Monday, March 08, 2010

Rationalism and Empiricism Explained

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

2 comments:

J said...

Which category, R. v E., does the Fundamentalist fall under, VR?

Really, it's not an exclusive disjunction. A real philosophaster might be a rationalist in regard to some knowledge (mathematics, logic), and an empiricist in regard to natural sciences, history, economics, etc.

That said, anyone who attempts to defend the historicity of JC (and scripture) must deal with empirical issues, and really with verification--and in that regard the New Testament's no more reliable than Tacitus or Suetonius (and perhaps less, in so far that other sources support the traditional roman history).

Victor Reppert said...

I always thought that someone was a rationalist if they thought that there were any innate ideas, or if they thought there was any synthetic a priori knowledge.