About Empiricism and rationalism in simplist way and work of Descartes

1. Empiricism &
Rationalism
Lecture 3

2. Empiricism
• Empiricism is a theory which
states that knowledge comes only
or primarily from sensory
experience. One of several views
of epistemology, the study of
human knowledge,
• It is the view that all knowledge
of reality is derived from sense
experience.

3. •There are so many sorts of
experience, but here
experience means “sense
experience” that is
perceptions derived from
five senses: sight, sound,
touch, taste and smell.

4. • Empiricists deny that any
ideas or even intellectual
structure is inscribed on
the mind from birth- the
mind at birth is a blank
tablet, devoid even of
watermarks. The
implication is that
anything “written” on the
tablet is written by five
senses.

5. • The term "empirical" (rather than
"empiricism") also refers to the method of
observation and experiment used in the
natural and social sciences.
• It is a fundamental requirement 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. Hence, science is considered to
be methodologically empirical in nature.

6. Development
of Empiricism
• John Locke, George Berkeley,
and David Hume were the
primary exponents of
empiricism in the 18th century
Enlightenment,
with Locke being normally
known as the founder of
empiricism as such.

7. • John Locke (1632–1704) was an
English philosopher, often classified
as an 'empiricist', because he
believed that knowledge was founded
in empirical observation and
experience. ... In that all our
knowledge is founded; and from that
it ultimately derives itself.
• John Locke is one of the most well-
known empiricists; he claimed the
mind is a tabula rasa, or blank slate, at
birth. Locke asserts that our
experience of the world provides us
with knowledge.

8. • The doctrine of Empiricism was
first explicitly formulated by the
British philosopher John Locke in
the late 17th Century. Locke argued
in his "An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding" of 1690 that the
mind is a tabula rasa on which
experiences leave their marks, and
therefore denied that humans
have innate ideas or that anything
is knowable without reference to
experience. However, he also held
that some knowledge (e.g.
knowledge of God's existence)
could be arrived at
through intuition and reasoning
alone.

9. • The Scottish philosopher David
Hume brought to the Empiricist viewpoint
an extreme Skepticism.
• He argued that all of human knowledge can
be divided into two categories: relations of
ideas (e.g. propositions involving
some contingent observation of the world,
such as "the sun rises in the East")
and matters of fact (e.g. mathematical and
logical propositions),
• and that ideas are derived from
our "impressions" or sensations.
• In the face of this, he argued that even the
most basic beliefs about the natural world,
or even in the existence of the self, cannot
be conclusively established by reason, but
we accept them anyway because of their
basis in instinct and custom.

10. Types
On this basis , these three forms can be distinguished:
absolute empiricisms
substantive empiricisms
partial empiricisms

11. ABSOLUTE EMPIRICISM
Absolute empiricists hold that there are no a
priori concepts, either formal or categorical,
and no a priori beliefs or propositions.
Absolute empiricism about the former is
more common than that about the latter,
however.
Although nearly all Western philosophers
admit that obvious tautologies (e.g., “all red
things are red”) and definitional truisms (e.g.,
“all triangles have three sides”) are a priori,
many of them would add that these represent
a degenerate case

12. SUBSTANTIVE EMPIRICISM
A more moderate form of empiricism is that
of the substantive empiricists, who are
unconvinced by attempts that have been
made to interpret formal concepts
empirically and who therefore concede that
formal concepts are a priori, though they
deny that status to categorical concepts and
to the theoretical concepts of physics, which
they hold are a posteriori.
According to this view, allegedly a priori
categorical and theoretical concepts are
either defective, reducible to empirical
concepts, or merely useful “fictions” for the
prediction and organization of experience.

13. PARTIAL EMPIRICISM
The least thoroughgoing type of empiricism here
distinguished, ranking third in degree, can be
termed partial empiricism.
According to this view, the realm of the a priori
includes some concepts that are not formal and
some propositions that are substantially
informative about the world.
The theses of the transcendental idealism of
Immanuel Kant (1720–1804), the general
scientific conservation laws, the basic principles
of morality and theology, and the causal laws of
nature have all been held by partial empiricists to
be both “synthetic” and a priori. At any rate, in all
versions of partial empiricism there remain a
great many straightforwardly a posteriori
concepts and propositions: ordinary singular
propositions about matters of fact and the
concepts that figure in them are held to fall in this
domain.

14. THE BRITISH EMPIRICISTS:
In the 17th and 18th Century, the
members of the British Empiricism
school John Locke, George Berkeley
and David Hume were the primary
exponents of Empiricism. They
vigorously defended Empiricism
against the Rationalism of Descartes,
Leibniz and Spinoza

15. Empiricism (experience-based
thinking)
Rationalism (concept-based thinking)

16. • Rationalism is an epistemological position in which reason is
said to be the primary source of all knowledge, superior to the
senses.
• In general, rationalists believe that abstract reasoning can
produce undeniable, absolutely certain truths about nature,
existence, and the whole of reality.

17. • These truths are called a priori, or innate, ideas – because they are
discovered independently of experience, without empirical observation
or experimentation.
• Descartes stands not only as the “father of modern philosophy,” but as
the original archetype of the modern rationalist.

18. Father of Rationalism
• René Descartes
• French philosopher René Descartes, who wrote "I think therefore I am," is
considered the father of rationalism. He believed that eternal truths can only be
discovered and tested through reason.

19. Latin word ratio, meaning reason-
point of view that states that reason
plays the main role in understanding
the world and obtaining knowledge.

20. Rationalism is “any view appealing to
reason as a source of knowledge or
justification.” in which the criterion of
the truth is not sensory but intellectual
and deductive.
The philosophical view that regards
reason as the chief source and test of
knowledge. Holding the reality itself has
an inherent logical structure

22. Empiricism
All knowledge of the world comes from
experience
Rationalism
Some knowledge of the world is independent
of experience— that is, some knowledge is
inborn (innate)

23. Concept Rationalism
There are innate concepts
Leibniz: “. . . can it be denied that there is much that is innate
in our mind, since we are, so to speak, innate to ourselves, and
since in ourselves there are being, unity, substance, duration,
change, activity, perception, pleasure and a thousand other
objects of our intellectual ideas?

24. Innate ideas
“Some ideas are present from birth.”
Ideas that do not require the proof or suggestion of
sense experience, are concept which are present
from birth.
It could be theoretically be discovered or brought
out from within the mind of each individual.
Example is Descartes arguments for the existence
of God.

25. Judgment Rationalism
There are synthetic a priori truths
We can learn something about the world independently of experience—
from reason alone

26. Descartes proposed that only those things we can accept as “clear and
distinct” should be accepted as true.
“Clear” he defined as “that which is present and apparent to an attentive
mind.”
“Distinct” he defined as “that which is so precise and different from all
other objects that it contains within itself

27. Objections to Rationalism
1. How can we have knowledge in our minds if we are not
aware of it?
2. How can we believe something without being aware of
it?