Rationalism vs. Empiricism: Philosophers and Key Ideas

Posted on Nov 18, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Rationalism

  • Studies abstract entities existing in the human mind (e.g., numbers).
  • Main source and test of knowledge is deductive reasoning based on axioms.
  • Claims the mind can recognize reality through reasoning.
  • Emphasizes reason in acquiring knowledge.
  • Knowledge comes after doubts, seeking evident truths.
  • Key figures: Spinoza, Leibniz, Descartes.

Empiricism

  • Studies events and experiences.
  • Main source and test of knowledge is perception and intuition through senses.
  • Denies the possibility of spontaneous ideas.
  • All knowledge is based on experience and perception.
  • Requires observation (senses) for certainty of knowledge.
  • Used to check, confirm, or deny a hypothesis.
  • Validity of knowledge depends on how it is constructed.
  • Key figures: Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume.

Hobbes

  • Lover of mathematics and physics.
  • Applied natural methods of physics to man.
  • Wrote The Body of Man, The Citizen, Leviathan.
  • Knowledge is founded on sense experience and necessary for morality.
  • Nominalist: does not believe in universal concepts.
  • Thought is a symbolic operation.
  • Mental processes are physical.
  • Soul is immaterial and not free; man is determined.
  • Theory of the natural state: man is selfish, leading to a “war of all against all” (Homo homini lupus).
  • Advocated for a tacit pact and absolute monarchy.

Locke

  • Considered the founder of the theory of knowledge.
  • Studied Descartes and Bacon.
  • Knowledge comes from experience; ideas are not innate.
  • Soul is a tabula rasa (blank slate).
  • Two types of experience: External (senses) and Internal (reflection).
  • Two types of ideas: Simple (objective and subjective qualities) and Complex (associations).
  • Morality consists of adapting to norms.
  • Advocated for constitutional monarchy and separation of church and state.

Berkeley

  • Empiricist with spiritual leanings, influenced by Locke and Platonism.
  • Argued against materialism; all qualities are subjective.
  • Ideas are the content of perception; no substance behind ideas.
  • Esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived).
  • All things exist as perceptions; material substance does not exist.
  • Everything is spiritual, originating from God.

Hume

  • Disputed empirical science due to its basis on cause and effect, which is a belief, not science.
  • Influenced by Newton; disliked searching for final causes.
  • Two types of prepositions: Impressions (sensory data) and Ideas (copies of impressions).
  • Knowledge comes only from perceptions; ideas are weaker than impressions.
  • No abstract or innate ideas.
  • Introduced the theory of association of ideas (similarity, continuity, cause and effect).
  • Distinguished between relations of ideas (e.g., math) and matters of fact (e.g., experience).
  • Cause and effect is a belief based on habit, not science.
  • Skepticism: no empirical science due to the lack of observable connection between cause and effect.
  • Critiqued metaphysical concepts like the existence of the world, God, and the self.