Empiricism Vs. Rationalism

[Levity]

I am new to this website so I figured I'd start off a discussion about Empirical thinking versus Rational thinking. What is your opinion on the need for each? I find that people see their world in one of the two ways, but often fail to synthesize both. As we can see with Kant it is important to bring both to the table in any debate because one can not exist without the other. I have written an analysis of this found here:

fredarnold.hubpages.com/hub/Rationalism-Vs-Empiricism-Kants-Synthesis
(Unable to link since I'm new!)

In this article I explore the differing mind sets of thinkers such as Plato and Hume. Hume used his "Fork" analogy to put a complete standstill on logical thought. This spurred Kant's synthesis of the two.

Also, do you believe the world functions using both types of reasoning? Often times in government I see politicians think empirically, they use history and trends to try and calculate outcomes, but fail to rationalize it in a way that leads to positive influence with their constituents.

[YesNo]

As I look at some of the sources you have cited in the article, I suppose I fall at the moment in agreement with William James' pragmatism or empiricism and with Berkeley's idealism. I can see how Kant would want to synthesize Hume's Fork.

The idealism that I think is true comes from looking at quantum physics. A quick summary of this view would be in this youtube explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5pq7W5yRM

[kev67]

Is the difference between empiricism and rationalism the same as the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning? I read an introductory course book on social science last year. iirc, deductive reasoning (rationalism) are thought experiments. The godfather of deductive reasoning is René Descartes of 'cogito ergo sum' fame. Other examples of deductive reasoning are Sadi Carnot's heat engine, Albert Einstein's theories of relativity, and Alan Turing's Universal Machine. The godfather of inductive reasoning (empiricism) is Francis Bacon. His approach was to examine the evidence, do tests and look at the results, then try and derive a theory from them if possible. I think you need both approaches. If you have a theory of something important, you need to verify against evidence somehow before you can have much confidence in it. For example, the Higgs Bosun that had been theorized for decades was finally verified at great expense and effort with the CERN particle accelerator. On the other hand, if you have a lot of data that show a pattern, you need a theory to explain it. The advantage of deductive reasoning is that it can short cut the process of finding a theory to explain a certain phenomenon, especially if the data is noisy or affected by other factors.

[YesNo]

Rationalism can probably mean a lot of different things. Putting empirical evidence into a theory, a rationalization process, might be called "rationalism", but it seems more like working empiricism. Knowledge still comes from the senses (or the test equipment giving a reading). If knowledge came in some other way, such as through Platonic forms, or assumptions, upon which one reasoned or rationalized, that might be rationalism.

As with all these philosophical topics, I'm worse than Socrates who claimed he didn't know. I really don't.

[cacian]

what must be said against what should be said.
it is empirical to say it in because one has to
versus
it is rational to let it say itself.
I think that lattest is fittest.

[The Atheist]

Often times in government I see politicians think empirically, they use history and trends to try and calculate outcomes, but fail to rationalize it in a way that leads to positive influence with their constituents.

Holy smoke! You wrote that like you think it's true.

Politicians care nothing about empiricism, rationalism or any other -ism, apart from "getting-votes-and-staying-in-power-ism".

On the main question, rationalism trumps everything, especially personal experience. Ask a cop.

[kev67]

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution seems like a good example of empiricism. He looked at lots of real world phenomena before the idea of evolution according to natural selection came to him. Then he spents years more checking his idea against the observable data before publishing. I think he was worried his theory could be shot down by one inexplicable observation.

Rationalists seem often able to use mathematics to express their thinking. Sadi Carnot was able to express the maximum theoretical efficiency of a heat engine as quite a simple mathematical formula. It still took some doing. He would have needed to realise that the energy contained in heat was directly proportional to it temperature (compared to absolute zero that is). He would also need to have known that the work done by the engine was equivalent to the energy output by the heat engine (minus friction and other losses), and that this energy was equivalent to the difference in heat between the hot and cold parts of the engine. Pretty clever when you think about it.

I am currently reading a book called Debunking Economics by Steve Keen, in which he criticizes neo-classical economics. If he is right, then neo-classical economics is an example of a failure in rationalism. Neo-classical economics relies on mathematical formula to derive demand and supply curves. It also relies on certain assumptions to make the formulas work. The problem is that the mathematics is still wrong, and the assumptions are unrealistic. It was an abstraction that was never really verified against real world data. The theory is not used by businesses to set prices or output levels, but is used to set government economic policy.

[The Atheist]

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution seems like a good example of empiricism. He looked at lots of real world phenomena before the idea of evolution according to natural selection came to him. Then he spents years more checking his idea against the observable data before publishing. I think he was worried his theory could be shot down by one inexplicable observation.

