Perhaps one of the most common methods of acquiring knowledge is through authority. This method involves accepting new ideas because some authority figure states that they are true.
These authorities include parents, the media, doctors, Priests and other religious authorities, the government, and professors.
While in an ideal world we should be able to trust authority figures, history has taught us otherwise and many instances of atrocities against humanity are a consequence of people unquestioningly following authority e.
On a more benign level, while your parents may have told you that you should make your bed in the morning, making your bed provides the warm damp environment in which mites thrive. Keeping the sheets open provides a less hospitable environment for mites.
These examples illustrate that the problem with using authority to obtain knowledge is that they may be wrong, they may just be using their intuition to arrive at their conclusions, and they may have their own reasons to mislead you. But we can learn to evaluate the credentials of authority figures, to evaluate the methods they used to arrive at their conclusions, and evaluate whether they have any reasons to mislead us.
Rationalism involves using logic and reasoning to acquire new knowledge. Using this method premises are stated and logical rules are followed to arrive at sound conclusions. For instance, if I am given the premise that all swans are white and the premise that this is a swan then I can come to the rational conclusion that this swan is white without actually seeing the swan. The problem with this method is that if the premises are wrong or there is an error in logic then the conclusion will not be valid.
For instance, the premise that all swans are white is incorrect; there are black swans in Australia. Also, unless formally trained in the rules of logic it is easy to make an error. Nevertheless, if the premises are correct and logical rules are followed appropriately then this is sound means of acquiring knowledge.
Although he sometimes seems committed to the view that all our ideas are innate Adams and Gotham , he there classifies our ideas as adventitious, invented by us, and innate. Adventitious ideas, such as a sensation of heat, are gained directly through sense experience. Ideas invented by us, such as our idea of a hippogriff, are created by us from other ideas we possess. Innate ideas, such as our ideas of God, of extended matter, of substance, and of a perfect triangle, are placed in our minds by God at creation.
Our concept of God is not directly gained in experience, as particular tastes, sensations, and mental images might be. Its content is beyond what we could ever construct by applying available mental operations to what experience directly provides. From experience, we can gain the concept of a being with finite amounts of various perfections, one, for example, that is finitely knowledgeable, powerful and good.
We cannot however move from these empirical concepts to the concept of a being of infinite perfection. Descartes supplements this argument by another. Not only is the content of our concept of God beyond what experience can provide, the concept is a prerequisite for our employment of the concept of finite perfection gained from experience. An empiricist response to this general line of argument is given by Locke Essay , 1. First, there is the problem of explaining what it is for someone to have an innate concept.
Young children and people from other cultures do not consciously entertain the concept of God and have not done so. Second, there is the objection that we have no need to appeal to innate concepts in the first place.
Where Locke puts forth the image of the mind as a blank slate on which experience writes, Leibniz offers us the image of a block of marble, the veins of which determine what sculpted figures it will accept New Essays , Preface, p. The mind plays a role in determining the nature of its contents.
This point does not, however, require the adoption of the Innate Concept thesis. Locke might still point out that we are not required to have the concepts themselves and the ability to use them, innately. In contemporary terms, what we are required to have is the right hardware that allows for the optimal running of the actual software. For Locke, there are no constrains here; for Leibniz, only a particular type of software is, indeed, able to be supported by the extant hardware.
Put differently, the hardware itself determines what software can be optimally run, for a Leibnizian. According to Locke, experience consists in external sensation and inner reflection.
All our ideas are either simple or complex, with the former being received by us passively in sensation or reflection and the latter being built by the mind from simple materials through various mental operations. Right at the start, the account of how simple ideas are gained is open to an obvious counterexample acknowledged, but then set aside, by Hume in presenting his own empiricist theory. Consider the mental image of a particular shade of blue. If Locke is right, the idea is a simple one and should be passively received by the mind through experience.
Hume points out otherwise:. Even when it comes to such simple ideas as the image of a particular shade of blue, the mind seems to be more than a blank slate on which experience writes. This does not require our positing that concepts be part of the inner workings, at the beginning of our lives.
