I don’t think that all rationalists were foundationalists. Descartes perhaps, but I don’t think Leibniz or Spinoza were. Empiricists up to Reid were foundationalists, and Mill was not. I think it is an independent issue.
Since there is a clear distinguishing feature, belief in the synthetic apriori in today’s terms, I prefer to use that to distinguish rationalists, not some rather vague ideal that probably nobody held. I am pretty sure that it distinguishes consistently those who are called rationalists, though there are some who would call, e.g., Russell, a rationalist, and Peirce, because of the role of logic in their views, but this seems wrong to me. Peirce was a fallibilist sort of positivist, and Russell was an empirically oriented Platonist. John Collier Professor Emeritus, UKZN http://web.ncf.ca/collier From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com] Sent: Tuesday, 24 November 2015 6:23 PM To: Peirce List Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Rationalism : Philosophical and Scientific On Nov 24, 2015, at 12:03 AM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za<mailto:colli...@ukzn.ac.za>> wrote: I disagree with the sharp division between empiricists and rationalists as Jon draws it. He quotes: Rationalism: A method, or very broadly, a theory of philosophy, in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive. Usually associated with an attempt to introduce mathematical methods into philosophy, as in Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza. (Vernon J. Bourke) This is not correct. Most rationalists allow for truth to be determined not only by reason but also by experience. Extreme rationalists like Aristotle require that essential properties and their consequences be understood rationally, but not accidents. Descartes, much less extreme, made most truths dependent on experience. Leibniz is perhaps the most consistent rationalist (if we require the split with empiricism to be really deep) in that he thought the nature of the whole universe was fully determined by rationality. However he also thought that because our (some of) perceptions are confused we must rely on experience to determine at least some truths, even if on the scale of God they are determined solely by reason. Isn’t the issue with Rationalists and truth from senses that they are foundationalists? That is truths of experience start with a point of infallibility and then draw deductive consequences from it. They still see it in terms of experience but induction just isn’t part of their reasoning in any strong sense. For something to be known it has to have that absolute reason. Of course as I said I doubt anyone was a pure Rationalist. So I doubt anyone only thought in that way. But that was the ideal. I confess it’s been an awful long time since I last read seriously Leibniz and company. So I can’t recall off the top of my head how they dealt with confused perceptions in this.
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