Skeptical

Vander, are you still there?

Vanderzyden

Skeptical,

This is in response to your recent lengthy post

But, of course you know about the cognitive sciences and psychology, which deal with these non-empirical "inner workings". So are these sciences less respectable than biology?

Note: my "mind examples" are meant to demonstrate that direct knowledge of other minds is impossible on empirical methods alone. This is a taken up in detail by studying <a href="http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/solipsis.htm" target="_blank">solipsism</a> (a term you used previously) and it does have limited practical use in discussions such as this one.

I agree that such "inspirational" statements are irrefutable, but neither are they believable without additional evidence. You make a giant leap from saying that the discussion ends upon invocation of subjective divine intervention to stating that non-empirical methods cannot benchmark empirical ones.

You cannot provide empirical evidence without an explanation. You will not be persuasive without a convincing explanation, which itself is not empirical. Furthermore, you will not be convincing without appeal to reason, which is equivalent to the non-empirical "inner workings" of your mind (i.e. non-empirical).

If you take the view of the <a href="http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/l/logpos.htm" target="_blank">logical positivist</a>, nothing that isn't sensory (including logic)counts as knowledge. But I'm not sure if you are defining empirical as the equivalent of sensory. To further confuse things, you employ the term objective:

Please affirm or deny if you hold the following:

objective = empirical = sensory

Whether this is your belief or not, I'd like you to provide an empirical demonstration of the following:

-- "I have dreams."

-- "I feel guilty feelings when I've have treated someone disrespectfully."

-- "Murder is wrong."

Also, tell me this: empirically speaking, what are the causes behind dreams and guilty feelings and moral statements?

Finally, I should make a quick response to your next post. Yes, you make a good point about understanding rudimentary aerodynamic principles as a prerequisite to repeatable sustainable flight, but let me ask:

Why does lift work? Not how, but WHY?

Perhaps you can elaborate on the underlying reasons WHY (not how) gravity and atmospheric pressure work as they do--separately and in combination--to produce the phenomena known as lift. Furthermore, explain in empirical terms how the WHY relates to the HOW.

Vanderzyden

[ September 04, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]</p>

scigirl

Hmm, there are ways to make these empirical and objective sciences.

What on earth do you mean by non-empirical "inner workings" in psychology? Have you ever read a psych book? It's filled with boring old naturalistic science (in fact that's all the one i read was!! oh, and some statistics)

Basically it seems what you are saying is that we cannot predict exactly what someone else is thinking.

So?

So how exactly does one employ these "non-empirical" methods, as say, a psychologist?

Please provide an example.

And you say, Impossible? How about "Close enough for government work?"

A couple of points:

1. Humans are in some ways very predictable creatures. We think about similar things, and in similar ways, over and over. The stages of grief, for example. Or stages in cognitive development as we grow from babies to adults.

2. The human mind's output is the human body - in the form of actions: speech, writing, other body movements. These can all be empirically evaluated.

scigirl

Vanderzyden

FYI: I have responded to your previous replies just after you posted this question.

Skeptical

I don't see how its relevant to this thread, but I'll answer anyway. Psychology, as it currently stands, is a far cry from the "hard" sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology. We understand the "what" of psychology a lot better than we understand the "how". I wouldn't say "less respectable", I would say psyche research still has a lot of work to do.

Yes, I stated this earlier. I cannot experience your mind directly, but its effects are certainly empirical, which is good enough. This point is only of minor importance to this discussion anyway. People appear to have minds and we react to the effects of the minds we believe they have, so its irrelevant from a practical standpoint if their mind really exists or not. This, again, is not the point of this thread.

</strong>

YES! That is my point. Non-empirical statements or explanations are indistinguishable from opinion without empirical data. Remember that you have agreed on this point.

Actually, its the only logical conclusion. If we try to use non-empirical explanations for empirical data, but we have already agreed that non-empirical data is essentially worthless without empirical data, we end up in a never ending argument:

empirical data: there's a ball in the road

non-empirical explanation: god put the ball in the road

empirical data: the bible doesn't say anything about god putting balls in the road

non-empirical explanation: I talk to god and he told me he likes balls and he puts them in the road all the time

empirical data: there's no evidence that god talks to you

non-empirical explanation: I just know it through intuition

etc. etc.

Not exactly. Here is the key. There is a difference between empirical data and an empirically verifiable explanation. For example:

Empirical data - There is a ball in the road

Empirically verifiable explanation - A child threw the ball in the road (we may not be actually able to verify a particular case due to lack of evidence, but it is in principle verifiable)

There is _no_ difference between non-empirical (NE) data and non-empirically verifiable (NEV) explanations. They both rely on "knowledge" which is indistinguishable from opinion without empirical data.

Whether one says, "there's a magic, invisible, weightless ball in the road" or one says "god put the ball in the road", both the NE data and the NEV explanation are effectively no better than opinion.

As stated before, the inner workings are irrelevant, only the external manifestations are important, and they are perfectly empirical. Reason is just applied logic. Logic is empirical, the rules must be agreed upon.

Yes

Dreams and feelings are not knowledge. I may experience these things, but any experience which cannot be empirically validated cannot be called knowledge. Morality is only relevant in relation to an objective, shared reality since morality is only a shared set of rules we agree to abide by.

Irrelevant. The causes for dreams and feelings are certain brain states and chemical reactions, ditto for moral statements although you could add societal influences for moral "feelings". None of this is knowledge.

Irrelevant. Lift works because of the laws of physics. If you ask "why do the laws of physics exist?" it is sufficient to say "they just do". Not everything that can be asked requires an answer and its irrelevant to the questions I asked which you have ignored. You have agreed that non-empirical explanations are worthless without empirical data, so I assume your answers to my questions are "no" and "no".

