On the Limits of Empiricism, Or Why I Have Faith: An Existential Argument for Metaphysics of Belief
Channel: School World Order
Date: 2021-09-14

In this video, I argue that a posteriori empirical methods of epistemology must be rooted in a priori, or pre-suppositional, ideas, which are fundamentally metaphysical in nature. Without belief, or faith, in such a priori metaphysical ideas, empiricism devolves into skepticism and subjectivism.

While empirical epistemologies, such as the scientific method, are grounded in the observation and/or measurement of data and sensory experience, the ability to quantify or qualify such data and experience requires that these data and experiences be calculated within the epistemological frameworks of a priori categories of reasoning, such as abstract modes of analysis, including comparison, contrast, cause, effect, correlation, generalization, classification, and principle. Since these abstract modes of reasoning themselves cannot be empirically measured or observed, it must be presupposed, or believed, that they are objectively real. Stated differently, because these abstract modes of reasoning cannot be empirically measured or observed, we must take a "leap of faith" that they are objectively real in order to use them to categorize and calculate empirical data and observations.

In sum, since these abstract modes of reasoning must be pre-supposed through belief or faith, they can only be objectively realized as metaphysics, or, in other words, as "first causes" or "first principles."

To illustrate the metaphysical nature of these a priori modes of abstract reasoning, which can only be pre-supposed through belief, or faith, I explicate the Pre-Socratic philosophy of Zeno's "paradox of motion"; the empirical philosophy of David Hume's "problem of causation"; the transcendental-idealist philosophy of Immanuel Kant's "wall"; and the existential philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard's "leap of faith."

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Links to references and citations:

Aristotle's Cosmology (University of Idaho)
https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/103/aristotle.htm

Zeno's paradoxes (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://iep.utm.edu/zeno-par/

Zeno's paradoxes (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes

Uncertainty Principle (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-uncertainty/

Quantum Mechanics: Wave-Particle Duality (University of California, San Diego)
https://quantummechanics.ucsd.edu/ph130a/130_notes/node68.html

Schrödinger Equation (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open Courseware)
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-007-electromagnetic-energy-from-motors-to-lasers-spring-2011/lecture-notes/MIT6_007S11_lec39.pdf

Schrödinger's Cat (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

General Stubblebine (Telegraph)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2017/04/07/major-general-albert-stubblebine-iii-us-intelligence-chief-involved/

David Hume: Causation (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://iep.utm.edu/hume-cau/

Kant and Hume on Causality (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-hume-causality/

David Hume (A Treatise on Human Nature)
http://singapore.cs.ucla.edu/LECTURE/section1/scan-23.jpg

Immanuel Kant (Smithsonian Libraries)
https://library.si.edu/image-gallery/72828

Cosmological Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/

David Hume (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/

Kant's View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-mind/

Noumenon (Encyclopedia Britannica)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/noumenon

Kant's Moral Argument for the Existence of God (Ontologistics, Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes)
http://www.philosopher.eu/texts/kants-moral-argument-for-god/

Kant's Philosophical Development (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-development/

Søren Kierkegaard (Encyclopedia Britannica)
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Soren-Kierkegaard

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