empricism

What is empiricism?
Empiricism is the philosophical concept that experience, which is based on observation and experimentation, is the source of knowledge. According to empiricism, only the information that a person gathers with his or her senses should be used to make decisions, without regard to reason or to either religious or political teachings. Empiricism gained credibility with the rise of experimental science during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it continues to be studied by many scientists today. Empiricists have included English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), who asserted that there is no such thing as innate (having at birth) ideas—that the mind is born blank and all knowledge is derived from human experience. Another prominent empiricist, Irish clergyman George Berkeley (1685–1753), believed that nothing exists except through an individual's own perceptions, and that the mind of God makes possible...
What is rationalism?
Rationalism is the belief that the world we live in can be understood by the use of reason. The Rationalist Association argues for a rational approach to human problems, proposes reasoned alternatives to religious dogmas, aims to advance a secular system of education and wishes to defend freedom of thought and civil liberties.
Reason is a tool for solving problems, creating strategies, debunking nonsense and undermining dogmas. However, feeling, compassion and imagination are also important in driving and enriching our actions and thoughts. The strength of reason is that it is a powerful tool of understanding and a means of arriving at rational decisions. Human choices are not always made with complete rationality, but it is preferable to aim for the reasonable than to choose without thought.
The scientific process is powered by the use of reason. Much progress has come through scientific understanding, although the application of science, such as atomic explosions or genetic modification, can sometimes be dangerous. Imagination and empathy enable us to envisage the outcome of the application of science. The arts too can enlarge our concept of being human.
Rationalists have questioned the claims of religious thinkers and religious institutions. They may be agnostics or atheists, but they doubt the claims of the supernatural on the grounds of lack of reasonable evidence. The attitudes and injunctions of religions seem unconvincing when examined in the light of reason.
Rationalists envisage that the use of reason will lead to human progress - even if not in a steady upward course. Rationalists reckon that the sum of human progress may be increased by the careful and consistent use of reason.
http://newhumanist.org.uk/articles
Question: What Is Behaviorism?
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select -- doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.
--John Watson, Behaviorism, 1930
Answer: Behavioral psychology, also known as behaviorism, is a theory of learning based upon the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. Conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment. According to behaviorism, behavior can be studied in a systematic and observable manner with no consideration of internal mental states.

There are two major types of conditioning:
1. Classical conditioning is a technique used in behavioral training in which a naturally occurring stimulus is paired with a response. Next, a previously neutral stimulus is paired with the naturally occurring stimulus. Eventually, the previously neutral stimulus comes to evoke the response without the presence of the naturally occurring stimulus. The two elements are then known as the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response.
2. Operant conditioning Operant conditioning (sometimes referred to as instrumental conditioning) is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior.
Major Thinkers in Behaviorism
• Ivan Pavlov / B. F. Skinner /Edward Thorndike / John B. Watson / Clark Hull
Criticisms of Behaviorism
• Many critics argue that behaviorism is a one-dimensional approach to behavior and that behavioral theories do not account for free will and internal influences such as moods, thoughts, and feelings.
• Behaviorism does not account for other types of learning, especially learning that occurs without the use of reinforcements or punishments.
• People and animals are able to adapt their behavior when new information is introduced, even if a previous behavior pattern has been established through reinforcement.
Strengths of Behaviorism
• Behaviorism is based upon observable behaviors, so it is easier to quantify and collect data and information when conducting research.
• Effective therapeutic techniques such as intensive behavioral intervention, token economies, and discrete trial training are all rooted in behaviorism. These approaches are often very useful in changing maladaptive or harmful behaviors in both children and adults.
Structuralism in Linguistics
Structural linguists make the influential argument that the elements of a language have no intrinsic character. They take on a character only in relation to each other.
For example, human beings can make a certain range of noises, but the sound of "m" is not really the sound of "m" outside of a language that uses an "m." Within that language, a certain range of noises gets classified together as equivalent versions of the "m" sound, and there is no useful way to describe this classification except by referring to the language. The boundaries are imprecise--people who hear an "m" are not measuring waveforms and rejecting the ones beyond a certain cutoff point. Furthermore, there is change through time, local variation, and a good deal of overlap between the range of noises that can be classified as "m" and those that can be classified as something else. If there is an "m" sound that exists in the language, it must be thought of as something persisting through the welter of possible variations.
The phoneme has some essential character, apart from all its manifestations. Furthermore, the language defines this essential character partly by differentiating it from other phonemes. What makes an "m" is partly its distinction from "n." But what makes an "n" is partly its distinction from "m." // Continuing this line of analysis, it must be the case that the ?m? sound in one language is not the same as the ?m? sound in another, even if the same range of vocal noise is classified as ?m? in each. The classification is being made by contrasts within two different systems. / Saussure believed that the meanings expressed in a language were determined by an analogous system of differences. /This way of thinking has several obvious characteristics. /It defines the boundaries of a language by reference to its internal structure. / It portrays the workings of a language solely in terms of the internal structure, rather than seeking a set of causes, functions, or patterns that could underlie several different structures. If generalized from phonetics to meaning, the approach obviously raises the possibility that what's expressed in one language cannot be expressed in any other.
Most pervasively, it depends on a notion of purely abstract structure underlying all the particular manifestations of a language. Language is not the sound, it is the classification of sounds; it is not the question, it is the comparison with other sentence types that define what a question is; it is not the idea, it is the set of underlying distinctions that make the idea possible. / This idealism, if that is the term, has a somewhat surprising result. Sign and meaning tend to merge. A word means just what it means in the language that uses it, and only that word expresses it. So, implicitly, languages are not translatable into each other. This is a possibility taken up by deconstructionism.