Rationalism

Question 1

Define rationalism

Answer 1

Knowledge that begins with intellect

Knowledge that comes ‘a priori’

Question 2

Descartes’ rationalist epistemology

Answer 2

• only accepts beliefs that can be recognised as clearly and distinctly true
• in order to determine whether our beliefs are justified, we have to trace them back to a statement that cannot be doubted
• “I think therefore I am”

Question 3

Define ‘The Cogito’

Answer 3

One’s existence as a thinking being is what we know is certainly true (“i think therefore i am”)
Intellect alone has led to this (a priori)

Question 4

Define anti-realism

Answer 4

That our senses do not perceive an objective external world.

Either there is not an external world OR we lack the capacity to ever experience the real world

Question 5

Descartes’ doubting his senses

Answer 5

our senses can deceive us => could be deceiving us constantly

Question 6

Descartes’ dreaming

Answer 6

when we dream our senses become fully immersed => are we constantly dreaming?

Question 7

Descartes’ evil demon

Answer 7

could be feeding you false information

Question 8

Descartes’ clear and distinct ideas

Answer 8

we know by our rational intuition that it cannot be false

Question 9

Define idealism

Answer 9

what is real depends on the mind, material world cannot exist outside the mind

Question 10

esse est percipi

Answer 10

• to be is to be perceived
• can a blind man know what it means to say a bus is red?
• Berkley says it’s wrong to say ideas come from experience

Question 11

Key criticism of rationalism

Answer 11

• Innate knowledge can only tell you the meaning of things that you must learn through experience => no knowledge without experience
• if mathematical ideas were innate, we would already know the answer to them
• If Descartes’ ontological argument was true, then we would all be born we the same idea of God

Question 12

Explain solipsism

Answer 12

• self-centred
• people believe that nothing exists apart from them
• no difference between reality and dreams if it is only your perception

Question 13

Criticisms of Berkeley’s idealism

Answer 13

• Solipsism
• If reality is the mind, how can we distinguish between reality and truth (illusions and hallucinations)
• If objects only exist through our perception, how is it that they still exist when we are not perceiving them (persistence and regularity of objects)

Question 14

Plato’s rationalist theory

Answer 14

• slave boy is taught basic principles of geometry and generates further knowledge on his own => we have innate knowledge
• Argument from the soul: there must be a part of us that remembers our past life that isn’t physical. We remember from our past life in the WoF which we experienced before our soul re-entered our body

Question 15

Criticisms of Plato’s rationalist theory

Answer 15

• The slave-boy still needs external input/ something that isn’t innate as he has been given some form of information
  + We need the initial help to remember what we already knew from the world of forms
• How does he explain the failure to learn
  CP: it’s a negation for the whole argument
• How come 1 year olds don’t algebra
  CP: it is because of latent innate knowledge – what rationalists always argue
  + explains how sometimes in education we get things instantly, links to remembering
  CP: Locke’s tabula rasa, yet you could argue that by the slave-boy generating new knowledge he is not a tabula rasa as if he was then would only know those basic principles
• Why didn’t someone in Plato’s time wake up and potentially remember Newtonian laws or Einstein’s discoveries => Plato fails to explain why there are genuinely new scientific discoveries