Sorry Mr. Dillahunty, Science is STILL a slave to philosophy

This is a discussion of Tommy (KabanetheChrsitian's) call into the Atheist Experience. You can view the show here: http://www.atheist-experience.com/archive/AtheistExp-2009-05-24.mp3

fastforward to 25:27

SCRIPT:

I want to play a clip from the Atheist experience
Now as Kabane pointed out, Matts structure of epistemic justification IS circular reasoning. To drive this point home, I want to turn to Microsoft paint.
Here we see the standard foundationalist structure of justification. On the bottom we have qualia. These belong to a set of beliefs we call properly basic beliefs. Upon these qualia, we found our beliefs about the external world.
Here we dont have any method of actually proving a priori that our beliefs about the external world are true. We can only say that they are justified thanks to our properly basic belief.
Now Matt Gives an interesting structure of justification in which he tries to prove that we can conduct science in a vacuum.
Here is his strikingly coherentist model of justification. The senses verify eachother.
Now he goes further than saying that they *justify* eachother, but that we can KNOW the external world because of the fact that they justify eachother.
Lets take a look at sight. How do we know that our sight is reliable? On a foundationalist epistemology, we really just assume it.
On matt dillahuntys structure of justification, sight is justified by the four other senses.
But what justifies smell, which is supposed to justify sight? Well, the other four senses are supposed to justify smell, INCLUDING sight.
These problems all arise when we systematically determine the justifications for the other senses, and it becomes grossly apparent that this structure of justification Is circular, and that, on Matts epistemology, it DOES NOT FOLLOW that our beliefs about the external world are true, or that we can even assume that they are true.
Moreover, I want to draw our attention to two more problem which Matts structure can never solve, and which prove that science is still a slave to philosophy
Here we have 2 sets of sensory data. The two are completely different, and there is still only one external world. On Matts structure of justification, both sides are justified. But this is absolutely absurd.
Moreover, while were still here on this diagram, we still have no idea within matts structure of justification if we are being deceived by an evil genius or demon. For such assumptions we need, of course, PHILOSOPHY
Our third problem is that there are major assumptions which cannot even be justified on this graph which are needed in order to trust our senses. Nowhere in this graph do we show that inductive inference is valid, or that the laws of logic are valid, or that the external world is knowable, or even that WE OURSELVES EXIST. Such problems cannot be solved with science or experience. For such problems, we need to appeal to philosophy.
Our final problem is with Dillahuntys laughable assertion that we can verify our own senses by checking with other peoples senses. But this, of course, is absurd. How do we know about other peoples senses? Well, we know about it through, of course, our OWN SENSES, which we still have to establish as reliable.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• matt
• dillahunty
• science
• is
• slave
• to
• philosophy

[MrTechFox]

I am affraid the only reason that you find Matt Dillahunty's argument for the reliability of the senses laughable is because you do not properly understand the coherntist epistemology. Sysiphusredeemed did an excellnt video explaining why you are wrong and gave real world examples of how coherntism works, even though it seems circular to you, it is still not fallacious. I recommend watching his video for educational purposes.

[migkillertwo]

dishonesty ftw? I have thoroughly responded to SisyphusRedeemed's videos on coherentism and have yet to hear a similar response from him.

"real world examples of how coherentism works"

I remember that, and he only explained examples of "virtuous circularity" which are not strictly speaking circular, nor are they related to justification. At best, they are examples of "circular" causal interaction between two entities. 

[Drgamedood]

@migkillertwo, Do you mind if I mirror this video on my channel?

[migkillertwo]

go ahead.

[awfulnhead]

i think you just didn't understand what he was saying, which is fine, maybe i didn't either, whether we are in a matrix, or whatever computer world or solipsism is true, doesn't change what we can observe about the universe etc, either way science is verifiable testable repeatable because our senses are reliable, would you not agree? if you want to say that science has roots in philosophy, fine, but it isn't a "slave" to it, that's absurd, is astronomy a slave to astrology?, just wondering.

[huntmatuk]

There are lot of weird things in philosophy and they tend to over think things when no thinking is required. One of my pet hates is philosophy of science. There is no philosophy, there is only methodology. William Craig's notions of science is purely classical, he throws all quantum arguments away when in reality they are they key arguments.

In short, philosophy has no place in science.

[kpmadness]

To surmise: not having 100% certainty of the world through our senses = the existence of god.

It all makes sense now.

[Drgamedood]

@IoEstasCedonta Sorry atheist, but there just are basic unprovable assumptions that we all accept as the groundwork for other beliefs. The belief in the external, the reality of the past, that we are not brains in a vat, or living in matrix, the existence of other minds other than my own, etc. These are beliefs that just simply cannot be proven. However, they are properly basic beliefs. And we are warranted in believing that they are true precisely because they are properly basic beliefs.

[SolDeSaBelle]

hey there Mr. StrawMan !

[Ensiferu]

the op is completely correct. there is simply no discussing whether or not our senses are reliable. that they are not doesn't mean that all research is meaningless and you're better off dying right away, but feel free to do so, you will not be proven wrong (or right). on a sidenote, dillahunty has made similarly stupid claims about quantum physics, which leads me to think he is deliberately ignorant or plain stupid and if you think you need to defend him by downrating this video, you are too.

[IoEstasCedonta]

I don't need philosophy to prove I'm not living in the Matrix, because I don't need to prove I'm not living in the Matrix. If I'm in the Matrix, then I'll endeavor to study what's knowable of the Matrix.

That the laws of logic are "valid, true, and necessary" cannot be fundamentally proven through philosophy because any such proof would be circular. It can only be verified that their conclusions agree with our own data. For what can be proven, math, not philosophy, will do.

[Credesign]

You oversimplified his explanation and acts like you've just got some kind of freaking amazing insight ! Dude, he didn't say that just by checking on Don's senses, something would be proved. That was just his way of explaining it to the guy on the phone, who clearly wouldn't understand a more sophisticated argument. Anyway, he was just asserting about the perception of reality, and NOT about the foundation of his world view. Out of context, anything sounds ludacris.