Rationalism In Philoshopy - Essay Example

Rationalism is a "philosophic doctrine that reason alone is a source of knowledge and is independent of experience" (Webster's New World Dictionary). Empiricism is a "philosophic doctrine that all knowledge is derived from sense experience" (Webster's New World Dictionary). Rationalism and empiricism both deal with experience. We need to be concerned as to the extent in which we are dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists say that there are many different ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists say that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge. Rationalists have developed their view in two ways. The first one is that "they argue that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge outstrips the information that sense experience can provide. Second, they constuct accounts of how reason in some form or other provides that additional information about the world" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/). Empiricists form lines of thought. "First, they develop accounts of how experience provides the information that rationalists cite, insofar as we have it in the first place. (Empiricists will at times opt for skepticism as an alternative to rationalism: if experience cannot provide the concepts or knowledge the rationalists cite, then we don't have them.) Second, empiricists attack the rationalists' accounts of how reason is a source of concepts or knowledge" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/). In order to be a rationalist you need to adopt one of three claims. The first one is"The Intuition/Deduction Thesis:" Some propositions in a particular subject area, S, are knowable by us by intuition alone; still others are knowable by being deduced from intuited propositions" The second thesis associated with rationalism is the Innate Knowledge thesis. "The Innate Knowledge Thesis:" We have knowledge of some truths in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature. The third important thesis of rationalism is the Innate Concept thesis. "The Innate Concept Thesis:" We have some of the concepts we employ in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ ) In this same context, Descartes would have offered a brief description of his own experience with the proper approach to knowledge. Begin by renouncing any belief that can be doubted, including especially the testimony of the senses; then use the perfect certainty of one's own existence, which survives this doubt, as the foundation for a demonstration of the providential reliability of one's faculties generally. Significant knowledge of the world, Descartes supposed, can be achieved only by following this epistemological method, the rationalism involved in relying on a mathematical model and eliminating the distraction of sensory information in order to pursue the demonstrations of pure reason. Later sections of the Discourse (along with the supplementary scientific essays with which it was published) trace some of the more significant consequences of following the Cartesian method in philosophy. His entirely mechanistic inclinations would consistently emerge clearly in these sections, with frequent reminders of the success of physical explanations of complex phenomena. Non-human animals, within Descartes's view, are complex organic machines, all of whose actions can be fully explained without any reference to the operation of mind in thinking. In fact, Descartes declared, most of human behavior, like that of animals, is susceptible to simple mechanistic explanation. Cleverly designed automata could successfully mimic nearly all of what we do. Thus, Descartes argued, it is only the general ability to adapt to widely varying circumstances-and, in particular, the capacity to respond creatively in the use of language-that provides a sure test for the presence of an immaterial soul associated with the normal human body. But Descartes supposed that no matter how human-like an animal or machine could be made to appear in its form or operations, it would always be possible to distinguish it from a real human being by two functional criteria. Although an animal or machine may be capable of performing any one activity as well as (or even better than) we can, he argued, each human being is capable of a greater variety of different activities than could be performed by anything lacking a soul. In a special instance of this general point, Descartes held that although an animal or machine might be made to utter sounds resembling human speech in response to specific stimuli, only an immaterial thinking substance could engage in the creative use of language required for responding appropriately to any unexpected circumstances. W. E. B. DuBois was an inate philosopher of rationalism in his numerous treatises portraying life as it truly would be in place of what people, no matter their race or affiliation, would see. He often would display what is evident as a conflict with social Darwinism and argued incessantly in regards to hereditarian research. Dubois sought truth in an era where the line was vividly drawn between blacks and whites in the United States. "DuBois's emphasis upon class and social structure as the primary causal factors of social behavior, social action and social conflict, subsequently propelled a tradition in American social science that stretches from Franz Boas, to the Chicago School of Sociology and up till the present." (http://members.tripod.com/DuBois/mont.html ) W.E.B. DuBois laid a much more scientific groundwork upon the philosophy of rationalism in his body of work. He proves, within that body of work, that paradigms are evident even in the broadest of philosophical and conceptual outlines as defined in disciplinary research. Feminism is a "doctrine advocationg social, political, and economic right for women equal to those of men" Webster's New World Dictionary. Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science studies the ways in which gender does and ought to influence our conceptions of knowledge, the knowing subject, and practices of inquiry and justification. It identifies ways in which dominant conceptions and practices of knowledge attribution, acquisition, and justification systematically disadvantage women and other subordinated groups, and strives to reform these conceptions and practices so that they serve the interests of these groups. Various practitioners of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science argue that dominant knowledge practices disadvantage women by (1) excluding them from inquiry, (2) denying them epistemic authority, (3) denigrating their "feminine" cognitive styles and modes of knowledge, (4) producing theories of women that represent them as inferior, deviant, or significant only in the ways they serve male interests, (5) producing theories of social phenomena that render women's activities and interests, or gendered power relations, invisible, and (6) producing knowledge (science and technology) that is not useful for people in subordinate positions, or that reinforces gender and other social hierarchies. Feminist epistemologists trace these failures to flawed conceptions of knowledge, knowers, objectivity, and scientific methodology. They offer diverse accounts of how to overcome these failures. They also aim to (1) explain why the entry of women and feminist scholars into different academic disciplines, especially in biology and the social sciences, has generated new questions, theories, and methods, (2) show how gender has played a causal role in these transformations, and (3) defend these changes as cognitive, not just social, advances. The central concept of feminist epistemology is that of a situated knower, and hence of situated knowledge: knowledge that reflects the particular perspectives of the subject. Feminist philosophers are interested in how gender situates knowing subjects. They have articulated three main approaches to this question: feminist standpoint theory, feminist postmodernism, and feminist empiricism. Different conceptions of how gender situates knowers also inform feminist approaches to the central problems of the field: grounding feminist criticisms of science and feminist science, defining the proper roles of social and political values in inquiry, evaluating ideals of objectivity and rationality, and reforming structures of epistemic authority. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ Nel Noddings is closely identified with the promotion of the ethics of care; -the argument that caring should be a foundation for ethical decision-making. Her first major work Caring (1984) explored what she described as a 'feminine approach to ethics and moral education'. Her argument starts from the position that care is basic in human life - that all people want to be cared for (Noddings 2002: 11). She also starts from the position that while men and women are guided by an ethic of care, 'natural' caring - 'a form of caring that does not require an ethical effort to motivate it (although it may require considerable physical and mental effort in responding to needs)' can have a significant basis in women's experience (ibid.: 2). 'Natural caring', thus, is a moral attitude - 'a longing for goodness that arises out of the experience or memory of being cared for' (Flinders 2001: 211). On this basis Nel Noddings explores the notion of ethical caring - 'a state of being in relation, characterized by receptivity, relatedness and engrossment' (op. cit.). http://www.infed.org/thinkers/noddings.htm Rationalism based on the ideology of these many philosophers of ages present and past carries on in many ways. There is a rationale within the consideration that the ethics of care as Nel Noddings would have in the feminist viewpoint, as Descartes and DuBois would have in the rationalist viewpoint within the confines of their era, all of whom would share a similar viewpoint in that rational thought must be achieved in order to focus energy on philosophical paradigms in life and see the world as it is, not as we want it to be. The beliefs found in empiricism would also be a shared consideration between all of the noted philosophers based purely on their expressions of life and understanding of life. This alone is an intriguing ideology and should be explored. Rationalists believe that those things that have always been in existence will not change until such time as all would willingly change them. Empiricists see the same in a different view, they believe that the world is as the world does and people's experiences will mold and create the methods by which rationalism has been defined for centuries at this time. Since the time of Plato and through the times of Descartes and DuBois and even in the present with Noddings, the philosophical viewpoints of rationalism have hardly faded from understanding or perception. References Cited: 1. Webster's New World Dictionary: Third College Edition; Neufeldt, Victoria; Guralnik, David eds.; Copyright Prentice Hall 1994 2. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Peter Markie; Copyright 2004; Rationalism vs. Empiricism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ 3. The W.E.B. DuBois Virtual University: W.E.B. DuBois: Scholar, Scientist, and Activist: Monteiro, Tony; Jennifer Wagner copyright 1995 http://members.tripod.com/DuBois/mont.html 4. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Peter Markie; Copyright 2004; Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ 5. Infed; Encyclopedia; Nel Noddings, the Ethics of Care and Education; Smith, Mark K. Copyright 2004 http://www.infed.org/thinkers/noddings.htm Read More