3 - Rationalism and self-evidence
from Part II
Summary
Rationalism
“Rationalism” is defined in various ways in the philosophical literature. In the canon of English-speaking philosophy departments, rationalism is associated with three philosophers: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. With these philosophers in mind, Charlie Huenemann (2008: 7–8) characterizes rationalist epistemology in terms of the following four theses:
(i) There is a priori knowledge.
(ii) We have innate ideas or beliefs.
(iii) We have a “privileged cognitive machinery which allows for the distinction between the intellect and imagination”.
(iv) Pure reason is more reliable than empirical justification.
Chapter 4 of this book is devoted entirely to discussing innate ideas and beliefs, so we shall not discuss thesis (ii) at any length in this chapter. Thesis (i), of course, is the topic of this entire book, and all the theories that we discuss, except radical empiricism, accept it. In this chapter we shall concentrate on theses (iii) and (iv).
Thesis (iii) is particularly interesting. Empiricist critiques of rationalism often accuse rationalists of confusing the limits of their imaginations with real insight into what is necessarily true. For example, some rationalists claim that we can know that nothing can be both red and green all over at the same time. A radical empiricist, such as Mill, would reply that we cannot imagine such an object, but that may just be a fact about what we can imagine at the moment rather than a fact about things.
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- A Priori , pp. 34 - 53Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2011