{"id":1132,"date":"2023-11-18T13:57:08","date_gmt":"2023-11-18T13:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2023\/11\/18\/is-empiricism-self-refuting\/"},"modified":"2023-11-18T13:57:08","modified_gmt":"2023-11-18T13:57:08","slug":"is-empiricism-self-refuting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2023\/11\/18\/is-empiricism-self-refuting\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Empiricism Self-Refuting?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russell says it is; I examine his claim. Substack<\/em> latest<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Russell<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Addenda<\/strong> (11\/19)<\/span><\/p>\n

Tony Flood writes<\/span>,<\/span><\/p>\n

Brian Kilmeade mentioned Ayaan Hirsi Ali's conversion to Christianity  quickly as he introduced her, one of his guests tonight, but I heard it on TV which was on in the background; I thought I had misheard Kilmeade. I've always admired her courage and considered her professed atheism in the context of her experience of Islamic terror. <\/span><\/p>\n

But her Wiki entry<\/a> says she "converted to Christianity" (by which I hope she means that she received Christ as her savior), citing this<\/a> and this<\/a>. <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
She blogged<\/a> about Russell last week (as you did today<\/a>): <\/span><\/p>\n
\n
In 2002, I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled \u201cWhy I am Not a Christian.\u201d It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South London branch of the National Secular Society, I would be compelled to write an essay with precisely the opposite title.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n
In high school in 1970 along the road to my Communism, I had read Russell's essay and decided I would study philosophy. I remember catching his obit in the papers, marveling at the longevity of this stellar Victorian intellectual who had been my contemporary for over a decade-and-a-half and therefore could <\/em>have met. <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Anyway, Ali's now firmly in my Hall of Hero(in)es. Feel free to share this, which may come as news to others as it did to me.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Thanks, Tony. I share your high opinion of Ali. The Unherd article<\/a> which I excerpted<\/a> earlier is important.  I too read Russell's Why I am not a Christian<\/em> in high school.  Russell was a logical and philosophical technician of high rank, but unlike his pal Wittgenstein, he wrote popular works as well. Wittgenstein, as you know, took a dim view of Russell's popular writings. Russell was secular to the core; Wittgenstein, I could easily show, had the heart of the homo religiosus<\/em> despite his bladed intellect.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Edward writes,<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n

Interesting, and overlaps with a central theme of the book, as follows. Assume<\/span><\/p>\n

1 Knowledge is propositional. That is, whatever counts as knowledge has to be expressible in language as a proposition.<\/span><\/p>\n

2 Propositions have two terms and can be affirmative or negative, universal or particular. Thus to any two terms there correspond exactly four propositions.<\/span><\/p>\n

3 There are a finite number of term types, as set out in Locke\u2019s classification of \u2018ideas\u2019 in Book II of the Essay<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

4 The meaning of any term is derived from experience. Locke assumes that every word either signifies a simple \u2018sensible idea\u2019, or signifies a complex idea that can be analysed into simple parts.<\/span><\/p>\n

These assumptions define what Bennett calls meaning-empiricism<\/em>, and Hanna calls semantic psychologism<\/em>. It follows from them that every object of human understanding is defined by a proposition whose meaning depends on experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this way we can set a limit to human understanding.<\/span><\/p>\n

Note that the empiricist project differs from the scholastic-Aristotelian one. The scholastics generally did not believe in meaning-empiricism, because they thought that the proper<\/em> signification of a term is an object, not an idea. So I think to settle your question we must look at whether words signify \u2018ideas\u2019, i.e. affections of the soul, or not.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ad (1). Is all knowledge propositional? You are making a very strong claim here: necessarily, nothing counts as knowledge that is not expressible in declarative sentences.  But knowing what something is like counts as knowledge. I know what it is like to be punched in the stomach, but not what it is like to undergo a menstrual period.  I know some people by description only, others by acquaintance only, and still others by description and by acquaintance. Isn't knowledge by acquaintance a counterexample to your thesis?  And then there is 'carnal knowledge.' Does it not count as knowledge? There is also 'know how.' My cats know how to open doors, but they would be hard-pressed to verbalize that knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ad (2). "Thus to any two terms there correspond exactly four propositions." Since copulae are typically tensed, there have to be more. There have to be at least twelve. 'Every animal in the house was\/is\/will be a cat.'  4 categorical forms X 3 simple tenses = 12 different propositions.  And then there are the tenseless uses of copulae, e,g, 'The cat is an animal.'   'The triangle is a three-sided plane figure that encloses a space.' Yogi Berra joke: "You mean now?"  'God is' is either eternally true\/false or omnitemporally true\/false, and tenseless either way.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Ad (3). OK.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Ad (4). "The meaning of any term is derived from experience." My question is: how could we know<\/em> that this proposition is true if it is indeed true? To know that it is true, we have to know what it means. But it cannot mean anything if it is true. Do the terms of this proposition signify a sensible idea? No. 'The meaning of any terms' does not signify a sensible idea.  The same goes for 'a meaning derived from experience.'  Meaning-empiricism is meaningless on its own theory of meaning.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russell says it is; I examine his claim. Substack latest. Addenda (11\/19) Tony Flood writes, Brian Kilmeade mentioned Ayaan Hirsi Ali's conversion to Christianity  quickly as he introduced her, one of his guests tonight, but I heard it on TV which was on in the background; I thought I had misheard Kilmeade. I've always admired … Continue reading “Is Empiricism Self-Refuting?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441,353,124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-empiricism","category-knowledge","category-russell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}