Comments on: E.O. Wilson and the limits of empiricism

By: Following science as a layperson | Love of All Wisdom

Following science as a layperson | Love of All Wisdom — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:41:43 +0000

[...] Experimentally derived knowledge does not and cannot exhaust philosophical reflection, as E.O. Wilson seems to think it does, but it does [...]

By: michael reidy

michael reidy — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:57:19 +0000

Coleridge has a remark on the Empiricist difficulty:
September 21, 1830 ……He told me that facts gave birth to, and were the absolute ground of principles; to which I said, that unless he had a principle of selection, he would not have taken notice of those facts upon which he had grounded his principle. You must have a lantern in your hand to give light, otherwise all the materials in the world are useless, for you could not arrange them. “But then,” said Mr.–, “that principle of selection came from facts!” – “To be sure!” I replied; “but there must have been an antecedent light to see those antecedent facts. The relapse may be carried in imagination backwards for ever, – but go back as you may, you cannot come to a man without a previous aim or principle. He then asked me what I had to say to Bacon’s induction: I told him I had a good deal to say, if need were; but that it was perhaps enough for the occasion to remark, that what he was evidently taking for the Baconian induction was mere deduction – a very different thing.”

By: Amod Lele

Amod Lele — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:48:36 +0000

Hi Rick – welcome to the blog! Hope you’ll stick around. I agree, we all have some sort of ontology, whether coherent or incoherent, and whether we know it or not. When empiricists claim to do away with metaphysics, what it typically means is that they’re accepting the completely incoherent metaphysics of logical positivism.

By: Rick

Rick — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:58:23 +0000

Thoreau would have liked Wilson for his enthusiastic ant-watching, but disagreed that a naturalist must accept a disenchanted view of nature. As Kant pointed out with respect to the “freethinkers” of his day, someone who says “I’m an empiricist, I accept only what is evident and proven,” is always making assumptions about the nature of the world. There really isn’t any neutral, unbiased standpoint to occupy, despite what the naive materialist might assume. We all have our tacit ontology.

By: Amod Lele

Amod Lele — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:01:05 +0000

Yes, that definitely helps – and it’s one of the reasons for starting this blog, as well. One of the hard things is just finding specialists in other fields who are interested in the conversation, since academia offers so few rewards for being a generalist. I’m delighted to have a diverse group of commenters here who know a lot about things I don’t – it gives me ideas I could never have just on my own.

By: elisa freschi

elisa freschi — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:08:02 +0000

Amod and Michael: Don’t you think that a possible way out of the specialization-superficiality dilemma is to join efforts? I do not know enough about rhetoric, but I am glad when I can work side by side with a colleague who can explain me tropoi I would not be aware of, etc.

By: Amod Lele

Amod Lele — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:50:53 +0000

By all means! And let me know if anything doesn’t make sense – I know there are many ways my ideas are not coherent with each other yet, and I appreciate getting called out on it.

The “epistemology and logic” category might have other posts relevant to the topic.

By: Topher

Topher — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:07:30 +0000

Thanks for that clarification! I’m going to look back at your earlier posts and try to put this all together…

By: Amod Lele

Amod Lele — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:29:04 +0000

Ah, then we are in agreement.

By: Amod Lele

Amod Lele — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:28:10 +0000

I definitely think we can find a foundation for knowledge, and one grounded in reason. I just doubt that it will be incontrovertible. I explored the topic of certainty a little while back; I didn’t come to a definite conclusion there, but it has increasingly set me to believing that complete certainty is impossible. I like your formulation in the previous post of “knowledge without certainty” – I think that hits the idea exactly – but I don’t want to emphasize the “without certainty” part so much that we lose the “knowledge” part.

I am much more reluctant to place the final ground of knowledge in community (or in language identified as relative to community, as opposed to a wider sense of Greek logos or Hegelian concept). That way, I think, lies a relativism that denies the ways in which ideas can and do cross cultural boundaries all the time.