What constitutes evidence?

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Um, solipsism is the idea that nothing outside the mind can be certain. No one here is arguing that nothing outside one's own mind can be known or that nothing outside one's own mind even exists. Are you now saying that without a doubt human senses are reliable and human observations are trustworthy? Because I don't have a problem with that, and I don't recall ever stating that I wanted to doubt my senses. But I think an honest evaluation of human senses will demonstrate their fallibility within various measurable margins of error--some of which that are acceptable and some of which that are not.

The question is how does one resolve mutual exclusivity between predictive power and human observation? Is there a non-question-begging way to accomplish this?

Evidence Please.

With regard to your spiritual experience are you deaf to all the research into neuroscience, or would you call this gathering of empirical knowledge "moving the goal posts".

Indeed advancement human knowledge was restricted and almost brought to its knees by Aristotelian ideas. Thank goodness for the scholars during the Islamic Golden age

What are you talking about here?

Dont you have it backwards?

Its the theist who retreat into "the god of the gaps" notions as science advances. Not the opposite.


Can you give an actual example of scientists "moving the goalposts" as "spirtual knowledge" advances?

Rho I am not sure which school of philosophical nonsense you are ascribing to, but these kind of thought experiments for example prove you exist, or prove that you are not a tree, are not meant to actually "prove" anything. rather they are devised to get people thinking, They have deliberately paradoxical circular arguments that in the world of philosophical mind games cannot be resolved.

Brought into the real world, using your line of thought, who is to say that what I perceive to be a solid wooden table at which I am sitting typing this post, is not in fact, a mass of soft purple jelly and my hands are actually tapping out a pattern upon the tentacle of a giant squid.

The reason I can be sure the table is infact what it appears is one of probability and consensus based upon repeated experiment, I.e myself and many others have sat at this table and enjoyed its non gelatinous properties.

To relate the concept of repeated experiment and observed outcomes and consistently fulfilled predictions with that of "eyewitness accounts" brings you guilty of one of two things. Either you are being monumentally disingenuous or you simply have no idea about what you are talking about and are flapping around in half baked google searches.

The paradox of observing changing the nature of the observed occurs in the micro world of quantum mechanics, and if observation does make any difference in the macro world it is so infinitesimally small as to have no practical consequential effect.

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 09 May 2014, 8:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Let me get this straight. To defend your belief that a storm god sacrificed himself, temporarily, to himself to forgive a curse that he himself had placed and so that he might come back at some future date to wrestle his old enemy the sea dragon you are parroting a creationist line that science is no more useful than that because maybe our senses are wrong?

And you are typing this on the internet in the 21st century while enjoying the immense benefits of modern science? Ok, so human senses, in some cases, do appear to be quite fallible. Well played.

Where did you get all that in the above quote? I found a mutually exclusive relationship between human observation and the predictive power of the scientific method. There's nothing about any storm gods in there. I think that's probably the most massive straw manning I've ever seen.

None of this has anything to do with any questions I've asked, or I'm missing something.

I'm not arguing in favor of solipsism. I'm not even really arguing anything.

And no, I don't know anything. Which is why I ask questions of people who purport to know.

I've been reading and rereading Viper's posts throughout this exchange. So far all I can seem to glean from it all is that you can externally verify the scientific method through its predictive power. But in order to do that, you have to actually OBSERVE that predictive power. This requires a MASSIVE assumption that human senses are reliable. Without the purported predictive power of the scientific method, you don't know that human senses are reliable. But you can't test the predictive power of the scientific method if you don't know that human senses are reliable. How do you resolve the Catch-22?

In either case, whether it is the predictive power of the scientific method or the reliability of the human senses to observe said predictive power, you're still assuming what you're trying to prove. So how do you resolve the issue of demonstrating and observing the predictive power of the scientific method without question-begging?

Ultimately your analogy of the table is irrelevant. The reason that it's irrelevant, first of all, is that we're talking about the scientific method, not a table. Even if I went with the table analogy, you're still using a methodology to demonstrate its existence. Why? And how do you demonstrate that your chosen methodology is the correct one?

What's even worse is that the scientific method fails as literature. It has no characters, it has no conflict and it has no conclusion. Oh wait, it's just a tool for discovering things. It's not literature. And it's not a philosophical argument to justify itself either

Why can't I ride a bible into the air? It has no engine or wings! How can I ride it? The bible has failed. Oh no. It serves absolutely no purpose. Oh wait, I already knew that.

That doesn't answer the question.

It's my answer. If you feel you are entitled to more then review your history of evasion in this thread and rework your entitlement math.

It appears you think there is no objective answer, so, here is a subjective one .... "I know it when I see it"

"The phrase 'I know it when I see it' is a colloquial expression by which a speaker attempts to categorize an observable fact or event, although the category is subjective or lacks clearly defined parameters".

source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

You seem to argue against the epistemic values of science, which inevitable leads towards some sort of philosophical skepticism and it isn't the first time you do this, it's funny that you do that in defense of religious beliefs.

Succintly put. I would add that whilst Rho will argue against human perception with regards science and anything which debunks his world view, he is certain that his visitation from god (or whatever happened) was a real and correctly observed event.

One thing we are beginning to understand is the nature of hallucination, but of course Rho would never contemplate that this is what he experienced.

There are many areas in which human perception is different to other earthly life forms, hearing, smell, and especially frequencies of light. So it is possible that there is a supernatural realm which most of us a oblivious to. The trouble with this is that those of you who claim to be able to perceive this 'realm' cannot demonstrate this ability when placed under conditions that do not allow for any natural occurrences or coincidences to intercede. Also we have created many machines which can perceive hidden natural occurrences.

Other than this you are talking philosophical nonsense. Your level of argument has reached its end stage, as you cannot continue to respond to the rebuttals you have faced you now turn to pseudo intellectual argument of, "well yes empirical evidence does suggest what you are saying is true, but how do you know that all the repeated experiments across all the scientific modalities are not flawed due to our eyes and brains completely miss perceiving the natural world"

To this I would say get of the computer, leave modern medicine behind, stop driving your car and go live in a cave gathering fire only when it presents itself in nature. Even the Amish would have more sense than to bring this argument.

But it still isn't an answer.

The subjective answer isn't really very satisfying, either, though. If we're talking about science and observation of the scientific method as verification of the scientific method, which is REALLY what we're talking about, then you would think there WOULD be an objective answer. The problem is separating "predictive power" from the scientific method itself, which, the more I think about it, the more I find it dubious. Essentially the scientific IS human observation, so if you're examining predictive power as a justification for using the scientific method, you are using the one thing that the scientific method cannot do without: Observation. The scientific method is a methodology of observation which cannot be verified without…wait for it…observation. Even if you were to somehow separate out scientific method's predictive power from the method itself, you cannot verify even that without an observational methodology. You're still using the basis for the scientific method itself to verify itself.

My question is this, which no matter how much I reword or restate it hasn't really changed: How do you verify/falsify/observe/test/etc. the scientific method without question-begging? In other words, how to prove it without assuming it? A follow-up question would be if you can't prove the scientific method without assuming it and/or it's fundamental principles, how do you resolve this apparent logical conflict?