Philip Wright
PHL 222 A
March 1, 2013
Knowledge by Experience Rene Descartes’ six Meditations raise many questions concerning epistemology and metaphysics. This main question that is raised by Descartes is, “Why and what should I doubt?” This vital question examines the existence of knowledge and where is originates from. There are two schools of thoughts that attempt to answer this question: empiricism and rationalism. Empiricists like Locke, Berkeley, and Hume believe that sense experience is the best source for all of our knowledge. In contrast, rationalists like Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz think that we acquire knowledge independently of sense experience. Descartes, being a rationalist, rejects all sense experience and is positive that knowledge comes from pure reason. Throughout this paper I will argue that knowledge does not come from pure reason but from empirical data. To do this I will explore both the limitations and benefits of empiricism and rationalism. The rationalist thinkers make an effort at understanding the origin of knowledge, but empiricism has better ideas in which knowledge comes from our sense experience in the physical world. To understand rationalism, Rene Descartes’ philosophy should be examined first. In his first of six meditations he focuses on his own doubt about sense experience and how it affects our knowledge. During his lifetime he thought the methods that schools taught to their students was flawed. He realized this and knew that everything up until that moment, everything he understood to be true, came from his sensory experience (Hatfield). After this epiphany he began to doubt reality through deceptions such as illusions, dreams, and the deceiver.
Immediately from Descartes’ first meditation a flaw is present. Descartes believes that he can doubt the physical world’s existence because phenomena like illusions happen. An illusion cannot be viewed as a glitch in reality, but as visual stimuli being distorted due to the nature of things. To expand on this, a mirage is a good example to explain this. Due to the lack of scientific advancements and understandings of Descartes’ time, it would be impossible for him to know the mechanics which create a mirage. Physically, photons travel through the hot air associated with mirages at a much faster rate. This causes them to take shortcuts and take a curved path, thus creating a mirage (Meyer). Again, because Descartes did not have access to this information, it is understandable for him to think that his mind was being deceived. However, now that a mirage can be defined, it cannot be used as a reason to doubt reality.
Descartes’ entire construction on knowledge can be drawn from his ideas about intuition and deduction. He has in his mind that these two approaches are the most trusted ways to attain knowledge. To Descartes, intuition gives us basic ideas which are so clear that they leave no room for doubt. Along with this, deduction is important assumptions which come from the intuitions that we already have. In his mind our senses are constantly changing and the “imperfect creations of our imagination” (Stumpf and Fieser 207) are confusing and do not give us clear ideas. And according to Descartes, ideas including mathematics and the laws of physics should be intuitive. Let us look at the concept of gravity in regard to Descartes’ thought of intuition. He says that our sense experience cannot be trusted, but the concept of gravity was discovered by experience. Sir Isaac Newton experienced an apple falling from a tree to come up with the concept of gravity. Without the empirical data of this event, it can be said that the apple moved from one point to another. It is our sense experience that gives meaning to the concepts we understand to be true, which without they would be empty words. Another rationalist thinker, Benedict Spinoza, uses an axiomatic method, like Descartes. He begins with ideas we know