On the other hand, consider, too, our concept of a particular color, say red. For one thing, it makes the incorrect assumption that various instances of a particular concept share a common feature. Carruthers puts the objection as follows:. We get our concept of causation from our observation that some things receive their existence from the application and operation of some other things.
Yet, to be able to make this observation, we must have our minds primed to do so. Rationalists argue that we cannot make this observation unless we already have the concept of causation. Empiricists, on the other hand, argue that our minds are constituted in a certain way, so that we can gain our ideas of causation and of power in a non-circular manner.
We come by the idea of power though considering the possibility of changes in our ideas made by experiences and our own choices.
Yet, to consider this possibility—of some things making a change in others—we must already have a concept of power, rationalists would say. Empiricists, on the other hand, would point out, again, that what we actually need is for our minds to be able to recognize this, by having the correct abilities and faculties.
Another way to meet at least some of these challenges to an empiricist account of the origin of our concepts is to revise our understanding of the content of our concepts so as to bring them more in line with what experience will clearly provide.
Hume famously takes this approach. Impressions are the contents of our current experiences: our sensations, feelings, emotions, desires, and so on. Ideas are mental contents derived from impressions. Given that all our ideas are thus gained from experience, Hume offers us the following method for determining the content of any idea and thereby the meaning of any term taken to express it. If experience is indeed the source of all ideas, then our experiences also determine the content of our ideas.
Our ideas of causation, of substance, of right and wrong have their content determined by the experiences that provide them. Those experiences, Hume argues, are unable to support the content that many rationalists and some empiricists, such as Locke, attribute to the corresponding ideas. Our inability to explain how some concepts, with the contents the rationalists attribute to them, are gained from experience should not lead us to adopt the Innate Concept thesis. It should lead us to accept a more limited view of the contents for those concepts, and thereby a more limited view of our ability to describe and understand the world.
Consider, for example, our idea of causation. Descartes takes it to be innate. Our idea of causation is derived from a feeling of expectation rooted in our experiences of the constant conjunction of similar causes and effects. Our claims, and any knowledge we may have, about causal connections in the world turn out, given the limited content of our empirically based concept of causation, to be claims and knowledge about the constant conjunction of events and our own feelings of expectation.
Thus, the initial disagreement between rationalists and empiricists about the source of our ideas leads to one about their content and thereby the content of our descriptions and knowledge of the world. To what extent do our faculties of reason and experience support our attempts to know and understand our situation? Rationalism vs. Introduction 1. The Innate Knowledge Thesis 4. Introduction The dispute between rationalism and empiricism takes place primarily within epistemology, the branch of philosophy devoted to studying the nature, sources, and limits of knowledge.
How can we gain knowledge? What are the limits of our knowledge? The Innate Knowledge Thesis : We have knowledge of some truths in a particular subject area, S, as part of our nature. The Innate Concept Thesis : We have some of the concepts we employ in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature.
The Indispensability of Reason Thesis : The knowledge we gain in subject area, S, by intuition and deduction, as well as the ideas and instances of knowledge in S that are innate to us, could not have been gained by us through sense experience. The second is that reason is superior to sense experience as a source of knowledge.
The Superiority of Reason Thesis : The knowledge we gain in subject area S by intuition and deduction or have innately is superior to any knowledge gained by sense experience. The main characteristic of empiricism, however, is that it endorses a version of the following claim for some subject area: The Empiricism Thesis : We have no source of knowledge in S or for the concepts we use in S other than experience.
Prolegomena , Preamble, I, p. Leibniz, in New Essays , tells us the following: The senses, although they are necessary for all our actual knowledge, are not sufficient to give us the whole of it, since the senses never give anything but instances, that is to say particular or individual truths. Now all the instances which confirm a general truth, however numerous they may be, are not sufficient to establish the universal necessity of this same truth, for it does not follow that what happened before will happen in the same way again.
That the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides is a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That three times five is equal to half of thirty expresses a relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would forever retain their certainty and evidence.
Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner, nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing.
The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness as if ever so conformable to reality. Enquiry , 4. Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment.
Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt more properly than perceived. Or if we reason concerning it and endeavor to fix the standard, we regard a new fact, to wit, the general taste of mankind, or some other fact which may be the object of reasoning and inquiry. Enquiry , If we take in our hand any volume--of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance--let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?
Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. There can be no a priori knowledge of reality. For … the truths of pure reason, the propositions which we know to be valid independently of all experience, are so only in virtue of their lack of factual content … [By contrast] empirical propositions are one and all hypotheses which may be confirmed or discredited in actual sense experience.
Ayer , pp. The Innate Knowledge Thesis The Innate Knowledge thesis asserts that we have a priori knowledge, that is knowledge independent, for its justification, of sense experience, as part of our rational nature. We have noted that while one form of nativism claims somewhat implausibly that knowledge is innate in the sense of being present as such or at least in propositional form from birth, it might also be maintained that knowledge is innate in the sense of being innately determined to make its appearance at some stage in childhood.
This latter thesis is surely the most plausible version of nativism. The Innate Concept Thesis According to the Innate Concept thesis, some of our concepts have not been gained from experience. Hume points out otherwise: Suppose therefore a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years and to have become perfectly acquainted with colors of all kinds, except one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with; let all the different shades of that color, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest, it is plain that he will perceive a blank where that shade is wanting and will be sensible that there is a greater distance in that place between the contiguous colors than in any other.
Now I ask whether it be possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his senses? I believe there are but few will be of the opinion that he can… Enquiry , 2, pp.
Carruthers puts the objection as follows: In fact problems arise for empiricists even in connection with the very simplest concepts, such as those of colour.
For it is false that all instances of a given colour share some common feature. In which case we cannot acquire the concept of that colour by abstracting the common feature of our experience. Thus consider the concept red. Do all shades of red have something in common? If so, what? It is surely false that individual shades of red consist, as it were, of two distinguishable elements a general redness together with a particular shade. Rather, redness consists in a continuous range of shades, each of which is only just distinguishable from its neighbors.
Acquiring the concept red is a matter of learning the extent of the range. In the notice that our senses take of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe, that several particulars, both qualities and substances; begin to exist; and that they receive this their existence from the due application and operation of some other being.
From this observation, we get our ideas of cause and effect. Essay , 2. The mind being every day informed, by the senses, of the alteration of those simple ideas, it observes in things without; and taking notice how one comes to an end, and ceases to be, and another begins to exist which was not before; reflecting also on what passes within itself, and observing a constant change of its ideas, sometimes by the impression of outward objects on the senses, and sometimes by the determination of its own choice; and concluding from what it has so constantly observed to have been, that the like changes will for the future be made in the same things, by like agents, and by the like ways, considers in one thing the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed, and in another the possibility of making that change; and so comes by that idea which we call power.
When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea as is but too frequent , we need but inquire from what impression is that supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to assign any, this will confirm our suspicion. Enquiry , 2, p. It appears, then, that this idea of a necessary connection among events arises from a number of similar instances which occur, of the constant conjunction of these events; nor can that idea ever be suggested by any one of these instances surveyed in all possible lights and positions.
But there is nothing in a number of instances, different from every single instance, which is supposed to be exactly similar, except only that after a repetition of similar instances the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant and to believe that it will exist.
This connection, therefore, which we feel in the mind, this customary transition of the imagination from one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or impression from which we form the idea of power or necessary connection. Enquiry , 7. Suitably to this experience, therefore, we may define a cause to be an object followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second… We may, therefore, suitably to this experience, form another definition of cause and call it an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought of the other.
Bibliography Adams, R. Alexander, J. Aune, B. Ayer, A. Bealer, G. Boyle, D. Bonjour, L. Block, N. Carruthers, P. Casullo, A. Clarke, D. Cottingham, J. Chomsky, N. Stitch ed. De Paul, M. Ramsey eds. De Rosa, R. Descartes, R. Fodor, J. Gorham, G. Huemer, M. Hume, D. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Tom L. Kant, I. We cannot doubt the empiricist view that we have no formal justification of induction. But that does not disprove induction.
