What are the differences between rationalism and empiricism?

Question

Which theory is more successful in explaining the origins of knowledge?

Answer 1

Additional: Oh, the ORIGIN of knowledge. The dialectic of the two, their contradictions and synthesis and the frustrations of antinomy (the descriptions being equally true to false). Neither really explain history as it is, but retrospection of them and the emergence of written word does help much.

This should help you to get started.

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/a.htm#rationalism

Rationalism

Rationalism emphasises the role of Reason in arriving at true knowledge, as opposed to Empiricism, which emphasises the role of Experience and sense perception in knowledge. There are both idealist and materialist trends in both Rationalism and Empiricism.

Further Reading: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant and Fichte.


http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/m.htm#empiricism
Empiricism

Doctrine that sense experience is the sole source of knowledge. Empiricism originated in England in the seventeenth century with Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, when it was a materialist trend, is as much as it directed attention to the observation of Nature as opposed to Holy scripture or introspection. Bacon, & Co. recognised the material world as the source of sensation, and that sense experience has objective content. The Rationalist critique of Empiricism, and particularly the idealist critique of Berkeley forced empiricism to the scepticism of Hume: experience was the only source of knowledge, but could not give us "certain knowledge". For example, we may know that the Sun has always risen in the East, and this may be good enough for practical purposes, but Hume explained that we cannot know for certain that the Sun will rise in the East tommorow.

Empiricism is characterised, on the one hand, by an uncritical attitude towards the categories through which Experience is grasped, and on the other by rejection of the significance of Reason in acquiring knowledge. This is why, historically, Empiricism could not answer the critique of Rationalism and fell into scepticism. Experience does not by itself give necessary and universal knowledge. Experience must be supplemented by the activity of Reason. The chief defect of Empiricism is that it views experience passively, whereas in order to retain a consistent materialist understanding of experience it is necessary to recognise that it is the practical activity of people changing the world which is the condition and source of knowledge. Further, knowledge only arises in and through definite social relations, through which people produce the forms of activity under which experience can be grasped; but for Empricism, experience is not a social activity, but simply a passive, sensual process.

Further Reading: Empiricism and Its Evolution by Gerge Novack, and Geoff Pilling's explanation, Hegel's critique of Empiricism, and in particular it's defect

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/m.htm#empiricism


http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/li_terms.htm

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/sl_iii.htm#SL36

The fourth branch of metaphysics is Natural or Rational Theology. The notion of God, or God as a possible being, the proofs, of his existence, and his properties, formed the study of this branch.

(a) When understanding thus discusses the Deity, its main purpose is to find what predicates correspond or not to the fact we have in our imagination as God. And in doing it assumes the contrast between positive and negative to be absolute; and hence, in the long run, nothing is left for the notion as understanding takes it, but the empty abstraction of indeterminate Being, of mere reality or positivity, the lifeless product of modern ‘Deism’.

(b) The method of demonstration employed in finite knowledge must always lead to an inversion of the true order. For it requires the statement of some objective ground for God’s being, which thus acquires the appearance of being derived from something else. This mode of proof, guided as it is by the canon of mere analytical identity, is embarrassed by the difficulty of passing from the finite to the infinite. Either the finitude of the existing world, which is left as much a fact as it was before, clings to the notion of Deity, and God has to be defined as the immediate substance of that world — which is Pantheism: or he remains an object set over against the subject, and in this way, finite — which is Dualism.

(c) The attributes of God which ought to be various and precise had, properly speaking, sunk and disappeared in the abstract notion of pure reality, of indeterminate Being. Yet in our material thought, the finite world continues, meanwhile, to have a real being, with God as a sort of antithesis: and thus arises the further picture of different relations of God to the world. These, formulated as properties, must, on the one hand, as relations to finite circumstances, themselves possess a finite character (giving us such properties as just, gracious, mighty, wise, etc.); on the other hand they must be infinite. Now on this level of thought the only means, and a hazy one, of reconciling these opposing requirements was quantitative exaltation of the properties, forming them into indeterminateness — into the sensus eminentior. But it was an expedient which really destroyed the property and left a mere name.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/sl_iii.htm#SL34n

