The discussion with Scott addresses “belief”.

Thanks again to Scott. He has raised issues that I had thought wouldn’t come up until later in the conversation. He has opined that scientists are never obliged to “believe” anything, as belief implies faith, and that the scientist could simply accept certain claims to be axioms or foundational. This seems odd; I would think that accepting claims in this fashion, in other words, simply accepting without proof or hope of proof, would qualify as faith.

But even more confusing is the reference to empiricism as an “epistemological hypothesis”. Now my impression of epistemology is that it represents Truth and/or the search for Truth, knowledge of Truth, and the knowledge of knowledge. Empiricism, especially if it is to be considered provisional, has nothing to say about truth; it does however address ontology, which is the search for being and relationships of being and existence.

If all empirical theories are held provisionally, and they should be, then none can be considered to be true, epistemologically speaking. Ontologically they might be said to be adequate until something better comes along.

I agree with that which I believe it is that Scott means, provisionally of course, the provision in this case being that I suspect that Scott really didn’t mean to exclude all faith from the empirical process. If I only had a nickel for every research paper that declares “X is believed to imply Y”.

Next Scott seems to say that if all theories have the caveat that something better, theory wise, might come along, and that because empiricism is held to be valid only provisionally, then scientists might not expect to find physical causes for each effect. To me this seems to be quite a twist on the provisional belief in empiricism. I am skeptical that funding of research that did not presuppose that “cause and effect” is universal and a First Principle, would be easy to come by. I am also skeptical that anyone is really considering dumping empiricism. But it is readily apparent that much of the science that goes on today does not use empiricism in the least.

Empiricism as a process is not possible in the pursuit of historical / forensic science. In forensics, the evidence is found, not created experimentally. Moreover, the forensic evidence cannot be replicated as is the case with the experiments of empiricism. And the forensic evidence is indicative of a single event, or a single existence; more evidence of other existences can be added to the overall story. Events can be stacked together and then extrapolated to other event stacks until the story becomes seemingly credible; however, the perceived necessity for extrapolation severely bruises any ontological value and supplants it with speculation.

Scott’s third point is that scientists of old, e.g. Newton and Wallace, delved into horoscopes and spiritualism, etc., proving that empiricism is not a belief system. I don’t actually believe that empiricism is a belief system either; empiricism is a process that derives it’s validity ultimately from a series of foundational principles called the First Principles. It is these principles that prevent the infinite regress that would be required to validate each premise, sub-premise, sub-sub-premise, etc. The question arises, if the premises are valid, what validates them? Sub-premises validate them. But what validates the sub-premises? Sub-sub-premises….ad infinitum. This infinite regress cannot be stopped without something that is known to be valid….without further need of “sub-premise” validation. In other words it is known to be absolutely valid, by inspection, by intuition.

There, I said it, intuition. Maybe that will trigger comments for the next round. Do we have faith in intuition?