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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