No reason justifies disbelief.

[The Grand Nudger]

You can't think of any way for the knowledge of..how to smile, say, to be both innate and empirical, and on the basis of your inability to imagine such a way you've then decided some other thing that doesn't follow?

Are you sure that you didn't engage in this process in reverse? That your affinity for the notion of mind as elemental informed you, instead of being informed of it?

[bennyboy]

If philosophic speculation and rational inference are, likewise, based on empiricism...then metaphysics is an empty set, and it's uncertain why the most succesful form of empirical investigation...the scientific method... would be an inappropriate tool for investigating the empirical.

Because the scientific method as we normally mean it refers to a specific set of empirical observations-- those which are shareable and repeatable by others. I can follow my own train of thoughts. If I decide to somehow quantify or establish experimental controls, I can do a kind of science on myself. What I can't do, however, is provide access other than my own accounts to anyone else. If you are willing to regard meditative and introspective traditions (like those found in the less woo-ish branches of Tibetan Buddhist thought), then I will retract the statement that mind cannot be studied scientifically.

Even in that case, however, I do not believe that any description of psychogony can be said to be verifiably correct.

Again, minutiae, and you're just telling us that you disagree with scientific hypotheses or the ability to establish a theory, it;s not accurate to consider either subject a black box for science..they just aren't.  

Sure they are. You cannot identify with any certainty what material systems or processes allow for subjective experience. There is no such thing as mind to be found in the Universe, except in the form of anecdotal reports.

As for the Big Bang-- the only reason the Big Bang would not be said to be a black box is that a black box has inputs and outputs. It is an observer's job to infer the mechanism by which the input is transformed into the output. Obviously, this is impossible in the case of the Big Bang.

[The Grand Nudger]

If philosophic speculation and rational inference are, likewise, based on empiricism...then metaphysics is an empty set, and it's uncertain why the most succesful form of empirical investigation...the scientific method... would be an inappropriate tool for investigating the empirical.

Because the scientific method as we normally mean it refers to a specific set of empirical observations-- those which are shareable and repeatable by others.  I can follow my own train of thoughts.  If I decide to somehow quantify or establish experimental controls, I can do a kind of science on myself.  What I can't do, however, is provide access other than my own accounts to anyone else.  If you are willing to regard meditative and introspective traditions (like those found in the less woo-ish branches of Tibetan Buddhist thought), then I will retract the statement that mind cannot be studied scientifically.

Even in that case, however, I do not believe that any description of psychogony can be said to be verifiably correct.

You may not be able to do something..that doesn't mean that it can't be done.  Frankly, you're not thinking this through.  You can already transfer the contents of your experience and even what it feels like to be you, albeit in a limited and crude way.  You're using the tool right now.  It's called language.  It has a few billion years r/d headstart on us but it does provide proof of concept, that knowledge and experience are translatable and communicable.  

I'm not sure why you think this is a negotiation, my willingness to accept some vague assertion on your part doesn't have any effect on whether or not what I'm saying, or what you're saying, is true.  It's a bit left field anyway, sine meditation and introspection appear to be yet more examples of empirical observation. I don;t have any particular issue with the notion that thinking real hard about yourself might lead you to knowledge of self..though I wonder how it could lead to knowledge of exterior content - which is a claim made, or how it could provide abnormal ability, another claim made...both of which have been investigated by another empirical means, and found to be, lacking..to put it generously.

Again, minutiae, and you're just telling us that you disagree with scientific hypotheses or the ability to establish a theory, it;s not accurate to consider either subject a black box for science..they just aren't.  

Sure they are.  You cannot identify with any certainty what material systems or processes allow for subjective experience.  There is no such thing as mind to be found in the Universe, except in the form of anecdotal reports.

Reassertion of the contents of your disagreement, followed by a completely unhinged statement.  

As for the Big Bang-- the only reason the Big Bang would not be said to be a black box is that a black box has inputs and outputs.  It is an observer's job to infer the mechanism by which the input is transformed into the output.  Obviously, this is impossible in the case of the Big Bang.

Why, and how would you know that?

[bennyboy]

I'm not sure why you think this is a negotiation

It's an even if, bro. You've been going on about empiricism vs. science, or whether science can be done individually. Even if you define science in that way, it can't answer the questions I mentioned.

As for the Big Bang-- the only reason the Big Bang would not be said to be a black box is that a black box has inputs and outputs.  It is an observer's job to infer the mechanism by which the input is transformed into the output.  Obviously, this is impossible in the case of the Big Bang.

Why, and how would you know that?

Because I know about singularities.

If something comes up which contradicts or supersedes physics as we currently understand it, then I reserve the right to amend my opinion. But as things stand right now, we have good reason to believe that some limits cannot be transcended, and that any question which requires the transcension of those limits will remain unanswered.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm not sure why you think this is a negotiation

It's an even if, bro.  You've been going on about empiricism vs. science, or whether science can be done individually.  Even if you define science in that way, it can't answer the questions I mentioned.

Science is a form of empirical investigation.  There is no "empiricism vs science".  

Why, and how would you know that?

Because I know about singularities.

