Ethics

There has been a dispute between empiricism and rationalism in our effort to sense and gain knowledge.  The two contrast because for empiricists, the ultimate source of all our ideas and concepts originates from our sense experience.  As for the rationalists, we gained our concepts and knowledge independent from our sense experience and there are ways to attain these.

Rationalists had found two ways which enlighten their view.  First, they claim that in some cases, our knowledge or the content of our concepts overpower the sense experiences information.  Second, they argue that additional information about the world was provided by serious accounts of reasons.  According to Rousseau, reason and cooperation, which led to the sciences and arts, are what forced us to leave our happy state of nature.  In accordance to this state of nature, Rousseau relates how a man performs in a society and how an ideal society should be.  For Rousseau, logic does not have an empirical part from which empiricists claim that the laws of thought nestled from the ground of experience.  Kant holds the same view.  For him, freedom of will can never be demonstrated by experience.  Everything we understand is a product of prior conditions.  Meaning to say that the world we observe and understand is base on the governed principle that an event is an occurrence of a previous even.

Empiricist provides somehow linear thoughts.  Complement to the rationalist view, they say that the accounts of experience provides the information for the rationalist thought.   Second, they disagree with how reason became the source of knowledge or concept.  This was clearly enveloped in Smiths The Wealth of the Nations were he described the view of the human nature with reference to varying situations or experiences.  For example, the mans morality will likely to play a smaller role in an economic set up- button-making.

After careful understanding of the two opposing ideas, I developed my own belief that both hold true in the explanation of human knowledge.  Human knowledge is not solely obtained from rationality or from being empirical.  I personally believe that every born individual has innate pattern of thinking.  May that be on genes- hereditary from his parents.  As one grows up his nature was developed by how he was nurture.  This is a product of the experiences he encountered as he grows up. For me the two ideas always intertwine because the source of our idea in experience determines its content.  From these experiences we may define a cause to be an object followed by another.  Therefore, suitably from this experience we may define another definition of an object.

Any knowledge we have and our claims about the causal connection in the world, given the limited content of our empirically based concept of causation turns out to be our knowledge about the constant conjunction of events and our own feelings of expectation.  Thus, the initial disagreement between rationalists and empiricists about the source of our ideas leads to one about their content and thereby the content of our descriptions and knowledge of the world.