Philosophy

An Assessment of Rationalism and Empiricism

Rationalism

I. Positive Evaluation

A. Rationalists point out that from a very few intuitively known mathematical theorems, reason can derive a body of theorems that amazingly hold true in our exploration of the physical world. How can one account for this correlation between what the mind rationally proves and what we observe in experience?

B. The Rationalists claim that without reason, experience would be a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, tastes, odors, and textures without any intelligibility.

C. The Rationalists claim that we could never prove the laws of logic since all proofs assume them. The impossibility of proving the laws of logic indicate that we must know certain truths innately before we can gain any knowledge at all.

D. Hume would say "There are no logically necessary truths about the world." Isn't this assertion itself based on logic? If this claim is not a logically necessary truth than how can experience ever reveal its truth to us? If so, are the rationalists right that reason can give us knowledge about the world?

E. John Locke argued that experience alone must tell us about the nature of reality. But how can we ever know if our beliefs are true since we cannot jump outside our experience to compare it with reality? Again, does the rationalists have advantages over seeing the mind solely through the lens of empirical experience?

II. Negative Evaluation

A. Rationalists claim that the fundamental truths about reality are innate or self-evident to reason. Yet, the

rationalists disagree among themselves and give contradictory accounts of the nature of reality, God, self, and the principle of ethics. Does the disagreement undermine the rationalist's claim that reason can give us universal and necessary truths on these issues?

B. Some medieval rationalists made various claims about the nature of reality that were later disproved with the

rise of scientific technology. Do these advancements cast doubt on the rationalist's claim that reason alone can tell us about reality?

C. Descartes argued that the idea of perfection must be innate because we never discover perfection in our

experience. However, Locke would argue that we can think about the qualities of baseball players, novels, homes, human beings, etc. and construct an empirical idea of the features that constitute better and worse. In other words, there is a satisfactory way of grounding an idea of perfection in common experience. Does Locke's approach suggest that we can indeed construct the notion of perfection from the elements of finite and imperfect experience?

D. One virtue of basing beliefs on experience is the experience of a self-correction process. If our conclusions

are mistaken, further experience can reveal our mistakes to us. Is this self-correcting nature of experience a distinct advantage over rationalism, as far as the methodology of science is concerned?

E. Randomly choose a page from any book (novel, science text, political work, religious treatise, etc.). Examine how every

concept can be accounted for by tracing the complexes of built up simple ideas that originate in our experience. To what extent does Locke's approach undermine the Rationalist's affirmation of innate ideas?

Empiricism

I. Positive Evaluation

A. More Conducive to Scientific Methodology (B under Rationalists Negative Evaluation)

B. Possesses Advantages of a Self Correcting Process (D under Rationalists