INTRODUCTION A. Introduction Descartes’ notion of innate ideas is consistent with rationalism Rationalism is a view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification.
The criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive. Since the Enlightenment, rationalism is usually associated with the mathematical methods of Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza.
This is commonly called continental rationalism, as distinguished from British empiricism.
18 Rationalism