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The word philosophy comes from the Greek, and a literal translation is the love of

wisdom, but philosophy goes much further than just studying wisdom and the investigation

and contemplation of being and existence, to include the principles underlying any sphere of

knowledge using reason and the intellect. As will be illustrated, both reason and empiricism

use two different approaches to how we acquire knowledge.

Much of the history of Western philosophy has been about the distinction between reason

(rationality) and experiences and how we gain knowledge from the world.

Historically, their use can be traced back to ancient Greece and Plato and Aristotle, who

gave many theoretical terminologies and laid the original groundwork. But the debate has

been part of philosophy for a long time, with both camps at either ends of the spectrum of

their approach to how philosophy is practised.

The work of Plato and Aristotle can be seen as the root of movements in philosophy called

Platonism and Aristotelianism. , which will be illustrated throughout with acceptable terms

and concepts about the use of reason or experience and to what approach is taken, either

relying on the intellect or on the senses.

Controversially, Plato assigned the idea of innatism, that is , human beings having pre-

existing knowledge within them. Plato argued that mathematical truths such as geometry

were innate and one does not need to rely on the senses to understand them. He also argued

that such a process of recollection of innate ideas was called anamnesis and that we are all

born with some knowledge and through the process of recollection could use reason over the

senses to build a picture of the world. Platos Meno is a dialogue between a slave boy and

Socrates in which the former is instructed to recollect mathematical truths. The point Plato

was making was that such truths are innate. However he goes on to suggest that other truths

and knowledge maybe innate. What he did was open up the seeds of doubt which has

entrenched philosophy in its long history.

His theory of forms extends to ideas such as beauty, justice and charity. The point is

that these ideal ideas are placed before birth and that through life we merely recollect these

concepts. Platos ideas have influenced Western thought and no doubt ignited and fuelled the

rationality belief in innatism.

In contrast to Plato was Aristotle, who was his pupil. He believed that these forms were out

there and he profoundly disagreed with Plato, in that he denies that the forms can exist

independently of particulars. What we see is a fusion of form and matter. For Aristotle,

knowledge of the world was right here in the world we see around us. What is crucial to this

time period are the particulars of philosophy were established. What will be illustrated is the

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development of the two opposing views of philosophical method ie use of rationality and

empiricism. This background knowledge is essential to show the emergence of such

concepts as reason and empiricism.

Aristotle, unlike Plato, emphasised the importance of empirical observation. It was he who

classified philosophy into headings which are familiar, such as metaphysics and

epistemology. Aristotle laid the foundations of empiricism and emphasis on the senses. These

two contrasting camps can be illustrated throughout with particular individuals writing

philosophical tracts allied to one or the other approach. Aristotles theories remained

dominant right up to the seventeenth century, notably due to the churchs role in the

dissemination of knowledge. Platos ideas remained dominant also, but focussed on innate

ideas and such thinking inspired its main modern philosopher, Rene Descartes in the

seventeenth century. His ideas of innatism will be illustrated, and contrasted with the British

school of empiricism which arrived later in the seventeenth century, and which is associated

with Locke, Berkeley and Hume.

Descartes idea of philosophy was based on reason, or rather the unaided ability to form

concepts (pure reason). Modern rationalism begins with Descartes.

Advances in science in Europe and a great awakening of art and aesthetics during the

renaissance led many away from the church and to promote individualism. From this time,

Descartes emerged (along with Leibniz and Spinoza). They believed that we can best

understand the world through logic and reasoning, this new emphasis on reason and

experiments was a shift away from tradition and the authority of the church. This new

optimism may have been seen to undermine church authority but it led to new approaches

with their roots in ancient Greece, with Plato and Aristotle. Aristotles idea of prior and

posterior knowledge led to the development of a priori knowledge, that is knowledge that is

independent of experience., without the need to experience it inductively (amassing instances

of this in nature). Knowledge that comes through the senses and through experience is known

only a posteriori (posterior to) experience of the event. These terms were developed by Kant

in the eighteenth century, but can be applied to works retrospectively. For example,

rationalism emphasises a priori knowledge and some of the best examples are set through the

work of Descartes. David Hume however was an empiricist in the tradition of Locke, with its

contrasting focus on a posteriori evidence through the senses. Rationalism is mainly a

continental tradition with its main proponents in France, Germany and Greece. Empiricism is

almost exclusively Anglo-American, with its supported in the British tradition of the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

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Descartes (1596-1650) believed that human reason has great powers of deduction and that

knowledge of the world can be innate. As an example, taking Platos ideas into consideration,

he believed that mathematics was an ideal case as a paradigm for knowledge. In deductive

logic, we start with basic truths, then build on these to discover other truths. Most of the great

rationalists were mathematicians and believed that using deductive reasoning we can discover

things about the world.

Isaac Newton may be seen as a candidate for the use of the powers of reasoning, deductively

solving the secrets of the universe without actually experiencing them. He published his

Principia Mathematica, setting out his theory of gravity in 1687.

