Hood Paper 3

"An empiricist always must divert to a nihilist-esque view of proof, perhaps even precluding a definitional ideology of proof - while a rationalist relies on experience to garner a sort of proof that can explicate one’s sensory experience and thus gain knowledge. Epistemologically, an empiricist ultimately must recant any notion of proof due to the fact that all notions of knowledge and understanding rely on some sort of belief based on experience (86) – repeated experience having the most credence per the scientific method. The consistent empiricist must, then, reject proof as being empirical and take on some form of skepticism in order to demonstrate that anything with the slightest chance, given an infinite amount of time, is entirely possible. A rationalist similarly relies on experience – both a priori and a posteriori – in order to come to conclusions, yet given similar situations, the rationalist and empiricist can come up with the same conclusion, yet with semantically and philosophically different views of that conclusion. If one were to go to an orchard, and see that an apple is about to break off from a branch, an empiricist and rationalist would both (hopefully) conclude that the apple will fall. A rationalist, however, can say that the fruit absolutely will fall (90) while the consistent empiricist cannot preclude the possibility that it will not fall. The rationalist relies on experience to judge what will happen, while the empiricist relies on experience to judge what is likely to happen, and this makes all the difference."