tells the incorrect time, but this is not its function). Both function and proper function have an element of what things should be doing. As should is a difficult concept to introduce in a mechanistic description of how things happen to be, Plantinga sources the "should", the "purpose" of our faculties in a concept of God.

Critical rationalism ( Karl Popper) differentiates from the above conceptions of rationality by rejecting any positive content in reason. Reason, critical rationalism holds, does not provide 'reasons': it does not give positive recommendations about what beliefs should be held. Reason operates negatively, restricting the beliefs that can be held. It does this through criticism, subjecting pre-adopted beliefs to tests in an effort to refute them.

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Rationalism - RationalWiki

Empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience.[1] One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism and skepticism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory experience, in the formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or traditions;[2] empiricists may argue however that traditions (or customs) arise due to relations of previous sense experiences.[3]

Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.

Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, says that "knowledge is based on experience" and that "knowledge is tentative and probabilistic, subject to continued revision and falsification."[4] One of the epistemological tenets is that sensory experience creates knowledge. The scientific method, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides empirical research.

The English term "empirical" derives from the Greek word , which is cognate with and translates to the Latin experientia, from which we derive the word "experience" and the related "experiment". The term was used by the Empiric school of ancient Greek medical practitioners, who rejected the three doctrines of the Dogmatic school, preferring to rely on the observation of "phenomena".[5]

A central concept in science and the scientific method is that it must be empirically based on the evidence of the senses. Both natural and social sciences use working hypotheses that are testable by observation and experiment. The term semi-empirical is sometimes used to describe theoretical methods that make use of basic axioms, established scientific laws, and previous experimental results in order to engage in reasoned model building and theoretical inquiry.

Philosophical empiricists hold no knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced unless it is derived from one's sense-based experience.[6] This view is commonly contrasted with rationalism, which states that knowledge may be derived from reason independently of the senses. For example John Locke held that some knowledge (e.g. knowledge of God's existence) could be arrived at through intuition and reasoning alone. Similarly Robert Boyle, a prominent advocate of the experimental method, held that we have innate ideas.[7][8] The main continental rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz) were also advocates of the empirical "scientific method".[9][10]

Vaisheshika darshana founded by ancient Indian philosopher Kanada accepted perception and inference as only two reliable source of knowledge. This is enumerated in his work Vaieika Stra.

The notion of tabula rasa ("clean slate" or "blank tablet") connotes a view of mind as an originally blank or empty recorder (Locke used the words "white paper") on which experience leaves marks. This denies that humans have innate ideas. The image dates back to Aristotle:

What the mind (nous) thinks must be in it in the same sense as letters are on a tablet (grammateion) which bears no actual writing (grammenon); this is just what happens in the case of the mind. (Aristotle, On the Soul, 3.4.430a1).

Aristotle's explanation of how this was possible was not strictly empiricist in a modern sense, but rather based on his theory of potentiality and actuality, and experience of sense perceptions still requires the help of the active nous. These notions contrasted with Platonic notions of the human mind as an entity that pre-existed somewhere in the heavens, before being sent down to join a body on Earth (see Plato's Phaedo and Apology, as well as others). Aristotle was considered to give a more important position to sense perception than Plato, and commentators in the middle ages summarized one of his positions as "nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu" (Latin for "nothing in the intellect without first being in the senses").

This idea was later developed in ancient philosophy by the Stoic school. Stoic epistemology generally emphasized that the mind starts blank, but acquires knowledge as the outside world is impressed upon it.[11] The doxographer Aetius summarizes this view as "When a man is born, the Stoics say, he has the commanding part of his soul like a sheet of paper ready for writing upon."[12] Later stoics, such as Sextus of Chaeronea, would continue this idea of empiricism in later Stoic writings as well. As Sextus contends "For every thought comes from sense-perception or not without sense-perception and either from direct experience or not without direct experience" (Against the Professors, 8.56-8).

During the middle ages Aristotle's theory of tabula rasa was developed by Islamic philosophers starting with Al Farabi, developing into an elaborate theory by Avicenna[14] and demonstrated as a thought experiment by Ibn Tufail.[15] For Avicenna (Ibn Sina), for example, the tabula rasa is a pure potentiality that is actualized through education, and knowledge is attained through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts" developed through a "syllogistic method of reasoning in which observations lead to propositional statements which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts". The intellect itself develops from a material intellect (al-'aql al-hayulani), which is a potentiality "that can acquire knowledge to the active intellect (al-'aql al-fa'il), the state of the human intellect in conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge".[14] So the immaterial "active intellect", separate from any individual person, is still essential for understanding to occur.

In the 12th century CE the Andalusian Muslim philosopher and novelist Abu Bakr Ibn Tufail (known as "Abubacer" or "Ebn Tophail" in the West) included the theory of tabula rasa as a thought experiment in his Arabic philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan in which he depicted the development of the mind of a feral child "from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a desert island, through experience alone. The Latin translation of his philosophical novel, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on John Locke's formulation of tabula rasa in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.[15]

A similar Islamic theological novel, Theologus Autodidactus, was written by the Arab theologian and physician Ibn al-Nafis in the 13th century. It also dealt with the theme of empiricism through the story of a feral child on a desert island, but departed from its predecessor by depicting the development of the protagonist's mind through contact with society rather than in isolation from society.[16]

During the 13th century Thomas Aquinas adopted the Aristotelian position that the senses are essential to mind into scholasticism. Bonaventure (12211274), one of Aquinas' strongest intellectual opponents, offered some of the strongest arguments in favour of the Platonic idea of the mind.

In the late renaissance various writers began to question the medieval and classical understanding of knowledge acquisition in a more fundamental way. In political and historical writing Niccol Machiavelli and his friend Francesco Guicciardini initiated a new realistic style of writing. Machiavelli in particular was
scornful of writers on politics who judged everything in comparison to mental ideals and demanded that people should study the "effectual truth" instead. Their contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci (14521519) said, "If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings."[17]

The decidedly anti-Aristotelian and anti-clerical music theorist Vincenzo Galilei (ca. 15201591), father of Galileo and the inventor of monody, made use of the method in successfully solving musical problems, firstly, of tuning such as the relationship of pitch to string tension and mass in stringed instruments, and to volume of air in wind instruments; and secondly to composition, by his various suggestions to composers in his Dialogo della musica antica e moderna (Florence, 1581). The Italian word he used for "experiment" was esperienza. It is known that he was the essential pedagogical influence upon the young Galileo, his eldest son (cf. Coelho, ed. Music and Science in the Age of Galileo Galilei), arguably one of the most influential empiricists in history. Vincenzo, through his tuning research, found the underlying truth at the heart of the misunderstood myth of 'Pythagoras' hammers' (the square of the numbers concerned yielded those musical intervals, not the actual numbers, as believed), and through this and other discoveries that demonstrated the fallibility of traditional authorities, a radically empirical attitude developed, passed on to Galileo, which regarded "experience and demonstration" as the sine qua non of valid rational enquiry.

British empiricism, though it was not a term used at the time, derives from the 17th century period of early modern philosophy and modern science. The term became useful in order to describe differences perceived between two of its founders Francis Bacon, described as empiricist, and Ren Descartes, who is described as a rationalist. Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza, in the next generation, are often also described as an empiricist and a rationalist respectively. John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume were the primary exponents of empiricism in the 18th century Enlightenment, with Locke being the person who is normally known as the founder of empiricism as such.

