My problems with empiricism....

This is to shift away from the OR and Ding an sich thread where I have been critiquing Empiricism, which is a tangent there.

I'll open with a question which is not my central concern with Empiricism, but it will perhaps get the ball rolling....

Is all my knowledge about another human being knowledge gained via my senses? (or does the fact that we are both humans give me an edge of knowledge beyond my senses?)

Actually, now that I formulate this, I can see it is family-related to some of the issues I will present in this thread. (Hint: I think there is an assumption of distance and disconnection in Empiricism, as if we were strangers here in the universe and not a locked in part of it)

 

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returning to nagarjuna's view, which i shall reiterate:

[strictly speaking, this is not nagarjuna's formulation, but rather one of many directions madhyamika thought took in response to nagarjuna's teachings. his intention was strictly quietistic: via a dialectical process, he reduced prior buddhist philosophies to absurdity, in an effort to turn towards his interpretation of the original teachings of the buddha. IOW in refuting previous views, he aimed to establish no view.]

this "limited" empirical epistemology is essentially (heh) an illumination of the limitations of empiricism. and correlated to the teaching of "emptiness," is a critique of language: the meaning of a term does not correspond with an objective entity (given the provisional reality), but rather in the context. as the context changes, the meaning likewise changes (or becomes altogether meaningless). given that there is no fixed meaning (or essential nature), one might also conclude that reasoning and discursive thought, as such is obviously based in language, is also necessarily limiting as far as epistemological means go.

and herein lies the problem: as the strictest empiricist might very well be a solipsist, the non-essentialist phenomenalist (the best name i can come up with to describe the preceding--i could probably do a lot better in german) might very well veer towards nihilism.

BUT, alternately one can choose an alternate epistemological means which is not strictly reliant upon the empirical (the senses) as means to knowledge: a properly speaking, heh, irrational mystical approach. (insofar as the epistemological and the ontological cannot be seperated, perhaps neither can the soteriological--egads!) ,yes, nirvana and that, but there is more to it than this--for along with the repudiation of things (dharmas)(except in that provisional sense), there is also the repudiation of atman, or the notion of the self or ego.

and we return once again to the matter of language: "Is all my knowledge about another human being knowledge gained via my senses?" an other being. the abandonment of the sensual (and perhaps rational) means for the irrational and mystical. nagarjuna as interpreted by ch'an (or zen) buddhism in china dissolves both the metaphysical dualism for non-dualism (which, of course, is not the same as monism) and illusory notions of difference/distance for identity.

but need one have an "enlightenment" experience to truly grasp (rather, not grasp) this? it might help as far as illuminating the true absurdity of this notion of "YOUR knowledge of another being," but i don't think it necessarily has to be so...sublime. for aren't those "enlightened" folk always saying something along the lines of: before my awakening, i was just an ordinary illiterate peasant; after my awakening, i was just an ordinary illiterate peasant? so you kinda know what you already know anyways.

i don't know if i'm really making any sense here, but what i am trying to get at is this: i don't think there really are any strict empiricists, and i don't mean just the solipsistic ones, but rather even those who claim to be proper empiricists (in so far as their capabilities allow)--well sure, there are those who claim to be, but they're not really. [on a side note: i've certainly "entertained" solipsism as an autistic, so perhaps--ala that little wiki excerpt on "rationality" i cited in the "athiest world=better world" thread--since a psychopath can be properly rational, perhaps a psychopath can also be a genuine empiricist (no empathy, no mirror neurons)?] IOW, i think our "knowledge of an other being" is as much dependent upon the senses, as it is dependent on some sort of constantly repeated mini-enlightenments, in which our dualistic views and notions of difference/distance dissolve. perhaps mirror neurons contribute to this? after all, that firing of certain "special" neurons is not wholly unlike the misfiring of neurons that epileptics (like my illusory self) experience--which, as noted by dostoevsky (see especially prince myshkin's "descriptions" of his seizure experiences in the idiot), that japanese guy (sekida?) who wrote zen training, myself, and countless epileptics, is very much like an "enlightenment" experience.

