Rationalism (Plato, Descartes, Spinoza); Empiricism (Locke, Berkeley, Hume); Transcendentalism (Kant); Intuitionism (Bergsonl)

Introduction (CHAPTER)
Intro: (Source of knowledge, it’s generation & process)
How we know, what we know! Basic problems of human life and their solution by answering with the approaches of the following approaches:
1-Rationalist (reason)
2-Empricist (experience)
PQ
QR
Therefore, PQ

III. Epistemology:
1. Introduction
Term: Greek word; “episteme”-knowledge & “logos”-study. Thus, “study of knowledge”
Study of knowledge & justified belief. It has 2 no of tasks:

i-Nature of knowledge, what we shall know?
ii-Limitation of knowledge, how much do we know?
Skepticism: an attitude of doubting that claims or statements are true or that something will happen.
Intuition: the ability to know something by using your feelings rather than considering the facts.
Empiricism: the use of experiments or experience as the basis for your ideas; the belief in these methods
Additional Epistemological Issues
 Virtue Epistemology
 Naturalistic Epistemology
 Religious Epistemology (Onto+Cosmo+logical issues) Though, evidentialists do not believe in the existence of God
 Moral Epistemology
 Social & Feminist Epistemology


1. Epistemology:
 Epistemologists focus on factual, proportional knowledge (2+2=4). Contrary, 2+2=7, killing people for fun etc
 Exploring more details about knowledge
 Thus it is, “what we can know about the knowledge itself”

2. Types of Knowledge
a-LOGICAL
A>B>C then C<A

b-SEMANTIC
Bachelor means un-married, & then is new born baby is unmarred?
Thus, dictionary defines the meaning of Bachelor word.

c-SYSTEMIC
Scientific, Mathematics knowledge
2+2=4, triangle=180

d-EMPIRICAL
Knowledge through 5 senses by (JTB) Justified True Belief


It is the nature of proportional knowledge:
Belief (about sth, salary increases, etc
Truth (changeable
Justification (might be false some times

However, some times, matters and coincidence makes the true knowledge as false:

The Gettier Problem (JTB) 1963
Publish an article in 1963 for epistemological problem about the (JTB) Justified True Belief
11:56 pm night
11:56 noon, though justified but false due to matter of luck

Rationalism (Plato, Descartes, Spinoza);
 In Epistemology, rationalism is the view that “regards reason as the chief source of knowledge”

 Thus, the practice or principle of basing opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response.

 Rationalism is based upon, reason, logic, theory of justification & deductive (scientific) methods.

 There has been rift between rationalism & Empirical approaches

Though one can be rational without following thesis.
Theses of rationalism
The intuition/deductive method: By mixing both things we increased our knowledge by our senses. (German philo: Leibniz)

The innate (inborn) knowledge thesis: We know everything but come to know when things are appeared & experienced. Thus, our knowledge is increased.

The innate concept thesis: we get knowledge due the natural rationalization

Plato’s rationalism (427-347 BCE)
 Was rationalist.
 Work: Meno & the Republic
 Taught the theory of forms/ideas, sense by rational approach. He believed in reason not. “let no one ignorant of geometry enter” written on the door of his academy.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
 Was modern rationalist, influenced by Plato
 Views: only by reason knowledge of eternal universe & (deductive) mathematics can be learnt. Though, physics knowledge can be learnt by experience. And it is all done by the senses of a human.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
 Was modern rationalist, influenced by Descartes & Thomas Hobbes.
 Is famous for his work in ethics. He was of view like mysticism that everything is God (wehdatul Shahud)
 Views: only by reason knowledge of eternal (exiting forever) universe & (deductive) mathematics can be learnt. Though, physics knowledge can be learnt by experience. And it is all done by the senses of a human.
 Only one can himself answer to know whether God exists or not.
 His approach was deductive.
 Albert Einstein was influenced by him.

Empiricism (Locke, Berkeley, Hume);

Empirical
Empiricism is the position that all knowledge derives from the five senses,
Is a theory “knowledge is based on experience”.
For the empiricists, experience is the primary source of our knowledge and the proper test of truth is external
Our ideas are true only if they relate to our findings of the external world. They believe the mind is a blank slate, called "tabula rosa"by Greek.
Finally, empirical knowledge is inductive in character, starting with a conclusion and attempting to prove it by premises. The premises may be true and the conclusion still false though.

