basics

Question 1

what is this about?

Answer 1

The focus of this topic is the debate between rationalist and empiricist

Question 2

what are the rationalist?

Answer 2

theory that the dominant basis of belief knowledge and justification is reason.
Emphasis is on a priori knowledge (knowledge acquired by or justified through reason and logic without experience)
According to rationalist a posteriori claims are doubtful
Descartes, Plato, Leibniz

Question 3

Empiricism

Answer 3

Theory that the dominant basis of belief knowledge and justification is experience
Emphasis is on a posteriori knowledge (knowledge acquired by or justified thought experience)
Empiricist do not deny a priori knowledge, but they claim it can give us no knowledge of the world. As Hume claims a priori knowledge can only tell us about the relations between ideas (first part of his fork)
Locke, Berkeley, Hume

Question 4

what was Descartes claim?

Answer 4

Descartes claims knowledge of the world can be achieved a priori using reason alone.
Through a method of intuition and deduction