Rationalist for mental issues, issues of understanding mind, thought, concepts, things like mathematics, logic, etc.

Empiricist for knowing the world outside of mind.

Does math have anything to do with the world outside of the mind?

As with logic, it's a way we think about relations, including with reference to experience, on the most abstract, generalized level. So yes, it has to do with the world outside of mind in that way.

I'm a phenomenologist, I don't know where that puts me on that spectrum. *drop mic*

In any case I'm a realist about philosophical questions but am uncertain as to how to approach them. I have a certain amount of skepticism regarding intuitions, unless we're talking about something that is straight up dependent on intuitions, like ethics. Your mind does not constrain reality, reality constrains your mind.

Both - we can clearly know both through reason, and through experience.

Both - we can clearly know both through reason, and through experience. — Agustino

Could you accept a scientific theory whose conclusions can't be verified experimentally, but which is satisfying by virtue of the number of loose ends it ties up?

Could you accept a scientific theory whose conclusions can't be verified experimentally, but which is satisfying by virtue of the number of loose ends it ties up? — Mongrel

Well no scientific conclusion can be verified - they can just be falsified. I believe reality is rational - thus the scientific conclusion in question has to fit in with everything else we know, just like a specific piece fits in a puzzle. So that is at minimum a condition I expect all scientific hypotheses to meet. If someone brings up the hypothesis that eating grass cures testicular cancer - well then I will dismiss it out of hand, because (1) a mechanism through which such a cure is achieved isn't provided, and (2) it disagrees with all the background knowledge we do have.

And what about research whose conclusion defies what makes the most sense to you? How would you handle that?

And what about research whose conclusion defies what makes the most sense to you? — Mongrel

Depends on the particular situation, I don't have a set of rules which would always apply, simply because there are too many variables involved. Generally if I disagree with a certain research and its conclusions, I will either disagree in its interpretation, or I will pinpoint some defects that have to do with its methodology. It is quite easy to engineer a result if you need it through your research method.

Cool, thanks! This question might seem to be coming out of left field, but it's related to stuff I've been pondering lately. Does God or divinity play a role in your thinking about the universe?

Cool, thanks! This question might seem to be coming out of left field, but it's related to stuff I've been pondering lately. Does God or divinity play a role in your thinking about the universe? — Mongrel

No. The universe, for me, consists of physics, and stuff amenable to physical investigation. Existence is larger than just this however. Nothing - no scientific conclusion - has anything to do with religion. All that it has to do with is the physical world. Regardless of what the physical world is like, the other realms of experience are left unchanged - hence meta-physics - valid for all physics.

The universe, for me, consists of physics, and stuff amenable to physical investigation. Existence is larger than just this however. — Agustino

Could you expand on this? I'm not quite understanding.

Could you expand on this? I'm not quite understanding. — Mongrel

Existence contains non-physical elements (which are objective - they really do exist - contrary to what some are inclined to think) - meaning, love, hope, value, etc (as well as the universe). The universe contains physical objects - chairs, atoms, houses, bodies, etc.

Existence contains non-physical elements — Agustino

How is that different from saying that non-physical things exist?

How is that different from saying that non-physical things exist? — Mongrel

It isn't. But they certainly don't exist "in" the universe. For to exist "in" something is to be physical. They existence "in" only by analogy.

OK. You're saying there are things which exist, but which have no location. Right?

OK. You're saying there are things which exist, but which have no location. Right? — Mongrel

Which aren't physical, so in-so-far as this entails not having a location, yes.

OK. Thanks!

No worries :)

For me, you are performing an incoherent separation here. "Meaning, love, hope, value" are not in things in the sense of "being contained' by them, but in the sense of being inherent in them. This is just what it means to say that God is immanent, 'right here with us', as opposed to transcendent ' impossibly distant from us'. So, to refer back to our other discussion it is not a matter of "immanentizing the eschaton"; the eschaton is inherently immanent, and how could it be intelligibly otherwise?

For me, you are performing an incoherent separation here. "Meaning, love, hope, value" are not in things in the sense of "being contained' by them, but in the sense of being inherent in them. — John

I agree with Aristotle about most things - forms are immanent. But the Neo-Platonists also have a point about Forms which are transcendent - don't have an object in this world.

This is just what it means to say that God is immanent, 'right here with us', as opposed to transcendent ' impossibly distant from us' — John

Immanent also has connotations of meaning something that can become another object for you. Something is immanent - it can be an object to a subject. God cannot be an object to a subject. Therefore God is not immanent.

So, to refer back to our other discussion it is not a matter of "immanentizing the eschaton"; the eschaton is inherently immanent, and how could it be intelligibly otherwise? — John

The end of history is immanent? Where is it? I don't see an end anywhere. That's precisely what is meant by transcendence. The "end" that you speak of never occurs - not in this immanent sense. There will never be an "end of history" or "end of the world" in this sense. The transcendent end - that is a different story, and Voegelin does agree with a largely Augustinian historiography which separates the City of Man from the City of God.

Strictly speaking, the sorts of things he is talking about do not exist at all. Rather, the are logical expressions. Existence (the physical) means in ways which do not exist-- from the meaning of somone's happiness, to the ethical significance of an action, the meaning of a rock or the significance of a fiction.

Thanks for remedying my foolishness Wise Willow :D

Strictly speaking, the sorts of things he is talking about do not exist at all. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Are you a physicalist? My original theory was supposed to match-up rationalists and empiricists with beliefs about divinity, but it's not working out so far.

So how about you? What do you think of

1. Scientific theories which are intellectually satisfying, but can't be proven experimentally, and

2. Research, the conclusion of which defies reason.

I agree with Aristotle about most things - forms are immanent. But the Neo-Platonists also have a point about Forms which are transcendent - don't have an object in this world. — Agustino

I would agree, obviously, that forms are immanent, but not that any forms have objects in this world; they are objects, or modes of being, in this world. There is no Form of love, hope, or meaning separate from the forms of love, hope or meaning, for example.

Immanent also has connotations of meaning something that can become another object for you. Something is immanent - it can be an object to a subject. God cannot be an object to a subject. Therefore God is not immanent. — Agustino

Being immanent has no such connotations for me. Immanence is the being of things; being cannot become an object for a subject, to say that is to evince an incoherent dualistic mode of thinking, that is, if you intend it to carry any significance beyond being merely a convenient mode of locution; to repeat: being is immanent in both subject and object.

The end of history is immanent? Where is it? I don't see an end anywhere. That's precisely what is meant by transcendence. The "end" that you speak of never occurs - not in this immanent sense. There will never be an "end of history" or "end of the world" in this sense. The transcendent end - that is a different story, and Voegelin does agree with a largely Augustinian historiography which separates the City of Man from the City of God. — Agustino

Again, this expresses a misunderstanding of Hegel. A man so extraordinarily brilliant, quite possibly the greatest philosopher ever (or along with Aristotle) wasn't stupid enough to believe that after his philosophy was completed, humanity would cease to change and evolve. He only believed that his philosophy has completed the circle of the historical dialectical unfoldment of consciousness as philosophy. Thus, there are no possible new questions now, that is. Philosophical questions now are, to quote Hegel, "the same old stew, reheated". Barfield thinks that Hegel has completed philosophy to make way for anthroposophy (as he [Barfield, that is] was a disciple of Steiner's work). Now, with modern science being where it is, spiritual science is possible; which will yield endlessly new knowledge in the spiritual evolution of humanity, if all goes well.

In a sense, yes. All states of existence are physical. I'm not a reductive physicalist. The world is more than any description of any state of existence. All states are material though, whether they be rocks or experience. There's no gap in causality which logic needs to fill. (i.e. idealism or anti-realism).

So 1. impossible. Any scientific theory proposes an empirical state which may be tested. Sometimes it may be such that a hypothesis is not tested, given that we have not yet made the relevant observations, in many cases due to lacking the tools to make the observation-- e.g. relativity, Higgs-Boson, etc.,etc. All that means is that a relevant observation hasn't been yet. Any scientific hypothesis or theory may be tested and proven (even if no-one ever does).

2. is also incoherent because any hypothesis or theory assumes a meaning. To say anything about the world involves speaking ita logical expressions. Research can only be coherent and senisble, else one cannot be talking about the world and one is not doing research at all.

Do you easily and naturally believe that the outcome of a thought experiment can tell you something important about the world? If so, you, along with Leibniz, Newton, Spinoza, and Einstein (among others) lean toward rationalism.

Do you tend to squint an eye at grand theories and prefer instead to be guided by good quality studies and experimentation? Then you, along with most doctors, engineers, and John Locke, lean toward empiricism. — Mongrel

Either may be the best approach, depending on the problem and the resources at hand. I suppose I lean towards empiricism. I'm a simple peasant and I like evidence that can be cut and dried. Rationalism is probably way over my head.

I suppose I lean towards empiricism. I'm a simple peasant and I like evidence that can be cut and dried. Rationalism is probably way over my head. — Bitter Crank

Me as well. The conclusions of good research seem concrete to me in a way that elegant rational projects don't.. although I occasionally find I have a lot of respect for people who do put their eggs in a rationalist basket.

So what about the place divinity holds in your views? Or perhaps maybe the question should be: are you a physicalist? I think in some ways it might end up being the same question.

Thanks!

A boring answer, but my thought is that Kant pretty much wrote the book on that particular distinction -- "Thoughts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.", where intuitions can be understood to take up the empirical side of the question of knowledge.

I would say that it's unreasonable, even, to favor one side over the other. Neither can stand in substitution or even in superiority to the other -- as far as (scientific) knowledge is concerned, they are interdependent.