Difference between revisions of "Rationalism" - New World Encyclopedia

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{{Otheruses4|the philosophical method, position, theory, or view|other uses|Rationalism (disambiguation)}}
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'''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 human 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 [[empiricism|empiricists]], who are often allied under the claim that all human knowledge comes from experience.
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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 philosophy|Modern thinkers]]. Indeed, Kant's principal works were concerned with "pure" faculties of reason. Contemporary philosophers have advanced and refined the issue, though there are current thinkers who align themselves with either side of the tradition.
  
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In [[epistemology]] and in its broadest sense, '''rationalism''' is "any view appealing to [[reason]] as a source of knowledge or justification" (Lacey, 286).  In more technical terms it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and [[deductive]]" (Bourke, 263).  Different degrees of emphasis on this method or theory lead to a range of rationalist standpoints, from the moderate position "that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge" to the radical position that reason is "the unique path to knowledge" (Audi, 771).
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==History of rationalism==
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In various contexts, the appeal to reason is contrasted with [[revelation]], as in [[religion]], or with [[emotion]] and [[feeling]], as in [[ethics]].  In philosophy, however, reason is more often contrasted with the [[senses]], including [[introspection]] but not [[intuition (knowledge)|intuition]] (Lacey, 286).
 
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Within the [[Western philosophical tradition]], "rationalism begins with the [[Eleatics]], [[Pythagoreans]], and [[Plato]], whose theory of the self-sufficiency of reason became the ''[[leitmotif]]'' of [[Neoplatonism]] and [[idealism]]" (Runes, 263).  Since [[the Enlightenment]], rationalism is usually associated with the introduction of mathematical methods into philosophy, as in [[Descartes]], [[Leibniz]], and [[Spinoza]] (Bourke, 263). This is commonly called '''continental rationalism''', because it was predominant in the continental schools of Europe, whereas in Britain [[empiricism]] dominated.
 
  
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Rationalism is often contrasted with this view known as ''[[empiricism]]''. Taken very broadly these views are not mutually exclusive, since a philosopher can be both rationalist and empiricist (Lacey, 286–287).  Taken to extremes the empiricist view holds that all ideas come to us through experience, either through the five external senses or through such inner sensations as pain and pleasure, and thus that knowledge is essentially based on or derived from experience.  At issue is the fundamental source of human knowledge, and the proper techniques for verifying what we think we know (see [[Epistemology]]).   
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It is difficult to identify a major figure in the history to whom some rationalist doctrine has ''not'' been attributed at some point. One reason for this is that there is no question that humans possess some sort of reasoning ability that allows them to come to know some facts they otherwise wouldn't (for instance, mathematical facts), and every philosopher has had to acknowledge this fact.  Another reason is that the very business of philosophy is to achieve knowledge by using the rational faculties, in contrast to, for instance, mystical approaches to knowledge. Nevertheless, some philosophical figures stand out as attributing even greater significance to reasoning abilities.  Three are discussed here: [[Plato]], [[Descartes]], and [[Kant]].   
  
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Proponents of some varieties of rationalism argue that, starting with foundational basic principles, like the axioms of [[geometry]], one could [[deductive reasoning|deductively]] derive the rest of all possible knowledge.  The philosophers who held this view most clearly were [[Baruch Spinoza]] and [[Gottfried Leibniz]], whose attempts to grapple with the epistemological and metaphysical problems raised by Descartes led to a development of the fundamental approach of rationalism.  Both Spinoza and Leibniz asserted that, ''in principle'', all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, could be gained through the use of reason alone, though they both observed that this was not possible ''in practice'' for human beings except in specific areas such as [[mathematics]].  On the other hand, Leibniz admitted that "we are all mere [[Empirics]] in three fourths of our actions" (''[[Monadology]]'' § 28, cited in Audi, 772).
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===Plato===
  
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==Philosophical usage==
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The most famous metaphysical doctrine of the great [[Greek philosophy|Greek philosopher]] [[Plato]] is his doctrine of "Forms," as espoused in ''The Republic'' and other dialogues.  The Forms are described as being outside of the world as experience by the senses, but as somehow constituting the metaphysical basis of the world.  Exactly how they fulfill this function is generally only gestured at through analogies, though the ''Timaeus'' describes the Forms as operating as blueprints for the craftsman of the universe.
  
