Rowan-Trees t1_jdii3hu wrote
The truth-statement that all truths can be empirically verified is itself empirically unverifiable.
That does not undermine empiricism, but it does show its reliance on truths outside its own toolbox. Science is instrumental to knowledge. But its own methodological scaffolding goes beyond science itself. To know that we can know anything, an epistemology is necessary. Every scientist relies in someway on truth-values outside scientific observation to interpret their data. The basic question, "what is truth?" points us to empirical reasoning, but cannot itself be answered by empiricism. I dare anyone to try.
Edited to improve clarity.
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BernardJOrtcutt t1_jdl6wn5 wrote
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WrongAspects t1_jdu00r0 wrote
The point is to keep those things to an absolute minimum. In effect this means that everything is subject to testing and verification including things like the fundamental laws of logic.
The anti science crowd loves to pounce on hard solipsism or simulation theory to shit on science so they can feel justified in their belief in some form of supernatural or another.
Luklear t1_jdubaf0 wrote
Well said!
Ok_Meat_8322 t1_jdwsl8s wrote
>The truth-statement that all truths can be empirically verified is itself empirically unverifiable.
To be fair, if this is stipulated as a definition rather than a truth-claim, then this issue disappears. This was the problem with the "yeah but can verificationism be verified?" objection to Ayer and the positivists: it only works if verificationism is taken as a proposition rather than a definition or criterion of meaning (which is precisely how it was posited, at least by Ayer).
But ironically enough, I think verificationism and this claim about truth fail empirically; it is a demonstrable matter of empirical fact concerning human linguistic practice that we use language to do things other than assert empirical truths, and there are truths and types of knowledge that are meaningful but cannot be empirically verified (truths about the self obtained via introspection, for instance, all truths that are generalizations, poetic/literary truth, etc).
radiodigm t1_jeciz3d wrote
Can't we just say that there's no such thing as truth? Our epistemology, at least for model-dependent realists, assumes that there's no such baseline -- there's no static reality against which we must measure the success of our perceptions. Reality is instead just valued against a floating relationship between the knowledge and the observation's moment in space-time, a function of the relationship itself as well as the necessity and utility that motivated the acquisition of that particular knowledge. Empiricism could indeed answer that sort of question, anyway. Instead of what is our foundation for truth, it only has to tell us what is the best way to arrive at knowledge that ends up being most reliable to suit the motive for the observation.
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