An overview of the rationalism vs. empiricism debate in epistemology broken down into the innate knowledge debate and the intuition and deduction debate.

In general, empiricists (such as Locke and Hume) say all knowledge requires a posteriori experience but the rationalists (such as Descartes, Leibniz, and Plato) say we can acquire some knowledge a priori without any experience. We look at two ways rationalists can argue this:
1. That we are born with innate knowledge, and/or
2. That we can acquire knowledge using only intuition and deduction.

The terms 'rationalism' and 'empiricism' were invented after these philosophers were writing and even today aren't clearly defined, though, so we end up going round the houses talking about analytic truths, synthetic truths, Hume's fork, evil demons, getting punched by ghosts, and knowledge of alien worlds in order to define and evaluate rationalism and empiricism.

These videos are based around the AQA A-level philosophy syllabus.

00:00 Intro
01:45 Overview and definitions
02:14 A priori and a posteriori knowledge
06:00 Rationalism's innate knowledge thesis
07:06 Plato's argument for innate knowledge (Meno's slave)
12:10 Leibniz's argument for innate knowledge (necessary truths)
15:41 Locke's empiricist tabula rasa theory
19:04 Locke's arguments against innate knowledge
20:41 Leibniz vs. Locke on innate knowledge
23:58 Summary: The innate knowledge thesis
25:24 Rationalism's intuition and deduction thesis
26:17 Analytic and synthetic truths
31:02 Descartes' Meditations
33:16 Descartes' cogito argument for rationalism ('I exist' as an a priori intuition)
35:40 Descartes' trademark argument for rationalism ('God exists' as an a priori deduction)
39:38 Descartes' external world argument for rationalism ('objects exist' as an a priori deduction)
42:04 Hume's empiricist fork
45:22 Hume's fork applied to Descartes' argument for objects
47:24 Hume's fork applied to Descartes' trademark argument
48:55 Locke's tabula rasa applied to Descartes' trademark argument
50:18 Hume's fork applied to Descartes' cogito argument
52:09 Summary: The intuition and deduction thesis
54:34 Outro and book recommendations

References/further reading:
- My website: [ Ссылка ]
- My book: [ Ссылка ]
- Meno by Plato. Full text here: [ Ссылка ]
- Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes. Full text here: [ Ссылка ]
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke. Full text here: [ Ссылка ]
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume. Full text here: [ Ссылка ]
- New Essays on Human Understanding by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Preface and book 1 available here: [ Ссылка ]
- Stanford's summary (a good resource) of the rationalism vs. empiricism debate: [ Ссылка ]

#philosophy #epistemology #alevelphilosophy

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