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The distinction between rationalists and empiricists was drawn at a later period, and would not have been recognized by the philosophers involved. Also, the distinction was not as clear-cut as is sometimes suggested;  for example, the three main rationalists were all committed to the importance of empirical science, and in many respects the empiricists were closer to Descartes in their methods and metaphysical theories than were Spinoza and Leibniz.
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The distinctiveness of Plato's rationalism lies in another aspect of his theory of Forms. Though the common sense position is that the senses are one's best means of getting in touch with reality, Plato held that human reasoning ability was the one thing that allowed people to approach the Forms, the most fundamental aspects of reality. It is worth pausing to reflect on how radical this idea is: On such a view, philosophical attempts to understand the nature of "good" or "just" are not mere analyses of concepts formed, but rather explorations of eternal things that are responsible for shaping the reality of the sensory world.
  
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==History of rationalism==
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===Descartes===
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===Classical Greek rationalists===
 
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{{sect-stub}}
 
  
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===Socrates (ca 470–399)===
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The French philosopher [[Descartes|René Descartes]], whose ''Meditations on First Philosophy'' defined the course of much philosophy from then up till the present day, stood near the beginning of the Western European [[Enlightenment]]. Impressed by the power of mathematics and the development of the new science, Descartes was confronted with two questions: How was it that people were coming to attain such deep knowledge of the workings of the universe, and how was it that they had spent so long not doing so?
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{{main|Socrates}}
 
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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.
 
  
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===Neoplatonism===
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Regarding the latter question, Descartes concluded that people had been mislead by putting too much faith in the testimony of their senses.  In particular, he thought such a mistake was behind the then-dominant physics of Aristotle. Aristotle and the later Scholastics, in Descartes' mind, had used their reasoning abilities well enough on the basis of what their senses told them.  The problem was that they had chosen the wrong starting point for their inquiries.
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{{main|Neoplatonism}}
 
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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.
 
  
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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.
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By contrast, the advancements in the new science (some of which Descartes could claim for himself) were based in a very different starting point: The "pure light of reason."  In Descartes' view, God had equipped humans with a faculty that was able to understand the fundamental essence of the two types of substance that made up the world: Intellectual substance (of which minds are instances) and physical substance (matter).  Not only did God give people such a faculty, Descartes claimed, but he made them such that, when using the faculty, they are unable to question its deliverances. Not only that, but God left humanity the means to conclude that the faculty was a gift from a non-deceptive omnipotent creator.
  
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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.
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===Kant===
  
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In some respects, the German philosophy [[Kant|Immanuel Kant]] is the [[paradigm]] of an anti-rationalist philosopher.  A major portion of his central work, the 1781 ''Critique of Pure Reason,'' is specifically devoted to attacking rationalist claims to have insight through reason alone into the nature of the soul, the spatiotemporal/causal structure of the universe, and the existence of God. Plato and Descartes are among his most obvious targets.
  
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For instance, in his evaluation of rationalist claims concerning the nature of the soul (the chapter of the ''Critique'' entitled "The Paralogisms of Pure Reason"), Kant attempts to diagnose how a philosopher like Descartes could have been tempted into thinking that he could accomplish deep insight into his own nature by thought alone.  One of Descartes' conclusions was that his mind, unlike his body, was utterly simple and so lacked parts.  Kant claimed that Descartes mistook a simple experience (the thought, "I think") for an experience of simplicity.  In other words, he saw Descartes as introspecting, being unable to find any divisions within himself, and thereby concluding that he lacked any such divisions and so was simple.  But the reason he was unable to find divisions, in Kant's view, was that by mere thought alone we are unable to find ''anything''.
  
