[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.

[lisper]

> the first mention of empiricism was about classifying alchemy as a type of empiricism

Yeah, but that wasn't me, that was scoofy.

> this doesn't prove anything about sensory experience being the primary means for knowledge.

It does until someone comes up with a better idea.

> he still thinks that logical truths arrived at through experience-independent reasoning are the primary source of knowledge.

Well, yeah, but he's just obviously wrong.

[knightoffaith]

1. I observe that people do not base their actions on sensory experience do stupid things.

2. Therefore, true knowledge or justification comes only from sensory experience and empirical evidence.

All that I'm saying is that (2) does not logically follow from (1), no more than "Socrates is mortal" follows from "All men are mortal". There's something missing here, an additional premise, (like "Socrates is a man" in the Socrates example).

[lisper]

> true knowledge or justification comes only from sensory experience and empirical evidence

That's a straw man. It's not "only", it's "primarily". Sensory experience is necessary, not sufficient.

[knightoffaith]

Fine, fine, replace only with primarily, and reread the comment, that's not a crucial point.

[lisper]

OK, but if you make that change then 2 does follow from 1.

[knightoffaith]

OK, let's be completely, utterly, crystal clear about this.

1. I observe that people who do not base their actions on sensory experience do stupid things.

2. Therefore, true knowledge or justification comes primarily from sensory experience and empirical evidence.

You're telling me that 2 is a logical implication of 1? You're perfectly happy with the way I've framed this---there are no hidden premises or anything like that? 2 is a direct, logical implication of 1?