Rationalism vs. Empiricism
Updated 2026-09-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns, in its most general form, the extent to which we depend on experience in acquiring knowledge of the external world. Experience is usually divided into two kinds: sensory experience involving the five senses directed at the world, and reflective experience containing awareness of our own mental operations. Rationalists appeal to intuition and deduction, while empiricists trace all the material of ideas to experience.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Source locating: ask whether the ground of a claim is rational deduction or sensory data, then settle its reliability. - Dispute diagnosis: identify the tacit assumptions about sources of knowledge that underlie an opponent's position, and grasp the real point of disagreement.
Anchor fast decisions
The disagreement is rooted in the fact that sensory experience provides only particular and variable material, while knowledge of universal and necessary truths seems to require a stronger source. Rationalism appeals to rational intuition and deduction, holding that some knowledge or concepts precede experience; empiricism holds that all the material of ideas comes from experience, and that reason's role is merely to combine and compare.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- plato.stanford.eduhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/verified
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