Is “the doctrine that reason alone is a source of knowledge and is independent of experience” ("Rationalism," 2015).
The main ideas of rationalism are:
The Intuition/ Deduction Thesis
The Innate Knowledge Thesis
The Innate Concepts Thesis
Intuition/Deduction
Intuition: is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning, this is also known as rational insight.
Deduction: “an argument whose premises are claimed to provide conclusive evidence for the truth of its conclusion’ ("Philosophy.lander.edu ", n.d.).
Rene Descartes, 1596–1650)
A rationalist that established Cogito, ergo sum ( I think, therefore I am) with the use of intuition and used methodic doubt to clarify subjects that were not to be doubted.
Also claimed that priori knowledge was more important that posteriori knowledge.
He developed a way to use doubt by being constructive so to identify, strengthen, and refine a persons beliefs. He did not believe that using doubt destructively would be beneficial because there were to true answer in that result.
Innate Knowledge
Is the theory that knowledge and ideas are with us when we are born. (Chaffee, 2013)
“We have knowledge of some truths as part of our innate rational nature” (Maston, 2008).
This knowledge could be obtained through natural selection, previous lives, or the act of God.
Plato
Meno, Plato tested the servant boy on instructing him to increase the square by twice its size. Because the slave boy was able to do so with out being taught, Plato believed his ability to do so was due to innate knowledge. He must have learned this skill in a previous life.
Experience may trigger our awareness of this knowledge, but it does not provide us with it. The knowledge is already there.
(Mason,