hopefully, this makes some kind a' sense; if not, i shall add more later.

see above. i'm also thinking along the lines of gnosticism (as per hans jonas' reading of the valentinian gospels), the poetic verse of georg trakl (for whom wittgenstein was primary benefactor)--"something strange is the soul on this earth...", and, uh, a few other things (which i forgot).


edit: that "perhaps that we are both humans" thing--again mirror neurons. sensory in a sense, but perhaps not. that's why i "know" dogs better.

i shall stop now, before i completely dissolve into nonsense...

 

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wow--where's (Q) when you need him? the above seems a little insane, or perhaps stream-of-conscious-like, to be generous.

still, i think there is a point there: the problem lies in your query--my knowledge of an other. has science identified this "self," which it also inclined to make reference to? "i" am hardly the same "i" that i was 10, 20, 30 years ago, in most any sense, yet "i" still somehow identify myself as such.

funny that some buddhists figured out all this nonsense (in wittgenstein's sense) nearly a couple thousand years ago, and it took western philosophy ages of pontificating and veering off on so many nonsensical tangents. still, regardless of what many (here, especially) may claim: philosophy is way "ahead" (as meaningless as such a notion is and all) of science in these matters. i mean, when you've got people like stephen pinker regurgitating the same ol' crap, only reframed, as those 17th and 18th century sorts...

 

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I just have a small procedural comment so far, in the hopes of clarification.

Here:

you're implying that the primary factor of the Empiricist position is that it is via the senses that we gain our knowledge of the world. This is not accurate.

What you describe here more accurately describes the Phenomenalist position [esse est percipi], and in particular the Idealism of Berkeley.

Although the Empiricist does look to the sense as a potential source of knowledge, they also recognize that 1) the senses can be mistaken, and 2) we can gain knowledge from things that are not sensible. To the Empiricist, the primary factor is not the senses, but experience.


Empiricism:

"The permanent strand in philosophy that attempts to tie knowledge to experience. ...
An empiricist account of our concepts will hold that thery depend upon experience: nihil in intellectu nisi prius in sensu (nothing in the intellect that was not previously in the senses)."

Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd Ed. Revised, 2008.



Empiricism:

"...
a type of theory in epistemology,the basic idea behind all examples of the type being that experience has primacy in human knowledge and justified belief. Because empiricism is not a single view but a type of view with many different examples, it is appropriate to speak not just of empiricism but of empiricisms.
Perhaps the most fundamental distinction to be drawn among the various empiricisms is that between those consisting of some claim about concepts and those consisting of some claim about beliefs – call these, respectively, concept-empiricisms and belief-empiricisms."

Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd Ed., 1999

 

I did assume empiricists thought the senses could be mistaken. Very few scientists would call themselves empiricists otherwise. As far as senses versus experience. What is in the larger set of experience that is not included in 'the senses'? I have a sense this might set us off on a tangent - given I will likely try to show that what I am guessing will be a set of mental phenomena are actually sensory experiences and or the batching of the memory of such.

Thank you for the clarification, though. It pleases me. (oh, oh!)

There are many problems with this. First we have to deal with all kinds of instinctive knowledge. Animals are obviously not learning just from experience. Then we need to deal with people who are very good at certain things from an early age, Mozarts in a variety of fields. And often these people are able to do more early in life, despite more time to gain knowledge via experience. How do they have so much more knowledge than their peers even though they have equal amounts of experience? I don't think we can write a lot of this stuff off as instinctive either. Or at the very least we need to show why some of these skills suddenly arise or are so greatly emphasized so young. In any case, something is going on beyond the individual's learning from experience. The source seems internal for a lot of their knowledge.

