This view of knowledge was once widespread. Moderate rationalism Even though radical rationalism and radical empiricism are widely regarded as untenable, we can still identify philosophers according to their rationalist or empiricist leanings. Rationalists rarely subscribe to any form of relativism and they are much more inclined than empiricists to believe that substantial problems can be solved by just thinking about them. Moderate empiricism Philosophers with empiricist leanings tend to characterize the methods employed in the empirical sciences as justified not by reason, but by experience. Many doubt the possibility of proving natural laws in anything like the way that mathematical and logical theorems are proved.
Empiricists tend to characterize rationalists pejoratively as armchair philosophers.
The classical debate here is between realists and idealists. Realism is the view that the world exists apart from our perception of it. Idealism says that the world is, in some sense, mind-dependent. In the philosophy of science, the difference between realism and conventionalism is as follows. Realists regard scientific theories as attempts to give us a literally true depiction of reality.