John Locke and Epsitemology

Rationalists believe that human reason can provide answers to the most basic and philosophical questions. These answers are then all necessary truths and are found within our thinking processes. To the rationalist, experience only provides material and clues to help obtain an answer, but experience cannot teach us anything, “Truth is subject to the vicissi

Empiricists don’t entirely reject all notions of reason, but only in specialized activities such as logic and calculation. Some of the more radical empiricists of this century believe that reason can tell us nothing about reality, only tell us about the structure of language. Since the majority of empiricism is based on learning through experience (an inductive argument), knowledge is highly probable and not certain. In addition, many empiricists believe that many of philosophy’s big questions, does god exist, what is the meaning of life, and the nature of reality are unanswerable. If these questions had an answer they would be trivial statements about the meaning of our words. To an empiricist, the meaning of reality simply means “that which is material and sensible.” These meanings also may be based on continual experience such as 2+2=4. Much of empiricism is the reexamination of these big questions. It is an attempt to show that these questions cannot be answered and that they might not possibly make sense in the first place.

What we know, claim to know, and how and how we justify these claims all comes through experience. If we do not experience something our minds tend to create a false or not entirely true image in our minds of how that object actually exists in reality. Without our many experiences in life we would n

Some topics in this essay:
John Locke, Locke Rationalists, Epistemology Epistemology, Rasa Blank, generalization objects, john locke, comes experience experience, learn experience, addition believe, blank born, objects feelings, object desk, experience experience, empiricists believe, comes experience,