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  • When I wake up in the morning

  • I know that the sky is going to be blue

  • And that the sun will be shining

  • The tweeting I hear are birds singing

  • I know that when I go downstairs

  • And feed my cat

  • He will have four legs and will be ginger

  • And that the big metal box with wheels outside my house is called a car

  • But how do I know these things?

  • How did I come to be of this knowledge?

  • What allowed me to gain my concepts of

  • Sky Sun Birds Cat and Car?

  • There have originally been two schools of thought to how we come to be of knowledge

  • Empiricism which argues that we gain all of our knowledge from experience

  • And rationalism which argues that certain knowledge

  • Can be gained just by reason and thinking

  • British Philosopher John Locke

  • Was an Empiricist and argued that when we are born

  • Our minds are in the state of Tabula Rasa

  • Which when translated to English

  • Simply translates as blank slate

  • But what does John Locke mean by this?

  • Well John Locke was basically saying that when we are born

  • Our minds are completely empty of all ideas and concepts

  • And that as we start to experience things through our senses

  • Such as touch taste sight sound and smell

  • Our minds start to gain those ideas and concepts

  • We are all familiar with

  • For instance a new born baby might see a dog

  • And therefore gain the concept of dog

  • On top of this Locke says as our mind gains certain concepts

  • It starts to group them together to form more complex concepts

  • For example it may group the concepts of Cat Dog and Cow together

  • To form the concept of animals

  • Or group Box Wheels Motor together

  • To form the concept of car

  • This view on how we gain knowledge is supported by Scottish Philosopher

  • And heavy pie eater David Hume

  • Who says A blind man can form no notion of colours

  • A deaf man of sounds

  • Restore either of them that sense in which he is deficient

  • By opening this new inlet for his sensations

  • You also open an inlet for the ideas

  • And he finds no difficulty in conceiving these objects

  • This suggests that surely then our ideas can only come from our sense experience

  • However rationalists would strongly disagree

  • And instead argue that there is some knowledge

  • That we can get without needing to have experienced anything

  • For example a rationalist like Descartes

  • Would argue that concepts such as mathematics

  • Can be gained without experience

  • He backs up this claim by saying that we can conceive the concept of a chiliagon

  • A one thousand sided shape

  • Without having experienced such an object

  • Other mathematical concepts such as

  • Square root equals and plus

  • Also do not seem to have come from experience

  • Implying that the Empiricist view that that all knowledge comes from sense experience

  • is false

  • Lastly we will have a look at another more modern view of how we gain knowledge

  • Raised by German Philosopher Immanuel Kant

  • Kant is neither an empiricist nor is he a rationalist

  • Instead being German he created his own theory

  • Kant argued that we are all born with certain innate concepts

  • That allow us to make sense of the world

  • The official term he gives to these are

  • Predetermined conceptual schemes

  • Kant argues that without these concepts our experiences would just be a unintelligible

  • buzz of sensation

  • To illustrate this point he gives the the analogy of a ship sailing down a river

  • He says that if we looked at a ship sailing down a river

  • Without the predetermined concept of casualty

  • We would perceive the boat as a different object every time it moved

  • And our perception of it changed

  • It is only our concept of causality that we are born with

  • That tells us that the boat is the same boat that we saw a few seconds ago up the river

  • So what do you think?

  • How did you become to know of things?

  • Please leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments below

  • Please tell us what philosopher or theory you would like next

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When I wake up in the morning

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