This House Believes That Sense Experience Is The Ultimate Source of Knowledge!

Thank you to Ajab for challenging me to this debate, and as requested, I will begin here. I'd actually spent quite a bit of time looking into the philosophy behind this before coming up with this post. But as you'll notice, I'm not going to be spending much time addressing the philosophical, at least not here. I decided to defend empiricism as a scientist rather than a philosopher. Remember how Pro defined empiricism and rationalism: Empiricism, at its core, emphasizes experience and evidence in the creation of knowledge. In other words, I'm arguing for the theory that states that knowledge is acquired a posteriori, as opposed to rationalism's a priori stance, which views knowledge as coming from the use of logic. Note that these aren't mutually exclusive views, yet, within the context of this debate, they have been apportioned to each side. While it is not Con's burden that he argue solely for rationalism, he still must argue for rationalism playing a substantive role in the generation of knowledge. And speaking of rationalism, I'm going to provide another definition (note that neither of these definitions clash with Con's, they're simply meant to clarify). Rationalism is defined as a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive."[1] So it will be a part of his burden to show how knowledge is acquired by those means, just as it is a part of mine to show how knowledge is acquired using the senses. Con says I have the larger burden of proof, and he is right, since I am affirming a resolution that asserts that sense experience is the ultimate source of knowledge. I'd like to clarify his burden. Con's burden is to support the claim that rationalism is a significant part of how we as human beings acquire knowledge. It is not sufficient for Pro to poke holes in my arguments. It is also insufficient for Con to win a single example and win the debate, as he must also show that anything he's winning is significant. A single example may be sufficient if and only if Con provides analysis showing that it plays an integral role in our general thinking. So this is the basis for our debate. I must show that empiricism is the basis for the vast majority of our knowledge gains, and Con must prove that rationalism represents a substantive source of knowledge through other means. Now, let's think about this logically. How does someone acquire new knowledge? At our core, we are all scientists, experiencing the world through our senses. We can afford something the color "green" because our eyes see that color. We might be told a fascinating tale, and we would now know that tale because we had heard it with our ears. We might be presented with a piece of sandpaper, and we would know it to be rough and coarse because we run our fingers over it and test it, or seen its effects on a surface. We could taste seawater and know it to be extremely bitter and salty only because we had tastebuds to relay that information. We might even smell the air near that body of water and detect a strong hint of salt, our noses becoming the source of knowledge. These are all sense experiences, and the basic ways we obtain knowledge. We may process that knowledge differently, but the knowledge is still obtained by means of the senses. I may see a large letter "C" written on a page and interpret it as a letter in the English alphabet, whereas another person may simply see a thin crescent. In either case, the input is still the symbol on a page, and therefore the knowledge is the same. Every bit of knowledge we gain is knowledge gained from input, and the route that input takes is always sensory. If it is argued, as it will be by Con, that certain pieces of knowledge may not result from experience, then I would argue that these aren't really knowledge. They're fabrications, attempts to make knowledge where the necessary experience cannot be garnered. As such, while I take the largest burden in this debate due to the structure, Con is the one with the highest mountain to climb in order to substantiate his point. Not only does he need to show how knowledge can be acquired without sensory input and show that those pieces are in no way rooted in empirical analysis, but he also needs to show how that knowledge can be construed as true without said inputs. It is simple for me to substantiate any given sensory input as truth, since it easily becomes a shared experience and therefore shared knowledge. There is truth when an experiment can be performed by multiple people and the same result obtained every time " that is the basis of the scientific method. However, this same process is not possible for anything that is not sensory, since two people effectively cannot experience it in the same fashion, and therefore there is no verifiability. All that is possible is to make assumptions as to what exists beyond our sensory knowledge, and assumptions are not in and of themselves knowledge of any truth. The knowledge gained is not substantial because it doesn't exist as a piece of information that expands beyond the person who conceives of it, as that knowledge is only passed on through sensory information. I'm not a big fan of preempting arguments in the opening round, so I will instead choose to leave this round a little short, and await Con's opening arguments. 1. Bourke, Vernon J., "Rationalism," p. 263 in Runes (1962).