In response to the early-to-mid-17th century "continental rationalism" John Locke (16321704) proposed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) a very influential view wherein the only knowledge humans can have is a posteriori, i.e., based upon experience. Locke is famously attributed with holding the proposition that the human mind is a tabula rasa, a "blank tablet", in Locke's words "white paper", on which the experiences derived from sense impressions as a person's life proceeds are written. There are two sources of our ideas: sensation and reflection. In both cases, a distinction is made between simple and complex ideas. The former are unanalysable, and are broken down into primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are essential for the object in question to be what it is. Without specific primary qualities, an object would not be what it is. For example, an apple is an apple because of the arrangement of its atomic structure. If an apple was structured differently, it would cease to be an apple. Secondary qualities are the sensory information we can perceive from its primary qualities. For example, an apple can be perceived in various colours, sizes, and textures but it is still identified as an apple. Therefore its primary qualities dictate what the object essentially is, while its secondary qualities define its attributes. Complex ideas combine simple ones, and divide into substances, modes, and relations. According to Locke, our knowledge of things is a perception of ideas that are in accordance or discordance with each other, which is very different from the quest for certainty of Descartes.

A generation later, the Irish Anglican bishop, George Berkeley (16851753), determined that Locke's view immediately opened a door that would lead to eventual atheism. In response to Locke, he put forth in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) an important challenge to empiricism in which things only exist either as a result of their being perceived, or by virtue of the fact that they are an entity doing the perceiving. (For Berkeley, God fills in for humans by doing the perceiving whenever humans are not around to do it). In his text Alciphron, Berkeley maintained that any order humans may see in nature is the language or handwriting of God.[18] Berkeley's approach to empiricism would later come to be called subjective idealism.[19][20]

The Scottish philosopher David Hume (17111776) responded to Berkeley's criticisms of Locke, as well as other differences between early modern philosophers, and moved empiricism to a new level of skepticism. Hume argued in keeping with the empiricist view that all knowledge derives from sense experience, but he accepted that this has implications not normally acceptable to philosophers. He wrote for example, "Locke divides all arguments into demonstrative and probable. On this view, we must say that it is only probable that all men must die or that the sun will rise to-morrow, because neither of these can be demonstrated. But to conform our language more to common use, we ought to divide arguments into demonstrations, proofs, and probabilitiesby proofs meaning arguments from experience that leave no room for doubt or opposition."[21] And,[22]

"I believe the most general and most popular explication of this matter, is to say [See Mr. Locke, chapter of power.], that finding from experience, that there are several new productions in matter, such as the motions and variations of body, and concluding that there must somewhere be a power capable of producing them, we arrive at last by this reasoning at the idea of power and efficacy. But to be convinced that this explication is more popular than philosophical, we need but reflect on two very obvious principles. First, That reason alone can never give rise to any original idea, and secondly, that reason, as distinguished from experience, can never make us conclude, that a cause or productive quality is absolutely requisite to every beginning of existence. Both these considerations have been sufficiently explained: and therefore shall not at present be any farther insisted on."

Hume Section XIV "of the idea of necessary connexion in A Treatise of Human Nature

Hume divided all of human knowledge into two categories: relations of ideas and matters of fact (see also Kant's analytic-synthetic distinction). Mathematical and logical propositions (e.g. "that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides") are examples of the first, while propositions involving some contingent observation of the world (e.g. "the sun rises in the East") are examples of the second. All of people's "ideas", in turn, are derived from their "impressions". For Hume, an "impression" corresponds roughly with what we call a sensation. To remember or to imagine such impressions is to have an "idea". Ideas are therefore the faint copies of sensations.[23]

Hume maintained that all knowledge, even the most basic beliefs about the natural world, cannot be conclusively established by reason. Rather, he maintained, our beliefs are more a result of accumulated habits, developed in response to accumulated sense experiences. Among his many arguments Hume also added another important slant to the d
ebate about scientific method that of the problem of induction. Hume argued that it requires inductive reasoning to arrive at the premises for the principle of inductive reasoning, and therefore the justification for inductive reasoning is a circular argument.[23] Among Hume's conclusions regarding the problem of induction is that there is no certainty that the future will resemble the past. Thus, as a simple instance posed by Hume, we cannot know with certainty by inductive reasoning that the sun will continue to rise in the East, but instead come to expect it to do so because it has repeatedly done so in the past.[23]

Hume concluded that such things as belief in an external world and belief in the existence of the self were not rationally justifiable. According to Hume these beliefs were to be accepted nonetheless because of their profound basis in instinct and custom. Hume's lasting legacy, however, was the doubt that his skeptical arguments cast on the legitimacy of inductive reasoning, allowing many skeptics who followed to cast similar doubt.

Most of Hume's followers have disagreed with his conclusion that belief in an external world is rationally unjustifiable, contending that Hume's own principles implicitly contained the rational justification for such a belief, that is, beyond being content to let the issue rest on human instinct, custom and habit.[24] According to an extreme empiricist theory known as phenomenalism, anticipated by the arguments of both Hume and George Berkeley, a physical object is a kind of construction out of our experiences.[25] Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects, properties, events (whatever is physical) are reducible to mental objects, properties, events. Ultimately, only mental objects, properties, events, exist hence the closely related term subjective idealism. By the phenomenalistic line of thinking, to have a visual experience of a real physical thing is to have an experience of a certain kind of group of experiences. This type of set of experiences possesses a constancy and coherence that is lacking in the set of experiences of which hallucinations, for example, are a part. As John Stuart Mill put it in the mid-19th century, matter is the "permanent possibility of sensation".[26] Mill's empiricism went a significant step beyond Hume in still another respect: in maintaining that induction is necessary for all meaningful knowledge including mathematics. As summarized by D.W. Hamlin:

[Mill] claimed that mathematical truths were merely very highly confirmed generalizations from experience; mathematical inference, generally conceived as deductive [and a priori] in nature, Mill set down as founded on induction. Thus, in Mill's philosophy there was no real place for knowledge based on relations of ideas. In his view logical and mathematical necessity is psychological; we are merely unable to conceive any other possibilities than those that logical and mathematical propositions assert. This is perhaps the most extreme version of empiricism known, but it has not found many defenders.[20]

Mill's empiricism thus held that knowledge of any kind is not from direct experience but an inductive inference from direct experience.[27] The problems other philosophers have had with Mill's position center around the following issues: Firstly, Mill's formulation encounters difficulty when it describes what direct experience is by differentiating only between actual and possible sensations. This misses some key discussion concerning conditions under which such "groups of permanent possibilities of sensation" might exist in the first place. Berkeley put God in that gap; the phenomenalists, including Mill, essentially left the question unanswered. In the end, lacking an acknowledgement of an aspect of "reality" that goes beyond mere "possibilities of sensation", such a position leads to a version of subjective idealism. Questions of how floor beams continue to support a floor while unobserved, how trees continue to grow while unobserved and untouched by human hands, etc., remain unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable in these terms.[20][28] Secondly, Mill's formulation leaves open the unsettling possibility that the "gap-filling entities are purely possibilities and not actualities at all".[28] Thirdly, Mill's position, by calling mathematics merely another species of inductive inference, misapprehends mathematics. It fails to fully consider the structure and method of mathematical science, the products of which are arrived at through an internally consistent deductive set of procedures which do not, either today or at the time Mill wrote, fall under the agreed meaning of induction.[20][28][29]

The phenomenalist phase of post-Humean empiricism ended by the 1940s, for by that time it had become obvious that statements about physical things could not be translated into statements about actual and possible sense data.[30] If a physical object statement is to be translatable into a sense-data statement, the former must be at least deducible from the latter. But it came to be realized that there is no finite set of statements about actual and possible sense-data from which we can deduce even a single physical-object statement. Remember that the translating or paraphrasing statement must be couched in terms of normal observers in normal conditions of observation. There is, however, no finite set of statements that are couched in purely sensory terms and can express the satisfaction of the condition of the presence of a normal observer. According to phenomenalism, to say that a normal observer is present is to make the hypothetical statement that were a doctor to inspect the observer, the observer would appear to the doctor to be normal. But, of course, the doctor himself must be a normal observer. If we are to specify this doctor's normality in sensory terms, we must make reference to a second doctor who, when inspecting the sense organs of the first doctor, would himself have to have the sense data a normal observer has when inspecting the sense organs of a subject who is a normal observer. And if we are to specify in sensory terms that the second doctor is a normal observer, we must refer to a third doctor, and so on (also see the third man).[31][32]

Logical empiricism (also logical positivism or neopositivism) was an early 20th-century attempt to synthesize the essential ideas of British empiricism (e.g. a strong emphasis on sensory experience as the basis for knowledge) with certain insights from mathematical logic that had been developed by Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Some of the key figures in this movement were Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick and the rest of the Vienna Circle, along with A.J. Ayer, Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach.

