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Reason as a source of Knowledge - Coggle Diagram
Reason as a source of Knowledge
This A Level philosophy topic examines 2 ways we can acquire knowledge through reason, i.e. a priori:
• Intuition and deduction
• Innate knowledge
and considers the kinds of things we can know through these methods (the debate between rationalism and empiricism).
Some definitions
ANALYTIC / SYNTHETIC
Analytic and synthetic are two different kinds of truths.
• Analytic truth: true in virtue of the meaning of the words
o
E.g. “A bachelor is an unmarried man”, or, “triangles have three sides”
Analytic truths cannot be denied without resulting in a logical contradiction. To say, “not all bachelors are unmarried”, for example, is to misunderstand the word bachelor – the concept of a married bachelor does not make sense. Similarly, one cannot coherently imagine a triangle with four sides because the very idea involves a contradiction.
• Synthetic truth: true in virtue of how the world is
o
E.g. “Grass is green”, or, “water boils at 100°c”
Denial of a synthetic truth does not lead to a logical contradiction. For example, we can coherently imagine red grass in denial of the synthetic truth “grass is green”. Though experience tells us grass is not, in fact, red, there is no logical contradiction in this idea.
A PRIORI / A POSTERIORI
A priori and a posteriori are two different kinds of
knowledge
:
• A priori knowledge: knowledge that can be acquired without experience of the external world, through thought alone
o E.g. working out what 900 divided by 7 is
• A posteriori knowledge: knowledge that can only be acquired from experience of the external world
o E.g. doing an experiment to discover the temperature at which water boils
RATIONALISM / EMPIRICISM
The debate between
rationalism
and
empiricism
concerns the relationship between the two kinds of knowledge (a priori/a posteriori) with the two kinds of truth (analytic/synthetic).
Most a priori knowledge is knowledge of analytic truths and most a posteriori knowledge is knowledge of synthetic truths. The disagreement between rationalism and empiricism is whether this relationship holds in all cases, or whether there are exceptions:
• Rationalism says there are some synthetic truths that can be known a priori
• Empiricism says all knowledge of synthetic truths is acquired a posteriori
In other words, empiricism says there is no such thing as synthetic a priori knowledge and rationalism says there is at least one synthetic truth that is known a priori.