Extreme Rationalism

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Rationalism is the idea that we can gain knowledge through the processes of mind alone. Empiricism is the idea that we can only gain knowledge through the senses. Empiricism has been adopted by the Western world because it is the foundation of the scientific approach to life that we use. Various popular sayings such as 'seeing is believing' and 'I heard it with my own ears', show that we accept the use of the senses without question. How many times do you hear anyone say anything about certain beliefs based on the mind alone?

There are two types of Rationalism which we will call Extreme and Moderate.

Extreme Rationalism

Reached its peak in the Ancient Greek world with some philosophers entitrely dismissing sensory data. Philosophers such as as Parmenidies and Zeno. They believed that the knowledge derived from the senses was misleading and that true knowledge could only be gained through the processes of mind. This means that they considered sensory data as entirely false and of no value. The way to knowledge was through introspection.

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Moderate Rationalism

During the 17th century major changes took place in the nature of thought. Prior to this people had a religious outlook in which events were explained by Divine Intervention. People had no real control over the world in which they lived so when events such as the Black Death broke out they could only rely on religious explanations and the hope of a Divine cure. In modern times we would explain plague in terms of a biomedical model and use drugs in which to treat it. In this way plague has been eradicated from the Western world ...

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Moderate Rationalism

Believe it or not this way of thinking is the consequence of one person, a Polish astronomer called Copernicus, who observed the night sky through a hole in a piece of wood (there were no telescopes then). He discovered that the Earth was not the centre of the universe and that the Earth revolved around the Sun. This directly challenged the teachings of the Church whose justification of religion was based on the idea that the Earth was at the centre of the universe. Copernicus did not dare to publish his findings because the Church would probably have had him put to death as an example to others that religious doctrine should not be challenged.

After this work was published Galileo invented the telescope and confirmed the findings of Copernicus and suddenly people had the beginnings of the possibility of an explanation of the natural world that did not depend on God. This is the beginning of empirical science as we know it. Empirical science is about observation of events and the development of an understanding of cause and effect. For example, in a system based on religious ideas an active volcano would be explained in terms of some kind of Divine intervention, usually seen as the wrath of a God who had been offended for some reason. In order to pacify the God some form of sacrifice would probably have been offered. In a scientific system the volcano would be studied by observation on the premise that its activity could be explained in natural terms.

The Church resisted the new ideas even though logic was on the side of science. The church defended its world view and dismissed the new ideas as heresy. Hence there were two systems of thought which were incompatible with each other. This led to two major schools of philosophy, Rationalism and Empiricism.

These pages are concerned with rationalism which was revived by Rene Descartes who was concerned to place knowledge on firmer foundations than religious explanations. He did not want the new way of thinking to contain the same problems of falliability as religious explanations. He had two possible epistemological approaches to this task based on the potential sources of 'true' knowledge. Either knowledge came through the senses or it came from another source.