The neopositivists subscribed to a notion of philosophy as the conceptual clarification of the methods, insights and discoveries of the sciences. They saw in the logical symbolism elaborated by Frege (18481925) and Bertrand Russell (18721970) a powerful instrument that could rationally reconstruct all scientific discourse into an ideal, logically perfect, language that would be free of the ambiguities and deformations of natural language. This gave rise to what they saw as metaphysical pseudoproblems and other conceptual confusions. By combining Frege's thesis that all mathematical truths are logical with the early Wittgenstein's idea that all logical truths are mere linguistic tautologies, they arrived at a twofold classification of all propositions: the analytic (a priori) and the synthetic (a posteriori).[33] On this basis, they formulated a strong principle of demarcatio
n between sentences that have sense and those that do not: the so-called verification principle. Any sentence that is not purely logical, or is unverifiable is devoid of meaning. As a result, most metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic and other traditional philosophical problems came to be considered pseudoproblems.[34]

In the extreme empiricism of the neopositivistsat least before the 1930sany genuinely synthetic assertion must be reducible to an ultimate assertion (or set of ultimate assertions) that expresses direct observations or perceptions. In later years, Carnap and Neurath abandoned this sort of phenomenalism in favor of a rational reconstruction of knowledge into the language of an objective spatio-temporal physics. That is, instead of translating sentences about physical objects into sense-data, such sentences were to be translated into so-called protocol sentences, for example, "X at location Y and at time T observes such and such."[35] The central theses of logical positivism (verificationism, the analytic-synthetic distinction, reductionism, etc.) came under sharp attack after World War II by thinkers such as Nelson Goodman, W.V. Quine, Hilary Putnam, Karl Popper, and Richard Rorty. By the late 1960s, it had become evident to most philosophers that the movement had pretty much run its course, though its influence is still significant among contemporary analytic philosophers such as Michael Dummett and other anti-realists.

In the late 19th and early 20th century several forms of pragmatic philosophy arose. The ideas of pragmatism, in its various forms, developed mainly from discussions between Charles Sanders Peirce and William James when both men were at Harvard in the 1870s. James popularized the term "pragmatism", giving Peirce full credit for its patrimony, but Peirce later demurred from the tangents that the movement was taking, and redubbed what he regarded as the original idea with the name of "pragmatism". Along with its pragmatic theory of truth, this perspective integrates the basic insights of empirical (experience-based) and rational (concept-based) thinking.

Charles Peirce (18391914) was highly influential in laying the groundwork for today's empirical scientific method.[citation needed] Although Peirce severely criticized many elements of Descartes' peculiar brand of rationalism, he did not reject rationalism outright. Indeed, he concurred with the main ideas of rationalism, most importantly the idea that rational concepts can be meaningful and the idea that rational concepts necessarily go beyond the data given by empirical observation. In later years he even emphasized the concept-driven side of the then ongoing debate between strict empiricism and strict rationalism, in part to counterbalance the excesses to which some of his cohorts had taken pragmatism under the "data-driven" strict-empiricist view.

Among Peirce's major contributions was to place inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning in a complementary rather than competitive mode, the latter of which had been the primary trend among the educated since David Hume wrote a century before. To this, Peirce added the concept of abductive reasoning. The combined three forms of reasoning serve as a primary conceptual foundation for the empirically based scientific method today. Peirce's approach "presupposes that (1) the objects of knowledge are real things, (2) the characters (properties) of real things do not depend on our perceptions of them, and (3) everyone who has sufficient experience of real things will agree on the truth about them. According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".[36]

In his Harvard "Lectures on Pragmatism" (1903), Peirce enumerated what he called the "three cotary propositions of pragmatism" (L: cos, cotis whetstone), saying that they "put the edge on the maxim of pragmatism". First among these he listed the peripatetic-thomist observation mentioned above, but he further observed that this link between sensory perception and intellectual conception is a two-way street. That is, it can be taken to say that whatever we find in the intellect is also incipiently in the senses. Hence, if theories are theory-laden then so are the senses, and perception itself can be seen as a species of abductive inference, its difference being that it is beyond control and hence beyond critique in a word, incorrigible. This in no way conflicts with the fallibility and revisability of scientific concepts, since it is only the immediate percept in its unique individuality or "thisness" what the Scholastics called its haecceity that stands beyond control and correction. Scientific concepts, on the other hand, are general in nature, and transient sensations do in another sense find correction within them. This notion of perception as abduction has received periodic revivals in artificial intelligence and cognitive science research, most recently for instance with the work of Irvin Rock on indirect perception.[37][38]

Around the beginning of the 20th century, William James (18421910) coined the term "radical empiricism" to describe an offshoot of his form of pragmatism, which he argued could be dealt with separately from his pragmatism though in fact the two concepts are intertwined in James's published lectures. James maintained that the empirically observed "directly apprehended universe needs ... no extraneous trans-empirical connective support",[39] by which he meant to rule out the perception that there can be any value added by seeking supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. James's "radical empiricism" is thus not radical in the context of the term "empiricism", but is instead fairly consistent with the modern use of the term "empirical". (His method of argument in arriving at this view, however, still readily encounters debate within philosophy even today.)

John Dewey (18591952) modified James' pragmatism to form a theory known as instrumentalism. The role of sense experience in Dewey's theory is crucial, in that he saw experience as unified totality of things through which everything else is interrelated. Dewey's basic thought, in accordance with empiricism was that reality is determined by past experience. Therefore, humans adapt their past experiences of things to perform experiments upon and test the pragmatic values of such experience. The value of such experience is measured experientially and scientifically, and the results of such tests generate ideas that serve as instruments for future experimentation,[40] in physical sciences as in ethics.[41] Thus, ideas in Dewey's system retain their empiricist flavour in that they are only known a posteriori.

Leavitt, Fred: "Dancing with Absurdity: Your Most Cherished Beliefs (and All Your Others) are Probably Wrong. (2015) Peter Lang Publishers.

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Rationalism and Empiricism Some Notes on Epistemological Strategies and their Implications in Ethics

