Friday, May 5, 2017

Blog Connection #4

Recently, we've been talking about Rationalists and Empiricists, and a tad bit about Kant. At this point I’ve learned that empiricists believe in the senses while rationalists believe in reason. I've actually been trying to figure out where I fall on that spectrum, but in the course of doing that, I've been asking friends and family a simple question: “Do you trust your senses?”. Typically, they respond with a yes, and then I ask them or give them different scenarios in which their senses have mislead them such as smelling vanilla extract and believing it to taste good, only to find out that it's quite disgusting. Or I’ll ask them about a time where they thought they saw or heard something, but it turns out that they were way off, such as maybe thinking a satellite was a star, or thinking a stranger was someone they knew, or maybe even thinking they heard their phone vibrate or ding! only to realize they were wrong. My follow up question then was, “Do you/Can you still trust your senses even after they've tricked or deceived you once? Who's to say it hasn't happened multiple times?” similar to the way one of the philosophers we learned about did...was it Socrates? I stumbled a few people until it got to my mom--of course. She flipped the script and asked me a question instead. She asked that if it wasn't for my senses what else would I used to believe what I believe or help aid my experiences. I replied with that reason would be the only other way, but again, she threw me a curveball and asked me to explain. But before I could, she said questioned whether my reasoning was correct simply because everyone's reasoning for certain vary greatly, so what makes my reasoning right versus hers? Who knew my mom was a philosopher??? Anyways, this left me stumped all over again because she had a point. If rationalists base their beliefs off of reasoning, technically wouldn't there always be “another side” to look at?

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