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

4. Definitions 4.2 – I think Con misunderstands what I'm saying with regards to a criterion here. Unless he means to present evidence that the truth can be acquired by other means than the intellectual and deductive (which includes intuition), then it does no harm to his case. He has to establish that these can lead a person to knowledge of substantial truth(s). It fits his case entirely, so I don't know where the concern is. 5. Acquiring Knowledge 5.1 – Voters shouldn't be required to read anything outside of this debate beyond what's directly cited – he should provide any necessary background knowledge. If Con feels that there is some very important point from “What is Truth?” then he needs to state it and cite it. The most that should be required of voters is substantiation of points made in this debate. 5.2 – Con's burdens analysis is confusing. He's essentially stating that my case has to show that there is no other way one could gain knowledge, though by doing so he's requiring that I establish a negative case. That's inherently unreasonable. I can't prove a negative. I can prove that sensory experience contributes to knowledge, as I have, and then proceed to establish why my opponent's case doesn't link to the acquisition of substantial knowledge. We're comparing empiricism and rationalism, so all I have to do is show that rationalism doesn't lead to substantial knowledge and empricism does. 5.3 – Con is right that certain sense experiences are subjective. This doesn't encompass all sense experiences. There is no subjectivity to the phrase “the desk is solid.” If a flask of water is heated ot boiling, I don't think anyone's going to contest that it's not hot. Those pieces of knowledge can only be acquired by sense experience. 5.4 – Con misunderstands the point with regards to C. How people perceive the letter doesn't change what is written. It will still have the same dimensions, no matter how it's regarded. The subjectivity of the interpretation doesn't change the fact that there is objective knowledge acquired. 5.6 – Con is correct with this example. This is the crux of experimentation – we assess, using sensory experience, all of the conditions in which the pan currently exists, repeat those conditions, and expect the same result. I'm interested to see why Pro thinks this works for him. 6. Truth 6.1 – I did assess geometry at one point in my rebuttal. I'll get to that there. This point addresses something more fundamental than geometry, and that is what our basis for true knowledge should be. Even if Con establishes the truth of a given geometric equation, he must then show that it establishes knowledge of the external world. Con cannot simply wave away Hume's logic by saying it doesn't mention geometry (it does). 6.2 – This is a strange point. Con says that truth may be demonstrated to show validity, but possesses the essence of truth. So, if they were to be tested, truths must hold up to those tests and remain true. I agree, this is entirely the basis for establishing truth. The issue is that while something might actually be true, there is no reason to believe it is truth without that demonstrated validity. No matter what theory Con provides, it is solely unproven theory, and therefore lacks the basic standard of proof required to call it truth. 6.3 - ...This is theory. It's disprovable, I recognize that. Con has to go about disproving it. He can't do that solely by showing that this theory is not proven truth. There's no reason why the theory can't exist and not be empirically derived itself. I've provided warrants to support such a theory, and Con needs to attack those warrants rather than asserting that there's some inherent contradiction. The theory does not need to be considered empirically demonstrable in order for it to be rationally valid. 7. Intuition 7.1 – Not really. A priori simply means “from the earlier.” I made it quite clear that Con had to support a mechanism of acquiring this knowledge. One such mechanism is intuition, and one is reasoning. I think Con understand this. 7.2 – I know you don't, but you have to support it. I would say mathematics is insufficient, and I've shown why. 7.3 – Note that Con has not furnished a separate definition. He says we should use the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to define intuition, but apparently never looks at the page. It's a monster, with a lot of varying and slanted definitions.[1] If Con feels that there is a better definition, he must furnish it. It is not my burden to support a definition given without a competing definition. 