In this paper I will attempt to give an understanding of both rationalism and empiricism, show the ideas and contributions each of the men made to their respective schools, and hopefully give my personal reasoning why one is more true than the other. Rationalism was developed by several important philosophers all around the 17th century. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz are all given credit for developing rationalism. Rationalism is the idea that reason and logic are the basis of knowledge. It says that knowledge is innate, and that it cannot come from sources such as the senses.
In this case, the cause would be social conditioning – Baroch Spinoza said that although we may think that we are free, we are not, we are merely aware of our actions. “In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to will this or that by a cause, which has been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on until infinity.” This emphasizes the fact that we are contingent beings, and that although we feel that we have options in life, the choices that we make are in the end determined my one single factor, which started a chain reaction creating the world we live in today. The surrounding and environment we are brought up into and therefore the upbringing and social conditioning we receive it determined. Our actions are due to how
For Descartes body and mind were substances, but with utterly different basic natures. According to him, body is extended and unthinking while the mind is thinking and un-extended. He rejected the Aristotelian concept of the body, which is, with its form-matter and actuality-potentiality dimensions, an essentially biological concept of matter. Problem of conceptualizing the mind The mind can be conceptualized from two broad perspectives, viz: a. With reference to internal connections between mental events, and b.
They reject both innate and universal intelligence as a belief. They believe other factors upset the equilibrium of the body and so offer a wider scope of practice. This has earned them the nickname ‘mixers’ (Coulter I, 1999). Overarching these concepts are methods of reasoning, which are used to base an argument or as a method for forming conclusions. History Vitalism originated with Socrates and Hippocrates.
Contents Introduction 3 The Ancients 4 The Athenian Tiad 4 Medieval and Renaissance Thought 5 The Hellenistic Philosophy of determinism and free will 5 Renaissance 7 Modern Thought 8 Conclusion 9 Introduction Determinism and free will are topics of great debate among psychologists and philosophers of the present age. The determinist school of thought states that the causes of a behavior are pre-determined and thus predictable. Whereas the idea of free will proposes that humans have choice and freedom in determining their behavior. For example a person would be free to decide whether he is going to act nicely or behave rudely with someone, and it is not determined by previous events or factors. The two beliefs are, however,
World views Materialism vs. Dualism Materialist such as Chris Frith believe that everything is composed of material, so this would mean they believe that the mind and the body are one (brain=mind).On the other hand, dualist such as Plato and Aristotle believe in the existence of a soul (mind) which is present in a different world one that is separate from the physical one. I believe that the materialists are right because there are too many scientific facts that show us how dualism is wrong. We can see that the laws of physic and other technologies show us the flaws of dualism through materialism. We have all been thought in high school the law of conservation of energy by Newton. This law states that in a closed system (our universe) energy can neither be created or destroyed it can only be transformed into another form.
According to him, our perceptions are the contents of our consciousness and our perceptions falls into classes, namely: Impressions and Ideas. Hume differentiates Impressions from Ideas unlike his predecessors Descartes and Locke, saying that impressions are our original experiences. It may be either sensations or the immediate and original contents of our psychological states while Ideas are copies of the original experience, but differs from impressions in the degree of force or liveliness. For
Paine’s main thesis discussed in the writing was his open mindedness for others to accept other religions and not blindly follow other people with that they believe. According to Paine, people should be open minded and make their own way of their beliefs. Someone should never believe in a religion that they do not truly understand. He had written the book so others could see what others religions can bring to our civilization and acceptance of others perspective of life. Throughout the writing, Thomas Paine has many contradictions of his thoughts.
In the pursuit of undeniable knowledge and justifiable belief, mankind turns to epistemology. Through this pursuit, man turns to one of the following divisions: empiricism, rationalism, or intuitionism. To focus on justification, coherentism and foundationalism also come into play. Epistemology’s divisions are all deemed rational, as a man’s truth relies on his perception of life. Good and evil are not universal beliefs due to the varying perceptions of all people.
Is Hume’s rejection of abstract ideas sound, and is his theory of concepts adequate? The notion of abstract ideas has been used by many philosophers, most notably Locke, to explain concepts/thoughts with general content, i.e. being about a class or set of objects. For example, our grasp of the word “triangle” as being about all triangles can be thought to rely on an abstract idea of triangles. An adequate account of concepts is especially important (and challenging) for Empiricist philosophers (such as Locke, Berkeley and Hume), as they cannot rely on a Rationalist-style belief in ethereal, inbuilt intellectual content .