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===René Descartes (1596–1650)===
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At the same time, however, Kant was an uncompromising advocate of some key rationalist intuitions.  Confronted with the Scottish philosopher [[Hume|David Hume's]] claim that the concept of "cause" was merely one of the constant conjunction of resembling entities, Kant insisted that all Hume really accomplished was in proving that the concept of causation could not possibly have its origin in human senses.  What the senses cannot provide, Kant claimed, is any notion of necessity, yet a crucial part of our concept of causation is that it is the ''necessary'' connection of two entities or events.  Kant's conclusion was that this concept, and others like it, must be a precondition of sensory experience itself.
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{{main|René Descartes}}
 
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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.
 
  
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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 a posteriori (philosophy)|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 [[Cartesian dualism|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.
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In his moral philosophy (most famously expounded in his ''Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals''), Kant made an even more original claim on behalf of reason.  The sensory world, in his view, was merely ideal, in that the spatiotemporal/sensory features of the objects people experience have their being only in humanity's representations, and so are not features of the objects in themselves.  But this means that most everyday concepts are simply inadequate for forming any notion whatsoever of what the world is like apart from our subjective features.  By contrast, Kant claimed that there was no parallel reason for thinking that objects in themselves (which include our soul) do not conform to the most basic concepts of our higher faculties.  So while those faculties are unable to provide any sort of direct, reliable access to the basic features of reality as envisioned by Plato and Descartes, they and they alone give one the means to at least contemplate what true reality might be like.
  
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===Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)===
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==Contemporary rationalism==
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{{main|Baruch Spinoza}}
 
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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). 
 
  
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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 [[Determinism|deterministic]].  Therefore, every human mind is part of God under the attribute of thought.
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In the early part of the twentieth century, a philosophical movement known as [[Logical Positivism]] set the ground for a new debate over rationalism. The [[positivism (philosophy)|positivists]] (whose ranks included [[Otto Neurath]] and [[Rudolf Carnap]]) claimed that the only meaningful claims were those that could potentially be verified by some set of experiential observations.  Their aim was to do away with intellectual traditions that they saw as simply vacuous, including theology and the majority of philosophy, in contrast with science.
  
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===Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)===
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As it turned out, the Positivists were unable to explain how all scientific claims were verifiable by experience, thus losing their key motivation (for instance, no set of experiences could verify that all stars are hot, since no set of experiential observations could itself confirm that one had observed ''all'' the stars). Nevertheless, their vision retained enough force that later philosophers felt hard-pressed to explain what, if anything, was epistemically distinctive about the non-sensory faculties.  One recent defense of rationalism can be found in the work of contemporary philosophers such as [[Laurence Bonjour]] (the recent developments of the position are, in general, too subtle to be adequately addressed here). Yet the charge was also met by a number of thinkers working in areas as closely related to psychology as to philosophy.
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{{main|Gottfried Leibniz}}
 
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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, Viscountess Conway|Anne Conway]]).
 
  
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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 phenomenon|well-founded phenomena]]").  Leibniz therefore introduced his principle of [[pre-established harmony]], in order to account for apparent causality in the world.
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A number of thinkers have argued for something like [[Kant]]'s view that people have concepts independently of experience.  Indeed, the groundbreaking work of the linguist [[Noam Chomsk]]y (which he occasionally tied to Descartes) is largely based on the assumption that there is a "universal grammar"—that is, some basic set of linguistic categories and abilities that necessarily underlie all human languages.  One task of linguistics, in [[Chomsky]]'s view, is to look at a diversity of languages in order to determine what the innate linguistic categories and capacities are.
  
