Metaphilosophy: Part 6. Rationalism & Idealism; Realism & Empiricism

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After temporary being relocated to Tashkent in the interior of Asia to gain some wisdom, we now start where we ended last session mentioning that there is no fundamental difference between realism and idealism (partly making an exception for Berkley’s empiric idealism).

Why is that? Well, basically both realism and idealism claim that they have the same key to truth namely to what really is (in contrast to what is only subject of our perception, representation, conceptions, ideas, etc.). Hereby they both refer to a bridge between being and knowledge (that is between ontology and epistemology), which we know from ancient Greece philosophers (such as Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle a.o.).

While empiricists of rather modern times argued with rationalists about the basis of criteria for verification of truth, they all agreed on identifying knowledge and being within the framework of the theory of correspondence (which we analyzed during our last session).

Empiricism is in this regard not less rationalistic than other forms of rationalism. It just puts accent on experience based on perception instead of logic of inherent mental categories as starting point and guarantee for further conclusions.

By distinguishing a separate sphere of true propositions – that is the truth, empiricism is after all at the same epistemological page as other rationalists, facing the same impossible logic dilemma: Either something is true because of its being (that is being implicates truth) or something it true because someone considers it to be true.

The first way would trespass David Hume’s law preventing being from underlying truth by own means (that is an aspect of the so called is-ought problem) stating that matters of fact cannot give birth to normative propositions.

And the second way claiming something as true because of the consideration of someone, obviously struggles with the basis of rational objectivity, not allowing subjective elements to have any impact on propositions.

All together it is easy to see that all these philosophical schools – rationalism, idealism, realism and empiricism – suffer from the same rationalistic movement creating a separate distinguished world of what really is, but there is according to their own rational criteria actually no rational basis for such claim, simply because rationalism (in a wider sense including all the forms we gone through today) can, strictly speaking, not consider itself to be rational.

Видео Metaphilosophy: Part 6. Rationalism & Idealism; Realism & Empiricism канала The Metaphilosopher by Dr. Mattias Lindgren