Blog Post 2

James Carrano

Blog Post 2

PHI 100-24N

14 October 2014

Some Ideas Are Natural

The debate about where our ideas come from is a very interesting discussion. There are two theories to the debate, which are empiricism and rationalism. Empiricism is the theory that all ideas are learned with experience. Rationalism is the thought that some ideas come naturally to us and the rest will come with experience. I believe that rationalism is the correct theory to side with in this debate. Humans are born with many things already implanted in their brains. Some examples could be beauty, virtue, and goodness. Everyone is born with the thought that they want to be beautiful or look beautiful. Nobody is born with the thought that they should be ugly. This is the same with goodness. Everyone wants to be good. In some cases, goodness can be learned with experience, but in most cases, everyone is born with the thought of right vs wrong.

Explanatory Breadth

I think empiricism is explained better since the only thing it says is that all ideas are learned through experience. Rationalism has more rules than empiricism does. When thinking about whether an idea is rationalist or not, you have to think if it could be innate or not. I think the definition of rationalism is too general to have the specifications that it does.

Explanatory Depth

Yes I think that rationalism explains the origins in more detail than empiricism does. It explains that most ideas are learned with experience, but some are natural to humans. Empiricism doesn’t explain itself in any kind of detail. It’s actually very general when it comes to an explanation. It just says that everything is learned through experience and that’s all.

Simplicity

Empiricism does have less parts since everything is under one belief. Rationalism is a little harder to understand since it says that some ideas are natural and some aren’t. When you see that some are innate, you might second guess yourself when you’re trying to decide if something is innate or not. With empiricism, there is no second guessing because everything is learned with experience. Rationalism is by far more complex than empiricism is.

Conservatism

I think many people today would believe in empiricism over rationalism. I think this because people think that everything is learned when you have experienced it. An example is common sense. Today, people would believe that you need to have some real-world experience to learn what common sense is.

1. Empiricism and rationalism are two major theories about the origins of ideas.
2. Rationalism narrows down ideas better and is more specific than empiricism.
3. Therefore, rationalism is the best theory to believe.