Rationalists say that knowledge is based off reason and that without reason we wouldn’t be able to make to make anything from our senses and surroundings. Rationalists claim that we are born with several fundamental concepts or categories in our minds. These fundamental concepts are also called innate knowledge, for example, time or space. According to rationalism knowledge is based of self-evident truths. An example of a self-evident truth is that all bachelors are unmarried. This is simply true there is no reason or problem solving necessary to find out if this is true or not. A good way to understand rationalism is through math, rationalists say that you don’t need sense experience to know that that 2+2 is 4. Through reason alone you can
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They claim that there are no such things as innate ideas and at birth the mind is like a blank slate that will be filled through our experiences. Empiricists claim that we create ideas through our experiences and have made two different categories for the ideas, simple ideas and complex ideas. Simple ideas are created through experiences, for example, by touching fire you learn that fire is hot. The second category is complex ideas which are created by the brain combining simple ideas. There are three ways that the brain combines ideas, compounding, relating, and abstracting. Before going in depth into these three categories it is important to understand two other ideas that John Locke proposed. These are primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities describe an object itself such as size, shape, texture or mobility. Secondary qualities are like color, smell, taste, sound, and texture. The difference between qualities and ideas is that Ideas are in our minds, but qualities are the properties of physical which cause ideas in our minds. Compounding ideas is when simple ideas are combined into complex ideas of things. For example flying and pig would be combined into a flying pig. Relating ideas is when ideas are related to create a complex idea of relationship, for example, cause and effect or space and size. Abstracting ideas is when a complex idea is forms from multiple experiences, so multiple experiences with dogs will give you the idea of
They claim that there are no such things as innate ideas and at birth the mind is like a blank slate that will be filled through our experiences. Empiricists claim that we create ideas through our experiences and have made two different categories for the ideas, simple ideas and complex ideas. Simple ideas are created through experiences, for example, by touching fire you learn that fire is hot. The second category is complex ideas which are created by the brain combining simple ideas. There are three ways that the brain combines ideas, compounding, relating, and abstracting. Before going in depth into these three categories it is important to understand two other ideas that John Locke proposed. These are primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities describe an object itself such as size, shape, texture or mobility. Secondary qualities are like color, smell, taste, sound, and texture. The difference between qualities and ideas is that Ideas are in our minds, but qualities are the properties of physical which cause ideas in our minds. Compounding ideas is when simple ideas are combined into complex ideas of things. For example flying and pig would be combined into a flying pig. Relating ideas is when ideas are related to create a complex idea of relationship, for example, cause and effect or space and size. Abstracting ideas is when a complex idea is forms from multiple experiences, so multiple experiences with dogs will give you the idea of