The only logical conclusion from this is that non-empirical statements cannot be used to validate empirical explanations, since they have no validity in and of themselves. One _can_ use empirical data and empirically verifiable explanations to validate or invalidate empirical data and other empirically verifiable explanations. However, trying to use non-empirically verifiable statements to do the same thing is demonstrably absurd.

[ September 04, 2002: Message edited by: Skeptical ]</p>

Skeptical

Recap:

It's getting late (I'm EST), but I thought it would be useful to recap at this point:

It seems we are agreed that non-empirical data and explanations are essentially worthless without empirical data. To me it seems to logically follow from this that you cannot use NE data nor NEV explanations to judge empirical data and explanations.

I don't know what more I can say about this than I haven't said so far, but I am more than willing to continue this thread with the understanding that is has been agreed upon that NE data and NEV explanations are worthless without an appeal to empirical data and/or empirically verifiable explanations.

BTW, Vander thanks for your responses.

Vanderzyden

I also appreciate this opportunity to think this through. Thanks!

Now, you do raise some interesting concerns. But I don't agree with your conclusion (not yet, anyway).

For the moment, let's step back and narrow the focus to one example:


Empirical data*: I treated my fellow man shamefully. He and I agree on this.

Non-empirical data: I had a guilty feeling.

Non-empirical explanation: The guilty feeling is not knowledge.

Conclusion: I know with the highest certainty that I had a guilty feeling, and I may confidently take action upon the basis of this knowledge.


*Note: Here we have the definition of empirical = objective (objective in your sense), but not empirical = sensory.

So, I have a question:

What do you consider unknowable about any of this reasoning?

Vanderzyden

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]</p>

pangloss

Why should philosophical arguments trump scientific evidence?

What an utterly and completely absurd and illogical position to take.

Scientist: Gravity's pull is inversely proportional to distance.

Philosopher: I prefer that it not be so, as it seems to discriminate against the further object. Therefore, it must not be so.


Wow....

Skeptical

In my view, this is not really a NEV explanation. A NEV explanation would be a statement that attempted to explain the nature of the empirical act in a way that could not be verified. For example, a NEV explanation might be "satan caused me to act in the way I did by clouding my judgement."

Agreed, you personally have this information and are convinced. However, I, as a separate entity, cannot know whether or not you actually, in fact, feel guilty. I can only observe your actions. You may in fact _not_ feel guilty and may only be performing acts that make it _appear_ as if you feel guilty for ulterior motives. Surely this sort of thing happens all the time. It could also even be possible that even though you _think_ you feel guilty, you actually don't. Perhaps you think you _should_ feel guilty, so you convince yourself that you do even though in reality you actually aren't feeling guilty about your action, but your feeling guilty that you _don't_ feel guilty. I have personally experienced this sort of psychological phenomena, I think most people probably have.

In any case, this is why your inner thoughts and feelings are not knowledge, you are the only person who can possibly "know" them, and sometimes even _you_ might not "know" them. True self knowledge is not an easy thing to come by.

Your personal motivations and inner thoughts are unknowable, perhaps even by yourself although its not necessary that you agree with the latter. The NE data and the NEV explanations provide no added information that is useful to the empirical fact that you acted a certain way, agreed to certain principles and then (I assume) would take certain other empirical actions. What is truly going on "in your head" is not suceptible to proof or disproof, even in theory. For all I know you could be under alien control and _that_ is why you are acting a certain way. Why your acting in this way or that is not capable of being known, only your external actions. The NE data and the NEV explanation are of no use to me, all I can say with certainty is what you empirically did.

BTW, sorry again for my lateness in replying.

Vanderzyden

Skeptical,

Your assertion that my thoughts are unknowable goes against all human experience, and raises two questions in particular:

-- how can you know anything at all?
-- how can you know that you know?

Let's pursue the guilty feeling example a bit further. If you insist that the feeling itself isn't knowledge, I will grant that assumption for the purposes of our discussion here. However, if you are saying that I can't know that I had a guilty feeling, then I have to disagree strongly. I can know with certainty that I had what is known as a guilty feeling, and its source is the realization of my shameful treatment of my friend. Now, if I tell my friend that I feel guilty and that I apologize, he will see the correspondence between what I am saying and my previous outburst. He may not yet believe that I'm feeling guilty, but my subsequent actions and relationship with him will be evidence that he may consider in determining the truthfulness of my declaration of guilty feelings.

Again, I will say that am in agreement that anyone who makes claim to divine inspiration bears an overwhelming burden of proof. It is difficult to refute "the devil made me do it". However, such agreement doesn't force me, or anyone, to preclude thoughts from being classified as knowledge.

Let me give another example:

I am thinking of an equation. You see me writing the equation on the chalk board. It is quite reasonable to say with high confidence that I had positive knowledge of the equation in my mind just before I wrote it on the board. Do you agree?

What you have been asserting in this thread is that anything that is empirically unverifiable has no utility, and therefore--practically speaking--does not exist. Above I have provided counterexamples. There are many others.

What you are espousing here is verificationism, which says that only what is verifiable is real. If measurements can't be taken, then it doesn't exist. Only statements that can be empirically verified are meaningful. But this is self-refuting, since such statements themselves aren't empirically verifiable. On this basis, it's impractical to begin questioning the validity of human discourse and all that we have come to know. Interesting note: Einstein's Theory of Relativity is founded squarely upon this philosophy.


Vanderzyden

[ September 08, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]</p>