Now that it is summer, I have a bit of extra time to indulge the nerd in me. So I’ve been reading about the difference between empiricism and rationalism, and here are some excerpts from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on this subject:
“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.
The Intuition/Deduction thesis claims that we can know some propositions by intuition and still more by deduction. (Empiricists) agree, (that we can) know by intuition that our concept of God includes our concept of eternal existence. Rationalists, such as Descartes, have claimed that we can know by intuition and deduction that God exists and created the world, that our mind and body are distinct substances, and that the angles of a triangle equal two right angles, where all of these claims are truths about an external reality independent of our thought.
Descartes claims that knowledge requires certainty and that certainty about the external world is beyond what empirical evidence can provide. We can never be sure our sensory impressions are not part of a dream or a massive, demon orchestrated, deception. Only intuition and deduction can provide the certainty needed for knowledge, and, given that we have some substantive knowledge of the external world, the Intuition/Deduction thesis is true.”
I’ve been chewing on this all morning. My teenage son frequently asks me, “How can we KNOW anything with certainty? How do we KNOW that everything we believe is not a dream or a figment of our imagination?”
Can we know anything without experiencing it or sensing it? Is there intuitive knowledge, a priori knowledge, built into us by God that we just need to be reminded of? Like birds that know where to fly for the winter, or salmon that swim upstream without any experience, do we humans have instinctual knowledge? Can we build on these intuitive truths by deduction?
I think so…
(you know you’re a nerd, if you get the irony in that statement ;-)
“Cogito ergo sum” -- Descartes
Hi nerd,
ReplyDeleteGood questions. After reading Charles Darwin I also wonder if we have that "innate" knowledge because we have needed it for survival all these years. However, there is so much that cannot be answered by scientific inquiry. I give science credit, but the best scientist is baffled and soon becomes a philosopher.
True Dat! (Who you callin a nerd?! I'm hip!)
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