Blog Post 2

Melissa Tkacs

Philosophy

Blog Post 2

Not All is learned

            In the debate of Rationalism vs Empiricism, Rationalists believe that ideas come from both our innate nature and experience, while empiricists just believe that ideas come from experience. I agree with the standpoint of Rationalism. I believe Decarte’s stance on rationalism is more plausible than Hume’s stance of Empiricism because it makes more sense for one’s ideas to come from more than one place. If we did not have innate ideas, we would not be able to know how to act and learn further ideas. I believe that the innate ideas that we are born with do not define who we are, but they help build us up to the ideas that we will learn as we go through in life.

            I believe that we start with a basis of innate ideas that we will build up over our life span. I believe that at birth we are born with the natural inclination towards knowledge, from the minute we come from the womb we are curious in nature. We want to further discover what is in the world for us, and feel and experience all of the senses. Next, we are born with the natural inclination of need, we know that we need to breathe, eat, sleep and etc. We immediately know even as a young child to look to our parents for the help that we need to survive. As we grow older we only build on this innate trait, we grow up and get jobs and begin our lives to provide for ourselves and sometimes eventually even for others who will depend on us to provide for them. The innate idea of need builds and builds, we feel the need for feelings such as love or companionship, or we also feel the need for material items such as money, or we can even feel the need for power other others. Lastly I also believe that we are born with the innate idea of order. It is our instinct to establish order in situations. By establishing this order, things will run smoothly, we have a natural inclination to avoid chaos and situations that will cause harm. Order generally ties in a way of staying out of trouble and in a peaceful state.

            The idea of Rationalism better explains the theory of where ideas come over how Empiricism explains it because rationalism offers a greater explanatory breadth by explaining of how we are able to function as human beings while we are infants coming out of the womb for the first time and are able to survive, learn and put more ideas together.

            The Rationalist approach has a greater explanatory depth while it explains in detail the origin of ideas in more ways than Empiricists. The rational approach offers two ways of coming about ideas and shows how the innate ideas help to form the ideas that we will learn from experience later down the road.

            The Rational approach may be less simple compared to the Empirical approach because the rationalist approach offers a longer explanation stating that there are both innate and non innate ideas while the Empiricist theory is straight forward on how the ideas are only formulated in the mind in one way.

            While both theories could be considered conservative, the idea most conservative with my beliefs is the Rationalist view. This view leaves the user open for suggestion that an all-powerful God whom has created us has indoctrinated the innate ideas into our minds.  

1. The Theory of Rationalism and the Theory of Empiricism are the most plausible explanations of the origin of ideas.

2. Rationalism has much more explanatory depth, explanatory breadth, and conservatism whereas Empiricism has a little more simplicity.

3. Therefore, Rationalism is the best explanation of the origin of ideas.