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===Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)===
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A similar proposal concerning human beliefs about mentality itself has been advanced by [[Peter Carruthers]]. One intuitive view is that each of us comes to attribute mental states to other people only after a long developmental process where people learn to associate observable phenomena with their own mental states, and thereby with others. Yet, Carruthers argues, this view simply cannot account for the speed and complexity of humans' understanding of others' psychology at very early ages. The only explanation is that some understanding of mentality is "hard-wired" in the human brain.
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{{main|Immanuel Kant}}
 
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Immanuel Kant started as a traditional rationalist, having studied the rationalists Leibniz and [[Christian_Wolff_(philosopher)|Wolff]], but after studying [[David Hume|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==
 
==References==
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* Bonjour, L. 1997.  ''In Defense of Pure Reason''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521597455
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====Primary sources====
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* Carruthers, P. 1992.  ''Human Knowledge and Human Nature''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198751028
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* Chomsky, N. 1988.  ''Language and Problems of Knowledge''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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* [[René Descartes|Descartes, René]] (1637), ''[[Discourse on Method]]''.
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* Descartes, René.  1985.  ''The Philosophical Writings of Descartes,'' John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (eds.).  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052128807X
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* [[Baruch Spinoza|Spinoza, Baruch]] (1677), ''[[Ethics (book)|Ethics]]''.
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* Kant, Immanuel.  1969.  ''Critique of Pure Reason''.  Norman Kemp Smith, trans.  Bedford Books. ISBN 0312450109
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* [[Gottfried Leibniz|Leibniz, Gottfried]] (1714), ''[[Monadology]].
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* Kant, Immanuel, 1998.  ''Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals.'' Mary Gregor, trans.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  ISBN 0521626951
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* [[Immanuel Kant|Kant, Immanuel]], (1781/1787), ''[[Critique of Pure Reason]].
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* Markie, Peter. 2005. [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ "Rationalism and Empiricism,"] ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.'' Retrieved September 20, 2007.
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* Plato. 1997. ''Complete Works''.  John Cooper, ed.  Indianapolis: Hackett Press. ISBN 0872203492
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====Secondary sources====
 
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* [[Robert Audi|Audi, Robert]] (ed., 1999), ''The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy'', Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1995.  2nd edition, 1999.
 
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* [[Simon Blackburn|Blackburn, Simon]] (1996), ''The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1994.  Paperback edition with new Chronology, 1996.
 
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* [[Vernon J. Bourke|Bourke, Vernon J.]] (1962), "Rationalism", p. 263 in Runes (1962).
 
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* [[A.R. Lacey|Lacey, A.R.]] (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy'', 1st edition, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976.  2nd edition, 1986.  3rd edition, Routledge, London, UK, 1996.
 
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* [[Dagobert D. Runes|Runes, Dagobert D.]] (ed., 1962), ''Dictionary of Philosophy'', Littlefield, Adams, and Company, Totowa, NJ.
 
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==See also==
 
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{{col-begin}}
 
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{{col-break}}
 
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* [[Cartesian linguistics]]
 
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* [[Empiricism]]
 
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* [[Innatism]]
 
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* [[Irrationalist]]
 
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* [[Nature versus nurture]]
 
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* [[Nominalism]]
 
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* [[Self-efficacy]]
 
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* [[Freethought]]
 
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* [[Freedom of thought]]
 
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* [[Higher criticism]]
 
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* [[Golden Age of Freethought]]
 
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* [[Empiricism]]
 
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* [[Cynicism]]
 
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* [[Irreligion]]
 
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* [[Skepticism]]
 
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{{col-break}}
 
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* [[Platonic realism]]
 
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* [[Poverty of the stimulus]]
 
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* [[Psychological nativism]]
 
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* [[Rationalist International]]
 
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* [[Realism]]
 
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* [[Tabula rasa]]
 
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* [[17th Century Philosophy]]
 
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* [[Natural philosophy]]
 
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* [[Secularism]]
 
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* [[Herbert Spencer]]
 
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* [[Robert Boyle]]
 
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* [[John Ruskin]]
 
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* [[Intellectualism]]
 
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* [[Anti-intellectualism]]
 
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{{col-end}}
 
  
 
==External links==
 
==External links==
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All links retrieved December 7, 2022.
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* [[Peter Markie|Markie, Peter]] (2004), "[http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2004/entries/rationalism-empiricism Rationalism vs. Empiricism]", ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
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* [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ "Rationalism and Empiricism"], ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.''  
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* John F. Hurst (1867), ''[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19397 History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology]''
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===General philosophy sources===
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*[http://plato.stanford.edu/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy].  
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[[Category:philosophy and religion]]
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*[http://www.iep.utm.edu/ The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy].  
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[[Category:Philosophy]]
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*[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/PaidArch.html Paideia Project Online].
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*[http://www.gutenberg.org/ Project Gutenberg].
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[[Category:philosophy]]
  
 
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Latest revision as of 01:30, 8 December 2022

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 human 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 human knowledge comes from experience.

