Shahmee Weaver
Andrea Winkler
LBST 275
Fall 2013
Descartes vs. Locke
Rene Descartes and John Locke are both philosophical thinkers that made a big impact on history regarding rationalism vs. empiricism. Descartes, in my opinion, is a bit mysterious. Despite the fact he had a healthy dislike for the rationale of his day and age, that was in the dubious science of the academic movement, when it came down to it he was respectively proficient at twisting his own thinking when confronted with the imbedded doctrine of the clergy. Locke's methodology to knowledge, on the other hand, was a response to the dominant thinking of his day. Locke’s method of rationale is a form of intellectual narrow-minded insistence on traditional doctrine, a system based mostly on the beliefs of the church. Locke's empiricism stresses the significance of the experience of the senses in the quest of knowledge, more willingly than intuitive speculation or deduction. In my opinion Locke disagrees with Descartes on the authority of experience.…show more content… The innate concept indicates that some of our ideas have not been gained from experience, but they are however, part of our rational make up, and familiarity merely generates a practice by which we deliberately clench on to them. An example of this reasoning is presented by Descartes in meditation one. Descartes classifies our ideas as fortuitous, invented by us humans, and therefore innate. Ideas, such as the awareness of heat, are expanded directly through capability of the senses experience. As the prominent philosopher Descartes puts it, “for example that I am sitting here next to the fire, wearing my dressing gown, that I am holding this sheet of paper in my hands and the like” (Descartes, 1641, p.