RATIONALISM

Rationalism distinguishes between empirical knowledge, i.e., knowledge that arises through experience, and a priori knowledge, i.e., knowledge that is prior to experience and that arises through reason. As knowledge that arises through our experiences, empirical knowledge is about the material universe (and the various entities and phenomena in that universe). Sentences such as Edinburgh is in Scotland, It is 75o outside, John Locke was a philosopher, The average moose weights 1500 pounds each express statements about certain entities in the universe and so represent empirical knowledge. In contrast a priori knowledge is not about phenomena in the empirical universe or our experiences, though some a priori knowledge is applicable to that universe. The sense in which a priori knowledge is prior to experience is logical rather than temporal, i.e., it is possible that one learns some a priori knowledge through experience, nevertheless that knowledge neither requires experience in order to be known, nor is about experience. Perhaps it is easier, then, to consider a priori knowledge as knowledge that arises through reason alone, i.e., it depends upon no experience. Consider, e.g., mathematical knowledge or logical knowledge. The statement All triangles have three sides makes no claim about experience or the empirical universe since there are no triangles in the universe. There are, to be sure, triangular entities, i.e., physical entities that have a triangular shape, but no triangles themselves. In a similar manner, the statement 3+3=6 makes no claims about the universe as there are no 3s or 6s that one can experience and so possess empirical knowledge about. Again, while it is obvious that some mathematical knowledge is applicable to experience (e.g., 3+3=6 is applicable when one has 3 apples and someone gives one 3 more applesone then knows that one has 6 apples), this fails to demonstrate that the mathematical statement 3+3=6 is an empirical statement. The logical statements x = x, All the entities in the universe are either x or not-x and No entities in the universe are both x and not-x are also statements that while applicable to experience are not about experience.[1] There is another difference between empirical and a priori knowledge in addition to their respective sources and content. This difference has to do with their truth conditions. A truth condition specifies under what conditions a given statement can be said to be true or false, i.e., it indicates what one needs to do to prove a statement true or false. Consider the statement It is 75o outside. Under what conditions is this statement true? It should be obvious that the statement is true so long as the outside temperature is 75o. How would one prove whether the statement is true or false? Again, it should be obvious that one would need to determine, through some procedure or apparatus, the outside temperature. In short, one appeals to experience and the empirical data it provides. In contrast to this empirical statement, consider again the statement 3+3=6. Under what conditions is this statement true and how is it possible to prove it? Well, it is true so long as 3+3 does indeed equal 6, this much seems obvious. But, and here is the principal difference between empirical and a priori knowledge, how does one prove the statement to be true? Perhaps the most obvious response is: Well, take three apples and add them to three more apples and then there are six apples. While this demonstration is to the point, does it suffice to prove that 3+3=6? No, at best this little exercise confirms the statement, but it fails to prove it. To understand the difference between prove and confirm consider another illustration. It is a quiet summer afternoon and James decides to rest on the grass beside a river. Some moments later a white swan swims down stream. As James continues to rest seven more swans, that are also white, swim down stream. James considers this experience and realizes that all the swans he has ever seen have been white. So, James formulates the statement All swans are white and sure enough the next swan he passes is white. Did this last experience prove that the statement All swans are white is true? No, since James has not seen all swans, it is possible that there is at least one that is some non-white color. James experience does, however, provide additional confirmation that the statement is true (at least until James discovers there are non-white swans). To prove that 3+3=6 is true then requires that one appeals to more than experience. To be precise, one must appeal to other mathematical knowledge. At this point someone will perhaps take exception with this analysis and point out that since one learns mathematics through experience, so mathematics must also be empirical knowledge! The point is well taken. The source, however, is not the real issue. The real issue is what the knowledge is about and its truth conditions. Moreover, even though some a priori knowledge might arise through experience, it should be obvious that most does not, i.e., while one might argue that one learns basic mathematical truths, e.g., 1+1=2, 2+2=4 and so on, through experience, it seems clear that there are other mathematical truths that it is much more difficult to learn through experience, e.g., 3525+2353=5858 or a2+b2=c2. The rationalists point here is that a priori knowledge is about more than experience and as such it provides knowledge that experience is unable to provide. A similar analysis will demonstrate that logical statements such as All the entities in the universe are either x or not-x also depend upon no experience to determine their truth. Indeed, since the statement is about all the entities in the universe, the experience one needs to prove it as an empirical claim is impossible. It should be obvious, however, that one needs no experience or empirical data to prove the statement, i.e., whatever characteristic one chooses as x, it is apparent that all the entities in the universe either have x or do not have x. All the entities in the universe are either purple or not purple, bigger than a cat or not bigger than a cat, spherical or not spherical, and so on. One can know that this statement is true even when one has no idea what the characteristic in question is. Thus, one knows that all the entities in the universe are either merbalis or not-merbalis, even though no one else in the universe knows what merbalis is (since I made it up!). To rationalists this power to discern and generate universal truths is quite impressive. Indeed, the differences between rationalism and empiricism as to (a) what constitutes genuine knowledge, (b) what such knowledge is about, and (c) its truth conditions, suggest to the rationalists that there is a real qualitative difference between empirical and a priori knowledge. To be precise, most rationalists argue that a priori knowledge is superior to empirical knowledge. The one consideration that is seen as the most decisive in this argument is the difference in truth conditions between empirical and a priori knowledge. Most rationalists consider there to be a fundamental problem with empirical knowledge. Empirical knowledge depends upon our senses, senses that, the rationalist wastes no time to demonstrate, are unreliable. Here the rationalist appeals to common sense deceptions and perceptual illusionswhen one places a straight rod into water the rod appears to bend, at a distance a square tower appears to be round, parallel lines appear to converge in the dis
tance, and so on.[2] Thus, it is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to ever know that an empirical statement is true. It seems that it is possible to doubt even the most certain sense perceptions. In contrast, a priori knowledge is certain knowledge. While it might be possible to doubt that I see a map on the wall beside the computer (I might have a bizarre optical disease or it might be a hallucination), it seems impossible to doubt that 2+2=4. Furthermore, while empirical knowledge represents conditional knowledge, i.e., knowledge that might have been otherwise, a priori knowledge is universal and eternal. Again, while it is possible to imagine a universe in which the earths circumference was 30,000 miles rather than 25,000 miles or a universe in which politicians are honest or a universe in which the Chicago Cubs do win a World Series, it seems impossible to imagine a universe in which 2+2=6 or where triangles have more (or less) than three sides. As with most philosophical theories there is some disagreement between rationalists on certain issues. One issue that separates rationalists is the answer to the question where a priori knowledge originates. The more radical rationalists (e.g., Plato and Rene Descartes) argue that a priori knowledge is innate, i.e., the knowledge is in some manner latent within the mind or even built into the mind. At best then experience acts to elicit the knowledge, but the knowledge was there prior to the experience. Plato argues that all genuine knowledge is innate and education is mere recollection or remembrance (see Platos dialogue Meno), while Descartes claims that certain critical conceptsGod, material substance, and mental substanceare innate. Given these three innate ideas and reason, Descartes argues that other a priori knowledge is derivable. The obvious problem that these radical rationalist strategies face is the need to explain where the mind acquires these innate ideas. In Platos case the solution is an immortal soul-mind that lives through countless lives (i.e., reincarnations), whereas Descartes argues that God places these ideas in human minds. It is also possible to argue that evolution is responsible, i.e., the minds biological structure contains the ideas. While this sounds rather strange, the linguist Noam Chomsky argues this precise thesis. Unless one assumes that certain linguistic structures, e.g., deep grammar, are innate, the argument goes, it is impossible to explain the apparent ease with which human beings learn natural languages. Immanual Kant argues a less radical rationalist line. Kant accepts the rationalist claim that reason alone can provide certain knowledge. Nevertheless, Kant also accepts the empiricist claim that all knowledge begins in experience, i.e., without sense experience as the initial data upon which reason can operate, the knowledge acquisition process can never start. Knowledge, as Kant conceives it then is what the mind produces as it orders and structures otherwise chaotic sense data. The rather radical idea here is that it is the mind that imposes the order and structure on the sense data, the implication being that the sense data have no intrinsic order or structure. The main organizational principles that the mind imposes on sense data are its spatial and temporal structure. These considerations led Kant to a metaphysical distinctionthe distinction between the noumenal universe and the phenomenal universe. The noumenal universe comprises entities-in-themselves, while the phenomenal universe comprises entities-through-their-appearances (White 1996: 296). This is rather technical so it is best to go through it in stages. Suppose someone presents us with a blue glass sphere. It is through our senses that we perceive this sphere. In this case the principal senses are visual and tactileour visual sense indicates that it is blue and spherical and our tactile sense that it is glass and also that it is spherical. Philosophers call these qualitiesbeing blue, being glass and being sphericalproperties or characteristics. All entities have propertiesa size, a shape, a color, a taste, a texture, an odor, and sound and so on. Kants point is that it is through these properties, and through these properties alone, that all the knowledge we have about the entities in the universe arises. All knowledge about entities comes through their properties (which Kant calls appearances). Our commonsense intuitions suggest, however, that there must be some substance or matter that has the properties that our senses perceive, i.e., that the properties cannot exist without some substance that underlies them and possesses them as properties. While the substance that underlies the properties is unseen, nevertheless reason and commonsense insist that it must exist. Descartes suggests that such inferences are rather common occurrences, e.g., when one peers out a window on a cold winter afternoon one might see a person move across the lawn. But does one see a person? No, all that one sees is a cap, a coat and perhaps trousers and shoes. Nevertheless, no one doubts that there is someone under all the apparel. Even though one is unable to see the person one still reasons that there must be one there, since clothes seldom stroll across lawns on their own. Kant agrees that there must be entities that possess the properties our senses perceive, but argues that while logic necessitates their existence, these entities-in-themselves (which comprise the noumenal universe) are unperceivable and so incomprehensible to the human mind. All that is knowable are the properties (i.e., appearances) that our senses perceive and our mind structures. These appearances are the entities that comprise the phenomenal universe. There are no means then to, as it were, move outside our senses to see entities in themselves, to see the real universe rather than the universe that our senses communicate to us through perception. Since all our knowledge comes through the senses and reason, these act as filters which order and structure all our perceptions and thoughts. The entities-in-themselves that underlie the perceptions remain forever elusive. While perhaps more plausible, Kants rationalism imposes limitations on knowledge that more radical rationalists would refuse to accept. Nevertheless, Kants approach is rationalist since it is the mind (to be precise, reason), that gives our sense perceptions the structure that changes them into knowledge (White 1996: 297). The main point to remember is that rationalists believe that, even though it might require experience to initiate the knowledge process, there is some knowledge that is irreducible to experience, i.e., the knowledge is neither about experience nor is it possible to use experience to demonstrate that the knowledge is true or false.

