Empiricism and Rationalism;
Stand Alone Theories?
The question I am predisposed to answer is this: Are Empiricism and Rationalism stand alone theories, or is their existence genuinely reliant on each other?
I will begin by explaining Empiricism and Rationalism. The epistemological theory of Empiricism derives its name from the Greek empeiria, meaning experience. Empiricism can be principally defined by saying that sensory experience is the origin of all knowledge, only after confirmation by actual experience can beliefs be accepted and acted upon.
To know something exists we must have experienced it; how can we know that something is the colour green if we have never experienced colour before? How do we know what something tastes like if we’ve never tasted it before? Would you know that a banana is yellow, perhaps someone may have told you that a banana is yellow, but until you have seen it for yourself can you really be sure?
John Locke, widely considered as the first British empiricist said this; “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters without any ideas; how it comes to be furnished? Whence it comes by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.” Locke is endorsing the idea that when we are born our minds are a tabula rasa or blank slate. This slate, our mind, vacant to all knowledge and ideas is gradually filled through the experiences of life.
An alternative way of understanding is to view our minds as a clean spon ...