Necessitarian takes on two atheists on the topic of empiricism. It is good for younger presuppositionalists to read how to perform presuppositionalism at a profound level.
Necessitarian:
I cannot agree that my system struggles with any such question. For Aristotle, induction involves a mystical apprehension of the universal. For Rand, human psychology does the hard work of conceptualizing sense data. And very commonly, these are the discord server answers to the question. By that, I do not mean to insult you or pin you under that umbrella, but these are unsatisfying answers, to say the least.
In the meantime, I think there is a rather simple refutation of empiricism. Intrinsic to human perception is its limited nature. No one person grasps the absolute; no one has access to the universal that integrates all particulars. Presumably, if that were the case, and someone had such an exhaustive picture of the universe, they could set most, if not all, questions of science and philosophy at ease. Unfortunately, this sets us up for meta-inductive pessimism about interpretations of percepts. Because experience only gives us a limited screenshot of a confined portion of reality, our interpretations of them are just as limited. As a result, we constantly have to update our interpretations. We could compare this phenomenon to people watching a movie. At first, it is assumed the drama is about a midlife crisis. Character visits a bar, goes on a trip, ends up at work late. A drastic revision of our viewing takes place when we learn about the Matrix, and the film – or rather, our interpretation of it, takes a philosophic direction. Then the protagonist is told he is not the one, and so a large quantity of the audience disbelieves Morpheus’ prophecy. After a very heroic rescue, the protagonist is killed. In that moment, a few might be led to believe that this is a tragedy. By the end of the movie, you may think you have the right interpretation, and come to conclude this is one of the greatest achievements in film history ever. Until you watch the sequels.
All this to say, putting aside a lot of the psychological and justificational problems revolving around empiricism, empiricism does not provide us with a sufficient way out of this sort of skeptical scenario. Namely, on empiricism, we may now be led to believe that empiricism holds, but unfortunately, we have no way of ensuring that in the greater picture of history, it turns out empiricism has been disproven somewhere in the future. Alternatively, the human race never comes to find out about the falsity of empiricism, but some obscure factoid in neurology disproves it.
In summary, because empiricism cannot give us insight into the ultimate nature of reality, it is insufficient to tell us about parts of reality. Because we have no access to the whole, we have no access to parts. And if empiricism means we have no access to parts, then on empiricism, it is both true in principle that we can know the empiricist thesis and also it is true that we cannot know the empiricist thesis.
DustBringer:
Firstly, you bring up Aristotle and Rand. Your “mystical apprehension” characterization is pretty dubious given the role of intuition in Aristotle’s first philosophy and his thoroughgoing naturalism. Interestingly enough, some of the very best work done with the purpose of arresting Aristotle from his “Platonism” on universals and distancing from him the usual interpretations about his “realism” has been written by Rand (and Aristotle) scholars. See: Aristotle on Genera, Species, and “The More and the Less” — James G. Lennox (this paper is a kind of forerunner of Salmieri’s research mentioned directly below) Aristotle and the Problem of Concepts — Gregory Salmieri (this is Salmieri’s PhD dissertation and) Aristotle’s Conception of Universality — Gregory Salmieri (condensed argument based on the above dissertation) With respect to Rand, it is unclear what you mean by “human psychology does the hard work of conceptualizing sense data” and why this is problematic. See: Ayn Rand’s Theory of Concepts: Rethinking Abstraction and Essence — Allan Gotthelf (in the footnotes you will find Gotthelf speaking to the amenability of Aristotle’s theory of universals to Rand’s understanding of abstraction)
The adjective “limited” as you use it is illicit because it suggests an unlimited kind of awareness as a standard of comparison. But the limits of awareness are part and parcel of the identity of that awareness. Awareness is not merely awareness of something, but awareness of something somehow. To hold the identity of awareness as some kind of obstacle to “true” or “real” or “full” awareness (even your “exhaustive picture” would have to be known and understood somehow) is to fail to grasp that the identity of consciousness is the means of facilitating awareness, not its bar.
It is not clear what giving “insight into the ultimate nature of reality” would mean, nor is it clear that your objection can’t be reduced to the following: Man can not know everything therefore man can not know anything. (“Because we have no access to the whole, we have no access to the parts.”) It is further unclear how this is advanced without recourse to empirical methods, and why omniscience and the ability to guarantee the impossibility of error should be our standard for the production of knowledge. Indeed if ought implies can then can not implies ought not, and your standards are in need of both serious revision and a principled acquiescence before the nature of the human cognitive faculty.
Necessitarian:
Dustbringer, there’s a lot in your response worthy of remark. I don’t think I’m up for getting in an infinitely expanding rabbit hole of paragraphs. This is already long. And so, I’ll stick to defending the refutation I offered. If I miss something important for that reason, forgive me and feel free to point it out.
Triviality You appear to make definitional fallacy when you claim (as so many Aristotelians do) that “the limits of awareness are part and parcel of the identity of awareness.” Here you have confused a theoretical definition with an argument. That you define awareness as such and such does not make it so, even if Aristotle, Rand, and other empiricists celebrate confusing definitions and proofs. By your own empirical criteria, what experience justifies belief that human awareness is its own sufficient criterion? How does one go about perceiving that fact, I’d like to know. If stipulating definitions satisfy your criteria, here’s my counter: I define you as one who speaks falsity whenever you disagree with me. In fact, that leads us to the second problem: subjectivism.
Subjectivism Proving your view of awareness by pronouncing your definition of awareness opens up the floodgates to baseless assertions of every variety, starting with, “Empiricism is by definition false.” That tactic is not only uninteresting, it’s absurd, worthy of mockery. Yet, such absurdity becomes inevitable for your epistemology when first-person consciousness is identified with the first principle of knowledge. For if every man’s mind is a law unto itself, then there is no epistemic law, just anarchy, and no longer any difference whatsoever between loud assertions and arguments.