EMPIRICISM

Empiricism denies the rationalist distinction between empirical and a priori knowledge. All knowledge, the empiricist argues, arises through, and is reducible to, sense perception. Thus, there is no knowledge that arises through reason alone. It is essential to be clear here: it is not reasons existence that empiricism denies, or that reason has a role in knowledge acquisition and manipulation, rather it is that reason has some special access to knowledge over and above the knowledge that experience provides. All empiricists acknowledge that human beings possess reasonreason is the instrument that allows us to manipulate and augment the knowledge that experience provides. Knowledge, however, has its origins in experience rather than in reason. Empiricism begins with the distinction between sense data and ideas. Sense data represent the basic information that the s
enses present to the mind through our perceptual experiences, i.e., sights, tastes, textures, sounds and odors. To illustrate, suppose that one sees a blue sphere. This sense experience is reducible to the visual act and the sense data (i.e., the information that the visual act contains). In this case the information that the visual act contains is that there is a visible blueness and a sphericalness. At this stage there is no conscious recognition that one sees a blue sphere, all there is is the pure sense data that the senses present to the mind through the sense experiences. The mind processes and represents each individual sense datum as an idea, in this case the ideas blue and spherical. The mind then associates and combines the ideas it creates through sense experience to create the conscious idea blue sphere. To the empiricist, sense data represent the basic material that the mind uses to construct the ideas that comprise all our knowledge. Thus, no matter what the idea is, it is possible to trace that idea to some sense experience(s). While the precise details differ, these are the basic cognitive mechanisms that the principal empiricist philosophersJohn Locke, George Berkeley and David Humeall appeal to in order to explain the process through which sense data becomes knowledge. Although empiricism denies a priori knowledges existence, as knowledge that depends upon no experience, there is still the recognition that some knowledge goes further than experience in the sense that it is not about experience. Nevertheless, empiricism argues that such knowledge is still reducible to experience. Again, this is the crucial notionthat it is possible to trace all knowledge, whether or not it is about experience, to some particular experience or experiences. Rather than preserve what is thought to be an inaccurate distinction, empiricism recasts the distinction between a priori knowledge and empirical knowledge into the distinction between analytic knowledge and synthetic knowledge. Through this distinction empiricism denies the rationalist claim that a priori knowledge is superior to empirical knowledge. Indeed, the distinction provides the basis to argue the precise opposite. The statements that the rationalists cite as paradigmatic a priori knowledgeA triangle has three sides, 3+3=6 and so onthe empiricist sees as analytic statements. An analytic statement is one where the statement analyzes the concept in question. Thus, the statement A triangle has three sides does no more than analyze the concept triangle, and the statement 3=3=6 does no more than analyzes the concept six. Moreover, the empiricist argues, these statements never do more than analyze the concepts in question. In a real sense then these statements provide no additional knowledge, all the knowledge that analytic statements contain is given is within the original concept the statement analyzes (White 1996: 280). Synthetic statements, in contrast, do provide additional knowledgeknowledge that goes further than the original concept. Consider the statement: The temperature outside is 75o. This is a synthetic statement since, while it has to be some temperature outside, there is no reason that it has to be 75o rather than some other temperature. The concepts temperature and outside then have no intrinsic connection to some specific outside temperature, rather what the temperature depends upon are various other environmental conditions. So statement such as The temperature outside is 75o provide us with additional (and sometimes valuable) information. All synthetic statements then share the characteristic that, because there is no intrinsic or logical connection between the statements elements, these statements provide information about a connection or relation that is unavailable in the original concepts themselves. Given that analytic statements reveal no additional insights, while synthetic statements do provide novel ideas and associations, it should come as no surprise that empiricism argues that empirical knowledge is superior to a priori knowledge rather than the reverse (or to be more precise, that synthetic knowledge is superior to analytic knowledge). With the focus on analytic truths rationalism never quite reaches the real universe in the manner that synthetic statements are able to do. There is, however, a philosophical price to be paid. While the empiricist gains additional insights and knowledge there is a loss in certitude, since the empiricist still must deal with senses that (the rationalist is correct to maintain) are unreliable. The rationalist can be certain that 2+2=4, the empiricist, however, must accept that empirical knowledge is at best probable, never certain. The problem is that the empiricist has no real response to the claim that it is possible to doubt even the most persuasive sense impressions, since it is possible to doubt them without logical contradiction. In philosophical terms, the problem is that our sense perceptions underdetermine their causes, i.e., a given sense perception has more than one explanation. Consider, e.g., that one sees a white rabbit. What might explain this perception? The obvious answer is that one sees a white rabbit because there is a white rabbit there. It is also possible, however, that one has a rare optical disease and the rabbit is some other color, rather than white. It is also possible that one hallucinates or dreams the rabbit. As Alice will attest, these are all logical possibilities and the sense experiences in themselves provide no certain means to decide which explanation is correct. This suggests another potential problem that empiricism must addresshow to explain mathematics and logic? Remember that empiricism maintains that all knowledge is reducible to experience. Thus, the empiricist must explain how it is possible to reduce sometimes arcane mathematical knowledge to common sense experience. This means that, since mathematical knowledge is thought to be certain knowledge, the empiricist must explain how it is possible to derive certain knowledge through a processsense experiencethat provides knowledge that is, at best, probable. Moreover, the empiricist must also explain how it is possible to prove mathematical statements through experience. There have been numerous attempts to demonstrate how it is possible to derive mathematics and logic through experience. Though commendable these attempts all have had serious difficulties and so have met with little general acceptance. Even were it possible to reduce mathematics to experience, the questions (1) whether experiences whose truth is probable can produce certain mathematical knowledge and (2) how it is possible to prove mathematical statements through experience, pose rather more serious difficulties. Perhaps the easiest, though least intuitive, solution is to argue that there is no certitude in mathematics. This is John Stuart Mills tactic. Mill, a radical empiricist, argues that, as with all other all empirical statements, mathematical statements express mere probabilities. All that distinguishes them is that mathematical statements have undergone more extensive con-firmation than other statements (Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2: 503). The disadvantage to this tactic is obvious: one must give up all claims to absolute truth in mathematics. Most philosophers (as well as mathematicians) consider this concession to be as difficult as it is undesirable. In contrast to Mill, less radical empiricists, e.g., David Hume and John Locke, still want to maintain mathematics certitude. This too, however, comes at a price. To preserve mathematical truths as absolute truths Locke argues that some perceptions, and the ideas that represent thes
e perceptions, can be more certain than others. To be precise, Locke argues that, when reason operates on experience, the ideas, and the associations between ideas, that it produces result in knowledge that is either intuitive, demonstrative or sensitive. Locke maintains that intuitive knowledge and demonstrative knowledge are certain knowledge (Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2: 501). Lockes arguments here are technical and, to most, less than a complete success. To all intents and purposes, however, what Locke does in order to guarantee certain knowledge is to introduce certain rationalist elements. The consequence is that Lockes certain knowledge is rather too similar to the rationalists a priori knowledge to please most empiricists. Since empiricism argues that there is no knowledge that arises through reason alone, it should be obvious that empiricism also denies that there are innate ideas, i.e., ideas that are in the mind prior to experience or that are built into the mind in some manner. The standard argument against innate ideas is that were there such ideas then all rational beings should possess and acknowledge them. Since it is obvious that there are neither universal ideas, i.e., ideas that all human beings possess, nor ideas upon which their is universal agreement, then there are no innate ideas (see John Lockes Essays on the Law of Nature and Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and David Humes A Treatise on Human Nature). The empiricist considers the pre-experience mind to be a tabula rasaa clean slateand it is through experience that knowledge comes to be written on this slate. Thus, empiricisms credo is that where there is (or can be) no experience there is (and can be) no knowledge.

