Compare and Contrast the Rationalist and Empiricist Approaches to Epistemology
Using the text and online resources in this module, respond to one of the following focused questions in at least 500 words. (Be sure to cite online sources by author or title and date as well as Web address/URL.)
In your original responses, be sure to cite primary source quotations in the words of the philosophers in addition to secondary source information about their ideas.
Examples:
Primary source: Descartes reached the conclusion, “cogito ergo sum” (Descartes).
Secondary source: Descartes methodological doubt led to the certainty of the mind or thinking subject. (Morgan)
Focused Questions:
Compare and contrast the rationalist and empiricist approaches to epistemology. How are these two differing approaches to knowledge, unified in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason? (Use primary source quotations in your response in addition to secondary sources.)
Examine the Feminist perspectives on Epistemology in Perry’s Women’s Ways of Knowing. Describe the stages of knowledge that lead to communication and social engagement. How are these alternative ways of knowing different than traditional approaches to epistemology explored in previous philosophers? (Use primary source quotations in your response in addition to secondary sources.)
Resources :
Survey the following resources to use in Discussions. You are not expected to read/view all of these, but you should be able to cite some of these in your Discussion postings.
The Empiricist Approach to Epistemology
Find out about the origins of Ancient Greek Skepticism.
See this introduction to Empiricism.
Review these notes on the British Empiricists.
John Locke
Find out about Locke’s Origin of Ideas.
Find out more about Locke’s contribution to British Empiricism.
Video: Watch this video on Locke’s philosophy on cognition. (6:52)
David Hume
See how Hume Shifts the Burden of Proof in Epistemology.
See this detailed overview of Hume from Stanford.
Read about how Hume’s Empiricism leads to Positivism.
Video: Watch this video lecture on Hume’s Epistemology. (4:33)
George Berkeley
Find out about the philosophy of Berkeley from Stanford.
Video: Watch this crash course on Locke, Berkeley and Empiricism. (9:51)
(Learning Objectives Supported: 1b, 2a, 3b, 4a, 4b
Reading Material :
Chapter 6
Text Notes: What is Real? What is True?
In the previous chapter we explored the metaphysics and epistemology of Plato, Aristotle and Descartes. While the rationalists, Plato and Descartes believed that genuine knowledge of reality is discovered through reason, Aristotle departed from his teacher, Plato and in shifting genuine knowledge to the examination of material reality, which combined reason and observation of the natural world. While neither Plato nor Aristotle ever doubted the existence of the external world, Descartes introduced the question, “How do I know the external world exists independently of my thinking about it?” Descartes method of radical doubt introduced a new and modern gap between the thinking subject and the external world, as one can only be certain of the one’s own thoughts. His “cogito ergo sum” introduced an uncertainty about external reality, independent of our thought and senses about it. Empiricist philosophers such as Locke, Berkeley and Hume all entertained the possibility that external reality may not be known or proven, independently of our experiences.
The 20th century British philosopher, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) stated that “the distinction between appearance and reality between what things seem to be and what they are” is the source of philosophical debate in epistemology and metaphysics or the nature of knowledge and external reality following Descartes quest for certainty. While Locke introduces the empirical focus of our knowledge of the world through sense-data, George Berkeley further extended Locke’s empirical certainty to deny the existence of matter as existing independently from our sensations or perceptions as nothing can be real or certain outside of minds and their ideas of things. Hume also introduces a skepticism that denies many of the common sense notions of external reality as well as our unfounded beliefs about the nature of reality and the mind.
Locke (1632-1704) was critical of Plato and Descartes rationalist views that we enter the world with innate knowledge as well as rational intuition independent of sense experience. In his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke views the mind as a tabula rasa or blank slate which is latter filled with sensory experience. Locke’s theory of knowledge is based on perception and was contemporary with the new and emerging world-view of Isaac Newton’s mechanistic universe of physical bodies and the related forces of particles as mass in motion.
Leibniz (1646-1716) disagreed with Locke, making a case for a modern notion of innate ideas as inclinations, disp