 

I would just like to say that denies 'things empirical reality' seems a very compilcated and troublesome phrase to me. If things means Ding an sich. If not, well of course.

Or you could say instead of context 'that whole out of which we hallucinate objects and the ego.'

It is its eternal claim to be transcendant - including transcendence from bodies - that really makes it a poo poo head.

Could you say why?

Notice Glaucon's procedural point above. Though I still believe we get to knowledge not simply via experience.

I need help here.

this is what I am getting at, at least I think so.

I actually think the Buddhist and Hindu enlightenment states are states in which must is cut off. I think they thought they had to disidentify with their emotional bodies - not only, but this especially - because of what they saw as the inevitable violence and darkness there. I think they made an understandible error there, but an error nonetheless.

I agree. I have further quibbles, however. Honestly my problem with even the claim to pure empiricism is that I see empiricists as missing a lot of stuff, important stuff. It really saddens me. I am not even primarily thinking of religious type stuff, but political, for example and relational. So I am exploring my issues with empiricism to see how I have acquired knowledge that they do not and perhaps in the process come to respect my own skills more and see where they are missing something.

I would make this more mundane. I think we are not islands and that we are intercausal, directly, with other people - not just people, but I'll try to keep my tasks simple for now.

Dogs tend to be more direct.

Well, feel free to keep up with nonsense. I find it interesting.

 

I actually think so, but I do think an empiricist must do away with the persistant self as a given. I have tried that line here against empiricists. They tend to balk.

This relates to what I will get into. I think Western empiricism arose in certain contexts. Primarily in Abrahamic countries - toss in the Greeks and what passes for European common sense and you can see a lot of what empiricists have yet to whittle away on that might, for example, bring them closer to Buddhists - some empiricists are attracted to Buddhist however. I think pure empiricists are vulnerable to the biases of mainstream thinking and those in power, because they shift the onus of evidence onto minority opinions - who 1) should not have that onus, but rather those in power should and 2) do not have the resources and are assaulted by those in power.

This is doing untold damage to the world.

But I have a long post on this I am trying to cut down.

 

Doreen

where has the empirical failed to prove the existence of the self ? first off

 

I would say it tends to prove the self does not persist over time, since all the matter in the body is replaced, the mass of the body changes radically, even from say, 10 twenty, the brain is organized differently each sucessive year - in fact every memory is a record of a change - behavior changes, etc.

If the matter is not the same. The amount of matter is not the same. The brain has vast changes in connections.

Why assume it is the same consciousness?

If it is DNA that determines continuity, this can easily be challenged by plopping that DNA in an egg.

If it is memory then amnesia is death and also memory changes radically over time.

Etc.

But this should be another thread. If you start one I'll go over and expand.

 

yes but the long term memories , for the most part remain

its more of an exchange though , a passing of info , so to speak

I don't , but it has the same values , at least I do , fundamentally

ehhh....?

depends on the strength of the memory

Etc.

what to call it ?

 

And change. But if I take a chair and replace most of the chair, is it the same chair if the writing on the new pieces is the same as some of the writing on the old pieces. Copied that is?

Like copying a CD? Is the second CD the same CD as the first one that also exists?

So if you had converted to Judaism and given up a life of crime, you would no longer be the same person?

That's OK. I'll wait until someone tries to use the DNA angle, which I think fails.

So some people do last through time and others are slowly replaced?

Does the self persist through time?

That's my last response here on this issue.

 

yes

 

I made a thread for this issue thinking.

 

not like at all

why shouldn't it be ?

 

Hello Thinking.....

Could you change your name to NOTICING for a moment and take the issue to the thread I created for this issue.

 

LOL

Very perceptive.

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Suffice it to say, 'thinking' rarely lives up to his moniker...

