Skepticism, Empiricism, and Rationalism

This is a brief description and clarification from the ideas presented in the Rauhut reading for Epistemology - Part I.

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Education

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[winstono75]

I am a naivist. We naivists believe that things are the way authorities tell us they are.

[mfraley76]

@winstono75

As an authority in this field, I need to inform you that authorities are not to be trusted.

[semasiologistics]

I don't understand how rationalism works since without the senses we cannot take in knowledge so far that we know. Mathmatics is like any other principle of the material world, is it not, in that for us to understand anything about it we must first experience it. We must learn its rules. Its numbers, its theory, etc. And, only after such are we able to practice it.

[mfraley76]

@semasiologistics

Think of it this way. We do indeed learn through our senses, none of us are a brain in a vat trying to construct notions from first principles, but the means by which we come to understand and practice notions is entirely irrelevant. When asked "What is three plus three?" You do not respond by asking, "Three what? Three apples, three chairs, three pencils?" You need not be experiencing any concrete object in order to manipulate the rational notions.

[mfraley76]

@semasiologistics

By contrast, if someone were to ask you, "On what Great Lake is Chicago built?" One actually needs either direct sense experience, or the reports of others who have had the sense experience to know that the answer is "Lake Michigan." I hope this helps.

[semasiologistics]

@mfraley76, Thank you for your response. Please do not view my opposing you as immaturity, rather as candor.

You said, if I could paraphrase, that three and three does not require concrete objects if to be manipulated as notions; however, this seems false. When we manipulate two or three or five, we have merely suspended their referential reality (on which mathmatics depends if to have function for humans). Liken the explanation to a memory of one's deceased grandparent.

[mfraley76]

@semasiologistics

I won't ever mistake polite difference of perspective and meaningful debate as immaturity, so long as they are posed in a mature fashion.

Though I can appreciate your counterexample, it seems harder to justify when we speak of things that do not literally exist within our frame of reference. Mathematics even requires the use of imaginary numbers to manipulate ideas.

I'll post a more detailed rebuttal when I figure out how to get it under the character limit. :)

[semasiologistics]

@mfraley76, Thank you very much, both for the video, which was a pleasure to learn from, and your answering my questions.

I posted a (2) and (3) but you might disregard them if they seem redundant, (it is very late here).

[semasiologistics]

@mfraley76, (3) surely, though, there is no difference between an image of a deceased grandparent, a Latinian prefix "dis-" and the number three, in that, they are all mental contents. If their origins are irrelevant, then they are all mere meaning types, one visual, the other linguistic, and the other, linguistic-like but for the sake of classification, mathmatic. They're all capable of being analyitcal contents within the mind. In these ways, is ratioanlism not but a branch of empiricim?

[semasiologistics]

@mfraley76, (2) Without plurality (something we observe in describing the objects of reality), mathmatics could not exist, to my mind. How could it? This to me means that revolving 3 and 5 in one's mind is no different from contemplating the application of a Latinian prefix, like "dis-"

The prefix is not observed in reality and is as reported to us as mathmatics, yet it is but a type of negation that accomodates certain rules in a language. Its being analytical to the mind makes it rational?

[winstono75]

@mfraley76 Hm, what a dilemma.