IMPLICATIONS IN ETHICS

The debate between rationalism and empiricism continues, and it is quite possible some issues will be impossible to resolve, at least given our finite human intelligence. To the degree that it is possible to determine the correct solutions to these issues, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell concludes that the score is even. Russell argues that while it seems clear that the empiricists are correct that all knowledge must arise through experience, it also seems obvious that there is some knowledge that it is impossible to reduce to experience, i.e., reason is able to use experience to produce knowledge that it is nevertheless impossible to prove through experience (see The Problems of Philosophy). The main purpose here, however, is to illustrate that ones general philosophical assumptions about knowledges nature and origins will have consequences in other philosophical investigations, in particular in ethics. And to illustrate that all theories involve compromises, i.e., no matter the initial assumptions, there will be advantages and disadvantages. It is to a philosophers credit then to be able to detect and acknowledge the disadvantages as well as the advantages that their positions entail.

John Locke: Lockes natural law ethics reveals the same tensions that run through Lockes general approach to knowledge. The desire to have some knowledge be certain knowledge, even though all knowledge arises through experience, forces Locke to argue that reason is able to combine some ideas in a manner that produces certain knowledge. Such knowledge is irresistible, i.e., it leaves no room to hesitate or doubt (Encyclopedia of Philosophy 4: 497). Thus, Locke argues that certain knowledge is possible. Perhaps most important to Lockes ethics is the conviction it is possible to be certain that God exists. More than this, since Locke bases what is moral on what God wills, it is even possible to know what it is that Gods desires human beings to do, i.e., the divine law. The divine law as discoverable through reason becomes the natural lawthe command to preserve human beings. The natural law, Locke argues, underlies and governs all human interaction. Thus, through the nature law reason is able to derive all the particular natural rights and moral duties that human beings possess. These are rights and duties that all human beings possess as human beings and that human beings must use as a guide in their behavior. The universal and absolute character is what reason supplies to experience to produce certain knowledge.

Immanual Kant: While Kant thought there was much to admire in the empiricist philosopher David Humes A Treatise on Human Nature, and though he even accepts the empiricist principle that all knowledge arises in experience, Kant is without doubt a rationalist. This rationalism is quite apparent in Kants philosophical investigations into ethics. Kant believes that the supreme principle that underlies all moralsthe categorical imperativemust be absolute and universal. Such a principle can never arise in experience, Kant argues, since all experience is particular (i.e., about particular entities in particular situations at particular times). Neither can experience prove this principle. Experience can at best, Kant insists, confirm the categorical imperative. In contrast to the knowledge that arises through experience, the knowledge that arises through reason is abstract and universal. To illustrate the difference consider the statements There are wombats in Tasmania and a2+b2=c2. It is clear that the empirical statement There are wombats in Tasmania is about particular entities (wombats) and a particular situation (being in Tasmania). The mathematical statement has no such limitations. This statement is abstract in that it mentions no particular entities and universal in that it applies to all appropriate as, bs and cs. It is reason alone then that is able to determine and prove the categorical imperative as the supreme moral principle. Kant distinguishes here between theoretical reason and practical reason. It is theoretical reason that investigates the empirical universe. This is the reason that science uses. Practical reasons concern is the will, that motive force in human beings that underlies all moral behavior. To be precise, it is practical reasons role to create a good will. To do this practical reason determines the moral principle that the will must follow, i.e., the categorical imperative. The general epistemological limitations that arise because Kant accepts the empiricist principle that all knowledge begins in experience are also apparent in Kants ethics. Since it is impossible to know entities-in-themselves there are certain entities and ideas, whose importance to ethics are immeasurable, about which human beings can have no knowledge whatsoever. In particular, it is impossible to have knowledge as to whether (1) God exists, (2) the soul is immortal and (3) that human possess free will. Kant argues, however, that even without certain knowledge, it is still essential to assume that all these are true, otherwise ethics is impossible.

John Stuart Mill: Mills utilitarian ethics incorporates the radical interpretation that Mill gives the empiricist principle that all knowledge arises in experience. Mill interprets the all to mean all knowledge. Thus, Mill assumes that even mathematical and logical knowledge are empirical knowledge with all the limitations that such knowledge possesses. Mill manages to overcome, however, the scepticism that characterizes Humes empiricism (Encyclopedia of Philosophy 5: 318). The Greatest Happiness Principle that underlies utilitarian ethics states that those actions are moral which provide the greatest happiness to the greatest number. What determines happiness is without a doubt an empirical matter, i.e., it is through our experience that we realize what actions cause the pleasures that increase happiness an
d what actions cause the pains that decrease happiness. Reasons role in this process is to learn through these experiences and to formulate the general moral rules that will, over time, lead to the greatest happiness. It is essential to realize, however, that while these general moral rules are meant to guide behavior, because our experiences change, these rules can and do change over time. There are no certain, or absolute, or universal moral rules. Experience is unable to provide such permanence. Mill also acknowledges, that it is impossible to prove that happiness is the ultimate end that drives all human desire and action. As a consequence Mill must concede, and this is a rather radical concession, that it is impossible to provide a logical demonstration that the Greatest Happiness Principle is the fundamental moral law. Logical analysis, Mill argues, has no place in ethics. In contrast to Locke and Kant then Mill denies that ethics is, or can be, a science. In the end, Mills normative ethics rests upon psychological observations and arguments, whereas Locke and Kant believe their normative theories to rest upon logical arguments.

NOTES:

1. Bertrand Russell argues that, more that obvious logical truths, without at least the assumption that these principles are true, rational argument becomes impossible (1912: 72). 2. There is an extensive discussion about these problems in Rene Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy.

