PP111 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Empiricism
Document Summary
Rationalism and empiricism descartes: descartes sought basic beliefs that can be known with certainty even if we cannot tell whether we are awake or dreaming and even if we cannot know whether there is an all powerful demon working to mislead us about everything we experience, rationalism, privileges reason over experience in the quest for knowledge, two ways a person could be a rationalist: The rational theory of knowledge only reason can provide the sort of justification needed for beliefs to become genuine knowledge: beliefs for which experience not reason, seems to be the only place to look for justification, invariably fall short of being genuine knowledge, for descartes any knowledge must rest on a foundation of certainty and so those beliefs for which such certainty is unavailable or which cannot be rationally deduced from other beliefs that are certain, will never qualify as knowledge.
