[knightoffaith]

I suppose the confusion still remains about how empiricism can be self-justifying. You've laid out a case for why it's empirical reasoning is pragmatic, fine, but that doesn't mean that empirical reasoning is grounded in empirical reasoning, even if empirical reasoning is in fact rational. Whether you go with a Humean-style solution or a Popperian solution, it's just still not the case that justifying empirical reasoning through empirical reasoning is not circular.

[lisper]

What about the argument presented in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40100070 did you find inadequate?

The reason it's not circular is that it grounds out in actual reality.

I suppose you could deny the existence of actual reality. If you want to do that, you are beyond my ability to help.

[knightoffaith]

I'm disputing something very specific. I'm not disputing that empirical reasoning is rational. What I'm disputing is that empirical reasoning is justified by empirical reasoning. This not being circular is not logically related to actual reality. Like, I'm just saying that this doesn't make sense:

1: If you try to pick a fight with reality, reality will win. (Empirical reasoning is evolutionary useful, etc.) 2: Thus, empirical reasoning is justified by empirical reasoning.

2 doesn't follow from 1. I accept 1, and I accept the rationality of empirical reasoning, but I don't accept 2.

[lisper]

> empirical reasoning

You've actually moved the goal posts here. The original claim was: empiricism can be justified empirically. But "empiricism" and "empirical reasoning" are not synonyms.

(You also threw in induction at some point, which is just a red herring.)

So let me try this again: to quote Wikipedia, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience and empirical evidence. This can be justified empirically (I claim) by observing (empirically!) that people who do not base their actions on sensory experience will do stupid things like walk into walls or fall off cliffs.

If you want to dispute this, tell me how you would define the words "true" and "false" without making any reference to sensory experience.

[knightoffaith]

Oh, I see, since we were talking about science, I figured you really just meant induction, I didn't think you meant empiricism, the philosophical school of thought (in contrast to rationalism), that's my bad.

But it seems that empiricism is a view that you have to hold a priori as opposed to a posteriori. Like, how is seeing that people who don't base their actions on sensory experience evidence for true knowledge or justification primarily coming from sensory experience and empirical evidence? Seeing people who don't base their actions on all guns being loaded doing stupid things like injuring themselves or others unintentionally doesn't make it true that all guns are loaded. I think what you really want to say is that empiricism is a very intuitive idea, and that it's telling that people who deny the reliability of sensory experience do silly things. (Not that rationalists were denying the validity of sensory experience anyway, it's not like Descartes or Spinoza were denying sense-data).

[lisper]

> I didn't think you meant empiricism

Well, that's pretty stupid, since I was actually using that exact word. You are quite literally saying, "Oh, when you said X, I didn't think you actually meant X, I thought you meant Y." (And in this case your Y is something that I absolutely do not believe.)

> But it seems that empiricism is a view that you have to hold a priori as opposed to a posteriori.

Why? Why cannot I not simply observe that when I base my decisions on plausible explanations of things that I observe I get better outcomes than when I base my decisions on some other criterion?

[knightoffaith]

I mean, the first mention of empiricism was about classifying alchemy as a type of empiricism, which leads one to believe the discussion can't be about empiricism in the technical philosophical sense because being an empiricist or not doesn't have anything to do with alchemy technically speaking, and as the discussion went on there was a claim made that empiricism is justified empirically which is something that none of the three paradigmatic empiricist philosophers (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) said, so the context of the discussion didn't seem to suit the technical meaning of the word. The spirit of the discussion seemed to be more about empirical reasoning and its empirical justification, so I went along with that.

>Why? Why cannot I not simply observe that when I base my decisions on plausible explanations of things that I observe I get better outcomes than when I base my decisions on some other criterion?

You can observe that, I'm just saying that this doesn't prove anything about sensory experience being the primary means for knowledge. Like, Descartes, the paradigmatic rationalist, is happy to do this. But he still thinks that logical truths arrived at through experience-independent reasoning are the primary source of knowledge.