Philoshopy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Philoshopy - Essay ExampleEmpiricists say that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge.Rationalists postulate developed their view in two ways. The first wiz is that they argue that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge outstrips the information that sense experience can provide. Second, they constuct accounts of how reason in some form or other provides that additional information about the world (http//plato.stanford.edu/entries/freethinking-empiricism/). Empiricists form lines of thought. First, they develop accounts of how experience provides the information that sensibleists cite, insofar as we have it in the first place. (Empiricists will at times opt for skepticism as an alternative to rationalism if experience cannot provide the concepts or knowledge the rationalists cite, thus we dont have them.) Second, empiricists attack the rationalists accounts of how reason is a source of concepts or knowledge (http//plato.s tanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/).In order to be a rationalist you need to adopt one of three claims. The first one isThe Intuition/Deduction Thesis Some propositions in a particular subject area, S, are knowable by us by intuition alone still others are knowable by being deduced from intuited propositions The second thesis associated with rationalism is the Innate friendship thesis. The Innate Knowledge Thesis We have knowledge of some truths in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature. The third important thesis of rationalism is the Innate Concept thesis. The Innate Concept Thesis We have some of the concepts we employ in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature (http//plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ )In this same context, Descartes would have offered a brief description of his own experience with the proper approach to knowledge. Begin by renouncing any tactile sensation that can be doubted, including especi ally the testimony of the senses then use the perfect certainty of ones own existence, which survives this doubt, as the foundation for a demonstration of the providential reliability of ones faculties generally. Significant knowledge of the world, Descartes supposed, can be achieved only by following this epistemological method, the rationalism involved in relying on a mathematical prototype and eliminating the distraction of sensory information in order to pursue the demonstrations of pure reason. Later sections of the Discourse (along with the supplementary scientific essays with which it was published) trace some of the more material consequences of following the Cartesian method in philosophy. His entirely mechanistic inclinations would consistently emerge clearly in these sections, with frequent reminders of the success of physical explanations of complex phenomena. Non- adult male animals, indoors Descartess view, are complex organic machines, all of whose actions can be fully explained without any reference to the operation of mind in thinking. In fact, Descartes declared, most of human behavior, like that of animals, is susceptible to simple mechanistic explanation. Cleverly designed automata could successfully mimic nearly all of what we do. Thus, Descartes argued, it is only the general ability to adapt to astray varying circumstances-and, in particular, the capacity to respond creatively in the use of language-that provides a sure test for the presence of an immaterial