8. Mathematics 8.1 – You're misunderstanding my point, and I made it quite clear further down in the debate. There's a difference between pure mathematics and applied mathematics. I've established that, if Con is to argue that pure mathematics is sufficient to meet his burden, then he must provide a solid link between that type of math and the external world. He has not met that burden. Perhaps he means to do so in the next round, but he has not done so here. The analytic a posteriori does exist. Many examples are stated in Saul Kripkey's book, Naming and Necessity. He talks about the proposition Hesperus is Phosphorus, because there was once a time in which people thought they were two different stars, but later found out that they were actually the same planet. They point to the same object but the truth was only found out as a result of empirical evidence. He's not the only one to disagree with Kant. Stephen Palmquist, in his book “A Priori Knowledge in Perspective: (II) Naming, Necessity and the Analytic A Posteriori” also disagrees, saying that “we should expect such knowledge, if it is possible, to have its validity grounded in some way in experience (a posteriori), and yet also to proceed by making inferences solely on the (analytic) basis of an application of the laws of logic to the concepts or propositions involved.” There's no inherent contradiction there, no reason why the two cannot coincide. In fact, Palmquist argues that philosophy actually requires these claims to function in its characteristic 'hypothetical' mode. Similarly, Thomas Case disagrees in his book “Physical Realm”: "Such is the outline of a realistic theory of self evident analytical judgments a posteriori, of which the points are, first, that such judgements are not always about names and conceptions, but also about objects of sense and reason; secondly, that we discover the objects by general reasoning from sense, by perfect abstraction apprehend a simple kind of object, and analyze it into subject and predicate by, not from, the principles of identity and difference, or contradiction, a posteriori; thirdly, that analytical judgements are self-evident to one who has abstracted the objects, universal without exception, and convertible; and, fourthly, that analytical judgements about objects of reason in the abstract are sometimes principles of science." (353-354) But beyond that, if Con is, at the most basic level, wrong in his assumptions of what mathematics is, then he cannot win this point. He's made absolutely no effort to support its syntheticity here, and thus has dropped his 1.2, a necessary link to his 1.5. If he cannot show that mathematics is “necessarily synthetic,” then he fails to garner anything from this contention. 8.2 – This is really irrelevant. If Con is right and mathematics is inherently unprovable, then it reveals absolutely no truths about the external world, which means he has failed in his burden to show that it is substantial knowledge of truth. Beyond that, this disagrees with his basic source, which is Kant, who argued that it was necessary to count points in order to assert their truth value. This is a necessary portion of Kant's argument, since it is necessary to establish a truth of the external world. So he's contradicting his source on the only mechanism for establishing substance. And this is the basis for considering Frege's point. Con's only rebuttal to Frege is Russell's paradox, something Frege responded to directly. The solution was endorsed by Russel directly in his “Principles of Mathematics.” As for the specific solution, Frege suggested that we can deny “that two propositional functions that determine equal classes must be equivalent.” He showed a distinction between sense and reference, specifically by saying that the sense is a “mode of presentation,” or simply a way of picking out its reference. We could take, for example, the equations 4+4 and 1*8, each of which have the same reference, but different senses. However, the logical system Russell uses conflates the two, which paves the way for the paradox. Con will have to show that the two should be conflated. But all of this is unimportant, as Con has not defended his conception against my attacks, and has instead just chosen to assault my source. So long as Con gives us no mechanism by which we can intuit the answer to that large equation I provided (and he, in fact, provides no analysis therein), he is inherently conceding that the sole mechanisms are to assert its truth and then prove it true. So long as mine is the only reasonable explanation of how to determine the truth value of any given mathematical statement, it is the one that should be preferred. 8.3 - ...If something is a posteriori, by its very nature, it is dependent on empirical evidence. That's not contradictory. Nor did I say that all mathematics is flawed, just that it is purely theoretical so long as it is not empirically proven. Con is correct that he may rebut arguments in the next round, and so for the time being I will merely extend all points on space and time and leave them for him to respond to. I will, however, point out that both are dependent on mathematics being a priori, since both are dependent on geometry. If mathematics is only proved a posteriori, then by necessity these two must also be a posteriori. Back to Con. 1.http://plato.stanford.edu...