Position

Rationalism

Reason can provide substantive knowledge or concepts independently of sense experience.

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Classification

Position level
specific
Domains
Epistemology

Overview

The rationalist argues from the character of what we already know. Some truths are grasped as necessary and universal, and experience, which delivers only what has been observed so far, cannot yield either necessity or universality. The source must therefore be reason itself, working on content the mind brings to experience rather than draws from it.

The standard reply is that this mistakes the unrevisable for the substantive: the truths that seem knowable independently of experience may be so precisely because they say nothing about the world, holding by the meanings of their terms alone. Showing that reason reaches past definition to fact is the position's outstanding debt.

Position on

Held by traditions

Incompatible positions

  • Empiricism

    Question scope: Experience or Reason?

References