Epistemology as the Study of Knowledge and Justified Belief - Assignment Example

For him, there is necessarily no contradiction between the two.  The empiricist proposes that knowledge only comes from experience (and feeling with Locke) while the rationalists assert that reason is already an innate attribute and is already previously present (Descartes with this Cartesian proof).    For Kant, experience perfects knowledge and argued that experience alone is purely subjective if not processed by reason. While reason in itself is a mere theoretical illusion if not applied to experience. With regard to empiricist philosophers such as Locke and Hume, they consider experience and feeling as the sole bedrock of the source of knowledge. For them, a human mind started as empty and only evolves with experience and learning. Locke's theory of mind defines the self as a conscious thinking thing that is capable of sensing.

It is capable of sensibilities like pain and happiness, pleasure and misery. In Locke's theory of the self, the self is a self-reflective consciousness present within us. It continuously evolves with experience, learning, and sensation which are the sources of our ideas. Hume agreed with Locke that all knowledge is derived from experience. But he did not recognize every idea-forming operation that Locke presupposes. Hume also did not accept the possibility of any necessary connection between simple ideas, where Locke does and so some ideas which count as simple for Locke-extension and space, for example, are complex for