Rationalism vs Empiricism

Hunter stokes
Philosophy
Blog post 2
                                                            Empiricism in Everyday

Rationalism and Empiricism both have their valid points that make them more or less plausible but in my opinion the more plausible idea is empiricism. Empiricism is the belief that all ideas originate from experience. This in my opinion is a better belief because it seems more logical since from the moment we are born we are absorbing anything and everything from our environment into our subconscious.

In Descartes wax example he explains that when wax that is solid moves closer to fire or heat, every single aspect of the wax changes yet it is known that the same wax remains. Just because it had changed forms doesn't mean it is different wax. This isn't something that was told to individuals, it is just known from the experience of watching the wax melt and alter. No one person told Descartes that the wax was still the same wax, it was knowledge from the experience of the wax melting that showed him the same wax remained.

The idea of empiricism has more explanatory breadth in my opinion because it states that all ideas originate from experience instead of just saying that there are innate ideas that we don't quite know of. The idea that some ideas are innate is just too vague to have any substantial backup to prove its logic, whereas humans are still learning every single day from experiences the previous day.

I also think that empiricism has more explanatory depth because of the matter of fact that it has more everyday examples. In life every single day we see that people learn from their experiences, ex. If you touch a hot pan your not going to touch that hot pan again in fear and knowledges that it is in fact
hot. In the belief of rationalism, it is stated that some ideas are innate, but the only examples that I have found are the examples of god and substance. But even these examples have yet to make sense to me because we are taught about god in our young years, and some do not even carry that belief.

In the matter of  simplicity , I believe that empiricism has the upper hand because it only has one idea ( that all ideas originate from experience), whereas rationalism contains two parts , that some ideas are innate, yet the rest of the ideas originate from experience. There is less confusion in empiricism because of this one clear idea , and that's what makes it the belief with more simplicity.

This seems to be one sided in my opinion because empiricism has outweighed rationalism in the previous 3 arguments , but again in my opinion I believe empiricism to have a more modern aspect to it. Every single day we are learning from our mistakes or learning new things and all the knowledge is coming from one experience or another, without experience there would be no new knowledge. It seems as if rationalism is just not as clear as empiricism and there is no clear examples, but empiricism is still happening today in every day life. Before I had mentioned the stove example, but this is also true with anything from getting a math problem wrong to messing up in a sport, no matter what is done wrong it is learned from and corrected.

The Theory of Rationalism and the Theory of Empiricism are the most plausible explanations of the origin of ideas.
The theory of empiricism has more explanatory breadth, explanatory depth, simplicity and conservatism. 
Therefore Empiricism is the best explanation of the origin of ideas.