You die and your consciousness wakes up in a void. You have none of the 5 senses - no external stimuli at all. Do you think it would be possible to learn anything new just by rehashing things from memory or does learning require external stimuli?
You die and your consciousness wakes up in a void. You have none of the 5 senses - no external stimuli at all. Do you think it would be possible to learn anything new just by rehashing things from memory or does learning require external stimuli?
Philosophically speaking, “rationalism” is the acquisition of knowledge through reason alone without external stimuli.
E.g. one could come to new knowledge about maths by just reflecting on axioms
Where would the axioms come from and what would they be about?
Rationalism is cool but ironically it breaks apart if you start applying logic to it. You need a dose of realism to have anything to reason about.
Conventional axoims of maths. OP is talking about this happening after a lifetime of experience. So there are memories to reason about.