 

ok, i was sick for a day, so back at it:

things does not mean ding an sich in the context, just things. think about how this relates to the other thread, which was created subsequent this one (self/time).

well, given that the meaning (in the most direct "intending/pointing to" sense is constantly changing, or disappearing altogether--along with the rest of the preceding "refutations"--certain schools of buddhism simply took this to the logical, so to speak, extreme: can one really say anything of anything? language aside: the denial of ding an sich--what is left? nothing really. the problem here, from the perspective of most other buddhisms, of course, is simply that the nihilistic thinkers are taking it to an extreme. [incidentally, early (western) translators and interpreters were not entirely incorrect to identify buddhism as nihilistic; nevertheless, they were reading what they had incorrectly, but there were(are) in fact nihilistic strains.]

still, considering the experiential, and not just the sensual; i do not think that mysticism would be acceptable to most (many an varied types) empiricists: this is where language gets tricky, i'm not sure how one can really talk about what is experienced without a lot of negatives--and that would be problematic given nagarjuna's dialectic: the denial of the notion of existence, is not the affirmation of non-existence (and so forth). [it might help to look at some examples of the syllogistic logic of nagarjuna--they've gotta be in wiki, probably under "buddhist logic" or something like that.] so all these negatives don't really get at what we're trying to get at.

well, the soteriological bit was kind of a joke, but still that is kinda what buddhism is getting at--a sort of "salvation"--though (generally) not western philosophy. but you probably meant the next part: i'm just saying that enlightenment that you have to consider other aspects, beyond the matters pertaining to empiricism (or phenomenalism) and language above--specifically, the repudiation of atman (self) and how this relates to what you are getting at: knowing the other. post-buddha, there were schools which did not repudiate this notion of atman, not unlike hinduism.

hmmm. i would say that some buddhisms do this, but by no means all; especially, when one considers the influence of daoism upon buddhism. i'm not just "defending" buddhism, i just don't think this is necessarily the case--just think of some of the ridiculous stories of "masters" in ch'an and zen.

for me, it is the cognitive sciences (which are based in empiricism) and some contemporary philosophy of mind where the problems lay (additionally, that is). considering what glaucon wrote (in the ding an sich thread), that a phenomenalist cannot properly talk about--or say anything of--the dark side of the moon, for instance. for me, the "ineffable" is not problematic, but then neither is the irrational, the unthinking, and the unknowing.

what do you mean by the political though? do you mean in the colloquial sense, or those sense which actually consider the etymology of terms (i.e. body politics)?

i had kinda thought that chaos theory might go in this direction, but apparently (heh), the video camera has ZERO impact.

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this, and i personally think i am "wired" more closely to their perceptual modalities (and what they make of them) and possibly more (beyond perceptual, that is).

 

i simply don't understand how empiricists can argue such--it seems unscientific.

science, and heidegger (an countless contemporary anglos), like to "pretend" that they are not in any fashion indebted to, or restricted by, abrahamic traditions. hubris (and ignorance) is good for a laugh at least, but it's consequences are grave.

 

anyhow, given glaucon's clarification re: empiricism(s), and the acknowledgment that the senses can be mistaken (but what about the tools of science which substitute for "sense"?), i'll relate this kinda relevant story:

i was ill yesterday, following a couple of days without sleep, and i can best describe it as a combination migraine and seizure that lasted for several hours (maybe it was one of those things that 4 neurologists standing in a room give me a dumb look and tell me that, frankly, they have no clue what "it" was):

so my mobility was severely impaired and my senses of my physical self were grossly distorted. i felt like i was a slipperman, having just bathed in a pool full of lamia--you have to watch the video for a couple of minutes to get what i'm describing:

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or perhaps, i was practicing some bizarre (and ineffectual) form of martial arts in which one emulates the form of dali-esque (or picasso-esque) insect and animal forms.

when i "walked," one foot would be turned 45 degrees inward (on my toes) and the other 90 degrees outward (on my heels), and the rest of me was contorted in some indescribable fashion--really, just watch the video as it makes more sense of what i'm trying to convey. and i was like this for hours. it was far beyond anything even parkisonian, methinks.

