Reason vs. Experience
Where does knowledge come from?
Rationalism vs. Empiricism
Rationalists like Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz held that reason alone can reach substantial truths, and that some knowledge is a priori; independent of experience. Empiricists like Locke, Berkeley, and Hume countered that the mind begins as a blank slate, with all ideas ultimately traced back to sensory experience. This clash over the source of knowledge defined early modern philosophy.
“There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses.”
Where this sits in the course
“Reason vs. Experience” is lesson 2 of 3 in What Can We Know?, a course about slow down on knowledge itself: doubt, experience, induction, and proof.. The lessons are sequenced rather than a menu, so this one assumes what came before it.
What Can We Know? is itself one of 18 courses in thinkr. The set opens with what philosophy is, moves through the Stoics and the Eastern traditions, then into what can be known, what exists, how to act and how power works — closing on practical reasoning you can use in an argument this week.
In the app this lesson is followed by 5 exercises that check whether the idea actually landed — and every answer, right or wrong, is explained rather than scored. That is the part a written page cannot reproduce.