Wednesday, October 17, 2007

EMPIRICISM

Why is empiricism true? Why should we believe that all knowledge of the external world is developed through sensory experience, or has it’s origins in sensory experience? (This second formulation is more interesting.) What precisely is wrong with metaphysics?

Modern versions of “traditional” empiricism are concerned with only the input side of cognition. The inputs to the black box. The workings of the box were irrelevant: science-psychology. But stopping at the input is an arbitrary position, and the opposition’s position is based on theories of what’s going on inside the box. Rationalism is about more than input. Metaphysics depends on a theory of what’s happening in the box, on mentalism, in fact on interactive dualism, although proponents may not always admit it or even realize it.


Empiricism needs a reformulation in terms of information theory.

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