Un si beau coin!

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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.

Susan Haack has some decent work on the subject.

I take issue with her arguments on demarcation and falsifiability a little bit, and I think she is a little guilty of nut-picking fallacies when talking about the extent to which at people hold to scientism.

That said, I think she does a good job explaining how we can have issues with science, and how some people view it. How we need to be aware of the intricacies of science, not just fall for anything labelled as science, and not forget that science it is susceptible to human error.

She also rebuts the common misconceptions of science and philosophy being separate, or science and religion being parts of separate domains.

People dangerously conflate anti-science with scientism as a way to avoid the tension between modern science and outdated beliefs(often religious or spiritual ones). But its key to remember science is simply the best philosophical method we have for discovering truth and knowledge. I would not say its the only way to knowledge, as thats too strong, and we run into serious definitional games and grey areas.

While i mostly agree with Susan's definition with scientism(kind of like gullibility for anything with the label science), I think most people who use the term are anti-science people who straw-man science or attempt a tu quoque fallacy to blissfully hold their unscientific beliefs on equal footing.

Bien le bonjour de Knowlton!

You can't successfully engage meaningfully with substance that presupposes something that is meaningless. Essentially if we can't agree on definitions then no meaningful speech can take place.

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There are other ways, such as personal experience, you can know something about yourself. But scientific evidence is the best way to demonstrate a truth you have come across to others and so be able to more easily get them to act on it and organise with that truth in mind. Science, like democracy, isn't perfect, it's just the best solution to a problem we've come up with so far.

That's the problem with things that are defined as "excessive." They are, by definition, bad. If it's not a bad amount, it's not excessive, which means it's not scientism.

Here is one.

Let us grant a couple premises. First the belief that a cookie consent banner that provides a large button to accept and a multiple-click, read the policy first on another page opt-out process, complies with a law that says opt out has to be just as easy to opt in. Second, that your developers are more likely to use such a banner if they believe it's legal than if they knew they were doing something illegal. Third, that you are going to use the tracking information gathered via dark patterns implying consent by default not to sell to data brokers, but to actually better target marketing of your own publication. Fourth, that reading your epistemology journal will actually make the readers you target better at epistemology.

I think I might have discovered an epistemically useful false belief?

You're arguing about definitions. How about the substance?

Iain McGilchrist has written a 3 volume tome that effectively and scientifically counters the current trend of left-brain dominance.

You cannot divorce science from philosophy. The hole created will fill with market currency.

Thanks for the read. I enjoyed Kant in college. I studied art and philosophy. I like his sobering view of intoxicants here….

“Just as such instances of imaginative abandon never result in great works of art, the aesthetic experience of intoxication – however powerful – lacks the edifying qualities Kant attributed to ‘the beautiful’.”

The meaning of the term "scientism" is "excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques.". Yet the article says: "there is 'excessive' scientism, and 'not excessive' scientism, but no one holds that excessive scientism views, so we won't discuss them".

>...most attention has been focused on the most radical version (upper left corner), which states that the natural sciences are the only valid form of knowledge. This is a pretty extreme view, which would imply that all of the humanities and social sciences are just rubbish. I believe this version of scientism is relatively easy to knock down, but in fact barely anyone holds it

So not only the article perverted the meaning of the term, but after that they artificially pre-picked only 'good' meanings, and this way "proved" that scientism is therefore good for you. Very scientific way to "prove" things.

We are so sorry. We tried to remedy it with all the beer after the fact but that only makes it worse most of the time.

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Studies have shown that our brains make decisions before we're even aware of them. Isn't that enough evidence to conclude that libertarian free will is false? If you were truly free in your choices, you would be aware of them at the same time as you make them.

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True "small" is relative but, taking into account the scale of the city, those 170k are pretty scattered.

No, no! We didn't have "modern" consciousness before that. Just be thankful that you don't instead have that dusty old pre-modern variety.

"small town" of 170 000 just east of Montreal 😜

I'd like you to describe this "subjective immortality" experience a bit more, or at least how you imagine it. Is it just like, I die, and then my point of view shifts to another "me", elsewhere in the universe?

If I've understood your thought experiment correctly, then I'm convinced you haven't preserved continuity of consciousness — in fact, it has been explicitly interrupted. As a counter-example, imagine creating a perfect clone of yourself. Your subjective experience won't suddenly be you looking through two sets of eyes; you'll have your consciousness, and the clone will have theirs. If you choose to kill yourself, you won't suddenly "take over" the clone's consciousness; it'll keep having its consciousness, while your brain will have permanently (?) stopped being conscious. CGP Grey has a nice video on the "Star Trek teleporter problem" where he goes over pretty much this exact topic, particularly as it relates to the Ship of Theseus problem.

In my understanding, the key missing factor is hiding in your second paragraph — the continuous sense of identity relates to that arrangement of atoms, as it persists continuously through time.

I've always wanted to visit Jena, if for no other reason than to walk in the footsteps of Hegel and Napoleon point of proximity.