Empiricism: The root of all knowlege?

[Undertow]

In recent times, I've dawned on an idea. First off, forgive me if you all already know this. I'm like a 2 year old when it comes to philosophy, so bear with me.

The assertion is this - Empiricism is the root of all knowlege.

Now for why -

First, I want you to imagine what it would be like for you, in your present state, to loose all senses; sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste. What would it be like? Would you suddenly lose all knowlege? Well, no, you'd still have memorised knowlege, correct? You would just no longer be able to recieve new stimuli and thus form new knowlege

Ok, secondly, I want you to imagine what it would be like to have never had any of the five senses. In other words, from the moment of your conception, you've carried a mutation that renders all five senses functionless. You come out of your mother, but you can't gain any knowlege whatsoever. Why? Because you can't recieve stimuli, of course. You can't even get the triggers you need to start innate behaviours or to know how to avoid getting killed. You'd have the cognative depth of a bacterium apart from those brain functions that regulate vital signs.

So I argue; we must all have senses before we even contemplate figuring out anything whatsoever i.e. we must all be empirical before we are philosophical, scientific or even spiritual.

Ok, pick it to pieces, people.

[Beto]

Please forgive a bit of 'cut and paste'. Perhaps you might find it relevent to your topic;

(Bronowski, 374). "One aim of the physical sciences," he said, "has been to give an exact picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that aim is unattainable" (353)

..failure of the scientific method to provide an unassailable. objectivity respecting knowledge and truth
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No matter how brilliantly Science has understood the mechanics of the material world, it is a remarkably ineffective tool for deciphering the mysteries of human misery. Even with thousands of "experts" telling us what's wrong, and measuring it, self-knowledge is on the decline. In America, the most technologically advanced country on earth, one has to be oblivious not to hear a din of sorrow and private disappointment just below the gabble of our TV’s and the hum of our personal computers. Where is the expertise that can explain us to ourselves? The scientific method is inadequate for such revelations. No matter how many developmental models we formulate to explain why and when we do things, no matter how extensive the revealed neurochemical connections, psycho-biology must always collaborate with human freedom - the curse of dealing with a creature for whom visual symbols, art and language, are a defining characteristic. Such a collaboration entails nothing less than a deeper respect for the singularity of our lives, a recognition of those immensely specific contingencies that belong only to our own individual experience. In other words, the business of art - the inner gaze, and those strategies for sharpening its clarity. Who else but the artist, insisting upon the primacy of individual experience, can reclaim the private territory ceded to experts - to those well-meaning and well-socialized professionals who created the idea of normal people just when the corporations needed a work force?
-Newsletter, Institute of the Arts, Duke University

Science and the Scientific Method can only deal with the material universe. That is what it was designed to do. The metaphysical questions and answers are, by definition outside, beyond, physics.
-Book of Fudd

Empiricism fails, as demonstrated by quantum theory. (See: Double slit experiment and the implications therefrom)

When it comes to the quantum theory, it does NOT fail. The double slit experiment IS direct data, and it demonstrateble and reproducible. Who ever wrote about how
Empiricism fails does not understand either what empiricism is, nor do they understand QM. Science can be consider methodologically empirical, and the
various experiments demonstrating the QM are the METHODS science uses.

You're right. Observation collapses the wave function. This IS empirical data retrieved from trials.

"The metaphysical questions and answers are, by definition outside, beyond, physics."

Classical physics, sure. Quantum physicists can, and do, address metaphysical questions. It would be interesting to know how a being with no senses from conception, dreams.

You have yet to show that quantum physicists address metaphysical questions.
If a model can be tested, and the results checked against, then it is not 'metaphysical' but physical.

Alright then, metaphysical questions to everyone except a quantum physicist. For example, Hameroff theorizes on platonic values being embedded in the quantum fabric of the universe. Of course he has no testable model for it, but he theorizes about it nonetheless.

[Goat]

Alright then, metaphysical questions to everyone except a quantum physicist. For example, Hameroff theorizes on platonic values being embedded in the quantum fabric of the universe. Of course he has no testable model for it, but he theorizes about it nonetheless.

Until he can come up with a model, then his speculations are not part of QM. It is his personal quirk. Individual scientists might or might not indulge in metaphysics, but the actual 'science' part of is has to be confirmed with observations and data.

[Beto]

Alright then, metaphysical questions to everyone except a quantum physicist. For example, Hameroff theorizes on platonic values being embedded in the quantum fabric of the universe. Of course he has no testable model for it, but he theorizes about it nonetheless.

Until he can come up with a model, then his speculations are not part of QM. It is his personal quirk. Individual scientists might or might not indulge in metaphysics, but the actual 'science' part of is has to be confirmed with observations and data.

You're quick to assume his theories aren't based on observations and data. Being a scientist he doesn't speculate from thin air, right? Have you read anything he published?

[Nameless]

Please forgive a bit of 'cut and paste'...
Empiricism fails, as demonstrated by quantum theory. (See: Double slit experiment and the implications therefrom)

When it comes to the quantum theory, it does NOT fail. The double slit experiment IS direct data, and it demonstrateble and reproducible. Who ever wrote about how
Empiricism fails does not understand either what empiricism is, nor do they understand QM.

I'm sorry, but it is you who does not inderstand.
The double slit experiment has shown that an observer is uniquely indivividually integral with that which is being 'observed' ('Everything is One', to the enlightened).
Each 'observation', not only when done by 'different people', but even when done by the same person in any different moment! There is no 'one size, out there, fits all' truth/universe.
There is no objective observation. Now science knows that 'present reality' and can extricate itself from some of the mess that those 'beliefs' has caused, and move on.
It will take awhile.

[Nameless]

You're right. Observation collapses the wave function. This IS empirical data retrieved from trials.

Yes, each uniquely individual observer's observation can be considered 'data' for consideration. All the observational data perforce having individual variance. And the experiment CANNOT ever be absolutely repeated because, if nothing else, the time factor can never be repeated (for obvious reasons.

It would be interesting to know how a being with no senses from conception, dreams.

Wouldn't the mental workins have to address the prior problem of there never having been record of any "being with no senses from conception". So that fantasy would have to preceed the foundational fantasy.
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