Key Philosophical Systems: Empiricism and Rationalism
Core Principles of Empiricism
Empiricism is the denial of any innate knowledge. Each of our ideas, however abstract it may seem, must have an empirical basis and result from the action of the subject over the world. Understanding is like a tabula rasa (a blank slate) in which nothing is written before contact with experience. Understanding cannot spontaneously occur from any idea.
- We cannot go beyond the data provided to us by way of what is called a vacuous metaphysics of speculative construction detached from observation.
- The establishment of sensible evidence is the epistemological criterion of truth. Faced with the clear and distinct idea of Cartesian rationalism, empiricism maintains that the approach allowing us to distinguish the true from the false, and the real from the unreal, is the patency of the sensible data.
- While for rationalists the legitimation of knowledge lies in deductive proof, for empiricists it lies in experimental analysis and induction.
- We must reject as illegitimate any content of consciousness that has no counterpart in previous experience.
- There is a denial of the possibility of a knowledge that is universally valid and necessary. Since knowledge is aimed at sensitive, individual, and unique beings, and the cognitive organs are the senses, empiricism holds that all knowledge is changing.
- This implies an epistemological contingency and a clearly skeptical or, at least, relativist stance, arguing that truth and falsehood depend on the conditions of experience.
- Experimental sciences of nature (such as physics) serve as the paradigm of knowledge.
The Foundations of Rationalism
Rationalism is a term often used to describe the modern philosophical current which includes Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Pascal, and Leibniz. Initially, Descartes’s followers were called Cartesians. It was Thomas Reid, in the late eighteenth century, who spoke of rationalists. It is characterized by:
- Regarding the origin of ideas, Rationalism holds that our valid and true knowledge comes from the understanding itself, maintaining the existence of innate ideas.
- In the method of obtaining new ideas, while empiricists favor induction (which came into vogue through Francis Bacon), rationalists prefer different methods.
Main Characteristics of Rationalism
- An ideal of deductive science, taking mathematics and logic as models.
- The conviction that the field of reason is necessary.
- The conviction that the realm of thought corresponds exactly to the field of reality. In other words, that reality is intelligible, which leads to a form of cosmic optimism.
- Contempt for experience, standing in opposition to the empiricist view.
- Appeals to God as a guarantor of the correspondence between the order of thought and the order of reality.
- Subjectivism, as it starts from the individual and their perceptions.
Maieutics and the Socratic Method
Maieutics is a technique that involves the questioning of a person to make them arrive at knowledge that has not yet been conceptualized. Maieutics is based on dialectics, which is the idea that truth is hidden in the mind of every human being. The technique consists of asking the speaker about something (a problem, for example) and then proceeding to discuss the response through the establishment of general concepts. The debate takes the listener to a new concept developed from the previous one. Usually, maieutics is often confused with irony and the Socratic method, and it is attributed to Socrates.
The Dual Meaning of Dialectics
Dialectics has a double meaning: first, it is the process of lifting the soul towards the Good or the “Idea of Ideas,” where one is guided by reason and ignores the senses. On the other hand, it allows for the knowledge of Ideas; it is the discipline that gives the supreme sage the power to know the truth: the Good and the Ideas.
Logical and Non-Logical Terms
Logical Terms
These are terms that have no meaning by themselves and need a propositional structure to acquire meaning. Example: hello, bye, dog, cat.
Non-Logical Terms
These are terms that have meaning by themselves and need no propositional structure. Nevertheless, they are present in propositions. Non-logical terms consider expressions as having meaning in themselves, independent of the proposition.
Classification of Categorical Propositions
Universal Propositions
- Affirmative: All S is P (Type A). Example: The man is a social being.
- Negative: No S is P (Type E). Example: No one who studies wastes time.
Individual/Particular Propositions
- Affirmative: Some S is P (Type I). Example: John is a scholarly student.
- Negative: Some S is not P (Type O). Example: The dog is not a cat.