Sources and References

Blau, J.L. 1967 Immanual Kant. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

1967 John Locke. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Descartes, Rene 1993 Meditations on First Philosophy. Indianpolis: Hackett. Hamlyn, D.W. 1967 Empiricism. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Hume, David 1969 A Treatise of Human Nature. London: Penguin. Locke, John 1950 Essays on the Law of Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1975 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plato 1981 Five Dialogues. Indianapolis: Hackett. Russell, Bertrand 1912 The Problems of Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett. Schneewind, J. B. 1967 John Stuart Mill. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. White, Thomas I. 1996 Discovering Philosophy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Williams, Bernard 1967 Rationalism. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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Rationalism and Empiricism - Ohio Northern University

Empiricism v. rationalism

THE EMPIRICISTS: Empiricists share the view that there is no such thing as innate knowledge, and that instead knowledge is derived from experience (either sensed via the five senses or reasoned via the brain or mind). Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are empiricists (though they have very different views about metaphysics).

The rationalists: Rationalists share the view that there is innate knowledge; they differ in that they choose different objects of innate knowledge. Plato is a rationalist because he thinks that we have innate knowledge of the Forms [mathematical objects and concepts (triangles, equality, largeness), moral concepts (goodness, beauty, virtue, piety), and possibly color he doesnt ever explicitly state that there are Forms of colors]; Descartes thinks that the idea of God, or perfection and infinity, and knowledge of my own existence is innate; G.W. Leibniz thinks that logical principles are innate; and Noam Chomsky thinks that the ability to use language (e.g., language rules) is innate.

Empiricism (In favor of Empiricism, against Rationalism):

1. Empiricism is Simpler: Compared to Empiricism, Rationalism has one more entity that exists: Innate knowledge. According to the Empiricist, the innate knowledge is unobservable and inefficacious; that is, it does not do anything. The knowledge may sit there, never being used. Using Ockhams Razor (= when deciding between competing theories that explain the same phenomena, the simpler theory is better),1 Empiricism is the better theory.

2. Colors: How would you know what the color blue looks like if you were born blind? The only way to come to have the idea of blue is to experience it with your senses. (This objection only works possibly against Plato; see the introduction above again to see why this objection would not faze Descartes, Leibniz, or Chomsky.)

3. Imagination and Experience: How can we get the idea of perfect triangularity? We can extrapolate from our experience with crooked, sensible triangles and use our imagination to straighten out what is crooked and see what perfect triangularity is.

4. Rationalists have been Wrong about Their Innate Knowledge: Some medieval rationalists claimed that the notion of a vacuum was rationally absurd and hence it was impossible for one to exist. However, we have shown that it is possible.2 Reason is not the only way to discover the truth about a matter.

5. The Advance of Science: Much of science is founded on empiricist principles, and would not have advanced without it. If we base our conclusions about the world on empiricism, we can change our theories and improve upon them and see our mistakes. A rationalist seems to have to say that weve discovered innate knowledge and then be embarrassed if he or she is ever wrong (see examples such as the vacuum, above).

6. All Rationalists do Not Agree about Innate Knowledge: Rationalists claim that there is innate knowledge that gives us fundamental truths about reality, but even among rationalists (e.g., Plato, who believes in reincarnation and Forms and Descartes, who does not believe in either but does believe in a soul), there is disagreement about the nature of reality, the self, etc. How can this be, if there is innate knowledge of these things?

Rationalism (In favor of Rationalism, against Empiricism):

1. Math and Logic are Innate: Doesnt it seem that mathematical and logical truths are true not because of our five senses, but because of reasons ability to connect ideas?

2. Morality is Innate: How do we get a sense of what right and wrong are with our five senses? Since we cannot experience things like justice, human rights, moral duties, moral good and evil with our five senses, what can the empiricists ethical theory like? Hume (an empiricist) says morality is based solely on emotions; Locke says experience can provide us with data to show what is morally right and wrong, but does it seem that way to you?

3. Verifying Empiricism: Locke (an empiricist) says that our experiences tell us about the nature of reality, but how can we ever check our experience with what reality really is, in order to know that? Rationalists do not think we can, so we have to rely on reason.

4. Poverty of Stimulus Problem: Three year olds use language in ways that they are not explicitly taught. For example, they form original sentences from words that they havent heard put together in precisely that way before. Also, they start to understand grammatical rules before they even know what a noun or a verb is. If we can only say what weve heard said by others, how can three year olds speak as well as they do? This is known as the poverty of stimulus problem. You may think that Rationalism is strange, but it does a better job of explaining this problem than Empiricism. One way of choosing which of two theories is better (in addition to or instead of Ockhams Razor see Empiricism point #1 above) is asking, Which theory explains the phenomena better?1

5. Empiricism Undermines Creativity? According to Empiricism, you can combine things, separate them, and nothing else. With Rationalism, we come to experience with ready-made tools for creativity. E.g., Plato would say that were in touch with abstract, immutable realities, which provide lots of material with which to create.

6. Controllable Humans? According to Empiricism, human beings can be controlled and manipulated exceptionally easily. If we are nothing other than what we experience, then we should be able to be made to do whatever were taught. Rationalism has it that there is an invariable core (call it human nature) that refuses to be manipulated, which is what makes us unique.

Notes:

1 I hasten to add that Ockham's Razor is simply a rule of thumb, and that I would recommend that the reader track down an excellent paper by Elliot Sober, entitled, "Let's Razor Ockham's Razor," wherein he demonstrates that if one uses Ockham's razor in a certain case of evolutionary biology, one will choose the wrong theory to explain the phenomena, because the situation is more complex than it may seem. I am persuaded by this argument and think we should not use Ockham's razor; I have it here because people seem to like using it, but hopefully they will be persuaded by Dr. Sober's argument as I am. 2 I have recently seen an episode of "Through the Wormhole" with God, I mean, Morgan Freeman, and scientists have apparently discovered that, even in a vaccum, there are some sort of subatomic particles there, so there is no such thing as nothing, or that even nothing is something.

2013 by David J. Yount

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Empiricism versus Rationalism - Mesa Community College

Rationalism is a branch of philosophy where the validity of an idea is determined by logic, rather than religious means such as revelations, meditation, emotions or observations.

Rationalist philosophers believe that all knowledge can be understood through a process of reasoning, without any external sources. They do not believe that human beings can understand everything this way, but that it is theoretically possible. Rationalist philosophers attempt to understand ideas like God and the Soul in this manner.

The first people to talk about rationalism were Marin Mersenne and Ren Descartes, in the 17th and 18th centuries. Other philosophers who are seen as rationalist today include Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant. Famous people opposed to this idea were David Hume and John Locke.

Rationalism also influenced natural law. Natural law is a theory that says that there are laws given by nature, valid everywhere. Deism was also influenced by rationalism. According to deism, a supreme being created the universe. This being, and other religious truths can be determined by observing nature, and finding natural laws. This would make religions that are based on revelation unnecessary.

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Rationalism - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rationalism,in Western philosophy, the view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge. Holding that reality itself has an inherently logical structure, the rationalist asserts that a class of truths exists that the intellect can grasp directly. There are, according to the rationalists, certain rational principlesespecially in logic and mathematics, and even in ethics and metaphysicsthat are so fundamental that to deny them is to fall into contradiction. The rationalists confidence in reason and proof tends, therefore, to detract from their respect for other ways of knowing.

Rationalism has long been the rival of empiricism, the doctrine that all knowledge comes from, and must be tested by, sense experience. As against this doctrine, rationalism holds reason to be a faculty that can lay hold of truths beyond the reach of sense perception, both in certainty and generality. In stressing the existence of a natural light, rationalism has also been the rival of systems claiming esoteric knowledge, whether from mystical experience, revelation, or intuition, and has been opposed to various irrationalisms that tend to stress the biological, the emotional or volitional, the unconscious, or the existential at the expense of the rational.

Rationalism has somewhat different meanings in different fields, depending upon the kind of theory to which it is opposed.