Calling Limits Illicit Presupposes Limits Your view of the limitations of awareness falls into historical absurdity straight away. Suppose we survey the progress of scientific paradigms, models, methods, and so forth, over the course of human history. At base, there are two approaches we could take. We could see the drastic changes and conclude that scientific knowledge is expanding. However, noetic expansion presupposes a standard of knowledge beyond what is currently had by any human. Empiricists are left with the alternative pickle. Since human awareness is its own standard, talk of progress in science, economics, or philosophy is unintelligible, for at every stage, those fields represent the awareness of the individuals promulgating them. There would be no canon beyond present knowers by which to say their knowledge has expanded and is yet to expand. Therefore, if you want to be consistent, you’ll have to say knowledge has been neither lost nor gained: consciousness has just gone through neutral changes. You may be extremely intelligent and I mean your intelligence no insult, but please realize this is a primitive epistemology not suitable for children, much less anyone epistemologically self-conscious.
Underdetermination It is entirely irrelevant whether we rely on empirical affairs to analyze or answer the problem I set forth. For you see, that is compatible with non-empiricist answers to the problem. Surely we would agree, in order to have this conversation, and so to consider the dialogue rationally, our senses must be reliable, our percepts must be intelligible, we must have access to extramental reality, etc. However, the reliability of the senses, et al, are not uniquely empiricist doctrines. A rationalist, Buddhist, Thomist, or Reformed Christian like myself can all agree our empirical faculties must work in our favor without resorting to empiricism as an answer to the problem. Pointing out the preconditional nature of our empirical faculties in no way supports empiricism. Thus, when you say, “It is further unclear how this is advanced without recourse to empirical methods,” insofar as you mean empirical means of knowledge are a precondition of this (or any) conversation: so what. I don’t mean to be rude, but that fits just fine with my non-empiricist epistemology – same with a thousand others.
Misdescription of the Problem My argument nowhere presents exhaustive human knowledge as a criterion. Nor does it “hold [Dust’s definition of] awareness as some kind of obstacle to ‘true’ or ‘real’ or ‘full’ awareness” (after all, your criterion is incoherent to begin with). Rather, the problem of the unity of knowledge takes notice that we are in an epistemic trilemma. We (humankind) can be omniscient (per impossibile), we can have access to an omniscient Source (e.g., Christianity), or knowledge is impossible (per impossibile). Nothing there asks us to know everything. Furthermore, this objection stands just as well against fallibilist models of justification. Infallibility is nowhere required (of human knowledge) in the problem. Whether you maintain knowledge requires a justificatory probability of 1, less than 1, or you use an unstatistical notion of justification in the first place, you still have to account for knowledge of particulars without access to an exhaustive picture of them. Defining magical powers of “abstraction” into human consciousness, as Aristotle does, is superstitious and trite, as it suits druggies on the street just as well.
For the sake of clarity, philosopher James Anderson has well syllogized the problem, which argument could be called the argument from the unity of knowledge. Here is the original thought formalized: P1. If no one has comprehensive knowledge of the universe, then no one can have any knowledge of the universe. P2. Only God could have comprehensive knowledge of the universe. P3. We have some knowledge of the universe. C: Therefore, God exists. (cf. IF KNOWLEDGE THEN GOD: THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL THEISTIC ARGUMENTS OF PLANTINGA AND VAN TIL James Anderson, page 20) Against your empiricism, the argument can be easily redirected as follows: P1. If no one has comprehensive knowledge of the universe, then no one can have any knowledge of the universe. P2. No one has comprehensive knowledge of the universe (empiricism). P5. Someone has some knowledge of the universe (empiricism). P6. No one can have any knowledge of the universe (P1 + P2). C: Empiricism is false (via contradiction).
Appeal to Ignorance This is one: “It is not clear what giving ‘insight into the ultimate nature of reality’ would mean.” You may be ignorant of a rather common idea in the history of philosophy, but that’s not an objection to my view. I mean no insult, but this is such an old-hat fallacy going around on the discord servers. Feigning ignorance is childish and frivolous, much less something that needs further response.
TheFool:
Just be a post-empiricist and post-positivist
post-empiricism doesn’t suffer from this kind of self-refutation
All knowledge is based on conjecture that can’t be proven or disproven
which itself is a conjecture
Necessitarian:
All knowledge is based on conjecture that can’t be proven or disproven
Unfortunately, that means knowledge just is conjecture, and we have no need for extra terms. Of course, then the claim that all beliefs are unproven conjecture becomes itself unproven conjecture and can be dismissed outright.
TheFool:
in order to dismiss it, you’d need to conjecture that knowledge was more than conjecture lol
its self-supporting, not self-refuting for me to say its all founded on conjecture. If I can dismiss something, just for being conjecture, I can dismiss any view you put forth. But I’m not going to do that necessarily, because making conjectures is vital to the project of philosophy. You need First Principles, which is what metaphysics is, which is arguably prior to epistemology. I think what you’re doing is putting epistemology before metaphysics, which might be backwards. When did I say we ought to dismiss conjecture? The idea that you need to logically or empirically prove everything sounds like logical positivism to me bro
Necessitarian:
You forget that your responses are all conjecture, The Fool. Even your attempt to distinguish self-refutation from cohesion is just your imagination. So is your attempt to distinguish my factual claims from your make-believe. Your imagination is both uninteresting to me and insignificant to philosophy.
The Council 