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I suspect that you're using empiricism somewhat more broadly than philosophers do, and that you may include things like science as a whole. Science is more trad

I suspect that you're using empiricism somewhat more broadly than philosophers do, and that you may include things like science as a whole. Science is more traditionally IMO considered to be a recursive process with rational (i.e. theory) and empirical (i.e. sense data) steps. In science, sense data provides a constraint on theory and theory (together with psychology) provide a constraint on the raw sense data (in the same way, for example, an AI provides structure to the raw input vectors). If that's something along the lines of what you believe, then sure I'd say we're on the same page and we're not actually in disagreement. But I wouldn't describe that belief system as saying empricism is self-justifying. Empiricism in practice goes off the rails pretty quickly with things like subjective idealism and the belief that there are no external entities, only sense data etc. The thing we have now, where theory and experience mutually constrain each other seems obviously correct to me both in the academic sense (e.g. I think that Kant was right that the mind provides structure to raw sensory data). I also think it's true in the broader sense (e.g. that the applied sciences tend to move more slowly on their own and advance much more rapidly when combined with theory).

lisper 3y ago
> Science is more traditionally IMO considered to be a recursive process with rational (i.e. theory) and empirical (i.e. sense data) steps. That's true, but like so many traditions, it's wrong. Science can be justified entirely in terms of empiricism. To be clear, it is not at all obvious that this is possible (it relies on the Church-Turing thesis), and so people can be forgiven for making this mistake. But it's still a mistake, and it's grounded in ignorance. > Empiricism in practice goes off the rails pretty quickly with things like subjective idealism and the belief that there are no external entities, only sense data etc. Unless your sensory experiences are radically different from mine, then you have to concede that those experiences behave, to a very close approximation, as if external entities exist, and a good explanation for that is that external entities do in fact exist. Ironically, that explanation turns out to be wrong, but to see that you need to dive into quantum mechanics. And the justification for quantum mechanics grounds out in the sensory experience of perceiving the results of experiments. There is no escape from empiricism in the world we live in.
- ants_everywhere 3y ago
  Respectfully I think we just disagree. I do think we must have pretty different sensory experiences then, because my awareness of sensory data is entirely of processed data and nothing at all like the raw output of my retina (which I personally don't have accesss to although we can access it in animals if we cut their heads open). My ears have a high pitched ring constantly, and although it's indistinguishable from a sensory perspective from hearing a high pitched noise out in the world, my brain has somehow never attributed it to an outside object. Similarly with occular migraines. I think a reasonable test would be whether you could build a useful embedded device out of only a sensor and no logic to interpret the output of that sensor. The thing that lets us even talk meaningfully about computable functions is that they have a logical description. We wouldn't be able to say anything meaningful about the entire class of such functions if we were restricted to those we have experience of. It's not even clear what it would mean to universally quantify over a class of logical structures in a purely empirical world. We don't even need to get as fancy as computable functions. We couldn't even meaningfully talk about the class of natural numbers. And the thing that lets us translate little dots on some quantum mechanical detector is that we have a mathematical theory that predicts that dots will look one way if such and such is the case. And they will look another way if such and such is the case. If sense data are all you need, then you have to give an account of why a trained experimental physicist can see different things in those dots than a toddler does.
  - lisper 3y ago
    > we just disagree. Yes. Obviously. > my awareness of sensory data is entirely of processed data and nothing at all like the raw output of my retina Yes, obviously. > I think a reasonable test would be whether you could build a useful embedded device out of only a sensor and no logic to interpret the output of that sensor. A more useful test would be if you could build a useful embedded device with no sensors. > The thing that lets us even talk meaningfully about computable functions is that they have a logical description. But that logical description is a description of a physical process. The whole notion of computability is inherently physical. Even the lambda calculus is a description of a process of symbol-manipulation, and symbols are physical things. > If sense data are all you need That's a straw man. Empiricism does not claim that sense data is all you need. It is the claim that sense data are the primary source of knowledge. All knowledge -- even mathematical knowledge -- starts with sense data, is ultimately grounded in sense data, but is obviously not just raw sense data.

lisper 3y ago

> Science is more traditionally IMO considered to be a recursive process with rational (i.e. theory) and empirical (i.e. sense data) steps. That's true, but like so many traditions, it's wrong. Science can be justified entirely in terms of empiricism. To be clear, it is not at all obvious that this is possible (it relies on the Church-Turing thesis), and so people can be forgiven for making this mistake. But it's still a mistake, and it's grounded in ignorance. > Empiricism in practice goes off the rails pretty quickly with things like subjective idealism and the belief that there are no external entities, only sense data etc. Unless your sensory experiences are radically different from mine, then you have to concede that those experiences behave, to a very close approximation, as if external entities exist, and a good explanation for that is that external entities do in fact exist. Ironically, that explanation turns out to be wrong, but to see that you need to dive into quantum mechanics. And the justification for quantum mechanics grounds out in the sensory experience of perceiving the results of experiments. There is no escape from empiricism in the world we live in.

ants_everywhere 3y ago
Respectfully I think we just disagree. I do think we must have pretty different sensory experiences then, because my awareness of sensory data is entirely of processed data and nothing at all like the raw output of my retina (which I personally don't have accesss to although we can access it in animals if we cut their heads open). My ears have a high pitched ring constantly, and although it's indistinguishable from a sensory perspective from hearing a high pitched noise out in the world, my brain has somehow never attributed it to an outside object. Similarly with occular migraines. I think a reasonable test would be whether you could build a useful embedded device out of only a sensor and no logic to interpret the output of that sensor. The thing that lets us even talk meaningfully about computable functions is that they have a logical description. We wouldn't be able to say anything meaningful about the entire class of such functions if we were restricted to those we have experience of. It's not even clear what it would mean to universally quantify over a class of logical structures in a purely empirical world. We don't even need to get as fancy as computable functions. We couldn't even meaningfully talk about the class of natural numbers. And the thing that lets us translate little dots on some quantum mechanical detector is that we have a mathematical theory that predicts that dots will look one way if such and such is the case. And they will look another way if such and such is the case. If sense data are all you need, then you have to give an account of why a trained experimental physicist can see different things in those dots than a toddler does.
- lisper 3y ago
  > we just disagree. Yes. Obviously. > my awareness of sensory data is entirely of processed data and nothing at all like the raw output of my retina Yes, obviously. > I think a reasonable test would be whether you could build a useful embedded device out of only a sensor and no logic to interpret the output of that sensor. A more useful test would be if you could build a useful embedded device with no sensors. > The thing that lets us even talk meaningfully about computable functions is that they have a logical description. But that logical description is a description of a physical process. The whole notion of computability is inherently physical. Even the lambda calculus is a description of a process of symbol-manipulation, and symbols are physical things. > If sense data are all you need That's a straw man. Empiricism does not claim that sense data is all you need. It is the claim that sense data are the primary source of knowledge. All knowledge -- even mathematical knowledge -- starts with sense data, is ultimately grounded in sense data, but is obviously not just raw sense data.