Difference Between Rationalism And Empiricism
Rationalism and Empiricism almost feel like polar opposites. To begin with, rationalism believes one has priori knowledge. Priori knowledge is basically "fundamental truths that everyone just knows." For example, the idea that "everything has a shape and size." It's an innate truth that we were already aware of. Rationalists think that we were born knowing everything already, but due to some traumatic event at birth, we forget everything we know. As we continue development on Earth, we begin to remember some of our past knowledge through difficulties such as problems and other scenarios. That's why a math problem all-of-a-sudden seems solvable or that you finally figured it out after a lot of thinking - you already knew it, you just had to remember it first. This is how rationalists think of priori knowledge.
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Empiricists believed that experience is how we learn and understand the world around us, and it can't just be thought of in one's mind and instantly understand and be familiar with said idea. That's why schools are very important to empiricists; since students are not aware of anything, they must assure to teach the students every detail to the bone about every idea. All understanding comes from posteriori knowledge; one must live and experience it in order to really understand it and have an idea about it. Empiricists often debunk rationalists with the notion that not everyone has the same "innate" ideas in mind just as the rationalists debunk empiricists by stating all experiences of "reality" are subjective and therefore maybe reality doesn't exist.
These are how rationalists and empiricists differ, especially with the notion of priori and posteriori
Empiricists believed that experience is how we learn and understand the world around us, and it can't just be thought of in one's mind and instantly understand and be familiar with said idea. That's why schools are very important to empiricists; since students are not aware of anything, they must assure to teach the students every detail to the bone about every idea. All understanding comes from posteriori knowledge; one must live and experience it in order to really understand it and have an idea about it. Empiricists often debunk rationalists with the notion that not everyone has the same "innate" ideas in mind just as the rationalists debunk empiricists by stating all experiences of "reality" are subjective and therefore maybe reality doesn't exist.
These are how rationalists and empiricists differ, especially with the notion of priori and posteriori