Atheism, Theism, Science & Philosophy

[The Grand Nudger]

This is an excellent and thought provoking question. I had a very interesting conversation with an individual who believed that empiricism and rationalism did not lead to "truth" (in epistemology), primarily because empiricism and rationalism rely on acquiring knowledge via the senses, primarily because all sense data is ultimately subjective to, as it were, the eye of the beholder. For example, if you and I had an interesting rational and logical conversation about a particular topic (and both you and I had an opinion about what we hold as true), how can you prove that your subjective opinion is actually true? Therefore, in this type of situation relativism trumps rationalsm and empiricism for the opinion held by the individual. I also find this with scientific evidence. If two people are viewing the same peer reviewed scientific document that presents evidence to disprove a theory, each person could be interpreting the evidence completely differently from each other. I think these are good examples that show the limits of reason.

I will address your other questions shortly.

Bolding mine-

True enough, two very different interpretations of any given body of evidence could be offered (and this is encouraged). However, one "interpretation" will have predictions and experiments nestled within it - and if one -does work- better than the other, that's the one we go with- if neither, it's inconclusive and we have very strong reasons to suspect that there's something going on that we are not aware of (particularly if two diametrically opposed hypothesis yield the same results). Even in this scenario the strength of the scientific method trumps the subjective nature of our experience. Meanwhile -other methods- don't even leave the starting gate if what we seek as an explanation for any given phenomena. I think that in the interest of full disclosure - one should probably at least give a nod to the failings of any alternative one prefers for any given thing. There may be limits to reason - but I don't see any limit offered here. Meanwhile the limits of -no reason- start at the ground floor and continue no further, because there is nowhere to go from there. Personally, I think that people who prefer something other than reason or the scientific method as a means to gain knowledge are polishing brass on the titanic, not because I think that reason or the scientific method have no limits, but because the alternatives are -complete- non-starters. The limits of what we might choose to call "true" are not specific to any method, they are all encompassing....some methods just appear to have a better chance of getting closer to the podium (and, to be frank, make no claims to the contrary).