By: Joseph Himinkool



This video provides a concise, yet thorough explanation of influential philosophers throughout history. As it explains about these various philosophers and their contributions, it touches on three important figures that are specifically important to the understanding of Empiricism and Rationalism (topics mentioned below on this page). Empiricism involves a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience, especially experience based on perceptual observations by the five senses. John Locke is one of the founders of Empiricism and as the video states, "John Locke formulated the principles of modern Empiricism and argued against the theory of innate ideas." George Berkeley was another great contributor towards the ideas of Empiricism. As the video succinctly puts it, "Berkeley speculated that material substance does not exist and equated perception and existence saying, 'To be is to be perceived.' " As a counterargument to Empiricism, Rationalism is a method or a theory in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive. As a forefather of this idea, Rene Descartes added many of his own intellectual thoughts. As the video
summarizes:

"Descartes introduced systematic doubt into philosophy and deduced
existence with his famous insight: 'I think therefore I am.' "



R. Kelly's song, "I Believe I can Fly" resounds with the human instinct to strive and
persevere. His love ballad evokes feelings of hope and optimism in listeners, as he
battles personal problems of heartbreak and depression. He begins the song with a
negative tone, questioning whether he can really go on, but eventually finds personal
hope in the arms of another. As the song continues, his attitude of pessimism gradually
disappears--replaced by inner strength and self-determination. His famous words, "I
believe i can fly" are repeated numerous times throughout the song. He even states, "I
believe in me." In relation to Epistemology, one of the most important notions to
understand it, is belief. The kind that is dealt with is when "to believe something" simply
means any cognitive content held as true. In this sense, R. Kelly embodies a crucial
characteristic needed for epistemology. Without belief in anything, one cannot discern the
true nature of knowledge.


The term Epistemology was first introduced by Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier. It's a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of knowledge and justified belief.

Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions.

The most important notions of Epistemology are:
1) Truth
2) Belief
3) Justification


Truth:
If someone believes something, he or she thinks that it is true but may be mistaken. This is not the case with knowledge. For example, a man thinks that a particular bridge is safe enough to support him, and he attempts to cross it; unfortunately, the bridge collapses under his weight. It could be said that the man believed that the bridge was safe, but that his belief was mistaken. It would not be accurate to say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. By contrast, if the bridge actually supported his weight then he would be justified in subsequently holding that he knew the bridge had been safe enough for his passage, at least at that particular time. For something to count as knowledge, it must actually be true.

The Aristotelian definition of truth states: "To say of something which is that it is not, or to say of something which is not that it is, is false. However, to say of something which is that it is, or of something which is not that it is not, is true."

Belief:
Often, statements of "belief" mean that the speaker predicts something that will prove to be useful or successful in some sense — perhaps the speaker might "believe in" his or her favorite football team. This is not the kind of belief usually addressed within epistemology. The kind that is dealt with is when "to believe something" simply means any cognitive content held as true. For example, to believe that the sky is blue is to think that the proposition, "The sky is blue," is true. Knowledge implies belief. The statement "I know P, but I don't believe that P is true" is contradictory. To know P is, among other things, to believe that P is true, or to believe in P. Knowing That and Knowing How are just two aspects of knowledge proper.

Justification:
Knowledge is true belief that has been "given an account of" — meaning explained or defined in some way. According to the theory that knowledge is justified true belief, in order to know that a given proposition is true, one must not only believe the relevant true proposition, but one must also have a good reason for doing so. One implication of this would be that no one would gain knowledge just by believing something that happened to be true. For example, an ill person with no medical training, but a generally optimistic attitude, might believe that he/she will recover from his/her illness quickly. Nevertheless, even if this belief turned out to be true, the patient would not have known that he/she would get well since his/her belief lacked justification.

Why is Epistemology important?

• It's the explanation of how we think
• It's required to determine the true from the false
• It's needed in order to use and obtain knowledge of the world around us
• Without it--we could not think
• More specifically, we would have no reason to believe our thinking was productive or correct, as opposed to random images flashing before our mind.

The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge. Both stem from specific theories of knowledge acquisition.

Empiricism is generally a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience, especially experience based on perceptual observations by the five senses. Certain forms treat all knowledge as empirical, while some regard disciplines such as mathematics and logic as exceptions.


John Locke:

The doctrine of empiricism was first explicitly formulated by John Locke in the 17th century. 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 is written the experiences derived from sense impressions as a person's life proceeds. 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. Complex ideas are those which combine simple ones and are divided 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.





George Berkeley:

Irish Bishop George Berkeley 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 a different, very extreme form of 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. Berkeley's approach to empiricism would later come to be called subjective idealism.


Rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification." In more technical terms it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive." Different degrees of emphasis on this method or theory lead to a range of rationalist standpoints, from the moderate position "that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge" to the radical position that reason is "the unique path to knowledge."


Gottfried Leibniz:

Leibniz was the last of the great Rationalists, who contributed heavily to other fields such as mathematics. His system however was not developed independently of these advances. Leibniz rejected Cartesian dualism, and denied the existence of a material world. In Leibniz's view there are infinitely many simple substances, which he called "monads." Monads are the fundamental unit of reality, according to Leibniz, constituting both inanimate and animate things. These units of reality represent the universe, though they are not subject to the laws of causality or space (which he called "well-founded phenomena"). Leibniz therefore introduced his principle of pre-established harmony, in order to account for apparent causality in the world.



Rene Descartes:
Descartes thought that only knowledge of eternal truths – including the truths of mathematics, and the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the sciences – could be attained by reason alone; other knowledge, the knowledge of physics, required experience of the world, aided by the scientific method. He also argued that although dreams appear as real as sense experience, these dreams cannot provide persons with knowledge. Also, since conscious sense experience can be the cause of illusions, then sense experience itself can be doubtable. As a result, Descartes deduced that a rational pursuit of truth should doubt every belief about reality. He developed a method to attain truths according to which nothing which cannot be recognized by the intellect can be classified as knowledge. These truths are gained "without any sensory experience", according to Descartes. Truths that are attained by reason are to be broken down into elements which intuition can grasp, which, through a purely deductive process, will result in clear truths about reality.

Descartes therefore argued, as a result of his method, that reason alone determined knowledge, and that this could be done independently of the senses. For instance, his famous dictum, cogito ergo sum, is a conclusion reached a priori and not through an inference from experience. This was, for Descartes, an irrefutable principle upon which to ground all forms of other knowledge. Descartes posited a metaphysical dualism, distinguishing between the substances of the human body ("res extensa") and the mind or soul ("res cogitans") .


Links and Resources:

Epistemology-Importance of Philosophy
http://importanceofphilosophy.com/Epistemology_Main.html

Empiricism-Philosophy for Everyone
http://skepdic.com/empiricism.html

Empiricism-Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism

Epistemology-Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/

Epistemology-Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

Rationalism vs. Empiricism-Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

Rationalism-Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism