Rationalistic philosophers, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,, claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. There are many strengths and weaknesses to this type of philosophy.
Beginning with the strengths, rationalistic philosophy is very advantageous. It allows people to "see" things beyond sensory experience from logical deduction. You don't always necessarily or don't have to use your senses to know something. For example, the statement A<B<C. You can deduce that A<C and you didn't need sensory experience to get to that conclusion. Also, another advantage is that rationalism allows for a clear and systematic way of organizing your beliefs and making justifications/decisions. In the case of empiricism, where everything is based on sense experience,it may not lead you to make the proper decisions. To explain further, let's take the examples of a person deciding to do drugs. I do not have to be empirical and experience the drugs myself to know that they will have a harmful effect on my body. I know that logically if my friend took it, he or she would be harmed. Therefore, since I am human also, the drugs would harm my body.
However, there are negative sides to rationalism. If a person relies completely on reason, that person may stray away from reality. For example, Rene Descartes thought to the point where he thought his body may not be real. His points may have led somewhere but at one point, they weren't pragmatic. Another negative side to rationalism is that you cannot always put it to practical use. Going back to the example with the letters, I may know that A<C, but what can I truly do with knowing it. Don't I have to rely on empiricism to actually do something practical about any conclusion I have ever reached?
Rationalistic philosophers believe that reality is not solely determined by what we can observe. They believe sense experience is relative and changing. These philosophers claim that you need a reason to sort out what is appearance from reality and they deny that sense experience is the only source of knowledge about reality. Rationalistic philosophers believe that ideas like the laws of logic, the concept of justice and the idea of God are already contained deep within the mind and only need to be brought to the level of our awareness. With this type of philosophy strengths and weaknesses arise. A strength of rationalistic philosophy is that it allows us to distinguish things past sensory experience from logical inference. Also rationalistic philosophy oftentimes, unlike empiricism, allows us to make better justifications because it is a clearer/ more efficient way to organize our beliefs. A weakness that arises from rationalistic philosophy is that if we begin to only rely fully on reason and disregard sense experience, as fellow philosopher Fairooz mentioned, we may begin to drift from reality. We may begin to question almost everything and anything up to an extent where as Rene Descartes questioned the existence of his body, if it is truly real or just a vivid impression/ illusion that the physical body is present.
Rationalism is the claim that reason or the intellect is the primary source of our fundamental knowledge about reality. Rationalists claim that reason can give us knowledge apart from experience.
The strengths of rationalism is the ability to have many view the truth of ones concepts beyond its sensory experience. They can arrive at a mathematical truth without having to measure or experiment to know whether a shape is presented as a triangle or circle.
The weaknesses of a rationalist is they may not always gain true knowledge of reality. They may see a strawberry along with other fruits and logically state it is an actual strawberry, whereas it may be a candy designed to look like a strawberry. They are unable to reach the conclusion of the reality without tasting and experimenting to realize the texture and taste was a candy with the familiar strawberry features. Therefore not all knowledge can be gained due to assumptions.
Rationalistic philosophy is the theory that the exercise of reason, rather than experience, authority, or spiritual revelation, provides the primary basis for knowledge. Rationalists believe that all knowledge is "innate", or is there when one is born.
According to Rationalists (such as Descartes), all knowledge must come from the mind. Rationalism is concerned with absolute truths that are universal (such as logic and mathematics), which is one of the strengths of this train of thought. Another strength is exemplified by Fairooz’s example of A<B<C. You can see that A is less than B and B is less than C, and from understanding that you can easily assume that A<C. Such reasoning saves time.
The weakness of Rationalism lies in the fact that it is difficult to apply it to particulars (which are evident in daily life) as they are of an abstract nature. Another weakness of logical, rationalistic thought is that it assumes something based upon reason and not actual experiences nor does it take into account possible x factors; it’s very linear.
Consider this: The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray; no matter how much you plan based upon logical reason, one does not have all the answers and the best thought out plans fall apart. Take Communism for example. On paper, Communism seems like a wonderful form of government with everyone sharing and helping each other, but the creators of Communism didn’t take into consideration the x factor of human nature. Humans are naturally selfish and prideful creatures and sharing is something that has to be conditioned into them. There will always be people who want to be better than the rest, or those who want nothing to do with others. It is for those reasons Communism isn’t a universal form of government.
Rationalism is to accept reason as the authority in all matters human, of human conduct and behavior or any thought A strength of this philosophy is that it allows us to see things apart from our primary senses from logical inference. A weakness of rationalism is the thought is that it assumes something based upon reason and not actual experiences,it fails to explain the workings of human mind and human emotions.
Rationalism is a theory that suggests that reason alone, separate from experience can arrive at basic truth regarding the world. Rationalism relates to innate ideas and also the method of logically deducting truths about the world from "self evident" premises.
Some advantages of rationalism are the belief that there is a reason behind everything. For example, when an object is thrown upward it is guaranteed that the object will come downward. Although we can experience this we do not base our knowledge on this matter solely on experience, however we base it on the law of gravity. Also, rationalism attempts to find the already existing general principles behind each phenomenon. Hence, man did not create these principles and is individualistic of a human’s perception of knowledge. For example, mathematical truths and logical truths are both universals, and therefore are absolute truths. The truth of 2 plus 2 equals 4 and cannot be anything else.
As for the weaknesses, rationalism becomes difficult when applied to particulars which are everywhere in our daily lives, this is because it is of such an abstract nature. Also another weakness is that rationalism does not leave room for other things such as morality, common sense, intuition, etc. therefore it is very unbalanced. Lastly, rationalism does not rely on experience and if one tends to depend too much on the basic principles of rationalism they will lose their sense of reality. After all, it is our own experience that gives us a “feel” for things and the evidence we need to confirm our beliefs.
Rationalism is the idea that our knowledge comes from reasoning rather than sense experience. Rationalists believe that reasoning and logic is innate, and these ideas come forth from realization after having the experience. In other words, experience does not actually give you the knowledge, but an opportunity to realize the knowledge which has been in you all along.
Rationalism gives us the ability to form conclusions that are true, without directly referring to the source. We do not have to actually measure the area of a square if we can use the formula (L*W). We can safely assume many things with just reason.
However, rationalists disregard sense experience as one of the primary sources of knowledge. This means that they disregard the world in which they live in at that present time. Rationalists look forward to a “reality” that they can only imagine, and have not seen; which leads them to the idea of God. Rationalists also think that because the world is constantly changing, experience cannot be accounted for. But they can only be sure of so much, since without the ability to experience, you cannot come to these realizations. There may be a point in time in which we have to face reason vs. experience. But how do we know that our reasoning will give us truth? If there are three kittens, it means that there is one kitten for every number. The number system is something that we put together. If our experience is wrong, then it is definitely possible for our reasoning to be wrong. Our intent may not be wrong and the underlying truth will continue to be true, but the reasoning may very well be incorrect.
Rationalism is any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification. I think this is the most mentally stablizing philosophy because you wouldn't have to go so deep into the thought of whether its true or not. All the evidence it there. A stregnth a rationalistic philsophy is that most times it cannot be proven wrong because of the reason and good justification. A weakness is that , what if you thought can't be justified ? Then , your idea would go to empiricism or any other philosophical method.
Rationalism is the theory that the exercise of reason, rather than experience, authority, or spiritual revelation, provides the primary basis for knowledge.
The strengths of rationalism go beyond sensory observations and feelings. Rationalism is the ability deduce that something exists without having to solely use our 5 senses. It deals with reasoning and goes beyond empiricism. Reality is based on your mind. For example, we can deduce the realities of mathematics.
However, Rationalism has a weakness where deducing something may result in an incorrect assumption. The whole basis of rationalism is reasoning and assumption. For example, in the past people used reasoning to deduce that the Earth is geocentric but the truth is that it is heliocentric and rationalism proved as a failure.
I believe that rationalism has but one strength: logic. It goes based upon fact so a thought is either true or it isn't. If a wall is blue, a wall is blue. There is no further thought and the truth of the matter is clearly seen by the human eye. A weakness of rationalism may be coming to the answer and going through the process of figuring out if something is right or wrong, or maybe even moral to people generally.
Strength - You can be absolutely certain of something. The reason of this is because you use information that is provided to you and use your own reason to determine whether or not it is true or false.
Weakness - How can you be certain of something without being able to obtain information about it? You can say that you think and you have thoughts but can you actually see, feel, hear, taste, smell that? No. So hence forth you cannot use reason to determine that answer.
The strength of rationalism is that it allows deductions that do not require the use of sensory inputs to justify them. The concepts derived from rationalism are completely independent of physicality and rely only on your ability to logically observe phenomena and subsequently reach a conclusion. Rene descartes began doubting his own bodies existence,which arguably would follow a good line of reasoning since physical sensations are congenial to the brain and completely up to the discretion of your mind as they are just neurological inputs that are interpreted by your brain. Your entire world is the manifestation of how your brain sees the world.
Interestingly enough, the main strength of rationalism is also is biggest folly as eliminating the need to verify via empricism you can start to make brash assumptions and assertions that hold no bearing or evidence as they are simply speculated as you have no way to verify your assumptions, meaning that's what they stay as nothing more than simply an assumption.
Rationalism is the claim that reason or that intellect is the primary source of our fundamental knowledge about reality. Rationalists claim that reason can give us knowledge apart from experience. The strengths of rationalism is that they don't have to experience something for them to know it is true. A weakness of rationalism is that they will never obtain full knowledge because they can't experience everything.
Rationalism is the theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. There are weaknesses and strengths with such a solid bases of thought. A strength is that the knowledge is concrete and hard to break because it is truth. A weakness is that rationalism will never be able to obtain full knowledge, to gain wisdom, because they never get to experience all of the things.
Rationalism is a belief that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response.
A strength is that it gets you thinking beyond the obvious answer. You use your basic knowledge and your own evidence in order to come up with a reasonable explanation for a question. A weakness is that since you can question every little thing you can spend most of your time dwelling on something that will not benefit you in the future and just confuse yourself completely.
Rationalictic philosophy has its strenghts and weaknesses. It is a good way to think because it lets you use the information you have to determine whats right and whats wrong, the decision is concrete. A weakness would be that one person alone can not experience or obtain information about everything, hence they can not obtain full knowledge.
Rationalistic philosophers, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,, claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. There are many strengths and weaknesses to this type of philosophy.
ReplyDeleteBeginning with the strengths, rationalistic philosophy is very advantageous. It allows people to "see" things beyond sensory experience from logical deduction. You don't always necessarily or don't have to use your senses to know something. For example, the statement A<B<C. You can deduce that A<C and you didn't need sensory experience to get to that conclusion. Also, another advantage is that rationalism allows for a clear and systematic way of organizing your beliefs and making justifications/decisions. In the case of empiricism, where everything is based on sense experience,it may not lead you to make the proper decisions. To explain further, let's take the examples of a person deciding to do drugs. I do not have to be empirical and experience the drugs myself to know that they will have a harmful effect on my body. I know that logically if my friend took it, he or she would be harmed. Therefore, since I am human also, the drugs would harm my body.
However, there are negative sides to rationalism. If a person relies completely on reason, that person may stray away from reality. For example, Rene Descartes thought to the point where he thought his body may not be real. His points may have led somewhere but at one point, they weren't pragmatic. Another negative side to rationalism is that you cannot always put it to practical use. Going back to the example with the letters, I may know that A<C, but what can I truly do with knowing it. Don't I have to rely on empiricism to actually do something practical about any conclusion I have ever reached?
Rationalistic philosophers believe that reality is not solely determined by what we can observe. They believe sense experience is relative and changing. These philosophers claim that you need a reason to sort out what is appearance from reality and they deny that sense experience is the only source of knowledge about reality. Rationalistic philosophers believe that ideas like the laws of logic, the concept of justice and the idea of God are already contained deep within the mind and only need to be brought to the level of our awareness. With this type of philosophy strengths and weaknesses arise. A strength of rationalistic philosophy is that it allows us to distinguish things past sensory experience from logical inference. Also rationalistic philosophy oftentimes, unlike empiricism, allows us to make better justifications because it is a clearer/ more efficient way to organize our beliefs. A weakness that arises from rationalistic philosophy is that if we begin to only rely fully on reason and disregard sense experience, as fellow philosopher Fairooz mentioned, we may begin to drift from reality. We may begin to question almost everything and anything up to an extent where as Rene Descartes questioned the existence of his body, if it is truly real or just a vivid impression/ illusion that the physical body is present.
