(February 10, 2025 at 4:40 pm)Alan V Wrote:(February 10, 2025 at 4:31 pm)Angrboda Wrote: Grounded in observation is worth nothing unless empiricism is entirely grounded in observation. Beliefs about what is or isn't knowledge are philosophical by their very nature. You could be sitting in your basement, or you could be hallucinating, or you could be dreaming. Observation by itself isn't knowledge except in the most colloquial sense of the word. It's not even information. True and false perceptions may appear to consciousness to be the same, so the act of perception doesn't become knowledge all by itself. You seem to be of the opinion that there's some bright line between having an opinion about observation and "doing philosophy." There isn't. They are just different forms of the same thing. And the former is typically just an inferior version of the latter.
What you say may be true of philosophers, but it is not true of empiricists and materialists, who define knowledge more in terms of probabilities rather than certainties.
Empiricists and materialists are just types of philosophers.
As for the rest, Angrboda is doing a fine job of addressing this.
