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In philosophy and in its current sense, rationalism is a line of thought that appeals to reason or the intellect as a primary or fundamental source of knowledge or justification". [1] It is typically contrasted with empiricism , which appeals to sensory experience as a primary or fundamental source of knowledge or justification. [ 2 ]
Jan 16, 2023 · However, despite his critique of rationalism in Scientific Man, it is clear that Morgenthau also thought that a “rational” theory of politics was possible; hence our claim that in Politics Among Nations Morgenthau embraced a soft rationalism. Third, is the fact that Morgenthau must believe that both the “observer rationality assumption” and the “rational actor assumption” are ...
- Overview
- Types and expressions of rationalism
rationalism, in Western philosophy, the view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge. Holding that reality itself has an inherently logical structure, the rationalist asserts that a class of truths exists that the intellect can grasp directly. There are, according to the rationalists, certain rational principles—especially in logic and mathematics, and even in ethics and metaphysics—that are so fundamental that to deny them is to fall into contradiction. The rationalists’ confidence in reason and proof tends, therefore, to detract from their respect for other ways of knowing.
Rationalism has long been the rival of empiricism, the doctrine that all knowledge comes from, and must be tested by, sense experience. As against this doctrine, rationalism holds reason to be a faculty that can lay hold of truths beyond the reach of sense perception, both in certainty and generality. In stressing the existence of a “natural light,” rationalism has also been the rival of systems claiming esoteric knowledge, whether from mystical experience, revelation, or intuition, and has been opposed to various irrationalisms that tend to stress the biological, the emotional or volitional, the unconscious, or the existential at the expense of the rational.
Rationalism has somewhat different meanings in different fields, depending upon the kind of theory to which it is opposed.
In the psychology of perception, for example, rationalism is in a sense opposed to the genetic psychology of the Swiss scholar Jean Piaget (1896–1980), who, exploring the development of thought and behaviour in the infant, argued that the categories of the mind develop only through the infant’s experience in concourse with the world. Similarly, rationalism is opposed to transactionalism, a point of view in psychology according to which human perceptual skills are achievements, accomplished through actions performed in response to an active environment. On this view, the experimental claim is made that perception is conditioned by probability judgments formed on the basis of earlier actions performed in similar situations. As a corrective to these sweeping claims, the rationalist defends a nativism, which holds that certain perceptual and conceptual capacities are innate—as suggested in the case of depth perception by experiments with “the visual cliff,” which, though platformed over with firm glass, the infant perceives as hazardous—though these native capacities may at times lie dormant until the appropriate conditions for their emergence arise.
In the comparative study of languages, a similar nativism was developed beginning in the 1950s by the linguistic theorist Noam Chomsky, who, acknowledging a debt to René Descartes (1596–1650), explicitly accepted the rationalistic doctrine of “innate ideas.” Though the thousands of languages spoken in the world differ greatly in sounds and symbols, they sufficiently resemble each other in syntax to suggest that there is “a schema of universal grammar” determined by “innate presettings” in the human mind itself. These presettings, which have their basis in the brain, set the pattern for all experience, fix the rules for the formation of meaningful sentences, and explain why languages are readily translatable into one another. It should be added that what rationalists have held about innate ideas is not that some ideas are full-fledged at birth but only that the grasp of certain connections and self-evident principles, when it comes, is due to inborn powers of insight rather than to learning by experience.
Common to all forms of speculative rationalism is the belief that the world is a rationally ordered whole, the parts of which are linked by logical necessity and the structure of which is therefore intelligible. Thus, in metaphysics it is opposed to the view that reality is a disjointed aggregate of incoherent bits and is thus opaque to reason. In particular, it is opposed to the logical atomisms of such thinkers as David Hume (1711–76) and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), who held that facts are so disconnected that any fact might well have been different from what it is without entailing a change in any other fact. Rationalists have differed, however, with regard to the closeness and completeness with which the facts are bound together. At the lowest level, they have all believed that the law of contradiction “A and not-A cannot coexist” holds for the real world, which means that every truth is consistent with every other; at the highest level, they have held that all facts go beyond consistency to a positive coherence; i.e., they are so bound up with each other that none could be different without all being different.
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- Brand Blanshard
A rationalist initially, Kant was influenced by the division in knowledge made by Hume. Only a combination of reason and experience can give us adequate knowledge, according to Kant. He begins by providing an account of relations of ideas, which he terms analytic truths. In sentences that express analytic truths, the predicate term is already ...
Aug 29, 2023 · Defining rationalism. We have all likely heard the suggestion to “be rational.”. This usually means to think or act in a way that is guided by reason. In philosophy, rationalism unpacks the faculty of reason, building a school of thought around the intellectual power of the mind. Rationalism is one distinctive kind of answer to the ...
Jan 16, 2023 · Yet is rationality a core supposition of realist theory, and if so, what kind of rationality is implied in these claims? Debate on the relationship between realism, and what is often labeled as rationality is replete with misunderstandings. Authors deploy terms such as rationality, rationalism, and rational actor in diverse and contradictory ways.
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Sep 29, 2023 · Rationalism, rooted in the Latin "Ratio" for reason, is defined as a philosophical doctrine where reason is the primary source of knowledge and justification, emphasizing intellectual and deductive processes over sensory experiences. This approach considers reason superior to revelation and authority, advocating for knowledge derived from a ...
