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John Locke Compare And Contrast

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Rationalism vs. Empiricism
Both Rene Descartes and John Locke were philosophers who focus their attention on knowledge and reality. Rene Descartes was a rationalist, while John Locke was an Empiricist. In order to compare and contrast their views one must take a few steps. Firstly, one will need to identify what rationalism is and how Rene Descartes interpreted it. Then, one will look at John Locke’s position and define empiricism as well. Finally, one will compare both of their positions finding similarities and differences that liken and distinguish each.
The Archetypes of Wisdom textbook define rationalism as “an epistemological position in which reason is said to be the primary source of all knowledge, superior to sense evidence” (Soccio, n.d.). To rationalists, people who practice the idea of rationalism, reason is the greatest factor one can rely on. Reason is something that is superior to the sense. Descartes believe that you can have what is know as priori knowledge. Priori knowledge, according to the textbook is “Truths that are not derived from observation or experiment, characterized as being certain, deductive, universally true, and independent of all experience.” (Soccio, n.d.) These ideas are sometimes called innate ideas. One example of an innate idea is music taste. …show more content…
While rationalism relies on reason “as the ultimate test of truth” (Soccio, n.d.). Empiricism describes reason as “unable to provide knowledge of reality; such knowledge can only derived from experience” (Soccio, n.d.). The 5 senses are pinnacle for empiricism. Rationalists say, “the 5 senses give you an opinion on something, but don’t explain why it is” ("Rationalism vs. Empiricism", 2018). Even though they both desire to discover how ideas are created and knowledge is formed, they both have very different ways for discovering what is true

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