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 "pure" faculties of reason. 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

It is difficult to identify a major figure in the history to whom some rationalist doctrine has not been attributed at some point. One reason for this is that there is no question that humans possess some sort of reasoning ability that allows them to come to know some facts they otherwise wouldn't (for instance, mathematical facts), and every philosopher has had to acknowledge this fact. Another reason is that the very business of philosophy is to achieve knowledge by using the rational faculties, in contrast to, for instance, mystical approaches to knowledge. Nevertheless, some philosophical figures stand out as attributing even greater significance to reasoning abilities. Three are discussed here: Plato, Descartes, and Kant.

Plato

The most famous metaphysical doctrine of the great Greek philosopher Plato is his doctrine of "Forms," as espoused in The Republic and other dialogues. The Forms are described as being outside of the world as experience by the senses, but as somehow constituting the metaphysical basis of the world. Exactly how they fulfill this function is generally only gestured at through analogies, though the Timaeus describes the Forms as operating as blueprints for the craftsman of the universe.

The distinctiveness of Plato's rationalism lies in another aspect of his theory of Forms. Though the common sense position is that the senses are one's best means of getting in touch with reality, Plato held that human reasoning ability was the one thing that allowed people to approach the Forms, the most fundamental aspects of reality. It is worth pausing to reflect on how radical this idea is: On such a view, philosophical attempts to understand the nature of "good" or "just" are not mere analyses of concepts formed, but rather explorations of eternal things that are responsible for shaping the reality of the sensory world.

Descartes

The French philosopher René Descartes, whose Meditations on First Philosophy defined the course of much philosophy from then up till the present day, stood near the beginning of the Western European Enlightenment. Impressed by the power of mathematics and the development of the new science, Descartes was confronted with two questions: How was it that people were coming to attain such deep knowledge of the workings of the universe, and how was it that they had spent so long not doing so?

Regarding the latter question, Descartes concluded that people had been mislead by putting too much faith in the testimony of their senses. In particular, he thought such a mistake was behind the then-dominant physics of Aristotle. Aristotle and the later Scholastics, in Descartes' mind, had used their reasoning abilities well enough on the basis of what their senses told them. The problem was that they had chosen the wrong starting point for their inquiries.

By contrast, the advancements in the new science (some of which Descartes could claim for himself) were based in a very different starting point: The "pure light of reason." In Descartes' view, God had equipped humans with a faculty that was able to understand the fundamental essence of the two types of substance that made up the world: Intellectual substance (of which minds are instances) and physical substance (matter). Not only did God give people such a faculty, Descartes claimed, but he made them such that, when using the faculty, they are unable to question its deliverances. Not only that, but God left humanity the means to conclude that the faculty was a gift from a non-deceptive omnipotent creator.

Kant

In some respects, the German philosophy Immanuel Kant is the paradigm of an anti-rationalist philosopher. A major portion of his central work, the 1781 Critique of Pure Reason, is specifically devoted to attacking rationalist claims to have insight through reason alone into the nature of the soul, the spatiotemporal/causal structure of the universe, and the existence of God. Plato and Descartes are among his most obvious targets.

For instance, in his evaluation of rationalist claims concerning the nature of the soul (the chapter of the Critique entitled "The Paralogisms of Pure Reason"), Kant attempts to diagnose how a philosopher like Descartes could have been tempted into thinking that he could accomplish deep insight into his own nature by thought alone. One of Descartes' conclusions was that his mind, unlike his body, was utterly simple and so lacked parts. Kant claimed that Descartes mistook a simple experience (the thought, "I think") for an experience of simplicity. In other words, he saw Descartes as introspecting, being unable to find any divisions within himself, and thereby concluding that he lacked any such divisions and so was simple. But the reason he was unable to find divisions, in Kant's view, was that by mere thought alone we are unable to find anything.