§ 34

The second branch of the metaphysical system was Rational Psychology or Pneumatology. It dealt with the metaphysical nature of the soul — that is, of the Mind regarded as a thing. It expected to find immortality in a sphere dominated by the laws of composition, time, qualitative change, and quantitative increase or decrease.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hl778.htm

Hegel’s Science of Logic

Kant's Critique of Rational Psychology
§ 1685

These conceptions, which must be called barbarous, place the defect in the fact that in thinking of the 'I', the 'I' as subject cannot be omitted; but the same defect then also appears the other way round, namely in this way, that 'I' occurs only as subject of self-consciousness, or I can use myself only as subject of a judgement, and the intuition is lacking by which the 'I' might be given as an object; but the notion of a thing that can exist only as subject does not so far involve any objective reality at all. If external intuition, determined in space and time, is required for objectivity, and it is this that is missing here, then it is quite clear that by objectivity is meant merely sensuous reality; and to have risen above that is a condition of thinking and of truth.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/sl_ivpi.htm#SL38n

Besides, this school makes sense-perception the form in which fact is to be apprehended; and in this consists the defect of Empiricism. Sense perception as such is always individual, always transient: not indeed that the process of knowledge stops short at sensation: on the contrary, it proceeds to find out the universal and permanent element in the individual apprehended by sense. This is the process leading from simple perception to experience.

In order to form experiences, Empiricism makes especial use of the form of Analysis. In the impression of sense we have a concrete of many elements, the several attributes of which we are expected to peel off one by one, like the skins of an onion. In thus dismembering the thing, it is understood that we disintegrate and take to pieces these attributes which have coalesced, and add nothing but our own act of disintegration. Yet analysis is the process from the immediacy of sensation to thought: those attributes, which the object analysed contains in union, acquire the form of universality by being separated. Empiricism therefore labours under a delusion, if it supposes that, while analysing the objects, it leaves them as they were: it really transforms the concrete into an abstract. And as a consequence of this change, the living thing is killed: life can exist only in the concrete and one. Not that we can do without this division, if it be our intention to comprehend. Mind itself is an inherent division. The error lies in forgetting that this is only one half of the process, and that the main point is the reunion of what has been parted. And it is where analysis never gets beyond the stage of partition that the words of the poet are true:

Answer 2

It's not a matter of one being more successful. They have both contributed to explaining things, which is the origin of knowledge. All knowledge begins with curiosity, with questions. When we had limited tools to explain things, we resorted more to observing and reasoning than experimentation and observation, but observation is a part of both.

Rationalism proceeds from deduction from observation, while empiricism depends on establishing a theory and an experiment to prove the theory. Empiricism is more reliable, but more tedious and time-consuming. Both require an adherence to logic.

Answer 3

Neither could. That was Kant's mission to transcend and reach the " starry heaven above " that left in him awe. Funny thing is , that he was looking for that bridge and it was transcendation. He never saw it. P.S. this is epitstemology not metapyshics. You seem to have a compellig arguement if you are talking about far-fetched of your own personal insights on the orgins of philosophy, but I would not post wisdom that has not been proven confusing the asker, Oh, great peson of proven wisdom, psyengine2003. If your url address give you that insight, then, I think that you should changed to more credibile websites...The orgins of epistemology( the study of knowledge) is only one of the six divisions of epistemology...by the way Immanuel Kant ,Fredrich Nietzsche, G.W.F., Hegel were not involved in Rationalism or Empericism so I would not credit them in futher readings because , my friend, it's morally wrong to suggest them as a answer in a question where the asker and future philosophers will be misinformed by the suggestive readings. Philosophy is not about winning the argument for it is the love of winning an agrument for philosophy, not in vain purposes only for the ego's philosophy.

Answer 4

I don't know much about those theories (except for what I read here), but the origin of knowledge according to neuronal science is the strengthening of the synapsis between neurons, due to various causes: looking repeateadly to something, being highly impressed by something, noticing a connection between two things, etc. That creates the effect of giving certain memories a larger level of trustworthiness and dependability, while other memories appear more random.

Answer 5

exactly

empiricism - sensory data is what we have to work with

rationalism - your senses can be unreliable. emphasises role of contemplation and Reason