Rationalism

Rationalism is a broad family of positions in epistemology. Perhaps the best general description of rationalism is the view that there are some distinctive aspects or faculties of the mind that (1) are distinct from passive aspects of the mind such as sense-perceptions and (2) someway or other constitute a special source (perhaps only a partial source) of knowledge. These distinctive aspects are typically associated or identified with our abilities to engage in mathematics and abstract reasoning, and the knowledge they provide is often seen as of a type that could not have come from other sources. Philosophers who resist rationalism are usually grouped under the heading of empiricists, who are often allied under the claim that all our knowledge comes from experience.

More precise delimitation on this point is quite difficult. Formulated weakly enough, some form of rationalism is obviously true. For instance, there can be no question that we are born with some innate abilities - it is just this fact that allows humans to consistently react in sophisticated ways to the world's causal influence on them, in constrast to rocks. Moreover, we certainly have some sort of ability to reason and draw conclusions that are not explicitly handed to us. Yet many philosophers have felt that stronger rationalist claims are true. Kant, for example, argued that we can know that every event has a cause independently of experience, and such a claim is not entailed by the claim that we have some innate reasoning ability.

The debate around which the rationalism/empiricism distinction revolves is one of the oldest and most continuous in philosophy. Some of Plato's most explicit arguments address the topic and it was arguably the central concern of many of the Modern thinkers. Indeed, Kant's principal works were concerned with our 'pure' faculties, which are the very aspects of the mind whose existence and role were in question. Contemporary philosophers have advanced and refined the issue, though there are current thinkers who align themselves with either side of the tradition.

History of rationalism

Socrates (ca 470–399)

Socrates firmly believed that, before anyone can understand the world, they first need to understand themselves. And the only way to accomplish that is with rational thought. Socrates did not publish or write any of his thoughts, but he was constantly in discussion with others. He would usually start by asking a (seemingly answerable) question, to which the other would give an answer. Socrates would then continue to ask questions until all conflicts were resolved, or until the other could do nothing else but admit he didn't know the answer (which was what most of his discussions ended with). Socrates did not claim to know the answers, but that did not take away the ability to critically and rationally approach problems.

Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism (also Neo-Platonism) is the modern term for a school of philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists. Neoplatonists considered themselves simply "Platonists", and the modern distinction is due to the perception that their philosophy contained enough unique interpretations of Plato to make it substantively different from what Plato wrote and believed.

Neoplatonism took definitive shape with the philosopher Plotinus, who claimed to have received his teachings from Ammonius Saccas, a dock worker and philosopher in Alexandria. Plotinus was also influenced by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Numenius. Plotinus's student Porphyry assembled his teachings into the six Enneads.

Subsequent Neoplatonic philosophers included Hypatia of Alexandria, Iamblichus, Proclus, Hierocles of Alexandria, Simplicius of Cilicia, and Damascius, who wrote On First Principles. Born in Damascus, he was the last teacher of Neoplatonism at Athens. Neoplatonism strongly influenced Christian thinkers (such as Augustine, Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena, and Bonaventura). Neoplatonism was also present in medieval Islamic and Jewish thinkers such as al-Farabi and Maimonides, and experienced a revival in the Renaissance with the acquisition and translation of Greek and Arabic Neoplatonic texts.

René Descartes (1596–1650)

Descartes thought that only knowledge of eternal truths – including the truths of mathematics, and the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of the sciences – could be attained by reason alone; other knowledge required experience of the world, aided by the scientific method. He also argued that although dreams appear as real as sense experience, these dreams cannot provide persons with knowledge. Also, since conscious sense experience can be the cause of illusions, then sense experience itself can be doubtable. As a result, Descartes deduced that a rational pursuit of truth should doubt every belief about reality. He elaborated these beliefs in such works as Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. Descartes developed a method to attain truths according to which nothing which cannot be recognised by the intellect (or reason) can be classified as knowledge. These truths are gained "without any sensory experience", according to Descartes. Truths that are attained by reason are to be broken down into elements which intuition can grasp, which, through a purely deductive process, will result in clear truths about reality.

