Knowledge: Where is it from?

Knowledge from Sense Experience

Shana Sanders

Philosophy 100

57Z1

Knowledge from Sense Experience

Where does our knowledge come from ? This is a question that many philosophers try to answer . In the history of philosophy , there are two main camps that try to answer the question : the rationalists and the empiricists . The main difference between the two camps is that the rationalists believe that we get our knowledge from reason while the empiricists believe that we get our knowledge from sense experience The basis of knowledge for one camp is

reason while for the other camp is sense experience . Which of the arguments of these two camps are more convincing ? I believe that the empiricists are more convincing than the rationalists . I believe that we can not know anything if we will not use our senses first . We need our reason but without anything to work on , our reason will not function

What is empiricism ? What are the arguments for it and who are the main philosophers who argue for empiricism

As the book says , empiricism is the theory that all knowledge of actual , existing things is delivered through the five senses : our sense of sight , smell , taste , hearing and touch . The main proponents of empiricism are grouped into three : the classical empiricists who are Aristotle and St . Thomas Aquinas , the modern empiricist John Locke and the radical empiricist David Hume . Locke , Berkeley and Hume are known as the British empiricists because they all came from the countries of Great Britain

How did these empiricists prove that it is mainly sense experience and not reason that is the basis of our knowledge ? Why are they more convincing than the rationalists

Aristotle argues that our knowledge of ideas come from our sense experience of the particular things . He is in a way reacting to the rationalist thinking of the Greek philosopher before him , Plato . He thinks that Plato 's world of forms and senses cannot be correct because the belief means that we have two realities : one that consists of the ideals , the eternal and unchanging things and the world of material things that we can perceive with our senses . Aristotle believes that the form and matter are not separate that the form is actually in the matter . Let us take for example a material thing like a table . For Plato , there is the material table which exists in our reality outside of our minds and the form of the table , the idea ' of table which exists in our minds . For Aristotle , this cannot be the case . As the book says of Aristotle 's argument , The Form or essence of the table must be right there along with the matter of table , constituting it How can the Form - that which is knowable about the table - makes the table knowable if it is not in the table (226 ) For Aristotle we get our idea of the universal things (our idea ' of universal Table ) from our sense experience of the particular things (the particular...