If something comes up which contradicts or supersedes physics as we currently understand it, then I reserve the right to amend my opinion.  But as things stand right now, we have good reason to believe that some limits cannot be transcended, and that any question which requires the transcension of those limits will remain unanswered.

If you know about singularities, and take them to be informative.....your previous comments would appear to be uninformed on their face.  Rather than demonstrate that  science cannot answer a question or has not answered a question or won't answer a question.... you've determined that it has.

I suppose it may not have answered the question to your satisfaction, but that's not going to get us very far, and again persuasively argues that the source and limits of knowledge are both empirical?

[LadyForCamus]

It's certainly possible that intuition is just another example of a subconscious form of information processing, and that this information is itself derived from sensory experience, but I think that a nominally rational intuitionist could object to the formulation above as proceeding from a question begging affirmation of empiricism, and even leverage the same closing remark - that calling every x empirical won't make it so any more than calling some empirical thing intuition would. 

I'd point out that you've given no reason to conclude that intuition can't be different from empirical observation and no reason that it would be impossible for intuition to provide knowledge.

Well, I would argue that an intuitionst has not provided any reason for me to think that intuition is in any way ontologically distinct from empirical knowledge. In fact, to the contrary, we have a large body of evidence demonstrating that our brains do exactly that: subconsciously process large quantities of data. And, that this data-processing directly influences our choices and decisions. Calling X empirical because there exists evidence that X is empirical, would be a far more promising argument than calling X non-empirical without any reason to do so, and without being capable of positively describing or identifying what X actually is, lol. They're building a second assumption into the argument without any reason (that I can tell) to do so. "These two things are different, and also, the second thing is its own special, magical thing."

How could I know that I exist without having a subjective experience first?

How could you have a subjective experience that didn't proceed from knowledge of self?  The existent self may be the axiom from which all statements of experience are made.  There is no "I see" without there first being an "I".

Or, perhaps these phenomena are necessarily concomitant.

A skeptical response here could even be that you don't know that you exist, as you briefly mentioned before...but that you assume it.   With -or- without subjective experience, as those experiences can be in error, can be manufactured or populated with unrepresentative contents..or in the case of intuition above as we discussed it, may be happening entirely without your knowledge of them.  As innate knowledge would frame it, your self is not the kind of conclusion, but a necessary truth from which those other empirical observations are derived.  A favorite of innate knowledge theories are things like axioms and mathematics.  

Like before, with intuition, I could stab in the dark with examples but a more direct approach would be to ask if you can state with authenticity that you possess no innate knowledge whatsoever?  You seemed amenable to the idea of intuition, albeit leery with regards to it's accuracy, is it possible that innate knowledge presents a similar situation or circumstance?

I mean, an axiom is not absolute knowledge. I can't think of any knowledge that I have that could qualify as distinctively innate, and completely divorced from sensory input.  Can you?

[Succubus]

Because I know about singularities.

Really? How big are they, how hot are they and how dense are they?

Richard Feynman:
"If you think you understand singularities, you don't understand singularities.". or he may have said something like that...

As for the rest of that rammel; where is bennyboy. what have you done with his body?


I swear to fuck this place is getting dafter by the day.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, I would argue that an intuitionst has not provided any reason for me to think that intuition is in any way ontologically distinct from empirical knowledge. In fact, to the contrary, we have a large body of evidence demonstrating that our brains do exactly that: subconsciously process large quantities of data. And, that this data-processing directly influences our choices and decisions. Calling X empirical because there exists evidence that X is empirical, would be a far more promising argument than calling X non-empirical without any reason to do so, and without being capable of positively describing or identifying what X actually is, lol. They're building a second assumption into the argument without any reason (that I can tell) to do so. "These two things are different, and also, the second thing is its own special, magical thing."

We do have some evidence of that, yeah...and it's definitely something for the intuitionist to grapple with, though the claim empiricism makes provides for a severe handicap.  As mentioned before, if 99.99% of all alleged intuition were actually some subconscious process of empirical data manipulation, the remaining .01 is still enough to make empiricism false as stated.  As it turns out, there's more than .01% in evidence, as we proceed from intuitivism here to nativism or innate knowledge below.  

Or, perhaps these phenomena are necessarily concomitant.

That's sort of the question we're asking ourselves...but if they were, then empiricism as envisioned would, again, be false.  All knowledge must proceed from sensory experience for the claim as made to be true. There can;t be even one other example of any other option....not even as concomitant partners.

I mean, an axiom is not absolute knowledge. I can't think of any knowledge that I have that could qualify as distinctively innate, and completely divorced from sensory input.  Can you?

Yeah, actually.  Human beings aren't born a blank slate.  I mentioned smiling in another post, not specifically directed at you..but that;s just one example.  There's a great deal of common behavior, and it would be difficult to argue that all of this is accounted for by us somehow all having the same empirical observations, at least not as the empiricists who envisioned both the tabula rasa and empiricism had thought.  We used to think that neurons didn't even form connections until they had some experience to build connections from, and the contents of those neurons, so far as we can tell, amount to all of our knowledge no matter what it's ultimate source may be.  We no longer believe that to be the case..because we've seen that it's not.  

