Шаргородский М.Б. - Philosophy of the New Times: Traditions and the Present

Introduction

In the beginning of 17 centuries in Switzerland and Holland it is restored a republican form of government. Thrones of absolute monarchies have hesitated for a time. In 1649 revolutionary weights publicly executed English king Charles I Stewart, and in 1793 - the French king Louis ХVI of Bourbon. Nobility (feudal lords) are definitively rejected on marginal positions of a sociopolitical and social and economic life. The Middle Ages epoch has definitively departed in the past. There has come the period of the New Time/ [1].

The New Time became an epoch of the statement and a gradual victory in the Western Europe of capitalism, as new way of manufacture, an epoch of fast development of a science and techniques. Under the influence of such exact sciences as mechanics and the mathematics, has affirmed as philosophy mechanicism. Within the limits of this type of outlook the nature was considered how the huge mechanism, and the person as the initiative and active worker/[2].

This period sometimes name an epoch of scientific revolution. However, this period is considered by some scientists as an early part of an epoch of Education. It is not surprising. After all the knowledge theme became the Basic theme of philosophy of the New Time. There were two large currents: empiricism and the rationalism differently treating sources and the nature of human knowledge/[2].

Supporters of empiricism ( έμπειρία — experience) asserted that the basic source of authentic knowledge of the world are sensations and experience of the person. Most in details this position is stated in Bacon creativity.

Supporters of rationalism (rationalis — reasonable) considered that the basic source of authentic knowledge is the knowledge. The rationalism founder Descartes is considered - the author of expression "call all in question"/[2].

In it the essay will be a question of the basic directions of philosophy of New Time, and also about the basic representatives and their sights and judgments.

Empiricism

Empiricism is an ism with many meanings. In accounts of the history of philosophy, empiricism is often contrasted with rationalism, though serious historians often look with jaundiced eye at this way of telling the story (Van Fraassen 2002). According to this formula, empiricists emphasize the role of sense experience, rationalists the role of reason. Each position can be given extreme formulations, as in the clashing claims that sense experience is the only source of knowledge, or that reason is, and each position can be moderated, with the attendant possibility that they no longer conflict. The debate was usually framed in terms of the existence of “innate ideas” and often blurred the distinction between psychological and epistemological questions.

A different kind of empiricism has been central to philosophy of science. Here empiricism contrasts with scientific realism, not with rationalism. When Galileo found himself in conflict with the Church, the philosophical issue concerned how heliocentrism should be interpreted. Galileo’s interrogator, Cardinal Bellarmine, did not object to Galileo’s using the hypothesis that the earth goes round the sun as a device for making predictions. His objection was to Galileo’s assertion that heliocentrism is true. As a first approximation, realism maintains that well-confirmed scientific theories should be regarded as true, while empiricism maintains that they should be regarded as empirically adequate – as capturing what is true about observable phenomena. Empiricists deny that it is ever rationally obligatory to believe that theories provide true descriptions of an unobservable reality. It isn’t that empiricists deny that quarks or genes exist; rather, they regard such realist affirmations as going beyond what the evidence demands. Empiricism is to realism as agnosticism is to theism. A third option corresponds to atheism. This is fictionalism, the thesis that scientific theories are always false. A closely related fourth option is instrumentalism, which is often interpreted as claiming that theories do not have truth values and are merely useful tools for making predictions.

In the contest between empiricism and scientific realism, the empiricist’s preoccupation with sense experience takes the form of a thesis about the role of observation in science and the rationalist’s emphasis on reason is transformed into a claim about the indispensable role of the super-empirical virtues (Churchland 1985). For an empiricist, if a theory is logically consistent, observations are the only source of information about whether the theory is empirically adequate. For a realist, the observations provide information about whether the theory is true, but there are other relevant considerations as well; if one theory is more explanatory, or simpler, or more unified than another, that counts too. Empiricists often dismiss these considerations as merely pragmatic or aesthetic – theories with these virtues are easier to use or more beautiful to behold, and that is all/[3].

Rationalism

To be a rationalist is to adopt at least one of three claims. The Intuition/Deduction thesis concerns how we become warranted in believing propositions in a particular subject area.

The Intuition/Deduction Thesis: Some propositions in a particular subject area, S, are knowable by us by intuition alone; still others are knowable by being deduced from intuited propositions.

Intuition is a form of rational insight. Intellectually grasping a proposition, we just "see" it to be true in such a way as to form a true, warranted belief in it. Deduction is a process in which we derive conclusions from intuited premises through valid arguments, ones in which the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. We intuit, for example, that the number three is prime and that it is greater than two. We then deduce from this knowledge that there is a prime number greater than two. Intuition and deduction thus provide us with knowledge a priori, which is to say knowledge gained independently of sense experience.

We can generate different versions of the Intuition/Deduction thesis by substituting different subject areas for the variable ‘S’. Some rationalists take mathematics to be knowable by intuition and deduction. Some place ethical truths in this category. Some include metaphysical claims, such as that God exists, we have free will, and our mind and body are distinct substances. The more propositions rationalists include within the range of intuition and deduction, and the more controversial the truth of those propositions, the more radical their rationalism.

