The perversion of empiricism

1« Previous thread | Next thread »
- z10
- Pub Regular
- Imago Dei
- offline
The perversion of empiricism
OP - October 08, 2011, 06:02 PM

1.To be empirical is to foundation all knowledge on the bare facts of experience alone.

2.Many so-called empiricists prefer to hold (for example) with the abstract concept of a proton instead of acknowledging the reality of intuition.

3.Intuition is one of the bare facts of experience: it may not be explained but it is as real as every other experience.

4.Empiricism needs to be saved from this perversion.

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
- toor
- Administrator
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #1 - October 08, 2011, 06:11 PM

For those of us needing a little guidance (myself, at the very least), can you please define intuition?

Before it gets too late, you will find escape.
- z10
- Pub Regular
- Imago Dei
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #2 - October 08, 2011, 06:19 PM

To know something as right or true spontaneously.

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
- toor
- Administrator
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #3 - October 08, 2011, 06:30 PM

Quote from: z10 on October 08, 2011, 06:19 PM
To know something as right or true spontaneously.

By that definition, any fool can intuit; is correctness of intuition relevant?

More to the point, are intuitions not learnt things, or do you hold certain intuitions to be innate?

Before it gets too late, you will find escape.
- harakaat
- The Cunning Linguist
- Ex-Muslim
- The World Is Quiet Here
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #4 - October 08, 2011, 10:40 PM

Quote from: z10 on October 08, 2011, 06:19 PM
To know something as right or true spontaneously.

Fitra

قل للمليحة في الخمار الأسود
مـاذا فـعــلت بــناسـك مـتـعـبد

قـد كـان شـمّر لــلـصلاة ثـيابه
حتى خـطرت له بباب المسجد

ردي عليـه صـلاتـه وصيـامــه
لا تـقــتـلــيه بـحـق ديــن محمد
- allat
- Euphoria
- Administrator
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #5 - October 08, 2011, 11:14 PM

Off topic riff-raff has been split and moved.

"Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused."
- Kodanshi
- La solitude s'eprend de mon coeur
- Ex-Muslim
- *Careful Plague & Scarred Joy*
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #6 - October 08, 2011, 11:17 PM

So… let me get this straight. Your contention is that Empiricists deny the usefulness of Intuition?
- passingaround
- Member
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #7 - January 06, 2012, 09:29 AM

I feel you z10. But how can we prove that empiricism is perverse without the data?
- passingaround
- Member
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #8 - January 06, 2012, 09:33 AM

I agree empiricism isnt the be all and end all of all things. For example how do we know we are alive? We try to establish it by certain ways. But logically where is the absolute foundation for that? And what prompts us to do that? And where is sense of that really? Its really the scientist who puts the work into and is the one who tries to make that credible. But its all in his own head. Theres nothing 'hanging' out there very solidly.
- passingaround
- Member
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #9 - January 06, 2012, 09:35 AM

Quote from: z10 on October 08, 2011, 06:02 PM
1.To be empirical is to foundation all knowledge on the bare facts of experience alone.

Dreams are experience.
- passingaround
- Member
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #10 - January 06, 2012, 09:50 AM

Going back to the example.

How do we know we are alive?

Being alive is a constant thing. One will cease to be alive the moment life leaves him. We dont need to see death to know that. But we wont know there is such a thing as death if we have not seen that.

But being alive needs no words to validate. No logic is required. Before all this thought, be it science or philosophy. There is living. A very basic trait.

All this science and philosophy stops when the very person thinking dies.

How do we know are alive?

First there is the question and then there is the answering of the question through science. So science is only an extention of intuition. Intuitively, being alive, we know we are alive. Its a feeling. We know we are "alive" through logic.

Science is just a far more elaborate scheme of pointing and saying "here it is, I got something tangible to assure that". Its an expansion of logic. And concrete because theres brevity behind it.
- BerberElla
- Class A'sexual
- Creator Goddess
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #11 - January 06, 2012, 10:01 AM

I always thought intuition was easy to explain. (I might not be right here) in that it's just a brain capable of solving some sort of problem/knowing an answer, simply because that brain can process/think the information through fast enough, without even being aware that they are rifling through the knowledge they do have to come up with an answer.

Sort of like the experience of de ja vou but a useful one.

Thus it's an experience itself, an empirical one?

Inhale the good shit, exhale the bullshit.
- harakaat
- The Cunning Linguist
- Ex-Muslim
- The World Is Quiet Here
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #12 - January 06, 2012, 10:08 AM

Setting aside all the abstraction, let's get down to the nitty-gritty: give me an example of intuition providing us with new, valid knowledge that we could not have reached empirically.

قل للمليحة في الخمار الأسود
مـاذا فـعــلت بــناسـك مـتـعـبد

قـد كـان شـمّر لــلـصلاة ثـيابه
حتى خـطرت له بباب المسجد

ردي عليـه صـلاتـه وصيـامــه
لا تـقــتـلــيه بـحـق ديــن محمد
- toor
- Administrator
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #13 - January 06, 2012, 10:30 AM

Benzene rings might be an example.

Quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzene
The new understanding of benzene, and hence of all aromatic compounds, proved to be so important for both pure and applied chemistry that in 1890 the German Chemical Society organized an elaborate appreciation in Kekulé's honor, celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of his first benzene paper. Here Kekulé spoke of the creation of the theory. He said that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake seizing its own tail (this is a common symbol in many ancient cultures known as the Ouroboros or Endless knot). This vision, he said, came to him after years of studying the nature of carbon-carbon bonds. This was 7 years after he had solved the problem of how carbon atoms could bond to up to four other atoms at the same time.

My own ~~intuition~~ supposition: we do a lot of probablistic reasoning subconsciously while learning, and what we call intuitions are our way of linking ideas together. To that extent, we learn our intuitions.

Before it gets too late, you will find escape.
- moi
- Pub Regular
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #14 - January 06, 2012, 11:34 AM

Quote
we learn our intuitions.

Strongly agree.

Supporters of sharia law intuit that it is right to stone adulterers.

We really do need to ask about underlying assumptions, what happens sometimes is that not enough questions are asked about how ways of thinking have developed, and that maybe some ways of being are actually better than others.

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
- Ishina
- Militant Atheist
- Ex-Muslim
- No Fate But What We Make
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #15 - January 06, 2012, 01:05 PM

Intuition tells us that the earth is flat, that the sun is no bigger than the moon, and that neither are as big as the earth, but all three are bigger than the stars. It seems to me that, historically, intuition has failed spectacularly to paint an accurate picture of what is factual or real beyond what is directly in front of our noses or our imagination.

Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
- z10
- Pub Regular
- Imago Dei
- offline
Re: The perversion of empiricism
Reply #16 - January 14, 2012, 10:03 PM

I don't think I would agree completely with the OP anymore. I think what I was trying to say is that if empiricism is the idea that only our experience of the world can be used to make true statements about the world then our intuition is just another experience and should be given equal weight as other experiences such as seeing the colour red.

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings. - Stevens
1« Previous thread | Next thread »