Descartes therefore argued, as a result of his method, that reason alone determined knowledge, and that this could be done independently of the senses. For instance, his famous dictum, cogito ergo sum, is a conclusion reached a priori and not through an inference from experience. This was, for Descartes, an irrefutable principle upon which to ground all forms of other knowledge. Descartes posited a metaphysical dualism, distinguishing between the substances of the human body ("res extensa") and the mind or soul ("res cogitans") . This crucial distinction would be left unresolved and lead to what is known as the mind-body problem, since the two substances in the Cartesian system are independent of each other and irreducible.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)

Baruch Spinoza, a key precursor to the Age of Enlightenment, offered both a solution to the mind-body problem and determined the relationship between God as an infinite substance with the finite substance of the world. As a corollary of this, God is the only being that exists, of necessity, and the empirical world is just modifications of the infinite attributes of God, of which we are aware by thought and reason. God, as infinite substance and as made up of infinite attributes, necessarily exists, and is the whole of nature, or deus sive natura (God or nature).

In opposition to Descartes, Spinoza argued that there is only one substance, and that this is God when conceived under the attribute of thought, natura naturans, and Nature when conceived under the attribute of extension, natura naturata. Natura naturans is the eternal, aspect of Spinoza's system, and natura naturata is the infinite modifications of God's attributes. This God is non-personal, and has no will; Spinoza's universe is deterministic. Therefore, every human mind is part of God under the attribute of thought.

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)

Leibniz was the last of the great Rationalists, who contributed heavily to other fields such as mathematics. His system however was not developed independently of these advances. Leibniz rejected Cartesian dualism, and denied the existence of a material world. In Leibniz's view there are infinitely many simple substances, which he called "monads" (possibly taking the term from the work of Anne Conway).

Leibniz developed his theory of monads in response to both Descartes and Spinoza. In rejecting this response he was forced to arrive at his own solution. Monads are the fundamental unit of reality, according to Leibniz, constituting both inanimate and animate things. These units of reality represent the universe, though they are not subject to the laws of causality or space (which he called "well-founded phenomena"). Leibniz therefore introduced his principle of pre-established harmony, in order to account for apparent causality in the world.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

Immanuel Kant started as a traditional rationalist, having studied the rationalists Leibniz and Wolff, but after studying David Hume's works which "awoke [him] from [his] dogmatic slumbers", he developed a distinctive and very influential rationalism of his own which attempted to synthesise the traditional rationalist and empiricist traditions.

References

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Primary sources

• Descartes, René (1637), Discourse on Method.
• Spinoza, Baruch (1677), Ethics.
• Leibniz, Gottfried (1714), Monadology.
• Kant, Immanuel, (1781/1787), Critique of Pure Reason.

Secondary sources

• Audi, Robert (ed., 1999), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1995. 2nd edition, 1999.
• Blackburn, Simon (1996), The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1994. Paperback edition with new Chronology, 1996.
• Bourke, Vernon J. (1962), "Rationalism", p. 263 in Runes (1962).
• Lacey, A.R. (1996), A Dictionary of Philosophy, 1st edition, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976. 2nd edition, 1986. 3rd edition, Routledge, London, UK, 1996.
• Runes, Dagobert D. (ed., 1962), Dictionary of Philosophy, Littlefield, Adams, and Company, Totowa, NJ.

See also

Cartesian linguistics Empiricism Innatism Irrationalist Nature versus nurture Nominalism Self-efficacy Freethought Freedom of thought Higher criticism Golden Age of Freethought Empiricism Cynicism Irreligion Skepticism

Platonic realism Poverty of the stimulus Psychological nativism Rationalist International Realism Tabula rasa 17th Century Philosophy Natural philosophy Secularism Herbert Spencer Robert Boyle John Ruskin Intellectualism Anti-intellectualism

External links

• Markie, Peter (2004), "Rationalism vs. Empiricism", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
• John F. Hurst (1867), History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology

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