are you a rationalist or an empiricist?

Rationalist. Only one I know lol.

What do does two words mean ?

umm, I could explain it if you want? haha

can we be rationalist friends pls

Yes please.

Yes! Gladly

Reason is a product of experience

Posted from TSR Mobile

both - I'm an empiricist because I'm a rationalist

Both. Reason is sufficient with regards to subjects that do not talk explictly about properties of the world themselves such as mathematics, logic and ethics as well as the axioms of physics and economics (are there are other subjects that are reliant on axioms that are not derived from elsewhere? Not sure). Everything else I'm an empiricist towards.

you think? How then would you respond to Plato's slave boy experiment which would suggest it's innate?

Can you remind me of the what that is? Posted from TSR Mobile

sure
(this is copied and pasted btw- my mathematical language isn't up to scratch)

'To show what he means, Socrates calls over one of Meno’s slave boys, draws a square with sides of two feet, and asks the boy to calculate how long the side of a square would be if it had twice the area of the one he just drew. The boy suggests four feet and then three feet, and Socrates proves him wrong both times. Socrates then helps the boy recognize that a square of twice the area would have sides with a length equal to the diagonal of the present square—but Socrates leads the boy to this point without actually explaining anything, instead forcing the boy to think the problem through himself. Since the boy reached this conclusion (more or less) on his own without any direct teaching, he must have been recollecting something he already knew.'

Plato uses this to argue that reason (or at least mathematical reason) is innate

Plato uses this to argue that reason (or at least mathematical reason) is innate

The boy worked it out because he had visualized the problem (using his senses) and then made a deduction so surely that's both.

I'm of the opinion that reason is learned
With maths, we observe quantity in the world (as if it is a vast and complex abacus) and build an intuition of it.
Just to illustrate what I think, imagine someone who's been fully comatose since their conception but suddenly comes around to consciousness one day. I'd say that all sensual input would be a indecipherable white noise, but as time passes they'd gradually begin to pick out patterns and begin to make sense of all that noise, to the point they build an intuitive understanding of things and the relationships between them. Kind of like new born babies can make little sense of their vision.


Posted from TSR Mobile