reason as a source of knowledge

Question 1

what are the debates in this topic?

Answer 1

• innatism vs empiricism
• rationalism vs empiricism

Question 2

what is innatism?

Answer 2

we are born with some knowledge already (and innate knowledge does not come from perceptual experience because you haven’t had any perceptual experience yet when you are born)

Question 3

what is rationalism?

Answer 3

we can acquire some knowledge purely through intuition and deduction ( we can acquire knowledge purely by thinking rather than through perceptual experience)

Question 4

what is a priori knowledge?

Answer 4

knowledge that can be acquired without experience of the external world, through thought alone
e.g. working out what 900/7 is

Question 5

what is a posteriori knowledge?

Answer 5

knowledge that can only be acquired from experience about the world
e.g. doing an experiment to discover the temperature at which water boils

Question 6

what is analytic truth?

Answer 6

true in virtue of the meaning of the words
e.g. a bachelor is an unmarried man

Question 6

what is synthetic truth?

Answer 6

true in virtue of how the world is
e.g. grass is green

Question 7

can analytic truths be denied?

Answer 7

not without resulting in a logical contradiction
- to say not all unmarried men are bachelors is to misunderstand the world bachelor - the concept of a married bachelor does not make sense
- one cannot coherently imagine a triangle with 4 sides because the very idea involves a contradiction

Question 8

can synthetic truths be denied?

Answer 8

yes, it does not lead to a logical contradiction
- we can coherently imagine red grass , which is a denial of the synthetic truth grass is green