Rationalism and Empiricism

Rationalism and Empiricism

In our world today, they’re many debates about were our ideas come from and the existence of them. They fall under two ideas; Rationalism and Empiricism. Rationalism, the idea that some of our knowledge is innate or they are born within us. Empiricism is the idea that all knowledge we have comes from experience and none of the ideas are innate. My opinion on this debate is that knowledge comes from experience and I agree with the Empiricism. I believe that in order for us to fully grasp the understanding of something we have to experience for ourselves.  We can’t rely on someone’s words and what they say in order for us to understand how something is. To back up my claim, I can refer to Descartes wax example. In Descartes example he explained how if one saw a piece of solid wax and had never experienced wax melting in there life, they would not be able to know that the puddle of melted wax is the same solid wax that we have in our hand. If I was a person who had experienced melting wax I would know that even thought its shape and the features that made is wax had changed its still the same wax that we had. But until we bring the person who has never experienced melting wax to see how the wax melts once its in the fire and creates a puddle of wax then they will understand that the wax is the same just in a different form. It means that things can go through changes but it will still be the same from what it first was and one can more grasp the concept from experience then from being learned from one other person.

Explanatory Breadth:  the origin of the ideas. Empiricism explains the theory of more ideas then Rationalism because it explains more about all the ideas then Rationalism does. It says all ideas come from experience and so that covers all of the knowledge we know. While Rationalism fails to explain where the knowledge comes from even though its innate, only coves some of them.

Explanatory Depth: how much detail an argument can provide. Neither arguments really provide detail about the knowledge we are learning but I believe Empiricism does a better job at giving detail then Rationalism. Empiricism explains how it’s acquired through experience and Rationalism doesn’t provide even one detail. An example on how Empiricism explains in more detail is someone who has experienced a loss of a person, can tell someone how there feeling but unless you have experienced a loss of your own, you will never fully understand what the person is actually feeling. Everyone can know what it is to lose someone but you don’t understand it fully until you have experienced it.

Simplicity: this is how simple the argument is and the lack of assumptions it may have.  Empiricism states how all of our thoughts or ideas originate in experience. Its ideas are less likely to be questioned then the ideas of Rationalism. Rationalism says some ideas are innate but not everyone’s born with the same knowledge making is more complex to understand the type of knowledge someone may have.

Conservatism: this is how well the ideas connect to today’s society I think that both ideas are accepted within today’s society but Empiricism is more of a consistent belief. In today’s world, there are many more things to experience and learn.  The things that you understand are from seeing and learning on your own. If you never knew how to walk and someone told you it’s just by putting one foot in front of the other, you wouldn’t really understand how to walk. Until you try it out for yourself and experience walking on your own you wouldn’t understand.   Rationalism, states that some of the ideas are innate but with todays ideas and beliefs it wouldn’t connect with them as well as Empiricism does.

1.                    Empiricism and Rationalism are the most plausible theories of explanation to explain origin of ideas.

2.                    Empiricism has much more explanatory depth and simplicity, while they are both pretty conservative.

3.                    Therefore, Empiricism is the best explanation of the origin of ideas