Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Rationalism vs. Empiricism


Empiricists think that there is no such thing as innate knowledge, all knowledge we have is through experience. While Rationalists think there is some innate knowledge, and the rest comes from experience.  In my opinion I would have to side with empiricists, I think that we gain knowledge through experience. Descartes comes to the conclusion that you can only be sure if you exist. Following his conclusion is the example on Wax. He states that wax has a certain characteristic which we use to identify it as wax. He said if it looks, smells and feels like wax, then it must be wax. However, if you melt it, it may burn and turn black, it will melt, and may give off a different odor. However, it is still wax, and we still have no problem identifying it as such. The wax can be used as a comparison to people and that you need to experience things to understand them, if you never experienced wax burning you would never know that it was the same piece of wax by the way that it looks after. People are constantly changing too, and from experience we know that someone is the same person even if they change and grow throughout life. 



A) Explanatory Breadth- Empiricism explains the ideas more than rationalism, it explains that all ideas are coming from experience and rationalism only explains that some of the ideas come from experience, we also don’t know were rationalism comes from.

B) Explanatory Depth- Empiricism explains the certain ideas more than rationalism, rationalism can't explain were the knowledge came from because they are only claimed to be ideas you were born with. While empiricism we learn from our experiences and knowledge in life.

C) Simplicity- Rationalism has fewer parts. Empiricism tries to explain ideas how all of our thoughts originate from experience; rationalism is not simple because we are not born with all the same ideas.

D) Conservatism- Nether one theory is more consistent with our current beliefs, some people agree with Rationalism while others are agreeing with Empiricism.  Therefore, nether one is more consistent than the other.


1. Empiricism and Rationalism are the most plausible explanations of origin of ideas.  
2. Empiricism has much more explanatory depth and simplicity, whereas Rationalism has a little more explanatory breadth.
3. Therefore, Empiricism is the best explanation of origin of ideas.

1 comment:

  1. Danielle, your overall argument was excellent! I loved how you used the wax example and related it back to how we need to experience things in life to undersand. However, I disagree with your last argurment. "People are constantly changing too, and from experience we know that someone is the same person even if they change and grow throughout life. " This sentence is not really well needed in your argument. You don't really know if someone is the same person if they change and grow up. It's more of what you knew already then through experiences. Great argument danielle!!!

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