Rationalists also vary the strength of their view by adjusting their understanding of warrant. Some take warranted beliefs to be beyond even the slightest doubt and claim that intuition and deduction provide beliefs of this high epistemic status. Others interpret warrant more conservatively, say as belief beyond a reasonable doubt, and claim that intuition and deduction provide beliefs of that caliber.

Still another dimension of rationalism depends on how its proponents understand the connection between intuition, on the one hand, and truth, on the other. Some take intuition to be infallible, claiming that whatever we intuit must be true. Others allow for the possibility of false intuited propositions.

The second thesis associated with rationalism is the Innate Knowledge thesis.

The Innate Knowledge Thesis: We have knowledge of some truths in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature.

Like the Intuition/Deduction thesis, the Innate Knowledge thesis asserts the existence of knowledge gained a priori, independently of experience. The difference between them rests in the accompanying understanding of how this a priori knowledge is gained. The Intuition/Deduction thesis cites intuition and subsequent deductive reasoning. The Innate Knowledge thesis offers our rational nature. Our innate knowledge is not learned through either sense experience or intuition and deduction. It is just part of our nature. Experiences may trigger a process by which we bring this knowledge to consciousness, but the experiences do not provide us with the knowledge itself. It has in some way been with us all along. According to some rationalists, we gained the knowledge in an earlier existence. According to others, God provided us with it at creation. Still others say it is part of our nature through natural selection.

We get different versions of the Innate Knowledge thesis by substituting different subject areas for the variable ‘S'. Once again, the more subjects included within the range of the thesis or the more controversial the claim to have knowledge in them, the more radical the form of rationalism. Stronger and weaker understandings of warrant yield stronger and weaker versions of the thesis as well..

The third important thesis of rationalism is the Innate Concept thesis.

The Innate Concept Thesis: We have some of the concepts we employ in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature.

According to the Innate Concept thesis, some of our concepts are not gained from experience. They are part of our rational nature in such a way that, while sense experiences may trigger a process by which they are brought to consciousness, experience does not provide the concepts or determine the information they contain. Some claim that the Innate Concept thesis is entailed by the Innate Knowledge Thesis; a particular instance of knowledge can only be innate if the concepts that are contained in the known proposition are also innate. This is Locke's position (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book I, Chapter IV, Section 1, p. 91). Others, such as Carruthers, argue against this connection (Human Knowledge and Human Nature, pp. 53-54). The content and strength of the Innate Concept thesis varies with the concepts claimed to be innate. The more a concept seems removed from experience and the mental operations we can perform on what experience provides the more plausibly it may be claimed to be innate. Since we do not experience perfect triangles but do experience pains, our concept of the former is a more promising candidate than our concept of the latter for being innate.

The Intuition/Deduction thesis, the Innate Knowledge thesis, and the Innate Concept thesis are essential to rationalism: to be a rationalist is to adopt at least one of them. Two other closely related theses are generally adopted by rationalists, although one can certainly be a rationalist without adopting either of them. The first is that experience cannot provide what we gain from reason.

The Indispensability of Reason Thesis: The knowledge we gain in subject area, S, by intuition and deduction, as well as the ideas and instances of knowledge in S that are innate to us, could not have been gained by us through sense experience.

The second is that reason is superior to experience as a source of knowledge.

The Superiority of Reason Thesis: The knowledge we gain in subject area S by intuition and deduction or have innately is superior to any knowledge gained by sense experience.

How reason is superior needs explanation, and rationalists have offered different accounts. One view, generally associated with Descartes (Rules for the Direction of our Native Intelligence, Rules II and III, pp.1-4), is that what we know a priori is certain, beyond even the slightest doubt, while what we believe, or even know, on the basis of sense experience is at least somewhat uncertain. Another view, generally associated with Plato (Republic 479e-484c), locates the superiority of a priori knowledge in the objects known. What we know by reason alone, a Platonic form, say, is superior in an important metaphysical way, e.g. unchanging, eternal, perfect, a higher degree of being, to what are aware of through sense experience.

Most forms of rationalism involve notable commitments to other philosophical positions. One is a commitment to the denial of scepticism for at least some area of knowledge. If we claim to know some truths by intuition or deduction or to have some innate knowledge, we obviously reject scepticism with regard to those truths. Rationalism in the form of the Intuition/Deduction thesis is also committed to epistemic foundationalism, the view that we know some truths without basing our belief in them on any others and that we then use this foundational knowledge to know more truths/[4].

Conclusions

In the ideological plan approach of New time has been prepared by creative activity, first of all - philosophers-educators of Renaissance. Also we will add: rough processes of progressive changes in political, economic, cultural, scientific and in all sphere of a spiritual life of New time leant, first of all, against a condition and a level of development of philosophy of that time.

Let's specify also that the philosophy not only was an ideological basis of progressive changes of New time, but also preceded these changes. New time has come at first in spiritual sphere of philosophy, and already then - and in reality.

References

1. Doolooman E. Lections

2. Philosophy of SunHome.ru.

3. Sober E. Lections. Empiricism

4. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu