The

Rationalists

ALMONTE, Ma. ROSEBIE

ALMONTE, MARY ANGEL
POBLETE, NATHALIE
Rationalism is the philosophical view that knowledge is acquired
through reason, without the aid of the senses. Mathematical
knowledge is the best example of this, since through rational
thought we can plumb the depths of numerical relations, construct
proofs, and deduce ever more complex mathematical concepts.
Advocates of this position were largely from the continental
European countries of France, the Netherlands, and Germany, hence
this new breed of rationalism is often called “Continental
Rationalism.” Rationalists were identified as people who did not
follow authority, but reason, in their lives and decision making.
Sources of knowledge

Innate Ideas ( ideas that we have at birth and in

some ways, shape our personality)

Intuitions ( intellectually envisioning a proposition as

true for things like the laws of logic or Math )

Deduction ( means applying principles to draw

conclusions )
Descartes was attracted to the notion of a scientific method
of investigation, which when followed would enable him to
make new discoveries and push the boundaries of knowledge.
Thus he devised his own method, the starting point of which is
to eliminate all former opinions and establish knowledge
afresh only on solid foundations. According to Descartes, the
knowledge that we typically attain through education and life
experience is an unsystematic mixture of truths and
falsehoods, and it is often impossible for us to easily
distinguish between the two.
Systematic Doubt
1st step: Clear away the unreliable clutter of his previous belief
system.
2nd step: The reliability of my senses is undermined when I
consider the possibility of whether or not I’m dreaming. I look at
the ball in front of me and my senses tell me that it exists. But, if
I’m dreaming, then this experience is completely unreliable
3rd step: Doubting the senses is one of Descartes’s claims to
fame: what if God, or some evil genius, is deceiving me about
everything, including the existence of the three-dimensional
world?
4th step: To prove that he can have confidence in a special truth-
detecting mental ability that God has given him.
Spirit-Body Dualism
Once Descartes knows that a three-dimensional physical
world exists, he continues by arguing that human beings
are constructed of both a physical body and a spirit-
mind, a position called spirit-body dualism. The pineal
gland, then is the master switchboard that conveys
information back and forth between my physical body
and spirit-mind.
Malebranche’s philosophy is driven by the problem with
spirit-body dualism. The central issue is that our minds
are non-three-dimensional spirit, and our bodies are
three-dimensional matter; it is an exceedingly difficult
task to move information from one realm to the other.
Descartes believed that his pineal gland theory solved the
problem. Malebranche, though, offers a radically different
solution: God performs the task by shuttling information
back and forth between our spirit-minds and physical
bodies. His theory comes in two parts: God giving our
minds sensory information, and God initiating bodily
movement.
Bodily Movement: God causing all Physical
Motion
The second part of Malebranche’s theory involves
how God gets data from our minds in the spirit
realm and converts that into motion in our
physical bodies.
God and Evil
A final influential component of Malebranche’s
philosophy is his explanation of the problem of evil, that
is, why an all good God would create a world with such
imperfection and suffering. The world as it currently
stands is far from perfect, and its imperfections have
resulted in untold human misery. The suffering that we
experience has two main sources: human-made causes
and natural causes. According to Malebranche human-
made suffering, such as crime and war, is solely the result
of human free choice, and we have no one to blame for
that but ourselves.
Spinoza believed that geometry offered the best
approach to systematically proving things, insofar
as it begins with basic definitions and axioms,
then deduces more complex propositions from
these.
God as Nature: Substance Monism
In a nutshell, Spinoza holds the pantheistic view that God is identical to nature as a
whole, and human beings are just little pieces of God. While pantheism is a
hallmark of Eastern philosophy, it is a view of God that has largely been rejected by
Western philosophers, two notable exceptions being the ancient Greek
philosophers Parmenides and Plotinus. The traditional monotheistic conception of
God is that he is an all powerful being that created the universe, but stands apart
from everything he creates: the universe is not a piece of God himself. This
traditional monotheistic position—sometimes called the transcendent view of God
—is completely at odds with the pantheistic position that the entire universe is
God. Human beings are mini-features of God, and exemplify God’s two attributes of
consciousness and three-dimensionality. As little pieces of God, our minds and
bodies perform in perfect synchronization with each other, just as God’s major
attributes of consciousness and three-dimensionality are perfectly coordinated
with each other.
Free Speech
Spinoza was a major advocate of free speech, and he had personal
reasons for being so. Well aware of the controversial nature of his
pantheistic view of God-as-nature, he knew that his views could be
published during his life only if there was a political climate of
tolerance towards free speech. He thus composed his Theologico-
Politcal Treatise, containing perhaps the staunchest defense of
free speech in its day, hoping it would help foster an environment
of toleration. His general position is that governments should
permit people to freely express their opinions, so long as those
opinions do not lead to subversive and harmful actions. In fact, he
argues, a society is more likely to rebel when its government
restricts people to holding only a narrow and irrational set of
beliefs.
Six specific claims in defense of free speech
1. It is impossible to deprive men of the liberty of saying what they think.
2. Free speech can be granted for everyone without injuring governmental
authority, so long as people don’t act contrary to the existing laws.
3. Free speech can be exercised without disrupting public peace, and any minor
inconvenience that it creates can easily be remedied.
4. People can exercise free speech without compromising their loyalty to the
government.
5. Laws are entirely useless when they aim to restrict the expression of purely
speculative ideas.
6. Free speech is in fact necessary for the preservation of public peace, since
death in the name of freedom is considered a glory.
Leibniz in developing his system returns to a pair of
issues that preoccupied ancient Greek philosophers
2000 years earlier: whether there is any vacuum of
empty space, and whether matter is infinitely divisible.
Atomists argued that there is indeed empty space, and
matter is not infinitely divisible. The tiniest particles of
matter, atoms, cannot be divided into anything smaller,
and they exist within a vacuum of empty space.
Perception, Appetite, and Mirroring in Monads
Ability of perception: monads have the ability to perceive what
other monads are doing around them.
Second ability of monads is appetite. When perceiving what
other monads are like around them, they form a desire to change
and shape themselves to fit into the crowd.
Third ability of monads is to mirror the entire universe. Each
monad has embedded within it the master plan of everything
that takes place in the universe.
Dominant Monad Souls and Parallalism

According to Leibniz, the monads that form living things

like plants and animals operate slightly differently than
those that form non-living things like rocks. Like
Descartes and the other rationalists, Leibniz is a spirit-
body dualist: human beings are composed of both a
physical body and a non-physical soul. For Leibniz, my
nonphysical soul is the dominant monad within me that
gives me sentience and rationality; my physical body, by
contrast, is composed of non-dominant monads, which
band together under the direction of my dominant
monad soul.
As a spirit-body dualist, Leibniz faces the same problem
as did the other rationalists. That is, since our minds are
non-three-dimensional spirit, and our bodies are three-
dimensional matter, how does sensory information move
back and forth between the spirit and physical realms?
Leibniz solves the problem with his own unique version
of parallelism. Parallelism is the theory that a person’s
physical body and spirit-mind exist in completely separate
realms, but events in each realm magically unfold in
perfect synchronization with each other. Thus, there is no
need for my physical body and spirit-mind to directly
communicate and interact with each other.