'''Panrationalism''' (or '''comprehensive rationalism''')<ref>{{cite IEP |url-id=cr-ratio |title=Karl Popper and Critical Rationalism}}</ref> holds two premises true:
# A [[rationalist]] accepts any position that can be justified or established by appeal to the rational criteria or authorities. # They accept only those positions that can be so justified.
The first problem that needs to be dealt with is: what is the rational criterion or authority to which they appeal? Here the panrationalists diverge into two groups: # Intellectualists – to whom the rational authority lies in the human intellect, in the faculty of reason. # [[Empiricist]]s – to whom the rational authority is achieved by [[empirical evidence|sense experience]] (such as seeing or hearing).
[[Descartes]] is considered the founder of rationalism and gave the illustration ''[[cogito ergo sum]]'' as the paradigm to demonstrate what he believed.
The problem of both these appeals is that: # Intellectualism is "too wide" by letting too much in (basically everything, in a strict sense). # Empiricism is "too narrow" in that it excludes too much (basically everything, in a strict sense).
In his ''[[The Critique of Pure Reason]]'' [[Kant]] sought to reconcile both appeals.
== See also == *[[Critical rationalism]] *[[Pancritical rationalism]]
==References== {{Reflist}} *[[W. W. Bartley III]], ''The Retreat to Commitment'', La Salle; Open Court Publishing Company, 1984.
[[Category:Philosophical anthropology]] [[Category:Rationalism]] [[Category:Epistemological theories]]
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