Ayer rightly points to the fact that for induction there is not better argument than induction itself Ayer, For both our knowledge of the past and our knowledge of the other minds rest on inductive reasoning. In both cases our knowledge rests on inferences from what we observe. It is logically possible that our statements about the past are mistaken and it is logically possible that other people have no mind; but all the same we can rightly and reasonably claim to be sure about a particular event of the past or a present feeling of our dear and near ones Passmore, Strict adherences to the empiricist principle that induction is not possible complete us to burn metaphysics along with science.
This is why; now-a-days traditional empiricism has got no place in philosophical circle. Empiricism in the moderated sense of Ayer, Russell and others establishes knowledge, science and metaphysics as possible. Empiricism ultimately leads to subjectivism, which not only denies the independent existence of subjective reality, but also completely ignores the dialectical relationship between the subjective and objective factors of knowledge.
It cannot see how the objective enriches the subjective Passmore, It ignores the dialectical character of subject-object relationship. It would only analyze objects and leave the study of the reality Lenin, But it is very much necessary to have some knowledge of the whole when we try to know the parts analytically.
An empiricist may still insist that the statement is a posteriori in the sense that it is known on the basis of experience and what we have to await the verdict of experience to ascertain whether the statement holds true or false Hospers, In this case the empiricist must hold that the statement may be either true or false. But perhaps few people will accept this view.
Even a skeptic who is in doubt as to whether the sun will rise in the east. It will not likely to deny that our statement is necessarily true. We have tried to show how in our day to day reasoning we unconsciously take synthetic a priori statements for granted without being aware of it. If empiricism is correct no statement which has a factual content can be necessary or certain. Consequently, there are two ways of dealing with the truths of logic and mathematics which are open to the empiricist.
Like all empirical hypotheses, the truths of logic and mathematics were theoretically fallible. Moreover, empiricism is not to be totally accepted because it presumes that the world falls apart into two classes of entities. But this whole idea is defective. If there is a sharp distinction between the subject and the object, there could never be any link which could possibly connect substances so disparate. For example, a spiritual substance could ever perceive an external world.
This is why the neutral monists, the supporters of the identity theory, Strawson and others reject the idea that body and mind are substantially disparate Ayer, Neutral monism upholds the view that there is no metaphysical dualism of body and mind, but only a structural difference between them as both are made of the same elementary stuff. The traditional empiricist view that our status in the world is like that of a spectator or a looker-on. They hold that the world is phenomenological revealed to the human being as his world, not in the sense of being the world which he perceives but as being the world he cares about made up of things which are hindrances or helps Brightman, Through a detailed discussion or critical examination of the theories mentioned above, knowledge includes a dialectical unity of the subject and the object.
The subjective is the product of the development of the material world. The subjective comprises an objective content in as much as it reflects objective reality. Consequently, even the objective is above all a reality independent of the subject and the fact that for the subject it exists only in so far as the subject exists, is not a condition of its own existence. Empiricism in the traditional sense cannot meet the demands of enquiries in the fields of epistemology and metaphysics because of its inherent limitations.
Empiricism cannot provide us with the certainty of scientific knowledge in the sense that it denies the existence of objective reality, ignores the dialectical relationship of the subjective and objective contents of knowledge. All rights reserved. Ayer, A. Foundation of Empirical Knowledge pp. London: Macmillan and Co. The Problem of Knowledge pp. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Language, Truth and Logic 2nd ed. London: Victor-Gollancez Ltd. Brightman, S. A Philosophy of Religion pp. New York: Prentic Hall. Edwards, P. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy pp. New York: The Macmillan Company. Hempel, C. Philosophy of Natural Science p. London: Printing Hall. Hospers, J. An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis pp. Hudson, W. Modern Moral Philosophy p. London: Macmillian Education Ltd. Hume, D. A Treatise of Human Nature pp. New York: Oxford University Press. An Enquires Concerning the Human Understanding pp.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. London: Oxford University Press. Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason Translated by N.
Smith, pp.
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