While Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is famed as the innovator of modern empirical method, Ren Descartes has the repute

of a rationalist, employing a form of intensive deductive reasoning, though not divorced from experiment. The French philosopher integrated to a significant degree the results of scientific endeavour, and pursued his own form of scientific research. His output has recently been reappraised, offsetting the caricature posed by Gilbert Ryle's concept of "the ghost in the machine." Descartes remained a Roman Catholic in his basic religious views, though he was not by any means typical of that ideological category, and in fact was quite a radical. It is abundantly clear that Descartes was a proponent of the scientific findings of his era. Modern commentators sometimes refer to the latter in terms of the "new science." Descartes opposed the traditional Scholastic philosophy perpetuated by the universities, a form of thinking rooted in Aristotelianism as interpreted by the Christian Schoolmen of the late medieval period. Scholastic Aristotelianism was not the Greek original, and had been accomodated to concepts and circumstances completely unknown to Aristotle. Scholastics identified their form of Aristotelianism with the Bible, maintaining that support was found in Biblical text. "Accordingly, if someone were to try to refute some main Aristotelian tenet, then he could be accused of holding a position contrary to the word of God and be punished." (J. Skirry, "Rene Descartes: Overview," Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.) There are some erroneous "new age" versions of Descartes that depict him as a Jesuit-influenced "dualist" teaching a backward doctrine. In reality, his version of philosophy and science evoked the fierce hostility of Roman Catholic and Calvinist theologians. Those dogmatic opponents were adherents of the Scholastic Aristotelianism which Descartes negotiated so assiduously. "He is best characterised as a philosopher of the Scientific Revolution" (D. M. Clarke, Descartes: A Biography, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 2).

John Locke (b. 1632, d. 1704) was a British philosopher, Oxford academic and medical researcher, whose association with Anthony Ashley Cooper (later the First Earl of Shaftesbury) led him to become successively a government official charged with collecting information about trade and colonies, economic writer, opposition political activist, and finally a revolutionary whose cause ultimately triumphed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Much of Locke's work is characterized by opposition to authoritarianism. This opposition is both on the level of the individual person and on the level of institutions such as government and church. For the individual, Locke wants each of us to use reason to search after truth rather than simply accept the opinion of authorities or be subject to superstition. He wants us to proportion assent to propositions to the evidence for them. On the level of institutions it becomes important to distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate functions of institutions and to make the corresponding distinction for the uses of force by these institutions. The positive side of Locke's anti-authoritarianism is that he believes that using reason to try to grasp the truth, and determining the legitimate functions of institutions will optimize human flourishing for the individual and society both in respect to its material and spiritual welfare. This in turn, amounts to following natural law and the fulfillment of the divine purpose for humanity. Locke's monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understandingconcerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to God, the self, natural kinds and artifacts, as well as a variety of different kinds of ideas. It thus tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim to know and what one cannot. Locke also wrote a variety of important political, religious and educational works including the Two Treatises of Government, theLetters Concerning Toleration, The Reasonableness of Christianity and Some Thoughts Concerning Education.

rasyonalismo n 1: (pilosopiya) ang mga doktrina na kaalaman ay nakuha sa pamamagitan ng dahilan na walang resort na karanasan 2: ang teolohiko doktrina na tao dahilan sa halip na banal na paghahayag nagtatatag relihiyon katotohanan

3: ang mga doktrina na ang dahilan ay ang karapatan na batayan para sa mga regulasyon uugali [syn: (freethinking)]

Empiricism is the philosophical concept that experience, which is based on observation and experimentation, is the source of knowledge. According to empiricism, the information that a person gathers with his or her senses is the information that should be used to make decisions, without regard to reason or to either religious or political authority. The philosophy gained credibility with the rise of experimental science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it continues to be the outlook of many scientists today. Empiricists have included English philosopher John Locke (16321704), who asserted that there is no such thing as innate ideas-that the mind is born blank and all knowledge is derived from human experience; Irish clergyman George Berkeley (1685-1753), who believed that nothing exists except through the perception of the individual, and that it is the mind of God that makes possible the apparent existence of material objects; and Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), who evolved the doctrine of empiricism to the extreme of skepticism-that human knowledge is restricted to the experience of ideas and impressions, and therefore cannot be verified as true. Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/what-is-empiricism#ixzz1tF2xpZJN

. Sensations and Perceptions Sensations can be defined as the passive process of bringing information from the outside world into the body and to the brain. The process is passive in the sense that we do not have to be consciously engaging in a "sensing" process.Perception can be defined as the active process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting the information brought to the brain by the senses.A) HOW THEY WORK TOGETHER:
1) Sensation occurs: a) sensory organs absorb energy from a physical stimulus in the environment. b) sensory receptors convert this energy into neural impulses and send them to the brain. 2) Perception follows: a) the brain organizes the information and translates it into something meaningful. Read more: http://www.alleydog.com/101notes/s&p.html#ixzz1tFD59Q4K

Association of Ideas, or Mental association, is a term used in the history of philosophy and of psychology to refer to explanations about the conditions under which representations arise in consciousness, and also for a principle put forward by an important historical school of thinkers to account generally for the succession of mental phenomena. One idea was thought to follow another in consciousness if it were associated by some principle. The three commonly asserted principles of association were similarity, contiguity, and contrast, numerous others had been added by the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century physiological psychology was so altering the approach to this subject that much of the older associationist theory was rejected. Everyday observation of the association of one idea or memory with another gives a face validity to the notion. In addition, the notion of association between ideas and behavior gave some early impetus to behaviorist thinking. The core ideas of associationist thinking recur in some recent thought on cognition, especially consciousness.