Which is sensibly using a rational approach to empirical data. Science obviously depends on observation, but it must be used and viewed rationally.

Otherwise, Darwin would have been Lamarck.

[YesNo]

I am currently reading a book called Debunking Economics by Steve Keen, in which he criticizes neo-classical economics. If he is right, then neo-classical economics is an example of a failure in rationalism. Neo-classical economics relies on mathematical formula to derive demand and supply curves. It also relies on certain assumptions to make the formulas work. The problem is that the mathematics is still wrong, and the assumptions are unrealistic. It was an abstraction that was never really verified against real world data. The theory is not used by businesses to set prices or output levels, but is used to set government economic policy.

That book sounds interesting. Most of what I know about economics is probably wrong, but based on ideas I assume are true and have no way of checking.

Rationalism seems to be a position where one's ideas are assumed to be infallible. Given that position, any experience or evidence that falsifies the infallible must be a delusion. The problem with empiricism, on the other hand, is that it doesn't have a way to get those ideas or the language to express them out of sense experience.

[Levity]

That's fallacious reasoning my friend. Some politicians do not make the whole. As a congressional body, when laws are implemented Congress looks at trends, which they base all their information on empirical data rather than a synthesis of both. This is why there is ethical issues when it comes to laws. Because they fail to rationalize each aspect of the law to an easily discernible entity, it promotes loop hole mentalities within the framework of the legal system. This is because you can reason that a law means this. Congress fails to get laws into their simplest form to actually encompass empirical and rationalized though. You also fail to realize that House Representatives generally follow the will of their constituents due to how short their terms are.

Also, remember, the media blows out of proportion the idea of political deceit due to its' nature of controversy. Just like any other area of discourse. If we are going off of opinion, the fact that the Executive Branch has been delegated so much power through bureaucracy is a reason why we see instability in the legal system due to the imbalance of checks and balances. The Supreme Court finds it difficult to attest the Executive, even.

Thank you for your response!

[Levity]

The idea of neoclassical economics is actually based off of the trend of supply and demand. Rational economics can be seen in Adam Smith's ideals of laissez-faire economics. Economics is hard to pinpoint with a synthesized approach because of macro and micro differences in economy. Would you consider every type of economic theory, thus far, a failure? (This is in regards to Keynesian economics and Laissez-faire)

[kev67]

The idea of neoclassical economics is actually based off of the trend of supply and demand. Rational economics can be seen in Adam Smith's ideals of laissez-faire economics. Economics is hard to pinpoint with a synthesized approach because of macro and micro differences in economy. Would you consider every type of economic theory, thus far, a failure? (This is in regards to Keynesian economics and Laissez-faire)

I don't know enough about it to say. I have only read books and watched a few YouTube videos. Steve Keen, the author of Debunking Economics is pretty convincing about neoclassical economics being wrong. He tends to think Keynes was more right. I think he goes on to explain that a lot of what passed for Keynesian economics in the 70s really wasn't. The thing is, neoclassical economic theory relies on some mathematical equations to derive supply and demand graphs, but mathematics does not work out. Keen says they used a zero where they should have used an infinitesimal. According to the theory, a perfectly competitive market should supply goods at lower prices than a monopoly, but that was only because of a mistake in the mathematics. According to Keen, neoclassical economics was once a progressive field of study, but has stagnated and become somewhat of a belief system. Even when neoclassical economists have discovered breakdowns in the theory, either the problem was smoothed away by imposing new conditions in which the theory held, or the problem was trivialised or ignored. In the last chapter I read, Keen complained that economics still tended to rely on static models of the economy, whem most other sciences have use dynamic models.

I watched a lecture by Ha-Joon Chang recently on YouTube. Among other things, he said there was a tendancy for economists to disparage actual data collecting. Great economic minds sat in their offices, thinking of grand theories. Only third rate researchers looked around factories and businesses and collected data.

[kev67]

I am still reading Steve Keen's Debunking Economics. He quotes John von Neumann about the need for more empirical research in economics. Though von Neumann was writing about half a century earlier, Keen thinks it is still true. John von Neumann was a pretty clever guy. I first came across him in the late 80s, when I had to write an essay about early days of computer development in my HND Software Engineering course. My brother came across him when he studied economics, as he dabbled in that field too.

In some branches of economics the most fruitful work may be that of careful, patient description; indeed, this may be by far the largest domain for the present and some time to come [...] the empirical background of economic science is definitely inadequate. Our knowledge of the relevant facts of economics is incomparably smaller than that commanded in physics at the time when the mathematization of that subject was achieved. Indeed, the decisive break which came in physics in the seventeenth century, specifically in the field of mechanics, was only possible because of the previous developments in astronomy. It was backed by several millennia of systematic, scientific, astronomical observation, culminating in an observer of unparalleled caliber, Tycho de Brahe. Nothing of this sort has occurred in economic science. It would be absurd in physics to expect Kepler and Newton without Tycho - and there is no hope for an easier development in economics.

