# Empirical philosophy
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [January 27, 2003, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270 "2003-01-27T16:58:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@TVAA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVAA)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/1 "2003-01-27T16:58:12Z")
Taking **Polycarp** ’s suggestion, I’ve created this thread in the hopes that it will result in the ceasing of the hijacking that took place in _his_ thread (mostly at my instigation).
I am forwarding the proposition that there’s no ultimate difference between “pure” logic or reasoning and empirical knowledge: using logic is an example of empirically examining what we wish to learn about, which is thought.
Essentially, if we want to know about something, we have to look at it. If we want to know about “actual” ethics or aesthetics or causality, we need to look at the universe in which we live. If we want to know about how we think, we need to look at our thoughts. We can make whatever models we please, but we must never forget that the model isn’t the reality.
Thoughts, anyone?
---
### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/2 "2003-01-27T17:03:25Z")
Sounds good – provided that we remember that the premises on which our logic is founded may themselves be invalid. (Classic example, which I’d regret causing a hijack by giving, is in the idea advanced by many conservative Christians that if gay sexuality is sinful and God created people with the ability to turn from sin and follow Him, then one must be able to “quit being gay” – it’s logically sound given the premises, but the premises themselves are questionable.)
But I like where you’re going with this (and I’d greatly appreciate people not debating my example and hence hijacking the thread).
---
### Author:  [@TVAA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVAA)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/3 "2003-01-27T17:35:51Z")
Quite right.
At the moment, I lack the time to put forward a full-fledged example (I’ll return later), but consider the following statement:
We should avoid action that is excessive.
What’s the problem with this statement?
---
### Author:  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/4 "2003-01-27T17:44:43Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Essentially, if we want to know about something, we have to look at it.
Ask yourself how you came to know such a thing. What principles allowed you to realize this?
> [@](#):
>
> We can make whatever models we please, but we must never forget that the model isn’t the reality.
I think this is much more difficult to prove than it is to say. If the model isn’t the reality, then everything is a representation. Including reality. To what does “knowledge” then refer? I mean, what does “reality” then mean?
---
### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/5 "2003-01-27T17:47:19Z")
**Vor wrote:**
> [@](#):
>
> I am forwarding the proposition that there’s no ultimate difference between “pure” logic or reasoning and empirical knowledge: using logic is an example of empirically examining what we wish to learn about, which is thought.
Just a couple of questions, and then I possibly will have more, depending on how successfully you address these to my satisfaction.
What do you mean by “pure”? And how is logic an empirical examination of thought? Why is it not an epistemology if you’re “learning”? And to what types of logic do you specifically apply your proposition? Or do you proclaim your opinion to be true of every type of logic?
---
### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/6 "2003-01-27T18:23:55Z")
I don’t know if this is exactly the kind of example you have in mind, but… Didn’t Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle) once say that, from a drop of water, a reasoning man can extrapolate an Atlantic Ocean or a Niagra Falls?
But…in fact…no, he can’t. There simply isn’t enough “data” in a drop of water to allow someone to extrapolate that far. You’d never get to thermoclines, to vortices, to tides, to cavitation.
(Given a hundred gallons…maybe…)
Trinopus
---
### Author:  [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/7 "2003-01-27T18:31:55Z")
it seems to me that what we might consider “objective” is just a subset of empirical knowledge. how do we know anything besides what we know empirically?
that we consider something transcendent is based on the conclusions we draw from our empirical knowledge. for example, based on what we know, see, and are capable of, it seems completely impossible for the following to be true:
if proposition A is true, then proposition B is true.
proposition A is true.
proposition B is false.
it is unimaginable how these statements could be consistent. of course, this assumes we have some knowledge of what we mean when we say “true”, which may or may not be the case. the point is, we accept these things as transcendent, because they are constructs that allow us to speak of empirical things. consider what we could talk about without the concept of truth. how could we put forward anything meaningful? how could we consider it to be true?
so, certain empirical knowledge, we like to think transcends the realm of empiricism, because if it doesn’t apply to all things empirical, the world makes no sense.
---
### Author:  [@Fatwater\_Fewl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fatwater_Fewl)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/8 "2003-01-27T18:45:50Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by The Vorlon Ambassador’s Aide \*
> \*\*Quite right.
>
> At the moment, I lack the time to put forward a full-fledged example (I’ll return later), but consider the following statement:
>
> We should avoid action that is excessive.
>
> What’s the problem with this statement? \*\*
The same problem this statement has:
We should do everything in moderation.
---
### Author:  [@Iamthat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iamthat)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/9 "2003-01-27T20:56:14Z")
\*\* The Vorlon Ambassador’s Aide\*\*
wrote:
> [@](#):
>
> We should avoid action that is excessive.
>
> What’s the problem with this statement?
**excessive** is a relative term.
It’s relative to the motivation and goals of the action.
\*\* erislover\*\*
wrote:
> [@](#):
>
> I think this is much more difficult to prove than it is to say. If the model isn’t the reality, then everything is a representation. Including reality. To what does “knowledge” then refer? I mean, what does “reality” then mean?
Is everything a representation?
Do you ever experience anything “in-and-of-itself “.
Do you ever experience your “self” as “in-and-of-itself’ ?
---
### Author:  [@TVAA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVAA)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/10 "2003-01-27T22:18:25Z")
Regarding “excessive”:
There are essentially two meanings of the word. The first is that more of something is being used or consumed than is needed to create a certain result. The other is that enough of something is being used to bring about a negative result.
For example, if I eat more food than I need to satiate my hunger, that is excessive1. If I eat enough food to give me an upset stomach, that’s excessive2.
