Rationalism - view that knowledge can be obtained by relying on reason without the aid of

senses. (facts, math and law based view)

Empiricism - view that knowledge can be attained only through sense experience. (sight,
hearing, smell and other senses)

1. When I know something is true it is based on facts and real evidence. You can only know
if something is true if there are facts behind it. Yes.
2. All of my knowledge depends on trusting others. No, others can easily lie. All of it.
3. Water is a liquid. I touched it.

RATIONALISM, DESCARTES, AND INNATE IDEAS

Rationalism - view that knowledge can be obtained by relying on reason without the aid of
senses. (facts, math and law based view)

● A PRIORI
○ Knowledge that you have before you experience it or use your senses to know it.
○ Rational knowledge does not depend on sense experience, rationalists call it a
priori.
● Rene Descartes
○ Rationalist
○ Lived in a time where reality and truth were constantly changing
○ Asked himself: “What do we really know to be true?”
○ Concluded that knowledge is grasped by the mind, not by the senses.
○ Knowledge is a PRIORI
○ Method of Doubt : where you doubt everything, nothing is true.
○ Only clear and distinct ideas provide true genuine knowledge
○ Descartes came up with 3 ideas to prove God exists
■ 1. An imperfect creature like him could not make up the idea of a perfect
God.
■ 2. The source of this idea must be something perfect.
■ 3. Therefore, this perfect being must be God.
● Innate Ideas
○ Plato believed that there are innate ideas, fully developed but hidden in our minds
at birth. We become aware of these ideas as we get older.

Empiricism: John Locke George Berkeley and David Hume

Empiricism - view that knowledge can be attained only through sense experience. (sight,
hearing, smell and other senses)
● Posteriori
○ Knowledge that you can verify through experience and reasoning
● JOHN LOCKE
○ Challenged innate ideas
○ Deemed it nonsensical
○ Not one idea in the world exists that everyone has
○ Mind is a blank slate
■ That is filled by experience
○ Knowledge is SUBJECTIVE: the nature and existence of every object depends
solely on someone's subjective awareness of it.
○ Knowledge is really our ideas of things
■ How do we come up with these ideas?
■ Primary Qualities: qualities that are inherent in an object, size, weight,
shape.
■ Secondary Qualities: qualities that we impose on an object like color,
smell, texture.
○ These qualities allow us to understand the world
○ Mind is like a camera taking photographs and through these pictures we can come
to know the world around us.
● PROBLEM WITH LOCKE'S THEORY
○ Our senses arent perfect and receivers of information and it is unlikely your
senses are the same as others
● GEORGE BERKELEY
○ Believed that the primary and secondary qualities are subjective
○ Believed esse est percipi to be is to be perceived
○ MInds and ideas are not dependent on their existence because they are the
perceivers.
○ Berkeley is a subjectivist and believed that nothing can be real unless it is
perceived.
○ SOLIPSISM: the position that only the person exists and that everything else is
just creation of subjective consciousness.
○ Berkeley is NOT A SOLIPSISTIC as GOD perceives everything.
○ Believed that there are only a sense experience of objects, and the experience that
is the same as other objects are referred to as the same name such as an “apple”
○ COmposed of a collection of ideas are recurring patterns
○ This explains why language is important in interpreting sense data
○ LAnguage interprets what the object is and the idea repeats and becomes a
pattern. That pattern becomes what we know
● DAVID HUME
○ Scottish took Locke’s Empiricism to a whole new level
○ Claimed the mind is made up of two types of perceptions
■ 1. Impressions: Lively perceptions; what we hear, see, feel, hate, desire,
etc.
■ 2. Ideas: what remains in our brain after the impressions fade; often
memories or vague notions.
○ Can be no idea without an impression, but not every idea is based on a particular
impression. Example, is a golden mountain.
○ PROBLEM: does external reality even exist? We can have an impression of
something - a book in front of us. And we may have an idea about the same thing-
when we close our eyes it is there in our mind. But once the impression
disappears there is no way of knowing if the book still exists.
○ Reality does not exist to him because there is no way to prove reality
○ Unike his fellow empiricists and skeptics, Hume does not see God as evidence of
an external reality because to him the existence of God cannot be proven.