We've always had this bouncing around in the back of our heads (and sometimes the front)..we were aware even when we lacked clarity on what it was we were aware of.  We used to call this sort of thing "instinct", our "our nature" (and hey, we still employ the terms).  Some intuition may be accounted for by it, but all of it qualifies as innate or nativist candidate. Anything we are born possessing the knowledge required to accomplish is unlikely to be a product of any empirical observation..or at least any empirical observation we can understand the means or timing of, or possess ourselves as the source. As with intuition above, this is something empiricists have to grapple with. Even if we were to rehabilitate empiricism in light of this, and far be it from me to claim that we can't, it will still have been the case that empiricism was wrong as conceived.

If we know to/how to smile before we could see a smile, then it isn't on account of the sensory experience of sight that we know this or know to do it, or know how to do it. If we know to run when the grass rustles behind us despite having never been chased by a lion...then it isn't on account of the experience of being chased by a lion that we know this, know to do this, or know how to do this.

Or, if you prefer..if it -is- based on those experiences, it's not based on our experience of either.

---

As to an axiom not being absolut knowledge, well, I think that you'll find a compelling argument to the contrary.  The sorts assumptions on which the slimmest means of inference are built are taken to be "absolutely true", necessarily true, in fact..which is a kind of truth that might elude any truth based on empirical observation, whether it's one or one-thousand...and knowledge of things like that was exactly how we launched this subset of innate knowledge, things we know as a consequence of our rational nature.

[bennyboy]

Because I know about singularities.

Really? How big are they, how hot are they and how dense are they?

Richard Feynman:
"If you think you understand singularities, you don't understand singularities.". or he may have said something like that...

As for the rest of that rammel; where is bennyboy. what have you done with his body?


I swear to fuck this place is getting dafter by the day.

Look at my religious description.  I know that they are impenetrable to us, which is why I say that there is evidence that there are some questions science cannot answer.

That is what I know about singularities-- that they present an area of unknowability!

---

It's an even if, bro.  You've been going on about empiricism vs. science, or whether science can be done individually.  Even if you define science in that way, it can't answer the questions I mentioned.

Science is a form of empirical investigation.  There is no "empiricism vs science".  

Stop with the straw men, dude.  You should know that they are obvious, and I'll call you out on them. You were the one who responded to posts about science with discussions about empiricism. And they are not the same-- one is a subset of the other.

Science as we mean it today is an empirical method with specific bounds: e.g.  that observations can be shared with others independent of interpretation and without regard to world view.  You are the one who keeps trying to talk about empiricism in general.  My thesis was that there are some questions science cannot answer.  That's all it ever was.

In response to your constant harping about empiricism (which I take as deliberate since you are responding to me, and I was always talking about science), then I've given that you could include other kinds of empiricism, like introspective insight, in the definition of science if YOU want to.  And even if you did-- there would still be questions science couldn't answer.

[The Grand Nudger]

---

Science is a form of empirical investigation.  There is no "empiricism vs science".  

Stop with the straw men, dude.  You should know that they are obvious, and I'll call you out on them.  You were the one who responded to posts about science with discussions about empiricism.  And they are not the same-- one is a subset of the other.

Straw men?  I repeated a thing you typed, literally, and corrected you with respect to what I've been commenting on.  I'd tell you to fuck off with that dumb shit, but I know you won't, not that you can't, ofc......

But..sure, science is a subset of empirical investigation, and on that basis alone it's hard to ascertain why any empirical whatsit would be a black box for scientific inquiry regardless of whether or not science has yet, or even will ever answer a specific empirical question.  It's the best tool we've come up with yet for answering questions of that sort..and you've been leaning on it, even if you can't quite bring yourself to accurately represent it, in this conversation.

That's what makes your cants so shaky, but I'm still willing to assume them for no reason other than to move this conversation past bitching about science or your relative level of satisfaction with it as you see it.

Science as we mean it today is an empirical method with specific bounds: e.g.  that observations can be shared with others independent of interpretation and without regard to world view.  You are the one who keeps trying to talk about empiricism in general.  My thesis was that there are some questions science cannot answer.  That's all it ever was.

There's no such thing as a scientific conclusion independent of interpretation..or -any- empirical observation independent of interpretation, for that matter, but so what, still willing to assume your can'ts without any of this convoluted horseshit required.  It's simply not true that this statement is the entirety of your "thesis", and you do yourself a disservice claiming as much now when your posts still exist for anyone to scroll back and read...you know...empirically.

In response to your constant harping about empiricism (which I take as deliberate since you are responding to me, and I was always talking about science), then I've given that you could include other kinds of empiricism, like introspective insight, in the definition of science if YOU want to.  And even if you did-- there would still be questions science couldn't answer.

Still not sure how you think you'd know that..hasn't won't and can't still aren't the same thing. I haven't shot anyone in china, and I wont be able to, but it isn't because guns don't work, aren't the proper tool for shooting people, or can't shoot someone in china.

-and it still doesn't matter, since I'm still willing to assume your can'ts so that we can figure out what you think that would suggest, indicate, or certify. Assuming science can't..not hasn't or won't..but can't answer some question....then...what?