No reason justifies disbelief.

[The Grand Nudger]

Okay.  All fair points. But, perhaps "knowledge" is a misnomer when talking about these in utero instincts or reflexes. You're right; I don't "know" how to smile because I spent several weeks walking around watching other people on the street smile, and then practiced in the mirror until I got it right, but that doesn't turn these neurological reflexes into something more than the purely physical effects of a physically developing neurological system, just like it wouldn't be quite right to say that a fetus responding to light in the womb "has knowledge" of how to kick its legs. It's a learned, physical ability.

Learned......by what means?  Not anything empirical as envisioned.  This amounts to non empirical knowledge unless you have some specific definition of knowledge that argues compellingly to the contrary or that that this x is fundamentally different from knowledge.  

Even still, the capacity for these reflexes is still intertwined with sensory experience, severely limited though they may be in early life. The fetus is responding to sensory input (light) in the example I just mentioned. And, it is suspected that many fetuses dream of the sounds, tastes, and sensations they experience in utero at quite an early gestational age. There is no tabula rasa. Humans are physical beings that begin having some base level of experience as soon as the neurological system is mature enough to start processing its external environment. The learned physical abilities of premature neurological development can hardly be conflated with intuitive, metaphysical knowledge, and I find it hard to believe that that is what most intuitivists mean when they're talking about intuitive knowledge versus empiricism. They still necessarily depend on a physical brain capable of experiencing, on some level, whatever exists outside of it. I suppose I could possibly get on board with this idea you mentioned, nativism, as at least it doesn't seem to be proposing some kind of woo-substance outside of the natural world. Either way, I clearly suck at this. What is your best argument for empiricism as the foundation of knowledge?

The things we're born with are exactly the kind of things that innate or nativist knowledge theorists are thinking of.  If we possess those then empiricism as conceived was wrong.  

My best argument?  Not so different than your own (or even at all), my best argument is to accept that nativist and innate knowledge was and is an actual thing, even if we didn't have the specifics entirely accurate.  Empirical experience and knowledge are translatable and communicable.   Those things we all do, these common human bits of knowledge expressed as behavioral norms -are- the product of sensory experience.  Just not our own.  They were shaped and powerfully informed by a long process of accurate and inaccurate empirical observations that resulted in the very structure of our brains as passed to us in a genetic inheritance.  

I know to, and how to smile and run because there are very few creatures left alive that didn't.  It is innate, and I didn't have to form this from any personal experience, it's the baseline of successful cognitive architecture.  Just like my assumed absolute knowledge of axiomatic principles.  I do think that some of the things we commonly put down to intuition are much the same. Heuristsics for reproductive success that just so happen to coincide with true postulates.

I suspect that there used to be many more that didn't...but those motherfuckers are all dead. That's what happens when your intuitive, innate, or derived knowledge is meaningfully in error. You end up as dinner rather than the diner.

[bennyboy]

The claim that you know that there are questions that some empirical method can't answer isn't an agnostic claim.

I'm agnostic about some things because I know enough about others. I know that a singularity is impenetrable in certain ways and why, and so I'm sure that we can't know what's really going on inside the Big Bang singularity. I know that mind cannot be directly observed, so I think science (being a system of objective observation), cannot answer any question of mind which can't be subject to correlation with properties which ARE objectively observable: if science is the only means by which mind can be studied, then we must remain agnostic about mind.

I guess we'll just have to add the term agnostic to the growing list of things you have consequential misconceptions of.

Why would an empirical object be immune to empirical investigation, what method do you use, and what is the answer?

Asked and answered. My not having a tool for answering some questions doesn't stand as evidence that a tool someone else claims is actually up to the job. It's almost like. . . the word "agnostic" means something, eh?

Does this direct experience of mine justify an assertion that you can't answer that question?  Not only that you don't know, but can't know what it feels like?  That you can only talk around it?

It doesn't really matter if you take that position, because in describing my experiences, I'm not claiming to be using a framework of objective, shareable observations. If you really question my knowledge about what an experience is like, I can shrug my shoulders, realize that you haven't had that experience, and walk away.

The assertion being made in this thread is that there are no questions science is not best-suited to answer. I've taken a contrary position-- there are some questions which science isn't well-suited to answer, there are some which it cannot answer because they're not the right kind of question, and there are some which it probably can never answer, due to limitations intrinsic to the Universe and our ability to observe things about it.

[The Grand Nudger]

The claim that you know that there are questions that some empirical method can't answer isn't an agnostic claim.

I'm agnostic about some things because I know enough about others.  I know that a singularity is impenetrable in certain ways and why, and so I'm sure that we can't know what's really going on inside the Big Bang singularity.

Sure, if you say so.

I guess we'll just have to add the term agnostic to the growing list of things you have consequential misconceptions of.

Why would an empirical object be immune to empirical investigation, what method do you use, and what is the answer?

Asked and answered.  My not having a tool for answering some questions doesn't stand as evidence that a tool someone else claims is actually up to the job.  It's almost like. . . the word "agnostic" means something, eh?

It does...just not what you thought it did, same as empiricism from before.

Does this direct experience of mine justify an assertion that you can't answer that question?  Not only that you don't know, but can't know what it feels like?  That you can only talk around it?

It doesn't really matter if you take that position, because in describing my experiences, I'm not claiming to be using a framework of objective, shareable observations.  If you really question my knowledge, I can shrug my shoulders, realize that you haven't had that experience, and walk away.

Is that a yes or a no?  Does the rule of hasn't = can't hold here or not?  

I posit that you can't know what it feels like to hold a cup of hot chocolate, because you haven't answered that question and can only talk around it.  True or false?

[bennyboy]

Is that a yes or a no?  Does the rule of hasn't = can't hold here or not?  