ReplyDeleteRationalism is the claim that reason or the intellect is the primary source of our fundamental knowledge about reality. Rationalists claim that reason can give us knowledge apart from experience.
ReplyDeleteThe strengths of rationalism is the ability to have many view the truth of ones concepts beyond its sensory experience. They can arrive at a mathematical truth without having to measure or experiment to know whether a shape is presented as a triangle or circle.
The weaknesses of a rationalist is they may not always gain true knowledge of reality. They may see a strawberry along with other fruits and logically state it is an actual strawberry, whereas it may be a candy designed to look like a strawberry. They are unable to reach the conclusion of the reality without tasting and experimenting to realize the texture and taste was a candy with the familiar strawberry features. Therefore not all knowledge can be gained due to assumptions.
Rationalistic philosophy is the theory that the exercise of reason, rather than experience, authority, or spiritual revelation, provides the primary basis for knowledge. Rationalists believe that all knowledge is "innate", or is there when one is born.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Rationalists (such as Descartes), all knowledge must come from the mind. Rationalism is concerned with absolute truths that are universal (such as logic and mathematics), which is one of the strengths of this train of thought. Another strength is exemplified by Fairooz’s example of A<B<C. You can see that A is less than B and B is less than C, and from understanding that you can easily assume that A<C. Such reasoning saves time.
The weakness of Rationalism lies in the fact that it is difficult to apply it to particulars (which are evident in daily life) as they are of an abstract nature. Another weakness of logical, rationalistic thought is that it assumes something based upon reason and not actual experiences nor does it take into account possible x factors; it’s very linear.
Consider this: The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray; no matter how much you plan based upon logical reason, one does not have all the answers and the best thought out plans fall apart. Take Communism for example. On paper, Communism seems like a wonderful form of government with everyone sharing and helping each other, but the creators of Communism didn’t take into consideration the x factor of human nature. Humans are naturally selfish and prideful creatures and sharing is something that has to be conditioned into them. There will always be people who want to be better than the rest, or those who want nothing to do with others. It is for those reasons Communism isn’t a universal form of government.
Rationalism is to accept reason as the authority in all matters human, of human conduct and behavior or any thought A strength of this philosophy is that it allows us to see things apart from our primary senses from logical inference. A weakness of rationalism is the thought is that it assumes something based upon reason and not actual experiences,it fails to explain the workings of human mind and human emotions.
ReplyDeleteRationalism is a theory that suggests that reason alone, separate from experience can arrive at basic truth regarding the world. Rationalism relates to innate ideas and also the method of logically deducting truths about the world from "self evident" premises.
ReplyDeleteSome advantages of rationalism are the belief that there is a reason behind everything. For example, when an object is thrown upward it is guaranteed that the object will come downward. Although we can experience this we do not base our knowledge on this matter solely on experience, however we base it on the law of gravity. Also, rationalism attempts to find the already existing general principles behind each phenomenon. Hence, man did not create these principles and is individualistic of a human’s perception of knowledge. For example, mathematical truths and logical truths are both universals, and therefore are absolute truths. The truth of 2 plus 2 equals 4 and cannot be anything else.
As for the weaknesses, rationalism becomes difficult when applied to particulars which are everywhere in our daily lives, this is because it is of such an abstract nature. Also another weakness is that rationalism does not leave room for other things such as morality, common sense, intuition, etc. therefore it is very unbalanced. Lastly, rationalism does not rely on experience and if one tends to depend too much on the basic principles of rationalism they will lose their sense of reality. After all, it is our own experience that gives us a “feel” for things and the evidence we need to confirm our beliefs.
Rationalism is the idea that our knowledge comes from reasoning rather than sense experience. Rationalists believe that reasoning and logic is innate, and these ideas come forth from realization after having the experience. In other words, experience does not actually give you the knowledge, but an opportunity to realize the knowledge which has been in you all along.
ReplyDeleteRationalism gives us the ability to form conclusions that are true, without directly referring to the source. We do not have to actually measure the area of a square if we can use the formula (L*W). We can safely assume many things with just reason.
