The dispute between rationalism and empiricism has been taken to concern to the extent to which we are dependent upon experience in our effort to gain knowledge of the external world. There are three major experiences humans can do which are, sense experience, involving our five world-oriented sense, and reflective experience which is the conscious awareness of our mental operations (Stanford, 2004). The distinction between the two is drawn primarily by reference to their objects, which are the sense experience allows us to acquire knowledge of external objects, whereas our awareness of our mental operations is responsible for the acquisition of knowledge of our minds.
Now, let us jump right into rationalism. Rationalists vary the strength of their understanding of warrant. Some people take warranted beliefs to be beyond the slightest doubt ad claim that intuition provide beliefs of this high epistemic status (Stanford, 2004). Others on the other hand are more conservatively, as belief beyond a reasonable doubt and claim that intuition provide beliefs of that caliber (Stanford, 2004). Most forms of rationalism involve notable commitments to other philosophical positions. One of the commitments is to the denial of skepticism for at least some area of knowledge. However, many times we try to claim to know some truths by intuition or deduction or to have some innate knowledge, we obviously reject skepticism with regard to those truths.
Moving on to Empiricism and how the two differ from each other. Empiricism has the same intuition/deduction thesis, but it is in a more restricted sense than the rationalists, which means this thesis applies only to relations of the contents of our minds, not also about empirical facts which are learned from the external world. So, insofar as we have knowledge in the subject, our knowledge is gained but not only triggered by our experiences, but they are sensorial or reflective (Stanford, 2004). Now, experience is our only source of knowledge because what you get through experiences is emotions, thoughts, and feelings, which then all trigger the bad reasoning or good reasoning behind the next time you choose to do it or experience it. So, they reject the corresponding version of the Superiority of reason thesis which is the reason alone that does not give us any knowledge, it certainly does not give us superior knowledge. This is a great example of what we are talking about, when people have not experienced what others have experienced, it is hard to feel any sympathy or relate to them because they simply have not experienced it. I used to judge other parents (sometimes) on their parenting because of certain things they would “allow” until I had my own child and realized how wrong I was before I had my own.
Finally, let us get in to Critique of Pure Reason. For, rationalism he draws the idea that pure reason is capable of significant knowledge but rejects the idea that pure reason can tell us anything about things in themselves and with empiricism he draws the idea that knowledge is essentially knowledge from experience but rejects the idea that we can infer no necessary and universal truths from experience which is also Hume’s conclusion.
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