Not my song, dude. I've never made this assertion.

I posit that you can't know what it feels like to hold a cup of hot chocolate, because you haven't answered that question and can only talk around it.  True or false?

Well, I can verbalize an answer to that question, and you can choose to accept it or discard it. If you want me to prove that drinking hot chocolate is really as I say it is, my best bet is to try and get you to have the same experience, and see if you recognize in your experience the things I was trying to verbalize.

If you still reject it, then I have to walk away.

Your analogy is a poor one, however, because my reason for saying science can't answer certain kinds of questions isn't that it hasn't. It's that I know some things about reality, and about what science is, and I can see that there's a fundamental disconnect.

Now, I've also asserted that there's no good EVIDENCE that Science can answer other kinds of questions, because it hasn't answered similar questions before. This is a response to the positive claim that science is the best (or only) tool for answering some kinds of questions: you'll have to supply evidence that this assertion is true.

As I said at the outset, I take the classical atheist position on the claim that science can answer all questions: you haven't provided me with good evidence that this is true, but I reserve the right to change my mind if good evidence is presented.

[The Grand Nudger]

Is that a yes or a no?  Does the rule of hasn't = can't hold here or not?  

Not my song, dude.  I've never made this assertion.

You've been making this assertion for pages and pages.  

I posit that you can't know what it feels like to hold a cup of hot chocolate, because you haven't answered that question and can only talk around it.  True or false?

Well, I can verbalize an answer to that question, and you can choose to accept it or discard it.  If you want me to prove that drinking hot chocolate is really as I say it is, my best bet is to try and get you to have the same experience, and see if you recognize in your experience the things I was trying to verbalize.

If you still reject it, then I have to walk away.

Your analogy is a poor one, however, because my reason for saying science can't answer certain kinds of questions isn't that it hasn't.  It's that I know some things about reality, and about what science is, and I can see that there's a fundamental disconnect.

Now, I've also asserted that there's no good EVIDENCE that Science can answer other kinds of questions, because it hasn't answered similar questions before.  This is a response to the positive claim that science is the best (or only) tool for answering some kinds of questions: you'll have to supply evidence that this assertion is true.

You make many assertions..alot of which are completely unhinged.

Nevertheless.  I'm going to go ahead with the rule of hasn't = can't, note that you still haven't answered the question and are only talking around it, therefore you have given just as much "EVIDENCE" that you cannot know and do not know what it feels like to hold a cup of hot chocolate as there is for any of your own claims about some specific means of empirical investigation.

Should I simply walk away from you and your many equivalent assertions?

[bennyboy]

Not my song, dude.  I've never made this assertion.

You've been making this assertion for pages and pages.  

Quote it. I've demonstrated explicitly that there are things which science hasn't answered, which I believe it eventually will: specifically, that I believe a cure for cancer in the next century is very likely, even though it hasn't yet been found.

The reason I say science can't answer certain kinds of question isn't that it hasn't-- it's that there's an important REASON why it hasn't, which seems likely to persist forever, due to the nature of reality.

Nevertheless.  I'm going to go ahead with the rule of hasn't = can't and state that you have given just as much "EVIDENCE" that you cannot know and do not know what it feels like to hold a cup of hot chocolate as there is for any of your own claims about some specific means of empirical investigation.

This doesn't bother me much. I'm not arguing that any other way in which I might gain or express knowledge is better than science. I'm saying that there are some questions which science can't answer, and some for which there's no evidence it can answer.

Should I simply walk away from you and your many equivalent assertions?

If you like.

[The Grand Nudger]

So, the real cherry on top of this shit cake you;ve been baking for yourself..is this.

Well, I can verbalize an answer to that question, and you can choose to accept it or discard it. If you want me to prove that drinking hot chocolate is really as I say it is, my best bet is to try and get you to have the same experience, and see if you recognize in your experience the things I was trying to verbalize.

You mean....do science....?

You're going to explain how it feels to hold a cup of hot chocolate, by predicting and checking against someone else's empirical observations?

You've repeatedly claimed for batshit reasons, that you won't even own, that you know science can't answer some question..and then offered, as an answer to that very same question....science.

[LadyForCamus]

Of what practical use is a fundamentally unanswerable question?

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure helps to bloat post count in some doomed fucking non-argument. 

He doesn't know, he doesn't even know that there are such questions, and he can't manage to rationalize the assertion without reference to the fundamentally knowable or the very thing he argues against. It's his opinion that all we can do is walk away from him.

(here, at least, I think he might have gotten something right by accident)

[bennyboy]

So, the real cherry on top of this shit cake you;ve been baking for yourself..is this.

Well, I can verbalize an answer to that question, and you can choose to accept it or discard it. If you want me to prove that drinking hot chocolate is really as I say it is, my best bet is to try and get you to have the same experience, and see if you recognize in your experience the things I was trying to verbalize.

You mean....do science....?

You're going to explain how it feels to hold a cup of hot chocolate, by predicting and checking against someone else's empirical observations?

You've repeatedly claimed for batshit reasons, that you won't even own, that you know science can't answer some question..and then offered, as an answer to that very same question....science.

As I said before, if you want to talk about descriptions of subjective experience as empirical evidence, and include them under the umbrella of the term, "science," then you can do that.  You can include schools of Buddhist meditative insight, then, as a "science of the mind" if you like.

I think the word "science" as we take it today is useful, because it identifies a clear set of methods and principles by which we understand the material universe.  But you can call talking about the experience of drinking hot chocolate science if you like.

---

Of what practical use is a fundamentally unanswerable question?

If practical use is the determiner of good questions, or of activities worth doing, then we are all going to have to make some lifestyle changes, I think.