RATIONALISM
From Philosopedia
RATIONALISM
In philosophy, Rationalism is a theory that holds that reason alone, unaided by experience, can arrive at basic truth regarding the world. It is opposed to empiricism on the question of the source of knowledge and the techniques for verification of knowledge. René Descartes, G. W. von Leibniz, and Baruch Spinoza all represent the rationalist position whereas John Locke represents the empirical.
Specifically, according to Edgar Sheffield Brightman, who once taught at Boston University in Massachusetts, rationalism is as follows:
- (a) the deductive [Cartesian, mathematical] method of drawing logical inferences from elementary concepts [intuitions, axioms, innate, or a priori truths], as opposed to the empirical method;
- (b) the doctrine (opposed to sensationalism) that reason is a higher source of knowledge, independent of sense [when Locke said that “there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in sense,” Leibniz added “except the intellect itself”]; or
- (c) the appeal to coherent thought [as opposed to irrationalism] as a criterion of truth.
Joseph McCabe states that the word rationalism came into use in the seventeenth century. Bacon spoke of “Rationals who in the manner of spiders, spin webs from their own substance,” but he was referring to the Aristotelian philosophers who disdained empirical science and claimed that reason was the source of truth. In Germany, at the time, they were sometimes called Rationalists.
McCabe continues,
- About the middle of the century the Clarendon State Papers recorded the appearance of ‘a new sect calling themselves Rationalists,’ who follow ‘what their reason dictates to them in Church or State.’ In 1661 Comenius applied the name to the Socinians (unitarians) and Deists. The word was rarely used, and was not adopted by any body of sceptics. It was usually applied to Christians who tried to prove that their faith is in harmony with reason, or to philosophers who slighted the empirical method of investigations. What are now called ‘Rationalists’ were sceptics, infidels, Atheists, Freethinkers, or Naturalists. Kant, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, used the word in both senses, but in Great Britain it was Owen’s foundation of Rational Religion which led the public to call his followers ‘Rationals,’ or ‘Rationalists,’ that made the name popular. In 1845 George Holyoake published a booklet with the title Rationalism: A Treatise for the Times, but later preferred the word ‘Secularism.’ Others called themselves Freethinkers, Agnostics, or Atheists. The group of Agnostics, with a few liberal Theists, who were associated with C. A. Watts in 1887, adopted the word, and in 1893 founded the Rationalist Press Committee in order to ‘circulate Rationalist publications,’ and the name was later changed to Rationalist Press Association. It defined Rationalism as ‘the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy and ethics verifiable by experience and independent of all arbitrary assumptions or authority.’
McCabe] then notes that rationalists became, “in the common usage of the term, men and women who by this use of reasoning have become convinced that religious beliefs are false. Since it would obviously be absurd to refuse the title of ‘Rationalist’ to men like Voltaire and Paine, the name is in historical retrospect extended to Deists and Theists who rejected all Christian doctrines or who today declare their rejection of the teaching of every branch of the Christian Church.” Organized Rationalists, he added, include members of the Rationalist Press Association (which has no doctrinal or philosophical tests) and similar bodies, and they “usually reject also the belief in God and Immortality and subscribe for the propagation of their opinions.”
For Bertrand Russell in his 1928 Sceptical Essays, rationality in opinion is
- the habit of taking account of all relevant evidence in arriving at a belief. Where certainty is unattainable, a rational man will give most weight to the most probable opinion, while retaining others which have an appreciable probability, in his mind, as hypotheses which subsequent evidence may show to be preferable. This, of course, assumes that it is possible in many cases to ascertain facts and probabilities by an objective method—i.e., a method which will lead any two careful people to the same result.”
Rationalist International is an online website by Sanal Edamaruku, who edits the publication and is the President in India of the Indian Rationalist Association.
(For one view of how rationalism differs from humanism, see the entry for Humanism, Per Curtis Reese. See a detailed discussion by Bernard Williams in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 7.)
(See related links to Rationalism and Rationalists)
