I asked a question earlier that I have had for a long time. I am re-posting it in its own thread because it got buried among all of the other arguments in the original thread.
What am I missing?
You’re confusing empiricism with synthetic a priori. Empiricism is, more-or-less, using the scientific method. Synthetic a priori is using facts and then deducing things from those facts.
That’s the short answer.
Not really, Empiricism in the sense of Aristotle and company would include thoughts and feelings. So, empiricism of this sort would be classified as synthetic apriorism which it isn’t. shrugs What one needs to understand that empiricism is not positivism.
Unfortunately, distinctive definitions of terms like empricism, positivism, realism and their variations don’t seem to be consistently applied very often, so things get even more confusing, especially on the internet.
But every science does that . . .
Now, where is the long answer?
I tried to reply to this twice last night but, for some reason, my reply would not post. I should not have used the word “empiricism”, I simply meant “empirical”.
" ‘Empirical’ refers to the use of working hypotheses that are testable using observation or experiment". To argue whether or not AE uses “empiricism” is way above my pay grade. I did not intend to open a can of worms.
If you’re prepared to do some reading, I can tell you. And no, not every science is axiomatic-deductive. They’re mostly (supposedly) hypothetico-deductive. There are exceptions.
Student discuss’s how A Priori augments your testing to improve the quality of your results.
This seems like a good tread to try to tap into this forums collective knowledge for a bit of help.
I am looking for some important philosophy of science sources that are against the use of a priori knowledge in social sciences.
There seems to be a lot about the flaws of empiricism in the social sciences but I have trouble actually finding some sources for why we should use it as much as it is used…
I am always “prepared to do some reading”.
Is the law of the conservation of matter and energy, a part of the foundation of physics, not an un-falsifiable “axiom”?
Good question! Yes it is not an unfalsifiable axiom. The conservation of energy principle, practically is equivalent to the fisrt law of thermodynamics, and the laws of thermodynamics are the most empirically supported laws of physics. They were derived using the hypothetico-deductive method from experimental phenomena.
HOWEVER: What is very interesting, is that as time progressed and the empirical meaning and content of these laws was realised, it began to be seen that we could not even conceive in a certain sense of a universe at variance with them, for instance; with the 2nd law of thermodynamics:
In the Boltzmann formulation states that the number of different ways of ordering a system increases or stays the same with time, hence causing entropy to increase. Yet, since this is the only physical law that dictates a direction in time, with the rest being time symmetric; we would not even be able to reason time, since it would be indistinguishable whether a process, was moving “forward” or backward. All we would be left with perhaps is a notion of periodicity, aside of the fact humans would not exist in such a universe.
Loschmidt’s paradox describes quite well the problem of translating the modelled time symmetric motion of molecular particles to entropy increasing processes that occur on a larger scale. I think the H theorem ultimately concludes the 2nd law as a statistical law, with microdeviations, but I digress…
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How is it possible to falsify that principle, the law of the conservation of matter and energy?
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Well, consider instead the first two laws of motion of Newton. Together, are they not an un-falsifiable “axiom”?
But do we, on the level of macroscopy, ever actually refer to that principle, that the entropy of a system tends to increase, in our everyday evaluation of the direction or nature of time? Plus, anyway, how does that principle apply to living systems?
By creating a perpetual motion machine of the first kind.
Please see today’s daily article “Why Friedman Misunderstood Physics and Mises was right about Economics.” It provides the story of how the conservation of energy principle was formulated.
Also, strictly the conservation of matter principle is erroneous since it can be violated by converting mass to energy(E=mc^2). It is only the energy principle that stands in modern physics.
Shouldn’t the same be true for energy? The formula kinda implies energy can be turned into matter?
Which also happens with small amounts of sub-atomic particles all the time from what I understand. It just very difficult to create whole atoms since it takes enormous amounts of energy and have a tendency to create anti-matter at the same time…
I understand what you’re saying, the short answer is that mass is understood as just another “manifestation” of energy. Hence, in total there is energy conservation.
Its not that we should not use empiricism. Its that we should use it ‘responsibly’. The video I posted above the gentlemen talks about how you take an a prioristic approach before employing your a posteriori testing. IT reduces your lab time and improves your results. Other wise your just a tester aimless testing jumping on any random result you find.
That (what filc said) and, hypothesis are founded upon an assumption. The hypothesis is built off of what is known to be impossible. Meaning. If it is logical that something is impossible, known to be such aprior, the hypothesis is the contrariety of what is impossible. Yet because it is the opposite of what is impossible doesn’t mean it’s the sole possible solution. There can be other possible explanations. But since that possibility isn’t aprior universal, it can mean that it is a possibly amongst many yet to be known possibilities. In other words, more hypothesis are made to further develop the on-going research. Many hypothesis can be correct and therefore a growing theory arises. It’s good or valuable to be rational, meaning, using deductive and hypothetical methods.
It seems to be about natural sciences though which are different. Electricity generally behaves in the same way under the same conditions. Human X and human Y … not so much.
I am writing an essay where I am supposed to define a priori knowledge and write about appropriate applications for it in social sciences. I found it surprisingly difficult to dig up sources favouring the use of empirical testing even though not doing so is basically considered scientific misconduct. I may just be searching wrong though…
Then read Mises’s Ultimate Foundation of the Economic Science, Hoppe’s Economic Science and the Austrian Method, Long’s book on Wittgenstein and Mises, Selgin’s Praxeology & Understanding, Hollis and Nell’s Rational Economic Man and Blanshard’s Reason and Analysis. In addition you might want to pick up BonJour’s In Defense of Pure Reason and read Hoppe’s In Defense of Extreme Rationalism. I know this seems like a lot, but it’s a complex topic that requires reading to be understood.
It’s a law. Whether it is unfalsifiable or not I do not deign to know. Bear in mind physicists will accept a whole host of axioms in doing their research (like the law of noncontradiction) to make sense of it. So to that extent all scientific inquiry is theory-laden. The question is rather whether praxeology needs to resort to testing to verify its claims, or whether proceeding deductively from well-known empirical truths/axioms (the latter of which are truths the denial of which leads to contradiction; I am not sure denying the law of conservation of matter and energy is in any sense axiomatic in this way) is sufficient. If the latter it will differ from how positivists envision most sciences proceeding, incl. physics.
I will do that.
Well, I do not understand why you believe that those two situations, (a) “resort[ing] to testing to verify its claims” and (b) “proceeding deductively from well-known empirical truths”, are mutually exclusive. For, if (a) your body of theory includes the assumption that the distribution of abilities among individuals is non-uniform and (b) you want to constantly apply that body of theory to reality, you have to constantly verify, like you would any other assumption, that the content of the assumption still conforms to the nature of reality. So, in that sense, it does indeed “require continuous testing”. The only uniqueness is that the experience of any layman whatever conforms to the content of that assumption, it is “common sense”. But, ultimately, the method appears to be identical.