At the same time, however, Kant was an uncompromising advocate of some key rationalist intuitions. Confronted with the Scottish philosopher David Hume's claim that the concept of "cause" was merely one of the constant conjunction of resembling entities, Kant insisted that all Hume really accomplished was in proving that the concept of causation could not possibly have its origin in human senses. What the senses cannot provide, Kant claimed, is any notion of necessity, yet a crucial part of our concept of causation is that it is the necessary connection of two entities or events. Kant's conclusion was that this concept, and others like it, must be a precondition of sensory experience itself.

In his moral philosophy (most famously expounded in his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals), Kant made an even more original claim on behalf of reason. The sensory world, in his view, was merely ideal, in that the spatiotemporal/sensory features of the objects people experience have their being only in humanity's representations, and so are not features of the objects in themselves. But this means that most everyday concepts are simply inadequate for forming any notion whatsoever of what the world is like apart from our subjective features. By contrast, Kant claimed that there was no parallel reason for thinking that objects in themselves (which include our soul) do not conform to the most basic concepts of our higher faculties. So while those faculties are unable to provide any sort of direct, reliable access to the basic features of reality as envisioned by Plato and Descartes, they and they alone give one the means to at least contemplate what true reality might be like.

Contemporary rationalism

In the early part of the twentieth century, a philosophical movement known as Logical Positivism set the ground for a new debate over rationalism. The positivists (whose ranks included Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap) claimed that the only meaningful claims were those that could potentially be verified by some set of experiential observations. Their aim was to do away with intellectual traditions that they saw as simply vacuous, including theology and the majority of philosophy, in contrast with science.

As it turned out, the Positivists were unable to explain how all scientific claims were verifiable by experience, thus losing their key motivation (for instance, no set of experiences could verify that all stars are hot, since no set of experiential observations could itself confirm that one had observed all the stars). Nevertheless, their vision retained enough force that later philosophers felt hard-pressed to explain what, if anything, was epistemically distinctive about the non-sensory faculties. One recent defense of rationalism can be found in the work of contemporary philosophers such as Laurence Bonjour (the recent developments of the position are, in general, too subtle to be adequately addressed here). Yet the charge was also met by a number of thinkers working in areas as closely related to psychology as to philosophy.

A number of thinkers have argued for something like Kant's view that people have concepts independently of experience. Indeed, the groundbreaking work of the linguist Noam Chomsky (which he occasionally tied to Descartes) is largely based on the assumption that there is a "universal grammar"—that is, some basic set of linguistic categories and abilities that necessarily underlie all human languages. One task of linguistics, in Chomsky's view, is to look at a diversity of languages in order to determine what the innate linguistic categories and capacities are.

A similar proposal concerning human beliefs about mentality itself has been advanced by Peter Carruthers. One intuitive view is that each of us comes to attribute mental states to other people only after a long developmental process where people learn to associate observable phenomena with their own mental states, and thereby with others. Yet, Carruthers argues, this view simply cannot account for the speed and complexity of humans' understanding of others' psychology at very early ages. The only explanation is that some understanding of mentality is "hard-wired" in the human brain.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Bonjour, L. 1997. In Defense of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521597455
  • Carruthers, P. 1992. Human Knowledge and Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198751028
  • Chomsky, N. 1988. Language and Problems of Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Descartes, René. 1985. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052128807X
  • Kant, Immanuel. 1969. Critique of Pure Reason. Norman Kemp Smith, trans. Bedford Books. ISBN 0312450109
  • Kant, Immanuel, 1998. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Mary Gregor, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521626951
  • Markie, Peter. 2005. "Rationalism and Empiricism," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved September 20, 2007.
  • Plato. 1997. Complete Works. John Cooper, ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Press. ISBN 0872203492

External links

All links retrieved December 7, 2022.

General philosophy sources

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