When we consider the concept of “waste”, we see that the first meaning is essentially just a special case of the second; when something is wasted, that’s a negative result.
When I make the statement “we shouldn’t do anything in excess”, all that really means is “we shouldn’t do anything that leads to a negative result”, which is trivial (essentially tautological once the concept of causality is accepted).
Therefore, for the statment to be meaningful, there must be a ready _operational_ definition of what it means to be excessive. Without that standard, the sentence essentially has no content.
Fatwater Fewl and Iamthat are correct.
**Trinopus** : I’m afraid I’d have to disagree with you. The rules governing the drop of water are the same as the rules governing all the oceans of the world. Given enough computational power, we could derive all of the universe from its smallest components. The problem is twofold: first, the only thing capable of genuinely modeling the universe without simplification is the universe itself; secondly, we could make the derivation only because you need the entire universe just to have the drop of water in the first place.
**Lib** : Logic, and all of philosophy, is thinking about thinking. We generate sets of relationships within our minds and use them to construct models of the world around us; when we find that the model in our minds gives results that allow us to make limited predictions about the world, we claim that they’re correct.
All the logics exist within the human mind… the human mind couldn’t exist without a greater system in which it can be. If every trace of humanity and its works were destroyed, the Theory of Relativity, Plato’s parable of the cave, and the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem would all be destroyed. The reality in which these concepts could be derived from would continue.
**erislover** : What do I mean when I say “reality”? Consider: what if I postulated a substance exactly like mass-energy of modern physics in all ways but one: it could not be transformed into any form that would interact in any way with “normal” mass-energy. Would it be real?
I say it would not. Reality is the set of things that interact with any given thing. The alternate mass-energy might be a reality unto itself, but that universe wouldn’t be real to ours. There would be no consequences from its existence that would differ in any way from its nonexistence; therefore, the two conditions are utterly and completely indistinguishable and are therefore _the same_.
---
### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/11 "2003-01-27T22:27:33Z")
Your answers are unsatisfactory, but that’s okay. Of much more immediate importance to me is a request that you shorten your username. When you are the OP and the last poster, the Great Debates forum titles are squished into one word per line, and Explorer adds a horizontal scrollbar to see the dates and times.
---
### Author:  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/12 "2003-01-27T22:28:50Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Reality is the set of things that interact with any given thing.
Is that what it is, **Vorlon** , or is that how you are modelling it?
---
### Author:  [@TVAA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVAA)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/13 "2003-01-27T22:31:03Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Libertarian \*
> Your answers are unsatisfactory, but that’s okay.
Hah! Coming from a person who tries to justify the ontological proof of God, that’s funny!
---
### Author:  [@TVAA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVAA)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/14 "2003-01-27T22:34:10Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by erislover \*
> Is that what it is, **Vorlon** , or is that how you are modelling it?
Ah, no. I’m not asserting that the _thing out there_, which is commonly referred to as “reality”, is the set of all things that interact with me.
Rather, I’m calling the set of all things that interact with me, “reality”.
I merely note that, when I substitute this definition for the word “reality” as it is commonly used, it doesn’t seem to change the meaning of statements.
The first law of metaphysics: nothing unreal exists.
Seriously: what is the difference between something not interacting with you (or with anything that interacts with you), and its not existing?
---
### Author:  [@RexDart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RexDart)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/15 "2003-01-27T22:52:36Z")
I think you have to have at least one piece of internal logic before you can learn anything through observation. If you don’t have the principle of non-contradiction, A v ~A, then you cannot acquire knowledge through observation. When you observe “it is snowing”, you must be able to _exclude_ the proposition “it is not snowing”. Without being able to do so, you could never limit the set of propositions that accurately describe the world.
Since you cannot learn _anything_ without knowing the principle of noncontradiction, the principle of noncontradiction cannot itself be _learned_. It must therefore exist prior to any empiric examiniation whatsoever.
---
### Author:  [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/16 "2003-01-27T23:02:34Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by The Vorlon Ambassador’s Aide \*
> \*\*Hah! Coming from a person who tries to justify the ontological proof of God, that’s funny! \*\*
Who knows (or cares) what you mean by “justify”? A proof is either valid or it is not. [Peter Suber](http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/re/onto-arg.htm), an atheist and a philosopher, understands this. You do not.
---
### Author:  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/17 "2003-01-27T23:05:05Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by The Vorlon Ambassador’s Aide \*
> **The first law of metaphysics: nothing unreal exists.**
Can I ask: is this an emprirical truth?
---
### Author:  [@robertliguori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robertliguori)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/18 "2003-01-27T23:10:24Z")
Well, Lib, if we know that necessary existence is, but not what it is, do we know anything at all?
---
### Author:  [@robertliguori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robertliguori)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/19 "2003-01-27T23:17:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Can I ask: is this an emprirical truth?
Well, since no one has been able to find an unreal thing that exists, yes.
---
### Author:  [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)
#### Post date: [January 27, 2003, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270/20 "2003-01-27T23:24:38Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by RexDart \*
> I think you have to have at least one piece of internal logic before you can learn anything through observation. If you don’t have the principle of non-contradiction, A v ~A, then you cannot acquire knowledge through observation. When you observe “it is snowing”, you must be able to _exclude_ the proposition “it is not snowing”. Without being able to do so, you could never limit the set of propositions that accurately describe the world.
>
> Since you cannot learn _anything_ without knowing the principle of noncontradiction, the principle of noncontradiction cannot itself be _learned_. It must therefore exist prior to any empiric examiniation whatsoever.
is that an empirical observation?
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/empirical-philosophy/151270.md?page=2)