RATIONALISM AND EMPIRICISM
To understand what I have in mind we have to distinguish carefully between two schools
of philosophy - Rationalism and Empiricism. Nobody is wholeheartedly either in the
one or in the other camp; all thinking people are necessarily a bit into both. - to say nothing of much else as well.
A Rationalist proceeds from alleged a priori truths (truths that one can grasp
as a result of thought (or, in the case of religious rationalists, from "revelation')
independent of observation and experience) and proceeds to deduce, therefrom, truths
about the world outside of his thoughts. Strictly, he does not allow experience and
observation to divert him from these derived truths. If experience and observation
('the data') do not fit his rationally derived conclusions then there must be something
wrong with the data. The conservative element in RC theology is just like this and,
altogether different content notwithstanding, the same pattern is evident all over the spectrum of belief and opinion.
Some time ago I wrote of the alleged supernatural
"My general attitude is summed up in five points:
-
1. I have no direct experience of anything that compels me to envisage the category
of 'not quite normal'
- 2. If such things had, or do ever, come my way then I have, I admit, no ready explanation
for them.
- 3. Number 1 is no big deal. I, exactly like everyone, have had only very limited
experience and it may be only pure chance that things of the category in question
have not come my way. Just because I have not experienced something does not prove
that thing to be non-existent. (There are people who, implicitly, do dismiss, as mere make-believe,
what they have not experienced; they may be termed philistines).
- 4. Number 2 is no big deal either. Things do not have to be intelligible to me to
be real; truth is not limited to that which I can understand or accept. (There are
people who think in that narrow way; they are termed bigots).
- 5, I have to be open minded - knowingly prescribing nothing and knowingly proscribing nothing - about what is possible while saying that some things
are, on evidence, less probable than others."
Our dedicated Rationalist would regard 1 and 2 as being self-evidently the case, indeed tediously obvious,
and he would regard 3 and 4 as pathetic pussyfooting and 5 as sheer heresy.
The classic weaknesses of the Rationalist position include that the initial premises
can be misleading or even plain wrong and also that one's logic is not always as
sure-foooted as one would wish.
It is also questionable whether there really is such
a thing as a priori truth; even the axioms of Euclid are hard to accept as genuine a
priori truths - we may ask whether Euclid could have done his geometry had he been
born blind but otherwise unimpaired - do we not wonder whether his seeing straight
and curved lines, in the everyday world of data, might have made him formulate his axioms?
The Empiricist proceeds differently. He starts, he claims, with a mental clean sheet
and simply accepts as fact the results of observation and experience (the data).
From these data he constructs an orderly system which he tests against new data
that he observes or procures. Science is alleged to be like this but its successful practice
depends upon very careful repeated observation and an avoidance of preconceived
ideas.
The classic weaknesses of empiricism include the illusion that WE CAN EVER have a
mental clean sheet; we actually have the baggage of our past and present cultures.
We are also liable to be driven off course by the data being, if not actually mistaken,
a misleading sample of the data we really need to consider. There is also the fact
that our choice of what data to seek depends upon a bundle of hypotheses as to what
data are worth seeking. May we not ask 'what is known about the relative rates of
toenail growth in red-heads who are not pregnant as against those who are?' There would be no
difficulty in amassing data on this subject but, assuming that nobody has done so,
that is because nobody believes the question to be of any significance. Perhaps we
are wrong to dismiss this area of inquiry as being of no value; some genius may yet do it
and make a huge difference to the way we live! The unconsidered but implicit hypothesis that the rate of toenail growth in red-heads' pregnancies is unimportant may, perhaps, be hugely wrong.
There are thus classic weaknesses in both positions. Immediately there is the old enemy
- arrogance. We are none of us as smart as we think we are That is a particularly nasty item of cultural baggage).
More fundamentally, we all depend upon two assumptions that cannot be authenticated:
- 1) that our senses give us a true view of the 'real world' - whatever that may mean
(but our senses cannot ultimately validate themselves; to think that they can do
so is to fall into circular argument)
-
2) that logic is ultimately dependable (but
logic cannot be validated logically ; to try to do so is, again, mere circularity).
So, granted those weaknesses in both the Rationalist and Empiricist positions,
it is small wonder that Mysticism
- the rejection of all rationalist and empiricist constraints - is always attractive. But it too has its dangers; mysticism can be a licence for crazy fantasy and
for the calculated exploitation of suckers whose dull lives can be spuriously enriched
by crazy fantasising.
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