In our journey into epistemology we now proceed to the sixteenth and seventeenth century philosophers, Rene Descartes and John Locke. Rationalism is the school of thought that gives human reasoning the primary role in knowing. A key proponent of Rationalism, Descartes was well known for the quote, “Cogito, ergo sum —I think, therefore I am”. Empiricism, in contrast, valued experience. Locke, a strong advocate of Empiricism, gave rise to the concept of the mind being a “tabula rasa” (blank slate / white paper) upon which we add and write our ideas based on experiences and reflections upon that experience. To further explore these philosophers I considered the question of if we do not use our senses, but only our intellect, how can we acquire new knowledge?
If we first look to answering this question from the empiricism perspective of Aristotle and Locke, the answer would be a simple ‘it can not be done.’ Both Aristotle and Locke contended that one can acquire new knowledge only through the senses and accumulating those experiences to form knowledge and skill. For them, knowledge is inductive by nature. Aristotle, who laid the foundation for the scientific method, argued that we use our sensory perception to take in particulars and then use reasoning powers to understand what our senses perceived. Locke argued that the only knowledge humans can have is based on experience (“a posteriori”). In Book I of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he argues against innate knowledge and the Cartesian split between mind and body—beliefs held strongly by the rationalist philosophers. In Book II, Locke then presents his theory of knowledge being one where all knowledge is acquired through either our senses or from reflecting on our experiences in the physical world. Interestingly, Locke still supports the Cartesian Dualism of the mind/body split—even though the mind gathers data from the sensory world, Locke argues that knowledge is an intellectual event still in a world separate from the physical one.
In answering the question of how we can acquire new knowledge, Plato and Descartes on the other hand are proponents of knowledge being acquired through the intellect alone—for they both believed that we are born with innate “a priori” knowledge and can deduce truths through mental reasoning. Proponents of rationalist philosophy, they believed that the intellect could be use to acquire knowledge about everything there is to know—that one merely needs to apply adequate intellectual reflection and study to a subject in order to deduce the truth. Plato argued that ideas are perfect, eternal, and found in the soul and that knowledge is innate and needs only be brought forth. Descartes argued that reason alone determines knowledge and this can be done independently of the senses. He further contends that since conscious sense experience can be the cause of illusions, therefore all sense experience should be doubted. Rather, the thinking mind can operate under its own rules of logic to come to conclusions about that “other world”—the physical world.
Contrasting Descartes and Locke also had me wondering, how one can acquire knowledge without at least one sense? Perhaps some knowledge is indeed innate and does not require the senses, while gaining other types of knowledge does require the senses. Yet again, if one has none of the five senses, how can knowledge be acquired without the “input” senses of sight, sound, taste, and touch? Similarly, how can knowledge then be articulated (output) without hearing and the ability to either speak or write, or some other method to understand language and communicate (such as Helen Keller who used her sense of touch)? Ah, but perhaps these questions and more is why there has been a move away from the either-or arguments that characterized early epistemology to the newer more holistic ideas of epistemology. Further study will reveal more insights.
-Robin
References:
Aristotle. (1993). Posterior analytics (J. Barnes, Trans.). London: Clarendon Press. (Original work published 350 BC)
Descartes, R. (1644). Principles of philosophy. Retrieved September 3, 2007 from http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/principles/index.htm
Locke, J. (1689). In Essay concerning human understanding. Retrieved September 3, 2007 from http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/locke_understanding.html
Plato. (1968). Republic (B. Jowett, Trans.). Public Domain. (Original work published 360 BC)
Copyright Robin Donnan 2007. All Rights Reserved.
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