Rationalism in Philosophy
Manipulation or absence of evidence does not hinder human mind from keep digging and resorting to reason for answers.
Rationalism in Philosophy
By Shah Muhammad, Ghotki
Does the absence of empirical evidence and sensory experience deprive you from having an opinion?
Are you not entitled to have a unique perspective about social issues and world affairs when those around you do not offer you hard evidence?
Is evidence and visible reality the only way to reach the truth?
Rationalists disagree.
According to rationalism in the field of philosophy, reason and intellect are the chief sources of knowledge. Empiricists, on the other hand, believe that empirical evidence and sensory experience are the real determinants of knowledge. Rationalists claim that human intellect does not always rely on evidences or visible objects to find out the truth or establish an opinion. Rationalism relies on reason and deductive logic mainly, as opposed to raw empirical evidences, to establish a viewpoint about something. That effectively means "connecting the dots" approach.
In a nutshell, empiricists say we CAN NOT see what we don't see. On the contrary, rationalists say we CAN see what we don't see.
For example, before the incumbent government came to power in 2018, some people started saying that the ruling party at the centre is going to fail at delivering on its promises. There was no direct evidence of this party's performance in the federal government, then how did these people establish opinions beforehand? They must have, we can safely guess, employed rationalism to arrive at their opinion. By saying that the system is rotten and the said party is not organized enough to do something about it, people exercised reason, applied deductive logic and "connected the dots," ultimately giving an estimate of an unenviable future of a government of this party--without any dramatic or revolutionary change that the party supporters were predicting.
Another example can be of those analysts who say that American capitalists are blackmailing their president in office to shape his policies when there is no direct evidence, scandal or leaked tape exposing this fact? They say that because they know the history of US political system; they understand capitalism, and how American policies have been shaped in the past (connecting the dots/deductive logic) and then they spell out a comprehensive analysis of present as well as future policy decisions of USA in favour of capitalists.
To offer another example from our past, when Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi expected a not-so-rosy picture of a post-partition Pakistan, they had no direct evidence to support their claim; and they had no magical powers to see the future either. But they had reason, and that reason was no less powerful than some magic. They knew history, observed socio-political and historical circumstances, and applied some deductive logic to get an estimate about the future of Pakistan. Their apprehensions turned out to be true.
Some of these rationalist interpretations are dubbed 'conspiracy theories' by some. When you tell someone that his opinion is a 'conspiracy theory', you might actually be killing the intellect and free thinking just because he does not have hard evidence for now. If he doesn't have raw evidence yet, he may have his cogent thought, intuition, deduction and a knowledge of how history of the world has unfolded in the past to atleast form an independent opinion. Rationalists rightly hate the word conspiracy theory as designed to obstruct freedom of thought. This power of reason can be applied to form opinions about corona crisis until the evidences become clear with time.
It needs to be noted that when reason is backed by a strong, humanitarian and comprehensive thought, it becomes highly powerful. Thus, reason can be an effective tool to penetrate the veils of deception and deceit in order to identify the "real truth" about social and world affairs. Everyone knows empirical evidence is a reliable source to gain knowledge, but the manipulation or absence of evidence does not hinder human mind from its quest for answers. In essence, while exercising independent analysis one can be both a rationalist and an empiricist to get to an appropriate conclusion.
"Indeed the worst of living creatures in the sight of Allah are the deaf and dumb who do not use reason." (Quran 8:22)