In the psychology of perception, for example, rationalism is in a sense opposed to the genetic psychology of the Swiss scholar Jean Piaget (18961980), who, exploring the development of thought and behaviour in the infant, argued that the categories of the mind develop only through the infants experience in concourse with the world. Similarly, rationalism is opposed to transactionalism, a point of view in psychology according to which human perceptual skills are achievements, accomplished through actions performed in response to an active environment. On this view, the experimental claim is made that perception is conditioned by probability judgments formed on the basis of earlier actions performed in similar situations. As a corrective to these sweeping claims, the rationalist defends a nativism, which holds that certain perceptual and conceptual capacities are innateas suggested in the case of depth perception by experiments with the visual cliff, which, though platformed over with firm glass, the infant perceives as hazardousthough these native capacities may at times lie dormant until the appropriate conditions for their emergence arise.

Chomsky, NoamAPIn the comparative study of languages, a similar nativism was developed in the 1950s by the innovating syntactician Noam Chomsky, who, acknowledging a debt to Ren Descartes (15961650), explicitly accepted the rationalistic doctrine of innate ideas. Though the thousands of languages spoken in the world differ greatly in sounds and symbols, they sufficiently resemble each other in syntax to suggest that there is a schema of universal grammar determined by innate presettings in the human mind itself. These presettings, which have their basis in the brain, set the pattern for all experience, fix the rules for the formation of meaningful sentences, and explain why languages are readily translatable into one another. It should be added that what rationalists have held about innate ideas is not that some ideas are full-fledged at birth but only that the grasp of certain connections and self-evident principles, when it comes, is due to inborn powers of insight rather than to learning by experience.

Common to all forms of speculative rationalism is the belief that the world is a rationally ordered whole, the parts of which are linked by logical necessity and the structure of which is therefore intelligible. Thus, in metaphysics it is opposed to the view that reality is a disjointed aggregate of incoherent bits and is thus opaque to reason. In particular, it is opposed to the logical atomisms of such thinkers as David Hume (171176) and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein (18891951), who held that facts are so disconnected that any fact might well have been different from what it is without entailing a change in any other fact. Rationalists have differed, however, with regard to the closeness and completeness with which the facts are bound together. At the lowest level, they have all believed that the law of contradiction A and not-A cannot coexist holds for the real world, which means that every truth is consistent with every other; at the highest level, they have held that all facts go beyond consistency to a positive coherence; i.e., they are so bound up with each other that none could be different without all being different.

In the field where its claims are clearestin epistemology, or theory of knowledgerationalism holds that at least some human knowledge is gained through a priori (prior to experience), or rational, insight as distinct from sense experience, which too often provides a confused and merely tentative approach. In the debate between empiricism and rationalism, empiricists hold the simpler and more sweeping position, the Humean claim that all knowledge of fact stems from perception. Rationalists, on the contrary, urge that some, though not all, knowledge arises through direct apprehension by the intellect. What the intellectual faculty apprehends is objects that transcend sense experienceuniversals and their relations. A universal is an abstraction, a characteristic that may reappear in various instances: the number three, for example, or the triangularity that all triangles have in common. Though these cannot be seen, heard, or felt, rationalists point out that humans can plainly think about them and about their relations. This kind of knowledge, which includes the whole of logic and mathematics as well as fragmentary insights in many other fields, is, in the rationalist view, the most important and certain knowledge that the mind can achieve. Such a priori knowledge is both necessary (i.e., it cannot be conceived as otherwise) and universal, in the sense that it admits of no exceptions. In the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant (17241804), epistemological rationalism finds expression in the claim that the mind imposes its own inherent categories or forms upon incipient experience (see below Epistemological rationalism in modern philosophies).

In ethics, rationalism holds the position that reason, rather than feeling, custom, or authority, is the ultimate court of appeal in judging good and bad, right and wrong. Among major thinkers, the most notable representative of rational ethics is Kant, who held that the way to judge an act is to check its self-consistency as apprehended by the intellect: to note, first, what it is essentially, or in principlea lie, for example, or a theftand then to ask if one can consistently will that the principle be made universal. Is theft, then, right? The answer must be No, because, if theft were generally approved, peoples property would not be their own as opposed to anyone elses, and theft would then become meaningless; the notion, if universalized, would thus destroy itself, as reason by itself is sufficient to show.

In religion, rationalism commonly means that all human knowledge comes through the use of natural faculties, without the aid of supernatural revelation. Reason is here used in a broader sense, referring to human cognitive powers generally, as opposed to supernatural grace or faiththough it is also in sharp contrast to
so-called existential approaches to truth. Reason, for the rationalist, thus stands opposed to many of the religions of the world, including Christianity, which have held that the divine has revealed itself through inspired persons or writings and which have required, at times, that its claims be accepted as infallible, even when they do not accord with natural knowledge. Religious rationalists hold, on the other hand, that if the clear insights of human reason must be set aside in favour of alleged revelation, then human thought is everywhere rendered suspecteven in the reasonings of the theologians themselves. There cannot be two ultimately different ways of warranting truth, they assert; hence rationalism urges that reason, with its standard of consistency, must be the final court of appeal. Religious rationalism can reflect either a traditional piety, when endeavouring to display the alleged sweet reasonableness of religion, or an antiauthoritarian temper, when aiming to supplant religion with the goddess of reason.

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rationalism | Britannica.com

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Rationalism | Definition of rationalism by Merriam-Webster

Rationalism is the term used to describe writers and philosophers who privilege scientific reason and logical thought over and above everything else. The Rationalists in America were very much influenced by the Enlightenment that was happening in the 18th century in Europe. However, unlike the Enlightenments great thinkers and philosophers, the Founding Fathers of America attempted to put the philosophy of the Enlightenment to actual use. This is most likely directly related to the fact that American Rationalists evolved out of the tradition of Puritanism, not the class structure and Feudalism of Europe.

Rationalism is based on the concepts of logic and scientific reasoning, but the Rationalists themselves were not scientists as we think of the term. Science in the 18th century was not a profession it was a hobby. Wealthier Americans who had gone to the universities went back to their homes and began to categorize the flora and fauna of their home regions. Not because they were biologists, but because somebody had to do it, and it might as well be them.

Most American science was based on figuring out how to do things more efficiently (and profitably). Rationalists used the scientific method of identifying the problem, hypothesizing a solution, and testing the hypotheses until you reach a satisfactory conclusion. Benjamin Franklin became one of Americas great scientists, but almost everything that he invented (bifocals, lightning rods, Franklin stoves, etc) were designed to solve specific problems. He was not just puttering around or doing experiments willy-nilly.

One side effect of rationalism was that it led to questioning of everything. Instead of following tradition simply because it had always been done that way, rationalists questioned the traditions and made the necessary changes based on what they observed. Thus, because of the rationalist worldview, instead of automatically setting up a government like every other government in Europe, the Founding Fathers asked what sort of government made the most logical sense.

One other significant element of rationalism is their view of religion. As is often pointed out in church/state discussions today, the Founding Fathers made reference to God on a regular basis. However, their view of God and religion was NOT the same as the Puritans. The vast majority of the Founding Fathers and other leading Rationalists were Deists. They believed in God, but it was not a God who was involved in human affairs. The metaphor that was commonly used was the God was like a Clockmaker who had made the universe, wound it up, and was letting it wind down. By referencing God, they were referencing the very notion of a rational, planned universe. Mans role was to try to make proper use of what God had created, whether it be in political structures, daily life, or even scientific observation. Studying the world scientifically wasnt in defiance of religion, it was to better understand what God had created.

This is just a very simple beginning explanation of Puritanism. Check out these websites if you want to know more:

http://abcnews.go.com/America/classroom/1.html

http://www.mesquitereview.com/mr28-5.html

http://www.vernonjohns.org/vernjohns/sthfrnkl.html

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Definition of Rationalism - kosmicki.com