Empirical Versus Rationalistic View on Reality, Essay Example

Introduction

The dispute between the empirical view on reality and the rationalistic view is the concern as to what extent we dependent on our senses and the mind in our effort to gain knowledge. Empiricists say that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our ideas and knowledge, and that reality as the object of the senses is physical and dynamic. Rationalists on the other hand claim that there are ways in which our ideas and knowledge are gained through pure reasoning such that reality is seen to be static and non-physical. This paper therefore, tries to analyze these two schools of thought.

Empirical view

Empiricism is a class of theory of knowledge that states that all knowledge comes from experience. The term “empiricism” etymologically comes from the Greek word translated into Latin as experientia, from which we derive the word experience. More precisely it means practical experience.

Philosophical empirical view is the idea that all reliable knowledge about the essential reality is derived in the process of experience. This view states that all the knowledge we have about the reality we got it through the power of senses. And therefore according to the view of empiricists, reality is physical dynamic and the object of our senses. Empirical view boasts a class of philosophical followers who include David Hume, John Lock and Berkley. These philosophers basing there arguments on the idea of an earlier philosopher Aristotle state that, we are all born in a state of Tabula Rasa – meaning that our minds at birth is in the state of emptiness. This emptiness according to empiricists comes to be filled by the knowledge and the encounter to the reality through the senses (Anderson 15).

Empiricism as one of the competing views on how we come to know things emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, particularly sensory perception in the formation of ideas. In empirical view, the notion of innate ideas is completely disregarded. For the empiricists, no form of knowledge is possible in the absence of the senses. In this regard they clearly state that reality essentially is tangible, dynamic and physical.

In due regard, empiricism seems to bond pretty well with scientific theories that are linked with experiments and evidence. Scientific discoveries that base there findings on experiments tend to fall on the support of the empirical view. Fundamentally, all methods in science must be tested and their hypotheses observed to be in line with the natural world. All these are opposed to the trust of the knowledge believed to be inseparable with the human mind or the knowledge a priori.

John Hobbes an empirical philosopher held that only sense knowledge is valid. According to him, no any other form of knowledge is capable of being the subject of the thinking mind. In his theory of knowledge he states that sensation is the only aspect to all human knowledge. For him, concepts or the ideas of the mind are mere representation of what the sensation have experienced. Therefore even science represents mathematical realities that are object to the senses.

Rationalistic view

Rationalism as opposed to empiricism bases its argument on the power of the human mind unaided by the senses. Rationalism philosophy therefore is a view that holds that reason alone can arrive at the truth of the essential reality without the helping of the senses.

Rationalism closely associates itself with the doctrine of innate ideas and the logical deduction method of arriving to the truths of reality. The schools of rationalists base their idea on the assumption that the human mind has the knowledge of the reality a priori, such that what matters is the method of arriving to the truths. Rationalism develops its view in two ways. They start by arguing that there are cases when the content of our ideas or knowledge exceeds the information that the senses can provide. Then they construct accounts about how reason can provide additional information about reality. This is as opposed to the empiricists who present opposite lines of thought. Empiricists generally attack the rationalists’ accounts of how reason is a source of concepts or knowledge.

Rationalism opposes empiricism on the idea of the source of knowledge and the methods of verifying the knowledge. On their part the rationalists support their argument on the observation and the confidence they get from the orderly, intelligible character of the universe. They also get to find the nature of the human mind as one able to contemplate such order. In that sense, rationalism tends to mend so well with faith that doesn’t have to see in order to believe. According to scholastic philosophers who are skeptical, rationalist tend to venerate the power of the mind so much that only faith can reach.

Like empiricism, rationalism attracted a group of philosophers including Rene Descartes, G. W. Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. There arguments disqualified the ability of the bodily senses to derive the truth about the reality.

Rene Descartes, one of the rationalistic philosophers argued that the senses have at several occasions presented the reality wrongly. This drove him into doubting whatever the senses presented to him. In the effort to proof his own existence, he observed that though he could doubt everything in nature, he was unable to doubt the fact that he was doubting. And as such he must have been in existence in order to doubt. For him, this kind of knowledge of the reality of existence was only the object of the mind; something that the senses could not hold.

In regard to the philosophical view of the rationalists, essential reality was the object of the mind as opposed to the senses. And as such knowledge is static, non-physical and the object of the reason alone. This view has reason as the sole source of knowledge.

Further from denying experiment as the source of knowledge, rationalism is also opposed to such claims as intuition knowledge, revelation and mystical experience calling them as mere irrationalism.

Conclusion

Both the rationalists and the empiricist tend to differ on their understanding of the source of all knowledge about the reality. But we cannot deny the fact that both the senses and the reason are important aspects in the effort to understand the essential reality. What the empiricist and the rationalists failed to understand is the fact that reality could not be reduced such that only one element of our being comprehended it. As Immanuel Kant reconciled the two disciplines, both the senses and the reason are sources of knowledge to their extent.

Works cited

Anderson, John. Studies in Empirical Philosophy. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. 1962.