Modal Argument: The Mind is Not the Brain

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

III.
Therefore, the claim that "Knowledge comes from experience and reasoning only." must have experience and reasoning to support it.

IV.
Nothing in our experience and reasoning tells us that "Knowledge comes from experience and reasoning only."


You could argue from induction, something like "We have ten trillion examples of knowledge learned from experience and reasoning." But this is fallacious reasoning. If we see ten trillion white swans, that doesn't mean a black swan cannot exist.

Therefore IV is true.

No, I don't agree at all that IV is true. You are confusing the classification of knowledge by others as a proposition. It isn't, it is a value statement.

If I say I consider blonds to be beautiful, you don't falsify my claim by finding a blond I dislike, you've merely found an exception to my classification. You would have to prove that all blonds repulse me to negate my classification. The "only" word of the positivist tenet is to claim a classification quality, meaning, " any other claims of knowledge sources are inferior to us."

When Positivists claim that all knowledge comes from reason and experience, they do so from first gaining experience. Experience comes first as a child, then reason is built upon the experience to create knowledge. Even seemingly non-experience related information, such as the classification of a song as beautiful or something rather abstract such as algebra, can be easily broken down into the factors of experience and reason.

I would like to see an example of some recognized knowledge that doesn't come from reason and experience, if you can think of one.

That doesn't make sense to me. When you say "value statement" do you mean a subjective opinion? Like

"In my opinion, all knowledge comes from reason and experience?"
"I prefer dealing with knowledge that comes from reason and experience?"

Or is it a weakened form of the claim, like
"Most knowledge comes from reason and experience?"

If it is just your subjective opinion, we can safely reject logical positivism as saying anything objective about epistemology.

And if it is a weakened form of the claim, it would permit theistic claims to be rational thereby defeating any claims by atheistic L-P against theism.

But properly speaking, the definition of L-P is even more stringent than we've discussed. We've been focusing on the first axiom in your finding. But L-P also entails verificationism which we haven't discussed yet. You'll find it in (2) of your tenets list.

This raises the question of historical truth claims: How do you test them? Since you can't test or verify the existence of Lincoln, do you simply reject the past? (Speaking of Lincoln check my website )

Thus L-P leads to skepticism of all past events because they fail the verificationist criteria.

Before you become too enamored with it, I have to point out that L-P is rejected today by almost all philosophers, even epistemologists.

So I hope you don't go crazy thinking it's a good position to take on truth.