Is Perception the Source and Basis of Knowledge?

our only source of knowledge; some ideas are not accumulated through experience. This theory is based on the idea that genuine knowledge is derived from reason and does not need to rely on experience. These ideas, according to rationalism, are synthetic necessary statements and are universally true. We call this type of knowledge a priori; this means that it is necessary knowledge not dependent unop experience. Something that is a priori is necessarily true by definition, for example “black cats are black”. This statement has to be true because we would be contradicting ourselves if we tried to say it wasn’t. It is presented in the name that black cats are black, so indeed they must be black. There are some problems with this theory, though. There are some names that have given adjectives that are not necessarily true to the thing that we are naming. For instance, if we were to say, “the red river is red” this statement would be false. Though it is presented in the name that the red river is red, it is not. This is simply the name for a dirty river; we cannot assume that it is red. There are countless other examples of names like this, “the Barenaked ladies are not Barenaked ladies” for example. This knowledge we call a priori, is not necessarily true by definition. We would need experience to learn that the red river is not red and that a band named the Barenaked Ladies is actually a group of men who are often clothed. Rationalists also use mathematics to support their claims. Common examples of this are; parallel lines never meet and the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180°. This is true for some people. Some people can figure these things out with nothing but reason, but I would believe that there are some others that cannot. Rationalists believe that we are born with detailed concepts of God, causality, and mathematics. There is no way to prove this but it is an interesting theory. Empiricism bases its entire doctrin on the belief that we must refer to experience as a source of knowledge. We have come to know this type of knowledge as a posteriori: knowledge that comes after or is dependent upon experience. To contrast the a priori statement “black cats are black”, you could say as an a posteriori statement “cats are black”. To determine if cats were black you would have to see one, sense it, experience it. The fathers of empiricism are John Locke and George Berkely, but David Hume later perfected their ideologies. They strengthen their arguments by saying that you need experience to have the skill of reasoning, and so without experience reason isn’t possible. They also say that reason produces nothing but analytical statements that are true by definition and they do not produce genuine worldly knowledge. They argue that knowledge is based on both sense experience and internal mental experiences. It is very difficult to prove this though, because it seems that they have come to this conclusion based on reason. Rationalism and empiricsim both present good evidence to secure their arguments, but they also both have some holes in their arguments. It is impossible to prove without exception which of these ideologies is the correct one. It can be assumed that both reason and experience are necessary to acquire knowledge, but it cannot be proved. So you must base your own decision on your own perception of the situation. But this statement brings us back to the question, is perception the basis of knowledge or not?