Alyssa Reed

Mr. Buescher
Philosophy, Period 1
28 September 2015
On Demand Essay; Empiricism
Epistemology is the basic study of how we acclaim our knowledge as people. Many
people would diverge between which of the three points of epistemology is the most accurate,
skepticism, empiricism, or rationalism. I formally believe empiricism is the closest thing to
finding out what knowledge really is. Empiricism is the claim that sense experience is the sole
source of our knowledge about the world. I believe this because, babies are born with a blank
slate and they learn everything from their experiences growing up, you cannot identify a single
belief that didnt come your way through experience, and lastly, reason is an unreliable and
inadequate route to knowledge unless it is grounded in the solid bedrock of sense experience.
Empiricists believe that children are born with natural instincts, not natural knowledge
and that they learn their knowledge through their experiences. When babies are born they have
no idea how to walk, talk, and they are sole dependant on people. As they grow they watch and
observe the people around them and they pick up things, they experience people walking,
talking, and feeding themselves. So they learn after awhile of watching people experience these
specific things to do it on their own. Unfortunately, not everybody believes this concept.
Skepticisms believe that we do not have any knowledge. So therefore they believe that babies
that are born have no sense of knowledge and have no way of accumulating it.
Epistemologists also believe that we cannot identify a single one of our beliefs that didnt
come our way without experience. Countless people have different believes and different ways

they portray certain things. Some people say, Punching a wall is not a good idea. You would
have to have punched a wall and felt the pain to believe this scenario. Another example would
be, lying is abominable recurrently saying, a person wouldve had to experience that lying isnt
the very best thing in order to hold it as a belief. If you dont have a reason or some kind of
experience for why you believe what you believe is it even a valid belief? Epistemologists firmly
believed that your experience is the most definite way to accumulating knowledge. Rationalists
unfortunately disagreed with the epistemologists. Rationalists believe that we obtain all of our
knowledge primarily through reason, and that all knowledge based off of experience is invalid.
Lastly, Empiricists believed reason is an unreliable and inadequate route to knowledge
unless it is grounded in the solid bedrock of sense experience. Basically stating that we as
humans cant rely on our reasoning to obtain knowledge because it is unreliable. An example
would be, A kid saying that the stove is hot, its his reason, but he wouldnt be able to prove it's
hot without touching it, experience. Another reason would be, oil and water dont mix youd
have to experience that these two liquids do not mix to have knowledge about oil and water not
mixing. Rationals again would disagree with this statement, because they believe that reason is
the sole way to acclaiming knowledge.
Many people would disagree on which of the three parts of epistemology would be true. i
believe empiricism is the closest one to being true. empiricists believe that we could only
acclaim knowledge through our experiences. I believe empiricism is the most true because,
babies are born with a blank slate and they learn everything from their experiences growing up,
you cannot identify a single belief that didnt come your way through experience, and lastly,
reason is an unreliable and inadequate route to knowledge unless it is grounded in the solid
bedrock of sense experience.