Tabula Rasa
Followed by Aristotle, Muslim Philosopher-Ibn-e-Sina,

John Locke (1632-1704) as an Empiricist
Lock says that knowledge is “nothing but the perception of the connection of and agreement or disagreement and repugnancy objectionable of any of our ideas.”
Thus, we learn by sensation and reflection by not by innate. Because a newborn baby is Tabula Rasa.
New born baby is not learnt, its mind is Tabula Rasa (blank paper) & environment teaches it. Thus, the learning process is moving on till the death by the “sensation”. He was of the view that senses play vital role in getting knowledge.

Primary quality learning (inborn)
resemble the object that produced them and include solidity, extension, figure, motion, rest, and number.
Sensation production by innate

Secondary quality learning (external)
resemble the object that produced them and include solidity, extension, figure, motion, rest, and number.
Environment/external response produces secondary learning
Knowledge
We know by body & respond by the soul with our senses
Material that we perceive is not reality
Moral ideas come from outside

George Barkley (1685-1753) as an Empiricist
 Was an empiricist like Hume & Lock
 He said matter does not exist & only mind & spirit exist. Physical entities are merely “ideas” generated by human.
 He attacked Locke's theories of abstractions. That he was wrong.

Hume (1711-76) as an Empiricist
 Was Scottish Philosopher
 David Hume agreed with his predecessors, Locke and Berekely, but carried their ideas farther.

 all knowledge derives from experience (his term for the way that the mind is "impressed" by external sensations).

 He said impressions are all the sensations, passions, and emotions that we experience.

 We know nothing of an external world and so we cannot know the origin of our impressions. We can only know the ideas and impressions. We believe in an external world but cannot justify these beliefs since no logical explanation can be given. For this reason metaphysics is impossible. Hume says it comes from custom or habit. By always observing B follow from A, we, by habit, assume this conjunction.

 Hume proposes is that human beings learn through association and that “truth springs from an argument among friends (Myers, 2004).

 As an empiricist, then, his method is "inductive' instead of "deductive," and he favored "a posteriori" truths over "a priori" ones. Hume, like all true empiricists, questions the role of reason in deriving ultimate principles. For Hume, all principles must be based on experience, or else they are illegitimate. This hard-nosed approach makes him appealing to guys like Popper, Russell, Quine, and the analytic naturalists of the 20th Century.

 He concludes that since a large part of our study of matters of fact depend on causal relations, our knowledge must be regarded as both limited and uncertain. Hume branded an extreme form of intellectual skepticism. We cannot be sure of the existence of self, an external world, or the law of cause and effect.
Human’s knowledge is divided into 2 categories (all done by sensation)
1-Retional Ideas (ringing phone-knowledge
2-Matter of Fact (mathematics-factual knowledge
All knowledge derived from senses

Transcendentalism (Kant);
Transcendentional :beyond the limits of human knowledge, experience or reason, especially in a religious or spiritual way
 Transcendentalism is a philosophy that says that our knowledge of reality comes from an analysis of our own thought processes, rather than from scientific evidence.
 According to the transcendentalist, if God exists, He can be found through human intuition. the ability to know something by using your feelings rather than considering the facts
 Transcendentalism is most commonly associated with a philosophical/religious view developed in the mid-1800s by a group of mainly Unitarian (in Christian: don’t believe in trinity of god) and agnosticintellectuals in New England, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
 Basically, distinction between the terms "transcendent" and "transcendental" was made by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant reserved the term "transcendent" for entities such as God and soul which are said to be beyond human experience and unknowable. The term "transcendental" Kant reserved to signify prior thought forms: the innate principles which gives the mind the ability to formulate its perceptions and make experience intelligible.
 The term "transcendental philosophy" Kant applied to the study of the pure mind. This led to the term "transcendentalism" being applied almost exclusively to doctrines of metaphysical idealismtranscendentalism is a philosophical movement that began in the 1830's.
 Truth can’t be found through observation alone. An individual with his inner light can found the truth that allows to reach the truth.
 Transcendentalists placed a lot of emphasis on self-reliance, self-discipline, and self-culture.
 The most famous transcendentalists are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and Kant.