Panrationalism (or comprehensive rationalism)
holds two premises true:
# A
rationalist accepts any position that can be justified or established by appeal to the rational criteria or authorities.
# They accept only those positions that can be so justified.
The first problem that needs to be dealt with is: what is the rational criterion or authority to which they appeal? Here the panrationalists diverge into two groups:
# Intellectualists – to whom the rational authority lies in the human intellect, in the faculty of reason.
#
Empiricist
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience and empirical evidence. It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along ...
s – to whom the rational authority is achieved by
sense experience (such as seeing or hearing).
Descartes is considered the founder of rationalism and gave the illustration ''
cogito ergo sum
The Latin , usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am", is the "first principle" of René Descartes's philosophy. He originally published it in French language, French as , in his 1637 ''Discourse on the Method'', so as to re ...
'' as the paradigm to demonstrate what he believed.
The problem of both these appeals is that:
# Intellectualism is "too wide" by letting too much in (basically everything, in a strict sense).
# Empiricism is "too narrow" in that it excludes too much (basically everything, in a strict sense).
In his ''
The Critique of Pure Reason''
Kant
Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, et ...
sought to reconcile both appeals.
See also
*
Critical rationalism
Critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl Popper on the basis that, if a statement cannot be logically deduced (from what is known), it might nevertheless be possible to logically falsify it. Following Hume, Popper ...
*
Pancritical rationalism
References
*
W. W. Bartley III, ''The Retreat to Commitment'', La Salle; Open Court Publishing Company, 1984.
Philosophical anthropology
Rationalism
Epistemological theories
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