However, rationalists disregard sense experience as one of the primary sources of knowledge. This means that they disregard the world in which they live in at that present time. Rationalists look forward to a “reality” that they can only imagine, and have not seen; which leads them to the idea of God. Rationalists also think that because the world is constantly changing, experience cannot be accounted for. But they can only be sure of so much, since without the ability to experience, you cannot come to these realizations. There may be a point in time in which we have to face reason vs. experience. But how do we know that our reasoning will give us truth? If there are three kittens, it means that there is one kitten for every number. The number system is something that we put together. If our experience is wrong, then it is definitely possible for our reasoning to be wrong. Our intent may not be wrong and the underlying truth will continue to be true, but the reasoning may very well be incorrect.
Rationalism is any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification. I think this is the most mentally stablizing philosophy because you wouldn't have to go so deep into the thought of whether its true or not. All the evidence it there. A stregnth a rationalistic philsophy is that most times it cannot be proven wrong because of the reason and good justification. A weakness is that , what if you thought can't be justified ? Then , your idea would go to empiricism or any other philosophical method.
ReplyDeleteRationalism is the theory that the exercise of reason, rather than experience, authority, or spiritual revelation, provides the primary basis for knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThe strengths of rationalism go beyond sensory observations and feelings. Rationalism is the ability deduce that something exists without having to solely use our 5 senses. It deals with reasoning and goes beyond empiricism. Reality is based on your mind. For example, we can deduce the realities of mathematics.
However, Rationalism has a weakness where deducing something may result in an incorrect assumption. The whole basis of rationalism is reasoning and assumption. For example, in the past people used reasoning to deduce that the Earth is geocentric but the truth is that it is heliocentric and rationalism proved as a failure.
I believe that rationalism has but one strength: logic. It goes based upon fact so a thought is either true or it isn't. If a wall is blue, a wall is blue. There is no further thought and the truth of the matter is clearly seen by the human eye. A weakness of rationalism may be coming to the answer and going through the process of figuring out if something is right or wrong, or maybe even moral to people generally.
ReplyDeleteRationalist:
ReplyDeleteStrength - You can be absolutely certain of something. The reason of this is because you use information that is provided to you and use your own reason to determine whether or not it is true or false.
Weakness - How can you be certain of something without being able to obtain information about it? You can say that you think and you have thoughts but can you actually see, feel, hear, taste, smell that? No. So hence forth you cannot use reason to determine that answer.
The strength of rationalism is that it allows deductions that do not require the use of sensory inputs to justify them. The concepts derived from rationalism are completely independent of physicality and rely only on your ability to logically observe phenomena and subsequently reach a conclusion. Rene descartes began doubting his own bodies existence,which arguably would follow a good line of reasoning since physical sensations are congenial to the brain and completely up to the discretion of your mind as they are just neurological inputs that are interpreted by your brain. Your entire world is the manifestation of how your brain sees the world.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, the main strength of rationalism is also is biggest folly as eliminating the need to verify via empricism you can start to make brash assumptions and assertions that hold no bearing or evidence as they are simply speculated as you have no way to verify your assumptions, meaning that's what they stay as nothing more than simply an assumption.
Rationalism is the claim that reason or that intellect is the primary source of our fundamental knowledge about reality. Rationalists claim that reason can give us knowledge apart from experience. The strengths of rationalism is that they don't have to experience something for them to know it is true. A weakness of rationalism is that they will never obtain full knowledge because they can't experience everything.
ReplyDeleteRationalism is the theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. There are weaknesses and strengths with such a solid bases of thought. A strength is that the knowledge is concrete and hard to break because it is truth. A weakness is that rationalism will never be able to obtain full knowledge, to gain wisdom, because they never get to experience all of the things.
ReplyDeleteRationalism is a belief that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response.
ReplyDeleteA strength is that it gets you thinking beyond the obvious answer. You use your basic knowledge and your own evidence in order to come up with a reasonable explanation for a question. A weakness is that since you can question every little thing you can spend most of your time dwelling on something that will not benefit you in the future and just confuse yourself completely.
Rationalictic philosophy has its strenghts and weaknesses. It is a good way to think because it lets you use the information you have to determine whats right and whats wrong, the decision is concrete. A weakness would be that one person alone can not experience or obtain information about everything, hence they can not obtain full knowledge.
ReplyDeleteIts strength is that we get knowledge through reasoning but its weakness is that if the premises is wrong even knowledge will not be valid
ReplyDelete