it was also a sensory experience, but i can't even remotely begin to describe that--just try to imagine it.

my point is: such is but a limited aspect of self--sensory awareness and experience--but when one is fully aware that such is not how "things are" with respect to oneself, how can one be so sure that in one's normal state of mind (and body), "things are as they are"? sure, we've got tools to tell me that i'm 6 foot tall, 135 pounds, and countless other particulars--but can you really tell me that i am 6 foot tall (and i don't mean that really i should be taller, but i have scoliosis)? i mean, when i am playing my harmonium i am fairly certain that my harmonium is a part of me an wouldn't that affect my weight and dimensions? (moreover, heh, i am thinking with my hands (and feet) when doing such.)

 

And perhaps projecting their own hypothetical nihilism were they to take on the beliefs.

Who should, it seems to me, be very cautious about labeling someone insane, given the problem of other minds.

I know that you are misinterpreting your experience - which my philosophy says I have no access to.......

seems very poor and incautious to me. I can see a judge, in the position of dealing with someone who is disrupting his or her family, and making assertions that do not seem to fit consensual reality, making such a call. Such a judge might be a position where some decision needs to be made in consultation with experts. And, in fact, one can be very cautious there, also, and simply treat whatever solution as ad hoc and a guess. (I am incredibly critical of psychiatry, etc., but my point is simply....I can understand being forced to act - by family members and perhaps by society in certain really rather extreme situations. But otherwise, why make the leap of faith and label another person insane, publically, especially.)

There is also an implicit arrogance - yes, I'll turn that word around and aim it the other way - beyond the epistemological one I mentioned above. It is arrogant to assume that whatever the experience the religious experiencer is having would not convince me.

This is also leaping over a chasm only psychics can at least say they are consistent when they make that leap. (psychics being a subset of the insane according to at least some empiricists)

I have to admit I have hesitated to get to far into Buddhist logic. I once looked into it, but it has all sifted away, and here I find I am trying to keep track of empiricists and my own position. Tossing in a third feels like a stretch. On the other hand perhaps it will help clarify.

Yes, Zen was the last Buddhism for me before I left the fold I never quite got into. But the freedmo there is rather physical and upbeat - with occasional outbursts of anger. The full range of human emotion seems absent to me. There are heavy portions in me that could not get into that freedom without more support. I think in fact there is implicit judgment and the Eastern version of 'just let go'. But this is my highly subjective reaction of course.

Anything from no longer calling the US a democracy to realizing the biases of cancer treatment in the West - reductionism, aggressive metaphors, the industries hysterical resistance to non-patentable 'chemicals' and so on.

I find that empiricism seems resistant to giving anomalies enough weight, along with information gained by noticing what is emphasized by experts and what is not. Of course my critical perspective is fed by experience. But also my reactions to mainstream experts - often revulsion - led me to experiences. Whereas the empiricist is limited to his or her own experience AND whatever empiricists he or she has decided, over time, to trust. Since power, money, culture, historical time period radically affect what the empiricist is allowed to see,
without allowing a strong place for intution,
the empiricist can be led by the nose.

Of course one can be led by the nose by poor intution. However tossing this skill out because it can be a weak skill (in others, at certain times with oneself) is, as I said somewhere, an ironically communist, Harrison Bergeron idea.

My critique here comes from observing people who tend to call themselves empiricists and also looking at the system itself to find out why they take so much as given that I do not.

I have no problem with empirical methods - for example the scientific one - in their place. But as a complete system for gaining knowledge in the world? Sorry, it is not working well enough.

i had kinda thought that chaos theory might go in this direction, but apparently (heh), the video camera has ZERO impact.

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I am more dog than cat, myself. I do think I get cats, despite their misgivings about this, but if you think of me as a dog, yuo come along way to reading me. If you think of me as a cat, you miss the mark.