What Descartes introduced was a method of doubt. He doubted the senses, because he

believed that they can be fooled. His Meditations was an attempt to place knowledge on a

firm foundation and to show that God exists and to prove that we have a soul independent of

our bodies, that exists immaterially.

His method of doubt enabled him to question everything and to apply doubt as a filter.

Beliefs which passed through the filter were retained and those that failed, were rejected.

Descartes believed that his beliefs were based on innatism, that is that such facts can be

brought out from within the mind of the individual. He regarded the senses as unreasonable,

as they often deceive. As an illustration. He argued that a stick immersed in water looks

different from usual, but that our previous recollections of sticks can recorrect this, as it is

relying on rational logic. He also believed that through doubt and his conception of dreaming,

we cannot tell whether what we experience is merely a dream or not. This method of

questioning whether one is dreaming is Descartes method of doubting the senses and his

dreaming hypothesis lays emphasis on the question of doubt. This uniquely Cartesian

concept rests on the foundations that even though we may be dreaming there must still be

some fundamental truths that exist. He believed that mathematical truths were immune to the

dreaming hypothesis and concepts such as space and time are unaffected by dreams. His

thesis seemed to be a provision for doubting empiricism, which will be discussed shortly. His

proof of reason over the senses is also illustrated by the example of wax. The wax is solid,

has form, its colour is apparent, but if it is placed near a fire, it melts its shape is changed and

it becomes something else. What he is getting at is that the senses are tricked all five of them,

but the wax still remains. He emphasised that it is the mind and the use of reason that

comprehends the was, and it is intuition of the mind. Our knowledge of it goes beyond what

can be sensed by it and that it is rationality rather than sense perception. He doubts

everything in order to reacquaint himself with thins that he believed cannot be doubted.

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Another example from his Meditations is when he doubts the senses again. For what can be

sensed can be deceived. An example of a man in a high tower. He is small, far away but our

perception of man is that he is not small, every object that is perceived by the senses is some

distance from our eyes. Pain is a good example too. For when a man loses a limb by

amputation, he still feels pain where his leg used to be. What is being illustrated is that even

internal senses can be doubted. The argument for rationalism is based on the belief that we

can be deceived. But even in this deception Descartes believed that he still thinks, and

therefore he exists. The cogito ergo sum phrase, from the Latin, has become famous in

philosophy. I am thinking therefore I exist (in some capacity). It is here when Descartes has

stripped his world, his body and his senses that in the cogito he exists, when conceived of it

in his mind. And it is here that needs an explanation of what truths are. A necessary truth is

one that could not be otherwise, in all possible worlds. For example, all boys are male, could

not be otherwise. Contingent truths are true, but may have been otherwise, for example all

boys are naughty. This may or may not be true, but we would have to find out how the

majority of boys behave. The same is with analytic and synthetic propositions. It is analytical

if the proposition dose not give anymore information than is already contained in the terms

involved. All bachelors are unmarried is analytically true, but all bachelors are unhappy is

a synthetic truth/ proposition. It synthesises different concepts that are brought together that

we would need to investigate through experience. It is this opposition of reasoning versus

experience that is the main thread running through much of Western philosophy. Analytical

statements, if true, are gathered a priori whilst contingent/ synthetic statements are a

posteriori. One of the main tasks of rationalists was to prove that synthetic statements could

exist independent of experience and that these could be discovered by non-empirical means.

The other side of the argument which will be considered is the empirical task of proving that

a priori facts eg maths and geometry are in fact analytic.

In history it is often put that rationalism is put opposite to the works of empiricism

(particularly Lock, Berkeley and Hume). Descartes did not oppose all sense experience, but

merely regarded that the senses can be fooled.

Now to turn to David Hume (1711-1776), who was an empiricist and philosopher who

believed that all sense experience is the basis for ideas. Taking up the mantle from Locke,

Hume argued that the mind is a blank slate and that a posteriori truths are important in

creating knowledge. His empirical approach rejected the idea of innatism and promoted the

natural sciences as a basis for knowledge. Taking his opposite view from Aristotle, who

studied the natural world, he believed in observation and inductive reasoning. Hume argued

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that our senses were the only way to provide us with knowledge about the world and set the

argument as opposite to rationalism and innatism. They merely disagreed on the method, as

they understood that knowledge was attainable, and agreed on the concept of

foundationalism. This concept means there has to be certain truths on which to have a fr=irm

basis.

Humes philosophy (early modern, 1600-1800) was set when there was a rise in early

science. Hume started by discussing the idead of concepts. He illustrated that there was two

fundamental forms of empiricism about knowledge and concepts. The Empiricist claims that

all knowledge of the world is gathered via the senses. The five senses, taste, touch, hearing,

vision and smell (and Humes sixth, feeling) are the only way for us to possess the real world

knowledge through our observation. He further theorized that concepts can be divided into

impressions and ideas. The impressions are garnered from the observation of the world by

our senses and ideas are a less vivid copy of our impressions. Hume calls concepts ideas.

These ideas of things are garnered via experience, being copied from impressions of the

world around us. He distinguished between simple and complex ideas. Red, for instance, is a

simple concept, whereas a table is a combination of simple ideas to make it more complex.