Reason and Experience

Reason and Experience is a module in the AQA AS Unit 1 Philosophy course. It is the only compulsory module.

Course outline

The central question of the course is: how do we come to know truths about the world? We seem to know an awful lot, from the trivial (e.g., that grass is green) to the substantial (e.g., that the Earth revolves around the Sun.) In the course, we shall examine three responses to this question. This will involve us looking at philosophers back in Ancient Greece through to philosophers of the 20th century.

Let us revist the question. The obvious answer to it is that we come to know about the world around us through our senses. I know that there is a computer screen before me, for example, because I can see it. Of course, it is not just a matter of having senses. I share the same senses as a cat but I know far more than it does. I have a more powerful mind. Nevertheless, all my knowledge begins with sensory experience of the world. My mind is simply able to do more with my sensory experiences.

The view that knowledge begins with (sensory) experience is a venerable philosophical position that is called Empiricism. It has appeared in various guises across the history of philosophy and is the dominant view today. It has been opposed by proponents of Rationalism, which is the view that knowledge comes from a special faculty of reason that we possess. Sensory experience is simply inadequate to deliver us knowledge of deep, philosophical truths about the nature of reality.

Rationalists say that reason gives us knowledge and that experience is of secondary importance. Empiricists say that experience is primary and that reason is just a tool for processing experience. A third position says that both reason and experience are required for knowledge. Reason provides a framework for knowledge and experience provides the filling. The framework is a framework of concepts that shape our experience and give us a certain view of the world. The view was first put forward by the philosopher Immanuel Kant and hence we might call it Kantianism.

Issues to be covered

This list is taken from the official AQA specification.

• Reason and Experience
  • Mind as a tabula rasa
    • The strengths and weaknesses of the view that all ideas are derived from sense experience.
    • The strengths and weaknesses of the view that claims about what exists or occurs must be justified by sense experience.
  • Innate knowledge
    • The strengths and weaknesses of the view that the mind contains innate knowledge regarding the way the world is: the doctrine of innate ideas and its philosophical significance.
    • The view that some fundamental claims about what exists can be grounded in and justified by a priori intuition and/or demonstration.
    • Is "certainty" confined to introspection and the tautological?
  • Conceptual schemes
    • The idea that experience is only intelligible as it is, because it presents sensation through a predetermined conceptual scheme or framework; and the philosophical implications of this view.

In covering these issues, students will be expected to demonstrate their understanding of the contrasts and connections between necessary and contingent truths, analytic and synthetic propositions, deductive and inductive arguments, a priori and a posteriori knowledge.

Main Resources

The Reason and Experience Guidebook 2011-12.

Plato and the forms (PowerPoint)

Descartes and Rationalism (PowerPoint)

Leibniz and Rationalism (PowerPoint)

Primary and Secondary Qualities (PowerPoint)

Rationalism - Summary (PowerPoint)

Hume and Empiricism (PowerPoint)

Some Problems With Empiricism (PowerPoint)

Kant Against The Empiricists (PowerPoint)

(For previous years' resources, click here.)

Revision Resources