Empiricism

Whenever a person chooses a side in the traditional debate between rationalism and empiricism, that person is necessarily making a statement about how much people should trust the evidence of their own senses. However, there are a number of instances in which I think that sensory evidence can be deceptive. While I think the allure of empiricism is undoubtedly seductive, for the precise reason that sensory experience can be so vivid, I think this is a limited worldview. I would like to advance my own preference for rationalism by looking at two basic objections to empiricism -- the presence of innate knowledge in the mind, and the potentially deceptive nature of the senses. The former, I hope, will show that rational processes and structures to a certain degree exist without need of sensory evidence -- that reason and logic are, to some extent, a thing apart from perception. The...
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