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Objectivists say that human experiences play only a minor role in structuring the
world, as meaning is something that exists in the world quite aside from experience.
Consequently, knowledge is considered as existing externally and independent from the learner.
That means, it corresponds to the accurate representation of objectivistic reality. Thus, we can
conclude that the aim of learning is to acquire knowledge of objects, their characteristics and
interactions.
The Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand holds the same conviction. She
seems to be the only one to call herself an objectivist. She was the founder of the Philosophy of
Objectivism, which is based on fundamental statements on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics,
and politics. The following of her statements are useful for our purposes:
"Reality, the external world, exists independent of man's
consciousness, independent of any observer's knowledge,
beliefs, feelings, desires or fears. This means that A is A, that
facts are facts, that things are what they are - and that
the task of man's consciousness is to perceive reality, not to
create or invent it."
"Epistemology: 'Man's reason is fully competent to know the facts
of reality.
Reason, the conceptual faculty, is the faculty that identifies and
integrates
the material provided by man's senses. Reason is man's only
means of
acquiring knowledge.
Rand described Objectivism as a philosophy for living on earth. The
reason why it is a philosophy for living on Earth is that its every principle
is derived from the observable facts of reality and the demonstrable
requirements of human life and happiness.
(this-worldly) source and nature of moral principles and the secular moral
foundations of a fully free, fully civilized society.
the idea that being moral consists in acting in whatever manner gives one
pleasure (or doing whatever one feels like doing).
learns about the world, himself, and his needs. Human knowledge
all human knowledgeis a product of perceptual observation and logical
inference there from.
also rejects the idea that man has no nature at all (i.e., the twisted, modern
interpretation of man as a blank slate), making his character the
consequence of social forces, such as upbringing or economic conditions. A
persons character is neither inherently bad nor the product of social forces;
rather, it is a consequence of his choices. If an individual chooses to face
facts, to think rationally, to be productive, and so onand thereby develops
a good characterthat is his achievement. If an individual chooses not to
face facts, not to think, not to produce, and so onand thus develops a bad
characterthat is his fault.
Empiricism
Empiricism is an important part of the scientific method because
theories and hypotheses must be observed and tested to be considered
accurate. Empiricists tend to be sceptical that anything can be known for
certain, and therefore they tend not to believe in dogmas or absolute truths.
This is in contrast to rationalists, who tend to believe that the universe has
absolute laws that can be determined and that the human mind is naturally
predisposed to understanding certain truths.
Empiricism is a philosophical belief that states your knowledge of the
world is based on your experiences, particularly your sensory experiences.
According to empiricists, our learning is based on our observations and
perception; knowledge is not possible without experience.
Empiricism, in philosophy, view that all concepts originate in
experience, that all concepts are about or applicable to things that can be
experienced, or that all rationally acceptable beliefs or propositions are
justifiable or knowable only through experience. This broad definition accords
with the derivation of the term empiricism from the ancient Greek
word empeiria, experience.
"it must be someone impression that gives rise to every real idea"
(A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Section IV, Ch. vi). Indeed
Hume continues in Book II "all our ideas or more feeble perceptions
are
copies of our impressions or more lively ones".
Rationalism
Rationalism is a philosophical movement which gathered momentum
during the Age of Reason of the 17th Century. It is usually associated with
the introduction of mathematical methods into philosophy during this
period by the major rationalist figures,Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza. The
preponderance of French Rationalists in the 18th Century Age of
Enlightenment, including Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Charles de
Secondat (Baron de Montesquieu) (1689 - 1755), is often known
as French Rationalism.
Rationalism is any view appealing to intellectual and deductive
reason (as opposed to sensory experience or any religious teachings) as the
source of knowledge or justification. Thus, it holds that some propositions
most powerful and influential political and philosophical writing in Western history, and had a
defining influence on the subsequent history of Western democracy and Liberalism.
Immanuel
Kant started
as
a traditional Rationalist,
having
studied Leibniz and Christian Wolf (1679 - 1754) but, after also studying
the empiricist David Hume's works; he developed a distinctive and
very influential Rationalism of his own, which attempted to synthesize the
traditional rationalist and empiricist traditions.
During the middle of the 20th Century there was a strong tradition
of organized Rationalism (represented in Britain by the Rationalist Press
Association, for example), which was particularly influenced by free
thinkers and intellectuals. However, Rationalism in this sense has little in
common with traditional Continental Rationalism, and is marked more by a
reliance on empirical science. It accepted the supremacy of reason but
insisted that the results be verifiable by experience and independent of
all arbitrary assumptions or authority.
Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts
and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists
claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and
knowledge.
Rationalists generally develop their view in two ways. First, they argue
that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge
outstrips the information that sense experience can provide. Second, they
construct accounts of how reason in some form or other provides that
additional information about the world. Empiricists present complementary
lines of thought. First, they develop accounts of how experience provides the
information that rationalists cite, insofar as we have it in the first place.
(Empiricists will at times opt for skepticism as an alternative to rationalism: if
experience cannot provide the concepts or knowledge the rationalists cite,
then we don't have them.) Second, empiricists attack the rationalists'
accounts of how reason is a source of concepts or knowledge.
Relativism
Relativism is
the
concept
that points
of
view have
no
absolute truth or validity within themselves, but they only have relative,
subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration.
As moral relativism, the term is often used in the context of moral principles,
where principles and ethics are regarded as applicable in only limited
context. There are many forms of relativism which vary in their degree of
controversy. The term often refers to truth relativism, which is the doctrine
that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some
particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cultural
relativism).
Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right and
wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of
differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority
is confined to the context giving rise to them. More precisely, relativism
covers views which maintain thatat a high level of abstractionat least
some class of things have the properties they have (e.g., beautiful, morally
good, epistemically justified) not simpliciter, but only relative to a given
framework of assessment (e.g., local cultural norms, individual standards),
and correspondingly, that the truth of claims attributing these properties
holds only once the relevant framework of assessment is specified or
supplied. Relativists characteristically insist, furthermore, that if something is
only relatively so, then there can be no framework-independent vantage
point from which the matter of whether the thing in question is so can be
established.
Relativism has been, in its various guises, both one of the most popular
and most reviled philosophical doctrines of our time. Defenders see it as a
harbinger of tolerance and the only ethical and epistemic stance worthy of
the open-minded and tolerant. Detractors dismiss it for its alleged
incoherence and uncritical intellectual permissiveness. Debates about
relativism permeate the whole spectrum of philosophical sub-disciplines.
From ethics to epistemology, science to religion, political theory to ontology,
theories of meaning and even logic, philosophy has felt the need to respond
to this heady and seemingly subversive idea. Discussions of relativism often
also invoke considerations relevant to the very nature and methodology of
philosophy and to the division between the so-called analytic and
continental camps in philosophy. And yet, despite a long history of debate
going back to Plato and an increasingly large body of writing, it is still difficult
to come to an agreed definition of what, at its core, relativism is, and what
philosophical import it has. This entry attempts to provide a broad account of
the many ways in which relativism has been defined, explained, defended
and criticized.
He label relativism has been attached to a wide range of ideas and
positions which may explain the lack of consensus on how the term should
be defined. The profusion of the use of the term relativism in contemporary
philosophy means that there is no ready consensus on any one definition.
Here are three prominent, but not necessarily incompatible, approaches.