Empiricism Vs. Rationalism: Two Different Types Of Philosophy

Empiricist and rationalist are two very different type of philosophy, both have its flaws. For me personally I would chose empiricism over rationalism. Empiricism is far from perfect but it makes a lot more sense to me than rationalism does. To be empiricist you have to look deeper into things and not be so gullible, I sometimes just lay in bed by myself for hours just thinking. What most interest me is how wide the universe is and how absurd life can be. I would stay in bed and ask a bunch of questions and doubt everything. Both of these philosophy are great, one philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant believed that either empiricist or rationalist could exist without the other.
David Hume and Rene Descartes were both great philosophers but …show more content…
Hume was also a believer in cause and effect, Hume stated we can see the cause therefore we can identify the effect without question. Rationalism is easy philosophy, it is rarely questioned and ideas are often never looked into deeply. There are two types of ideas when it comes to empiricism, simple ideas and complex ideas. Simple ideas are something easy to understand like a specific color, while complex ideas are just a bunch of simple ideas group together. Innate ideas are rejected by empiricism. Induction is the idea that everything we know is not certain, for example how do we know the color blue is blue when we are not looking at it. We know it is blue when we are observing it at the moment but we cannot know for certain that blue is blue when it is not being observed. Innate ideas are ideas that you are born …show more content…
These two way to think go hand in hand and it is hard to just pick one way of thinking. The two articles we read in class on Hume and Descartes are very distinct from each other. The piece we read for Descartes was titled “ Meditations”. In this article Descartes talked about the everything he knows, he questions everything and how does his thoughts contradict with his existence. Descartes was able to fall into deep thought and was able think from the foundation. For Hume we read an essay called “ Hume’s enquiry”. This opens up with Hume explaining the distinction between two different type of philosophy, easy and obvious, and accurate and abstract philosophy. These two philosophy are opposite from each other. Easy and obvious philosophy is the most common among people because it is the most popular. Accurate and abstract philosophy is the one that make you think. In Hume’s enquiry, he drew distinction between impressions and ideas. Impressions are in the moment, something you are doing and it is more lively and vivid than ideas. Ideas are similar to memory they are not as vivid or lively as an