[kev67]

Rationalists tend to use mathematics to explain their thinking, but there is at least one area of engineering in which empirical formulas are used to approximate answers. Heat convection equations tend to be empirical. They are found to give reasonable answers within certain conditions. For example, you get equations like this for heat convection from fluid flowing through a circular tube:

NuD - 0.023ReD4/5Prn

This applies only where flow is turbulent. The Prandtl number (Pr) has to be between 0.6 and 160. The Reynolds number (Re) must be over 10,000. The length of the tube must be at least 10 times its diameter. If the temperature of the fluid is greater than the tube's surface then n = 0.3, otherwise n = 0.4.

It is strange seeing factors like 0.023 and powers of 4/5 in physics related field, but apparently, there are no precise equations that could be used. Well, there are, but you would need a computer with a lot of processing power to number-crunch them. I think the problem is that heat convection is related to fluid mechanics, and fluid mechanics is often chaotic.

[Phocion]

I am currently reading a book called Debunking Economics by Steve Keen, in which he criticizes neo-classical economics. If he is right, then neo-classical economics is an example of a failure in rationalism. Neo-classical economics relies on mathematical formula to derive demand and supply curves. It also relies on certain assumptions to make the formulas work. The problem is that the mathematics is still wrong, and the assumptions are unrealistic. It was an abstraction that was never really verified against real world data. The theory is not used by businesses to set prices or output levels, but is used to set government economic policy.
I have not read the book, but i can't understand why he has come to that conclusion: neo-classical economics, if anything, is an example of the failure of the application of scientific empiricism to a science built around the inner workings of the human mind, it being something that cannot be empirically measured (both Keynesians and the neo-classicals share this methodology and thus faith in aggregated statistics and mathematical economic predictions, which have an abysmal accuracy record - their answer to this is simply to refine their models rather than accept their methodology is flawed).

What stands opposite to this (and has been completely shunned by academic economists - unsurprisingly considering to accept its conclusions would be to accept the redundancy of most of their careers and professions) is methodological dualism, which argues the following:

‘In the mathematical treatment of physics the distinction between constants and variables makes sense; it is essential in every instance of technological computation. In economics there are no constant relations between various magnitudes. Consequently all ascertainable data are variables, or what amounts to the same thing, historical data. The mathematical economists reiterate that the plight of mathematical economics consists in the fact that there are a great number of variables. The truth is that there are only variables and no constants. It is pointless to talk of variables where there are no invariables.'

Hence methodological dualism is based on the rational induction that human beings have goals and purposes and therefore act to attain them; further economic rules can then be deduced from this single principle, but you can't quantitively analyse human wants and desires using mathematical modelling.

[Libro]

You are quite correct in your disquiet about politcos - they care nothing for rational thought or else theydd be cost accountants (come to think of it that;w hat most of them are) - philosophical thought doesn't enter their limited purview - if it did there would be far more intelliegnce found on this planet rather than the banal ethicz (sic) that pass themselves off as true and abiding principles - the truth is that even personal experience is limited to the perception of the individual and/or the society and thus subjectivity becomes the norm - objective reality is irrational at best.

[108 fountains]

Robert Kennedy reportedly carried around books and/or essays by Albert Camus and, despite being a hard-nosed prosecutor and Attorney General he ascribed his opposition to the death penalty to the influence of Camus on his thinking. There are still a few politicians in Washington who can read, and even a few who can think, but their numbers are dwindling.

[pere4]

for me, empiricism is more important.

[Dreamwoven]

You are quite correct in your disquiet about politcos - they care nothing for rational thought or else theydd be cost accountants (come to think of it that;w hat most of them are) - philosophical thought doesn't enter their limited purview - if it did there would be far more intelliegnce found on this planet rather than the banal ethicz (sic) that pass themselves off as true and abiding principles - the truth is that even personal experience is limited to the perception of the individual and/or the society and thus subjectivity becomes the norm - objective reality is irrational at best.

Economics is probably the least understood of all. We live in an age of neoliberalism (basically letting the markets rip). So now we find ourselves on a boom-slump roller-coaster. The most recent boom broke in 2008/9 with bank runs and bail-outs, and economists are still trying to stimulate the market by using quantitative easing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing), basically pumping more cash into the economy by printing money. I think we have had 4 of these exercises already, combined with lowering interest rates. It is not working, and now with lending interest rates near zero it gets hard to continue the policy. What next, negative interest rates? Meanwhile the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Where will it end?