I think it’s fair to say that most people are drawn to science and philosophy because these are systems based on hard rationality… they don’t require belief or a belief-system to give context to the inquiry into the nature of the universe.
This idea (“I’m not kidding myself by blindly believing something that is unverifiable”) is, I think, very important to most scientists and philosophers.
What I write about here challenges that idea, and from the responses I have received, it seems that this is a particularly difficult concept for scientists and philosophers to hear or assimilate.
To date the idea below has received very little logical rebuttal (though I have received lots of abuse for raising it – perhaps in part because of the way I had previously worded it).
If you are interested in asking meaningful questions that may take you to unexpected and probably uncomfortable places, please read on. If you are rigid in your ideas and unable to assimilate any thought that does not adhere to your currently accepted paradigms, please don’t waste your time reading the rest of this article (and don’t waste mine by commenting).
It is widely accepted that science and philosophy are based on logic and empiricism. These are the fundamental tenets that underpin all scientific and philosophical thinking and enquiry.
Logic and empiricism are not just the fundamental tenets of science and philosophy though; they underpin all human thought. There is no communication between humans, and there is no human thought-system, that does not fundamentally require logic and empiricism.
As we can see, logic and empiricism are central to the way we all think and experience the universe around us.
As a result, these tenets of our thinking – logic and empiricism – often go unquestioned; we consider them to be practically absolute.
But are they absolute? What happens when we question them? And why should we question them?
Before we answer these questions, let’s take a moment to look at the concept of tautologically justified belief-systems…
The most common and valid criticism of religion from a philosophical perspective is that it is based on an unverifiable belief-system. It is this that most scientists and philosophers find insupportable… “You are asking me to believe something that just doesn’t make sense to me and for which there is no physical verification. This is unacceptable.”
Most religions tend to be quite consistent within their belief-system. Logic is used within the parameters of the paradigm that defines the belief-system.
For example, the Christians believe that the bible is the word of God, and therefore everything in the bible is true. The evidence to substantiate this is found in the bible.
This is a tautology; a self-referential or circular argument, that will inevitably prove itself to be correct and accurate and therefore logically cohesive and impenetrable from attack.
This is a good description of a belief-system; a tautological, self-referring, circular cohesive concept structure that inevitably proves itself to be accurate…
Rational thinkers, understandably, tend to scoff at tautological systems, but it should be remembered that the stability of this concept structure (the tautological belief-system) is essential to the human mind in order that it can make sense of the universe within which it finds itself. Without this stability, sanity is not possible (for further explanation of the concept of belief-systems and their importance to thought-systems and rationality, please read ([we don’t get to choose what we believe…]( http://interestingideasthatmissthepoint.blogspot.com/p/we-dont-get-to-choose-what-we-believe.html)).
To demonstrate that science and philosophy are significantly different from religions and belief-systems, it is necessary to illustrate that the foundations of the concept structures in science and philosophy are different from the concept structures found in all religions and belief-systems. In other words it would be necessary to demonstrate that the concept structures of science and philosophy are not tautological.
As we stated above, the fundamental tenets (concept structures) of science and philosophy are logic and empiricism.
All we know about logic is that it gives a logical result. This is not unreasonable, but it leaves us in a bind that we usually tend to ignore. The bind is that there is no external verification of logic, i.e., nothing external to logic indicating that logic is ‘correct’ or ‘accurate’ or ‘real’, etc., we therefore look to logic to verify itself...
Empiricism is based on observation. It postulates that through repeated observation we can obtain knowledge and learn the truth about the universe… How do we know that observation yields knowledge? Well it’s demonstrated by observing empiricism. Observation of observation indicates that the observation yielded knowledge… the only problem with this is that we’ve used observation to verify itself…
The fact that logic and empiricism cannot be externally verified indicates that in effect they are tautological… and therefore that science and philosophy has a concept structure that is tautological (unverifiable and self-referring).
This is very significant, because it means that the criticism levelled at most religions and belief-systems by philosophers – that the systems are tautological and therefore invalid – can and should also be levelled by the same philosophers against science and philosophy!
In other words, it would not be terribly inaccurate (though terribly unpopular with scientists and philosophers, of course) to include science and philosophy under the category: religions and belief-systems.
Expecting most scientists and philosophers to accept the above is a little like expecting Christians to accept that maybe, just maybe, the bible isn’t quite what they think it might be.
This is really difficult for rational thinking people to accept… but unfortunately it’s kind of irrefutable… or at least nobody yet has taken a good go at it (I get lots of abuse, but nobody sticks with the argument and discounts it).
This argument does not discounting the value of logic, or science, or philosophy… neither does it use logic to discount logic… (these are common, inaccurate, and boring arguments raised against the above), it uses logic to see the limitations of logic… everything has limitations; nothing is absolute (unless of course you believe God to be so…!)
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