€œWe see and understand things not as they are but as we Essay

â‚ ¬Ã…“We see and understand things not as they are but as we are.â‚ ¬Ã¯ ¿ ½ Discuss this claim in relation to at least two ways of knowing - Essay Example Empiricism is the theory that knowledge can only be gained from actual perceptions. It is an extension of the Aristotelian theory that human mind is a blank slate (or in Aristotle’s words – â€Å"Tabula Rasa†, an empty tablet) and only experience can bring in knowledge. This was later expounded in the 17th century by a number of philosophers like, Locke. As per this theory, only the sensory experiences allow us to understand the world. Soon it could be seen that experiences and sensations, by themselves, cannot explain most of the things like religion, philosophical concepts etc. It was therefore necessary to add an element of inductive inference from the actual sensory perception to convert it into knowledge. This is, by definition, a deviation from the pure empiricism as the inductive inference that a human being makes is dependent on the habits and beliefs of the person in question. Knowledge thus ceases to be an absolute entity anymore and is dependent on the person acquiring the belief. Rationalism states that reason is the fundamental building block of our knowledge. It does not ignore the physical sensory perceptions but argues that the reason in the human mind is responsible for co-relating the events into knowledge. The most famous exponent of this theory was Rene Descartes. His â€Å"cogito ergo sum† or â€Å"I think, therefore I am† is probably the simplest definition of rationalism – where the process of thinking of an individual becomes the keystone of his knowledge. As Babich and Cohen tells us in regard to Descartes that â€Å"because he assumes that the intellect is naturally the same in all humans, everyone can participate in this knowledge if they can think† (Babich and Cohen, p.53). Rationalism is based on certain specific concepts like the intuition/ deduction theory, the innate knowledge theory and the innate concept theory. The intuition/ deduction theory tells us that knowledge