deepstash
Beta
Deepstash brings you key ideas from the most inspiring articles like this one:
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
Rationalism: Reason as the Key to Knowledge
3
Key Ideas
Save all ideas
Rationalism
Rationalism is the philosophical idea where reason is the ultimate source of human knowledge.
It stands in contrast to empiricism, where the senses are enough to justify knowledge.
164 SAVES
1.07k READS
Descartes' Case for Rationalism
René Descartes thought we know objects through reason.
Simple problems may be solved using our senses, but more complicated issues need reason to figure it out. We can easily distinguish between a triangle and a square. But when we consider two polygons, one with a thousand sides and the other with a thousand and one sides, we use reason to tell them apart.
144 SAVES
608 READS
Rationalist vs empiricist debate
Rationalism characterizes a wide range of philosophical topics.
- How do we know who and what we are? Rationalists claim the self is known through rational intuition, while the empiricist thinks that the unity of the self is illusory.
- What is the nature of cause and effect? Rationalists claim casual links are known through reason. The empiricist replies that it is because of habit that we know, for example, that a fire is hot.
- How do we know which actions are ethically correct? Kant argued that ethical worth could only be understood from a rational perspective. Moral evaluation takes place when rational agents consider their actions under hypothetical conditions.
151 SAVES
627 READS
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
9
Key Ideas
How we perceive philosophy
When most people think of philosophy, they believe philosophers simply argue about arguing. Philosophy is viewed as impractical and irrelevant to current issues.
In...
Defining philosophy
Philosophy is examining our understanding of reality and knowledge. Philosophy consists of three major branches:
- Metaphysics - What is true about existence.
- Epistemology - How we can know that it is true. Epistemology has given us science, logic/reason, economics, psychology, and other theories of knowledge.
- Ethics - What actions we should take as a result of this knowledge. Ethics contains concepts such as democracy, human rights, the treatment of animals, and the environment.
When you order your thoughts into a coherent belief system, you are engaging in philosophy. To criticize philosophy, you must rely on philosophy.
3
Key Ideas
Fiction and the mind
Stories, fiction included, act as a kind of replacement for life. You can learn information from them very effortlessly. You'll also remember false information without realizing and will find f...
Confusing fiction with reality
When stories are done well, they are like artificial sweeteners - they fool the mind into thinking we're consuming the real thing.
For example, children sometimes really believe that puppets are alive. Even animals sometimes react to pictures as if they are real things.
Emotions influence our perception
The rational part of our mind knows that what we're looking at, or reading, isn't real. However, the perceptual areas of our brains are very closely connected to our emotions.
Emotions force us to interpret the world differently. Research reveals how fear can affect vision, moods can make us more or less susceptible to visual illusions, and desire can change the apparent size of goal-relevant objects.
2
Key Ideas
Aristotle gave us an alternative conception of happiness
It cannot be acquired by pleasurable experiences but only by identifying and realizing our own potential, moral and creative, in our specific environments, with our particular family, friends and colleagues, and helping others to do so.