The Resurrection

[Alan V]

Empiricism cannot prove itself because, by its own definition, all knowledge comes from sensory experience, so there is no sensory experience that could verify the statement "all knowledge comes from sensory experience" - essentially creating a circular logic where the very idea of empiricism relies on an unprovable assumption about the source of knowledge itself; it's a classic "chicken and egg" problem within the philosophy of knowledge. 

and this one:

The idea that "empiricism can't prove empiricism" means that the very concept of relying solely on sensory experience to gain knowledge (empiricism) cannot be verified through sensory experience alone, creating a paradox; essentially, to prove that experience is the only source of knowledge, you would need to use some form of reasoning or intuition which goes beyond mere experience, contradicting the core tenet of empiricism itself. 

It's similar with materialism. Materialists begin with the idea that only the material is real, so a materialist experiment which only accepts materialist methods and materialist results as reliable will rule out non-materialist answers a priori. 

I think you misunderstand both empiricism and materialism because of your background in philosophy. I see it as a case of Maslow's hammer, though I may be mistaken.

Empiricism and materialism are proven by getting reliable results. Neither have to prove themselves metaphysically to philosophers, that being the case. That's why both are considered knowledge. In contrast, other methods (religion, inspiration, intuition, philosophy, or whatever) do not yield reliable results. That's why they don't qualify as knowledge anymore.

So what empiricists and materialists actually claim is that only their methods are reliable, by our experiences with those methods and with others. There is no reason to exclude other methods up front, but they are abandoned along the way when they are shown to be unreliable (as the histories of scholarship and science have shown).

However, you are correct that there is no reason to continue this digression.