Scientific knowledge versus spiritual knowledge

[LadyForCamus]

Sorry for taking so long to respond...sometimes I see something shiny, and I get distracted. [emoji16]

My position on your OP, was grounded the moderate realist distinction between the form of a thing and the matter from which it is made. I hoped to address the more general understanding of ‘spiritual’, as the essences of things (which I think can be known), from a speculative type of ‘spiritual’ substance, an epiphenomenal ectoplasm, which may exist but could not be known from observation of nature

But what justifiable reason do you have for being convinced a 'spiritual essence' exists in the first place, before you even get into any attempt at information gathering on the subject? I mean sure, you can say that anything supernatural may exist, but what would be your method of determining to a reasonable degree of certainty the truth of such a claim? And how would you go about obtaining knowledge of it?

The underlying assumption of the scientific disciplines is that reality is intelligible. This is to say, cause-effect relationships happen consistently and things exhibit behaviors according to their natures. Science can discover the nature of particular beings, but science lacks the tools to ask about the nature of being itself. Science can discover the causal relationships between things, but it cannot account for why causality works. Generally people who say that only the finding of natural science qualify as knowledge adopt the following stances: 1) no knowable reason accounts for the consistency of cause-effect relationships & 2) no knowable reason accounts for some particular things having a general nature.

And this is begging the question, I think. Just because you can ask a "why" question about a particular thing doesn't necessarily mean the question makes sense being asked that way. I mean, I could ask: 'what is the reason water is made up of two hydrogen and one oxygen?' Someone could answer: 'well, because of chemistry,' and I could reply, 'yes, but why?' So, what? You can't imbue something with agency or purpose simply by asking "why." That is putting the cart before the horse, so to speak.

To them, these are just brute facts contingent on nothing at all.

Again, because there is no reason to think otherwise outside of just wishing it were so, which is in no way a justifiable reason to believe anything.

This belief cannot be empirically validated using the tools of natural science. One can certainly take a pragmatic approach and say that facts are ultimately about what appears to work and whatever is happening below the surface doesn’t matter. That only allows for a weakly defined meaning of knowledge. In pragmatism, facts stay contingent. Everyone ‘knows’ that crows are black until someone finds a white one. Certainty is impossible. Somehow pragmatism, as ontology, fails to satisfy. Most people believe that the value of pi does not depend on measurements of round objects, but the other way around. The roundness of an object depends on how well in conforms to something certain, the value of pi. This is to say, the value of pi is a non-contingent fact. It counts as certain knowledge without empirical verification. Mathematicians do not perform lab experiments to confirm their discoveries. Mathematics serves as at least one example of non-scientific knowledge attained by deduction. I do not believe it is the only example and believe that philosophy can also be a source of knowledge within its proper domain.

Pragmatism, as ontology, fails to satisfy YOU. And, I get it. I actually do. I would personally prefer there be a deeper, intrinsic meaning and reason to our existence too, Chad. I'm probably one of the few atheists here who feels that way. Or, if others do they'd probably rather not admit it for fear of theists misinterpreting it as a vulnerability. But, there is simply no good reason to cling to unfalsifiable beliefs. You freely admit there is no way to empirically observe, or validate any of these assertions, so before we even get into why other people should believe them, I'd like to know how you have convinced yourself that they're true? What if you had a vision tomorrow akin to what Swedenborg claimed to have experienced? How could you ever possibly make the distinction in your own mind between a supernatural vision, and a plain old neurobiologically generated hallucination, via experience alone?.

That's the convenient thing about unfalsifiable beliefs, I guess. No one can ever prove you wrong, and you can keep on thinking you are right, without needing a good reason to do so. Don't you see something wrong with that?