Is Reason the Source of Knowledge?: Descartes' Corpuscular Theory
Descartes wants to prove that knowledge of the physical world can be acquired through reason, an explanation that eventually relies on the corpuscular or atomistic theory. In this theory, all matter is made of corpuscles, far too small to see, with ...
Is Reason the Source of Knowledge?: Necessary Truths
Descartes argues that the senses can perceive only the changing surfaces of things, but the mind can go deeper to find necessary truths. Empiricist who argue that all knowledge must come from the senses disagree.
Is Reason the Source of Knowledge?: Locke and Leibniz Debate Theory of Innate Ideas
The first great 17th century empiricist John Locke borrows many ideas from Descartes. For the most part he accepts the corpuscular theory, but flatly rejects the notion of innate ideas about the world. Gottfried Leibniz concedes that innate ideas ar...
Is Reason the Source of Knowledge?: Reason, the Source of Knowledge
Seventeenth century rationalists like Descartes and Leibniz believe that knowledge comes from reason alone. It is not necessary to see examples in the physical world;truth can be grasped entirely in the mind. This is a period in which science is mak...
Is Reason the Source of Knowledge?: Theory of Innate Ideas, The
Rationalists believe in innate ideas, ideas that are present in the mind from birth. The concept had a long history beginning with Plato in the 4th century B.C.E. The difficulties and discoveries characteristic of Athens during this period are simil...
Is Reason the Source of Knowledge?: Sentiment of Rationality
In the 17th century, experimental sciences are in their infancy. As they have grown, they have demonstrated that much of our knowledge of the world comes through sense observation. But the basic question remains about whether all knowledge depends o...
Is Reason the Source of Knowledge?: Religious Conviction of Rationalists
Major rationalists share a profound religious conviction. They believe that God created the universe with an underlying order that can be grasped through the power of reason. Both Descartes and Leibniz take the view that the human mind is made in th...
Does All Knowledge Come from Experience?: Berkeley's Solution to Locke's Gap
George Berkeley, the next major empiricist after Locke, makes the gap between the external world and our mental images of it central to his philosophy. Berkeley's solution is to say that bodies are simply collections of ideas that exist in the mind....
Does All Knowledge Come from Experience?: W.V.O. Quine and Contemporary Empiricism
W.V.O. Quine, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, is a naturalist and an empiricist. Quine views science as a vast web of interconnected beliefs which is related to the sensory experience only "along the periphery." Vital c...
Does All Knowledge Come from Experience?: Hume and Causal Relationships
Consider the motion of billiard balls on a table. Can reason analyze how they will move a priori without previous experience as rationalists contend? Hume insists that the only way we know about patterns like cause and effect is by seeing certain ev...